Arts

CALL FOR ARTISTS

In furtherance of an NEA Our Town grant the Town of Brattleboro seeks proposals for an inaugural creative placemaking project – a permanent or temporal public artistic expression or (an) arts-based performance(s) – intended as a response to Brattleboro’s past, present, and future, its relationship with natural and built landscapes, its cultural heritage, and its vision for itself as a community that embraces the arts. There is a budget of $50,000 allocated to this project. Application Deadline 9PM July 26, 2015. Details at www.brattleboro.org

Gallery For and By Individuals with Disabilities Joins Downtown Brattleboro’s Community

Brattleboro, VT – June 2015 – Gallery Walkers have a unique new stop to enjoy at 61 Main St. in Brattleboro’s vibrant, artistic, downtown community. Angel Boy Art’s Resource Center is a special gallery and community center run for artists with disabilities by volunteers with disabilities.

“We named it our ‘Resource Center’ because this space is much more than just an art gallery for people with disabilities,” says Kim Gove, Vice President, “this is a place to learn, confront and erase stigmas, and challenge yourself.”

On Thursday, July 2 Emily Mason’s exhibit Chromatic Celebrations will be opening with a reception at Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts from 5 – 7pm at 183 Main Street, Brattleboro.

Chromatic Celebrations, the featured exhibit from July 2 to August 16, 2015, showcases Emily Mason’s printmaking production and illustrates a richness and spontaneity equal to her paintings in oil.

Emily Mason, recognized for her abstract paintings, has pioneered with several master printmakers since the mid 1980s to establish a singularly rich and distinctive body of prints. Several different printmaking techniques are represented. Common to all is an involvement with a variety of processes leading to a mixture of sharp focus and ambiguity. She embraces unique states, giving each work its own space.

On July 7, the Town of Brattleboro’s Selectboard will consider the appointment of an ad hoc committee to conduct initial screening of artists who apply for funding through the Town’s NEA “Our Town” grant.

The Screening Committee will review all application materials submitted by all artists and will recommend to the Selectboard a group of finalists. The Screening Committee’s work will occur during the week of July 27-31. The Selectboard will consider the Screening Committee’s recommendations on August 4. The only minimum requirements for service on the Steering Committee are residence in Brattleboro and/or prior experience in judging artistic ability and experience.

Local actor, playwright, and director Jerry Levy has announced he will give a special benefit performance of his original one-person play “The Third Coming: Marx Returns” on Sunday, June 28, 2015, at 7:30 PM, at The Space at118 Elliot, 118 Elliot Street, Brattleboro, Vermont.  

“The play,” explained Levy, “is about Marx’s thoughts and observations should he theoretically return to life in our time.” Levy has played the character of Karl Marx in Howard Zinn’s play, “Marx in Soho,” touring intensively for many years, both domestically and internationally. This experience informed him deeply about the Marx character, and inspired him to write the new play he will be performing in Brattleboro.

West Brattleboro, Vt. – On Sunday, June 14, from 4 to 6:30 pm, All Souls Church Unitarian Universalist invites area art lovers to “For the Love of Art,” a gala reception and fundraising auction for 53 works of art donated to the church by Beverly Alberts. This is an “everything must go to a new home” event, so minimum bids are set a very modest levels, most under a hundred dollars, many under fifty.

Nearly all of the collection is by artists from the local area, including Maisie Crowther, Carolyn DiNicola Fawley, Gennaro Prozzo, Petria Mitchell, Susan McDormand, Karen Becker, Simi Berman, Dorothy Kehaya, Bob George, Trudy Crites, Gib Taylor, Brian Cohen, and Linda Wright, among others. The exhibit includes photographs, prints, and paintings in a variety of mediums, and a few artful posters. Six larger pieces—by artists Jeanne Carbonetti, Arrin Fancher, Bill Hunt, Eric Slayton, and Sally Warren, as well as a 4-panel Chinese screen—will be sold by live auction at 6 pm as the Silent Auction comes to a close.

Vermont Weaving School is please to announce it’s summer retreat schedule.  All classes are held in Putney, VT and are open to both new and experienced weavers.  Classes are small and tailored to your own skills, experience and learning style.  All equipment is provided. 

A three day Beginning Weaving Retreat will be held from July 27-29.  Participants will learn the basics of floor loom weaving, complete a sampler and a scarf, learn how to plan out their own projects and explore color and pattern in weaving.  Cost is $285 plus materials ($235 if registered before June 15).

After reading over the comments to the story on the Our Town arts grant, I found a lot of questions percolating that don’t yield quick or easy answers.  Although it’s our tendency as a culture to treat arts as a frill, they’re clearly important to people, as evidenced by the amount of interest in this topic.  Art matters, as they say.  So let’s think about art.  On to the questions, in no particular order:

1) What is “the arts sector”?  Professional artists?  Businesses and organizations?  What about the many arty people who do art for its own sake and provide an audience for all the other artists?  Where is the arts sector?  Should the arts sector work together?

