Arts

by Tom Fels
 
Establishing an independent artistic personality is a key challenge for most photographers, even more so when their name already conjures up one of the best known figures in the field. For photographers in the second half of the twentieth century, the work of Diane Arbus brought a sea change, the arrival of a significant personal vision which has been characterized as rendering strange the familiar and uncovering the familiar in the strange. Most conversant with the art of the past few decades would recognize her work.
 
For her daughter Amy the first solution was to stay away. She didn’t take up photography seriously until her early twenties. From that point on, however, she has been determined to blaze a path of her own. Today, decades later, we can see where her efforts have taken her.

I am proposing a multi-disciplinary arts and cultural festival to take place annually in and around Brattleboro during the ‘fall foliage’ season. In practical terms this will mean from the beginning of September through the week following Columbus Day.

Here are some thoughts about the Festival which I have recently put into writing. Please note that one of the functions of the festival is to focus extraordinary funding for the arts into that season or window of time.                                            [Photograph by William Hays]

I am seeking individuals who may be interested in serving on the founding Board of Fantastic Wantastiquet. This will be a non-profit organization, will seek funding through grants and charitable donations, and will distribute grants whose arts & cultural work projects contribute to the local economy and to the themes and purposes of the Festival.

With Brattleboro artist William Hays ending 25 years’ presence in the downtown on Main Street, several of us have gotten together to try to honor his contributions to our community’s cultural life. Accordingly, we are seeking places to display portraits by Hays which are part of his Brattleboro community portrait series.

We’ll anchor these Hays retrospective displays with a front-window feature of two of his best-known portraits, those of ‘Nina’ (NIna Singleton-Spencer, now the bass player for The Snaz), and of Wayne London, the iconoclastic psychiatrist / metaphysician who is founder of the Brattleboro M.A.S.H. Unit (Metaphysical and Spiritual Healing).

April 2015, Brattleboro, Vermont —  Thursday, April 30 an opening reception for an exhibit of acclaimed photographer, Amy Arbus, will be held from from 5 – 8pm at Mitchell • GIddings FIne Arts at 183 Main Street, Brattleboro. 

The exhibit, After Images, will run from April 30 to May 24 and is a series Arbus made in 2011 and 2012 to payhomage to her favorite painters such as Balthus, Cezanne, David, Ingres, Modigliani and Picasso. The images will seem familiar to most viewers. They are photographs of live scenes staged to replicate the powerful effects of original paintings from the early 20th century, Arbus’s team painted costumes, props, and the models themselves. What has materialized is a series of hybrid images that challenges the thin line between painting and art photography.

Sharon Myers is known as a caterer in Brattleboro. She is also an artist who is about to receive her MFA in Fine Arts from Heartwood College of Art in Biddeford, Maine. She works with fabric, mixed media and sculpture. She has drawn on her multiple talents to create a moving installation called “The Wedding Gown Project.” For those who are beyond first (or second or…) marriages there is much in this exhibit that will resonate. Everyone will be drawn in by both the artistry and the execution.

The “Wedding Gown Project” is up for only two days, Saturday, April 11 and Sunday, April 12 at the seventh entrance in the C. F. Church Building at 80 Flat Street. Hours on Saturday are 3:00 – 7:00 PM and on Sunday from 3:00 to 5:00 PM.

C.X. Silver Gallery (http://cxsilvergallery.com/) is pleased to present ‘In The Box’, a recent series of mixed media abstract paintings by Cai Xi. Please join us for conversation with Cai on the Art-Food Connection and hands-on demonstration. Cai will demo how to make 盒子 (hezi) – or ‘boxes’ – a wheat flour mini-dumpling-based dish. Audience participation will be welcome.

Cai: “I look at my life the way I look at a blank canvas.  In front of the blank canvas, there are millions of opportunities. Putting brush to canvas zeroes in on one opportunity to savor. Each opportunity creates and adds to what I call the whole of the art experience. Each instance of this arrival at one-among-many is a part of my art creation process – eating, working, playing.”

Scale and Presence is an exhibit of masterly crafted large scale ceramics on display at Mitchell•Giddings Fine Arts, 183 Main Street, Brattleboro Vermont. The show will run through April 26, 2015 highlighting a new body of work by Brattleboro artist, Stephen Procter.

Known for the disciplined lines and unglazed surfaces of his historically-inspired monumental vessels, Procter’s more recent work revels in the sensuality of curves and the painterly effects of layered glazes. Whether austere or exuberant, these vessels transcend the usual experience of pottery and broach the realm of sculpture. Alongside human-sized vessels, Scale and Presence will introduce a series of smaller pieces and non-traditional shapes including colorful wall pieces, called “orphan lids.”

The Artist’s Loft has overlooked Main Street for almost 25 years and this will be the last Gallery Walk for William Hays’ studio and gallery.

Hays opened The Artist’s Loft Gallery and studio in June of 1990. It has been in continuous operation since that time. Although initially the gallery showed the works of a variety of artists, in 1995 the gallery began presenting only Hays’ work. He says, “After a few years of being an artist and operating a gallery with rotating shows , I became exhausted by organizing the exhibitions each month. Besides, I had enough of my own paintings to fill both rooms of the gallery.”

