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Now available at independent bookshopssee listings on Theforgottenchapters.com
Readers of this non-fiction narrative have the opportunity to sail across the Atlantic Ocean on Winthrop Fleet ships, learn about dramatic events which led to Harvard College’s establishment, and to go into battle during the English Civil War. Visit early farms, mansion houses and orchards in colonial New England and manor houses and modern-day museums in England. Enjoy unforgettable encounters with early colonial men and women and their Native American contemporaries.
PAINTING INFORMATION: Depiction of The Battle of Marston Moor which took place on July 2, 1644 during The English Civil War. IMAGE CREDIT: The Battle of Marston Moor, 1644 (oil on canvas), Barker, John (19th century) / © The Cheltenham Trust and Cheltenham Borough Council / Bridgeman Images. PHOTOGRAPH INFORMATION: This photo of The Marston Moor Obelisk was taken by
author Katherine Dimancescu in February 2014. The obelisk is located in between the villages of Long Marston and Tockwith which are both near the historic city of York, England. Ms. Dimancescu’s maternal ancestor Captain George Denison participated in and survived The Battle of Marston Moor. The battle was a victory for the Parliamentarians including Oliver Cromwell, who also fought in this battle and was wounded.
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The Country and Abroad
Vol. 23, Issue 1
Publishers Elizabeth Backman Potter Donn King Potter
Editorial Director Elizabeth Backman Potter
Director of Advertising, Sales & Marketing
Contents AN APPRECIATION 83 34 50
Donn King Potter
Sales & Marketing, NY Donn King Potter 518 398-6683 Elizabeth Backman Potter 518 398-9344
Sales & Marketing, CT Bart L. Smidt 860 459-8321 Donn King Potter 518 398-6683 Elizabeth Backman Potter 518 398-9344
Sales & Marketing, MA Elizabeth Backman Potter 518 398-9344 Donn King Potter 518 398-6683
58
18
72
Contributors Frances Chamberlain James Kelleher Diana Niles King Sharon Kleinman Will Nixon James Polk Elizabeth B. Potter
www.countryandabroad.com
Bard SummerScape Presents World Premiere of Four Quartets from Pam Tanowitz, Kaija Saariaho, and Brice Marden on 75th Anniversary of T.S. Eliot’s Poems; Resonance II with Miki Orihara at Kaatsbaan; Jacob’s Pillow Presents Festival 2018 with Season Opening Gala & After Party
EDITORIAL 24
On Being an Immigrant: An Interview with Abdo Ballester by Jack Coraggio
MID-SUMMER EVENTS 27
Washington Depot’s Mid-Summer Solstice; Bennington’s Midnight Madness, 5th Annual Arts & Crafts Weekend, Homebrew Festival, and Garlic and Herb Festival; Beacon’s Circus at Howland Cultural Center; and Sharon’s 22nd Annual Summer Book Signing
MUSEUMS 36
Women Artists in Paris, 1850-1900 at Clark Art Institute; Master Class: Northern European Art 1500-1700 from the Permanent Collection at Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center; Art and the New England Farm at Florence Griswold Museum; Keepers of the Flame: Parrish, Wyeth, Rockwell, and the Narrative Tradition at Norman Rockwell Museum
MUSIC 64
Art, Editorial Design & Production FM DESIGN 917 856-9329
Marking the Moment: The Art of Allen Blagden and Stephanie Bernheim: From Paint to Pixels, Essay by Kara L. Rooney, Reviewed by James Polk
DANCE
Ad Design & Production MORALES COMMUNICATIONS countryandabroadads@gmail.com 845 855-5642