In the proposal for the Fantastic Wantastiquet festival, I am advancing the premise that the Connecticut River ought not to be regarded as a border in the ‘special case’ area of the arts and culture. Why?

Well, did you ever wonder about why the river is regarded as a border? It’s not a border south of here in Massachusetts or Connecticut.

These two William Hays portraits of notable people in Brattleboro, Vermont, among a score or so of portraits he painted as part of his Local Portraits Of Brattleboro Series, are on exhibition in the front window of Angel Boy Arts (next to Shin La Restaurant) through the end of this month.

Looking through William’s blog for April 2001, I was just reminded that the Dr. Wayne London portrait, the one on the right (of course) won the Dr. Robert L. Bartolli Memorial Award of the Academic Artists Association in 2001. As the winner, it was exhibited at the 51st National Exhibition of Contemporary Realism in Art, which was held in Springfield, MA.

New exhibit in cardiology suite features 18 artists represented by local gallery Vermont Artisan Designs

BRATTLEBORO, VT — Patients and visitors to the cardiology suite at  will have an opportunity to view artwork by some of the region’s finest artists in a new exhibit entitled “Scenes from New England,” which opens with a free public reception on Thursday, June 4 at 5:00 p.m. The exhibit is part of a program called Art for the Heart, a collaboration between BMH and the .

The artists featured in the exhibit are all represented by the Brattleboro gallery . They include Anne Cady, Jerry Cajko, Caroline Christie, Barbara Coburn, Sabra Field, Carol Gobin, Charlie Hunter, Deedee Jones, Deb Lazar, Alistair McCallum, Will Moses, Deborah Randall, William E. Roberts, Jr., Janis Sanders, Marjorie Sayer, Jeanette Staley, Paul G. Stone, and Charles Townshend.

On Thursday, May 28 Lauren Olitski’s exhibit Painting From Nature will be opening with a reception at Mitchell • GIddings Fine Arts from 5 – 8pm at 183 Main Street, Brattleboro.

Painting from Nature will be the featured exhibit from May 28 to June 28, 2015 and will include an artist’s talk on Sunday, June 14th at 5 pm. This talk will be free and open to the public.

Join Michel Moyse for an introductory talk on Art Rage for the iPad, on Wednesday, May 20, at 7 PM in the library’s meeting room. The library will provide three iPads with Art Rage loaded and there will be another one provided by Michel. This talk is free and open to the public.

Michel Moyse, artist, filmmaker and teacher, is Artistic Director and Co-Founder of the Center for Digital Art in Brattleboro, Vermont. Michel has an extensive background in film and experimental art. His multi-screen video artwork has been shown in the United States and abroad. Prior to his position as Artistic Director of CDA, Michel was Sound Editor in New York City for such directors as Woody Allen, Brian De Palma, Jonathan Demme, and Peter Yates. Michel has a Masters in Art Education from New York University.

ON EXHIBIT for the Month of May at Brooks Library

MAIN FLOOR: RAYE ARNAULT Close-up photographs presenting a unique perspective on things in the natural world.

2ND FLOOR CHILDREN: AMY HUNTINGTON Children’s book llustrator of “Grandma Drove the Garbage Truck”.

Local Brattleboro artist Ray Arnault presents her work in the Brooks Memorial Library beginning May 1, 2015 at 224 Main Street in Brattleboro, Vermont. Her artistic photographs will be on view throughout the month of May in the ground floor Main Room of the library.

From the library’s balcony, Arnault’s photos of “Stone People” who pose immobilized and mute yet seemingly alive with a sense of purpose and direction, are some of today’s most unique visual displays from a local artist.

“We Need to Re-Connect with Nature!”

“I’m ‘wired’ for visionary thinking — though I’m good at mathematics and abstract ideas, I have enough deep compassion to speak out and say, ‘this is not working; we’re out of touch with ancient and deeply spiritual ideas’.

“So I’m a ‘doc’, helping sick people get better, but I’m also a teacher, reminding people of forgotten and misunderstood history, practices, wisdom, and lore.” 

Wayne P. London M.D., whose oil portrait by Brattleboro artist William H. Hays (at right) will be displayed in the front window of the new Angel Boy Gallery, next to Shin La Restaurant, during the month of May, 2015 and as part of the Friday,  May 1 Gallery Walk.

William H. Hay’s ‘Local Portrait Series’ will be honored and recognized in the front window of the new Angel Boy Gallery, located next to Shin La Restaurant, for a month beginning this Friday. The exhibit will include a few of the actual portraits!

“I Discovered I Could Express A Person’s Essence!” — William H. Hays

“In the early 2000s, I was in an artist’s ‘dry spell’ similar to a writer’s block. Friends counseled me that I ought to try a different approach. I thought about it, then I took a trip overseas to relax and await new inspiration. So I happened to be at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and saw a Rembrandt; a portrait of an old woman. I was surprised to discover that because of the qualities of the portrait, I knew who she was! Then I immediately had the thought:

”I can do that!” — William H. Hays

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).