Sunday March 15, I will be reading aloud, ” The Revolt of Mother” by Brattleboro resident, Mary Wilkins, on WVEW, as part of the Write Action Radio Hour. This is one of her most anthologized stories, and is considered a small masterpiece. It is told with compassion, anger, attention to detail, and humor.

How her life in Brattleboro helped shape her life, is touched on . In addition to “The Revolt of the Mother” we will also hear a brief newspaper account from the Vermont Phoenix, about the Hanson Tyler, the man she fell madly in love with, but whom declined her romantic overtures. He remained the love of her life, and themes of independence, as well as frustrated love, became repeated themes of her stories. The article is from the 1880’s.

West Brattleboro, Vt. — The Arts Committee of All Souls Church is hosting an opening reception for “A Mix of Oil and Water,” an exhibit of oils and watercolors by John Dimick of Guilford, on Saturday, March 7, from 2 to 4 p.m. Three dozen works are featured, primarily landscape paintings and prints of scenes in the surrounding region. Several studies of downtown Brattleboro capture the town from unusual vantage points, such as along the railroad tracks. A few of the featured works are pairings of the same scene in both mediums to allow viewers an interesting comparison of Dimick’s creative techniques.

Photographer, gallerist, and magazine editor Alfred Stieglitz was a seminal figure in the history of twentieth-century photography.

Middlebury College professor Kirsten Hoving examines Stieglitz’s work and his advocacy for photography as a fine art, with special attention to his quarterly journal Camera Work. Wednesday March 4th, 7 pm – 9 pm. 

Lots of art at the Library this month! Mezzanine Wall & Main Floor: Student Art Month. The Arts Council of Windham County is inviting the community to join them in recognizing and honoring the many young people in Windham County who are involved in a wide range of the arts.

So, for the 34th consecutive year, they have set aside March as Student Art Month, a time to spotlight, through shows and events, the terrific kinds of work coming from our young people and the teachers and school programs which help these young artists to blossom. 

Mary Wilkins Freeman is one of Brattleboro’s “lost treasures” and on the third and fourth Sundays of each month,

Write Action will be featuring some of her best stories, as well as biographical and historical information.

This Sunday, February 22,  at from 5 -6 PM, the Write Action Radio Hour will offer a reading of “The Revolt of Mother”, one of her most anthologized and critically acclaimed stories. Freeman’s story, The Revolt of Mother, is one told with both humor, anger, compassion and detail. It’s a small masterpiece. 

ON EXHIBIT at Brooks Library in February:

MAIN FLOOR: Sequencing paintings by local artists and students River Gallery School of Art. The RGS is a vibrant hub for Brattleboro’s artistic community, with bright, spacious studios on Main Street overlooking the Whetstone Brook.

Founded in 1976, RGS offers classes, community workshops, and summer and school vacation programs for students of all ages.  Our core faculty members are all professional working artists, and teach a wide range of visual media including all types of painting, drawing, printmaking, and encaustics. RGS also partners with community organizations to offer classes to seniors and adults with physical and cognitive challenges

Do you write poetry?  Or perhaps you write prose ? Either way this Friday you will have a chance to read your work in front of an audience. 

This Friday, February 20th, is the third Friday of the month, and at 7:30 PM on every third Friday, Write Action hosts the Open Reading.

We meet at the Blue Dot Studio, in the Hooker Dunham Building to share our poems and stories. Each person gets about 7 minutes

Starting Friday, Feb. 6, the Gallery at the Garden features two exhibits: “Touring New England through Oil Paintings” by Shawnna O’Connor, and “Lights, Camera, Action….Motion Pictures,” an exhibit of photographic works by Sam Groves. Both shows will continue through February.

O’Connor is mainly a self-taught artist.  She uses oil paints to create bright works illustrating historic sites in New England.

She originally focused on smaller canvas depictions of cats.  After the 2011 fire that ravaged the Brooks House apartments where she lived, O’Connor began to paint larger pieces, featuring some of New England’s many historic landmarks.

This Sunday and every Sunday at 5 PM, the Write Action Radio Hour, brings ;literature to the air waves. This Sunday, I will be reading Mary Wilkins Freeman’s crime story, “The Long Arm” My mission is to give it a reading worthy of the story, and worthy of radio. If you are interested in reading this story yourself,

This story was printed in numerous publications, including Brattleboro’s newspaper, the Vermont Phoenix, in 1895.

We are open for registrations at the In-Sight Photography Project!

This semester we have a great selection of classes in both film and digital photography that are filling up fast. 

Students can get their photography fix from the following classes…

ON EXHIBIT at Brooks Library

MAIN FLOOR:  Local artist Matti Salminen curates an exhibit of works by other local artists in various media, about issues of mental illness.

2ND FLOOR CHILDREN: Picture book author and illustrator Anna Dewdney. 

On Exhibit at Brooks Library:

MAIN FLOOR:  Local artist Matt Saliman curates an exhibit of works by other local artists in various media, about issues of mental illness.

2ND FLOOR CHILDREN: Original hand-painted relief etchings by Brian D. Cohen from his recent alphabet book, “The Bird Book,” with rhyming couplets about each bird by Holiday Eames