CLAIRE CARINO CONTEMPORARY · SOWA, BOSTON
BRADFORD JOHNSON
THE LONG NOW
New Paintings · September 15 to October 9, 2026
The Long Now: a recognition that the precise moment you are in grows out of the past and is a seed for the future.
Each painting begins with a patterned wall. Once the panels are built, a search starts through photographic archives for a figure to set into the middle of it, someone rooted in that place and time but coincident in ours. Here are a few of the seeds that propagated this work.
1864 Parlor
Good Friday. The Petersen boarding house parlor, Washington DC. Mary Todd Lincoln. An unknown woman in a Union Army camp. Pressed Easter lilies under glass.
1937 Chancel
The newly completed chancel of Trinity Church, Boston. Wayfaring strangers. Dorothea Lange. A Dust Bowl migrant.
1970 Passage Way
A Scottish Georgian manor house. The novel War in Heaven. A boy Inkling and his father. Roses as symbols.
1877 Balcony
A balcony in Trinity Church, Boston. The Gilded Age, social class, a need for belonging, and the advantage of anonymity.
1969 Invoke
A guest bedroom. The Amazon rain forest. Indigenous contact, and an evangelical missionary.
1934 Bait & Switch
Edward Bawden’s wall paper, Marmaduke Wetherell, Loch Ness
1887 Survey
An abandoned house, Andrée Polar Expedition, the limits of human endurance
1934 Fishing
Edward Bawden’s wall paper, Marmaduke Wetherell, Loch Ness
Claire Carino Contemporary
450 Harrsion Ave
Boston, MA 02118
Wednesday - Saturday | 12- 5
and by Appointment