This week on Open Studio, Jared Bowen visits Madhouse Motors in Roxbury, MA. It's a rumbling repository for motorcycles. It’s also a coffee shop with Middle Eastern flair. It’s a hub of creativity and to bike aficionados, it’s Eden. Madhouse Motors is a place for tune-ups and repairs, but also much more than that. It’s a space where master mechanics work their wonders. It’s where antique bikes live and where they take on new personas. It’s an artist’s workshop.
Jared Bowen drops by to meet with some of the creative force behind Madhouse Motors: J. Shia, owner and motorcycle builder; Rami Bishara, mechanic and motorcycle designer, and Nick Timney, mechanic and manager of Madhouse Motors.
From there Jared Bowen talks with artist Arghavan Khosravi. As a young woman in Iran and immigrant to the United States, Khosravi has been subjected to many restrictions based on those identities. On the canvas, she renders it all through surrealist imagery, where she explores the themes of freedom, exile and oppression. Her work is taking on new urgency amid the protests and unrest in Iran. With Khosravi embarking on an artist residency at the Rose Art Museum, we revisit the conversation Jared had with Khosravi last year.
And on Boston Common, the Embrace monument is a truly larger than life tribute to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. Directly across the park is another tribute to sacrifice, bravery and justice: the Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial commemorating one of the first Black regiments of the Civil War. To mark Black History Month, we revisit our story from 2021, about the efforts to restore it.