Confessions of a Yard-Sale Junkie by Nick Lyons Art Galleries—Connecticut and Massachusetts. Washington Art Association Presents Sculpture Walk 2018; Art Workshops at Hollister House Garden; Prominent Local Artists at Gregory James Gallery; Our Towns Group Show at Gallery 25; Marc Stofi at Liberty Art & Framing; Stanley Allyn Schaeffer at Berkshire Art Gallery; Leslie Peck and Stan Taft at Greylock Gallery Art Galleries—New York and Vermont. Gertrude Fisk and Rockwell Kent at Green River Galleries, Roxie Johnson’s Art & Poetry, A Collaborative Affair, Unique 18th C. Italian Tall Case Clock at Montage; Will Moses at Mr. Nebo Gallery, Cross River Artists at Betsy Jacaruso Gallery; Murray Zimiles’ Hunt Paintings at Millbrook School; Arthur Getz’s New Yorker Covers at Moviehouse Studio Gallery; George Kalinsky’s Sports photography at Southern Vermont Art Center
BOOKS
Sales & Marketing, VT Elizabeth B. Potter 518 398-9344 Donn King Potter 518 398-6683
Philip Roth: Out and About of an Evening by William O’Shaugnessy, WVOX and WVIP
ARTISTS AND ARTISANS
Bard Summer Music Festival Presents “Rimsky-Korsakov and His World with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri and The Tsar’s Bride; Bard SummerScape Presents Anton Rubinstein’s Opera, The Demon; Washington Friends of Music Presents Summer Concert Festival with New Baroque Soloists; Waterbury Symphony Orchestra Presents Summer Concerts; and Hotchkiss Presents Summer Portals—Piano Concert Series
POETRY 14
Poems Deemed Appropriate for Print by Jean Tate
THEATER 76
Vassar & New York Stage and Film Present 34th Powerhouse Theater Season; Bard SummerScape Presents Leonard Bernstein’s Peter Pan; Oldcastle Theatre Presents 2018 Season; Living Room Theatre Presents Chekhov’s Three Sisters
COVER Encounter, 2018 Watercolor, 30 x 23 in.
Allen Blagden Allen Blagden, Lakeville, CT
Artist’s Note: “The idea for this painting came to me in the middle of the night after hearing a program on the BBC about the horrors of poaching in Africa. An elephant is killed every six minutes just for its tusks to be sold in the illegal ivory trade. I deliberately titled the painting Encounter, and gave the Massai warrior no weapons. I wanted to convey a meeting between man and nature. A meeting of the minds, if you will, of non- confrontation, but mutual trust.—Allen Blagden
We publish monthly and bimonthly and accept photos, opinions, short articles, stories, poems, and drawings from the general public, but assume no responsibility for failure to publish a submission or for typographic errors published, or incorrect placement. The contents of the magazine consists of copyrightable material and cannot be reproduced without the expressed permission of the author and the publishers of The Country and Abroad. The Country and Abroad is now available by annual subscriptions through the mail for $60. Send check or money order with complete mailing address to: Johnnycake Hollow Press, P.O. Box 762, Pine Plains, NY 12567. Offices: 86 Johnnycake Hollow Road, Pine Plains, New York 12567. Phone 518 398-6683; 518 398-9344; fax 518 398-6368.
Advertising Deadline: The 5th of each month prior to publication 518 398-6683, Advertising 518 398-9344, Editorial
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The Country and Abroad v June/July 2017-18
14 POETRY
Poems Deemed Appropriate for Print by Jean Tate …there is something about the outside of a horse, that is good for the inside of a person—Winston Churchill Mares in downpour Again, they stand, where they always have hind hooves cocked, under dripping firs in dense evergreen over-growth
ears, withers, tail dock scratched mud all over she pushes up from knobby knees hocks not what they used to be, but holding and teeters off on unshod hooves, a sort of half-pass
the two bay mares, rumps turned toward summer rain butts, shiny like fall chestnuts
late in her day
I know they’re slowing down they may know it too
Trunks weave branches up into the endless dome,
But how they flew last year beyond summer’s reach blowing into sky turned over on itself
scraping baby blue.
restive stomping drinking from the moon sweet amaranth breath diamond sweat beads, foaming quarters
Gargantuan blue
Its chicory blue, Gallouise blue souls of birds feasting, blue Monk’s head poisoned petals blue
whirling, kicking out, charging up and down hill, turf flying behind
days, spread about in ancient Egyptian blue
their race run in the paddock of yesteryear
the pain of lives, mistakes of our world, absorbed
Improbable premise
in ineffable nothingness right above our heads
the old mare sidles off, as she has many times before down to the waning stream her crooked joints supporting the ribby cage above she, still above ground but failing with a wheeze and a thud she lies on soft ground haunches well under unknowing the improbable premise (life’s promise) …that we do not go on forever rolling back and forth spine, arched in a hollow
Gargantuan blue
Great Blue Heron As if transported from hieroglyphics off an Egyptian wall the Great Blue stands motionless mirrored at the slant edge of summer’s pond stalky legs of an Egret, scaffolding of an old man up to his knees in antiquity silent and alone until the splash-jerk-judder of the catch flick of an eye, the pollywog swallowed
The Country and Abroad v June/July 2017-18
15 POETRY
papyri straddling arroyos slurped down like an oyster neck stretched skyward, bill open in exaltation
as time’s minute hand removed Itself from the equation
no doubt who owns the water rights here Child of disbelief (…the knee operation) After hours in the operating room days in the hospital I find myself at the nursing home, where they bring a cold bagel I have it good here and I know it with my new knee, packed in ice on pillows I watch hours of CNN beside, Roy Moore’s defeat (no one will remember him) one image stays with me … a little girl, her mud-strewn face perhaps you’ve seen her, her expression unable to speak, her hands flapping pumping air, in limp-wristed c o n t o r t e d disbelief ( a bomb has just exploded near her she is in full shock, her mouth frozen open ) you want to steal her from the Syrian scream want to hug her, hold her, endlessly rock ( how do you stop the world from crashing down? ) the artist in me, the painter, turns attention to a blob of cream cheese spilled on white sheets … I focus away compare white on white enjoy the slight dash of Naples yellow in the ecru color Disordered dreaming Star bursts sang with certainty In the slit of evening’s eye light along the ends of fronds generated gravitas beyond beginning time freed itself to dovetail with Perpetua, drawn into her elegant omissions distinct from the onyx line
and spectral metronomes arose like chapter headings in the furthest parts of her sub rosa universe Where dreams kept on inverting Jean Tate is a painter turned poet.After fifty years as a practicing artist, showing abstract paintings in America and Canada, she began to capture life in words, while not forsaking color, line, and texture, simply using them in a different way. Her poems come under the category “Of Where I live.” Tate is presently working on a second book of poems, possibly of the same name, while simultaneously continuing to make paintings in encaustic.
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The Country and Abroad v June/July 2018
18 BOOKS
Two Unique Artists, Two Unique Styles
The Broad Axe, 1992 Watercolor, 40 x 36 in.
Allen Blagden Collection of David Rockefeller
MARKING THE MOMENT: The Art of Allen Blagden Introduction by John Wilmerding David R. Godine, 158 pp. $50. Reviewed by James Polk As a painter, Allen Blagden is best known for his watercolors of the natural world: of animals and the colorful birds of Africa, of the seabirds and raptors of the Northeastern and Western US—of the rocky shores and island vistas of Maine and of the quiet lakes of the Adirondacks. But Marking the Moment introduces a far more expansive version of the artist, of one equally accomplished when working with oils or with graphite, with etching or lithography, adept at penetrating close to the core of his human subjects in a series of portraits of both the famous and the less so, and of an artist capable of capturing the essence of whatever scene he chooses to put on canvas or on paper. The works collected here, in other words, expose us to Blagden’s wider world. But beyond that they also represent something of a visual memoir, recording the places he has been, the people he has known and—most important of all—those things and events that have made major impacts on the course of his life. And that life has been consumed by art from the beginning.The son of Thomas Blagden, a noteworthy painter in his own right and longtime instructor at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, Allen Blagden grew up in a family where two sisters would take to painting and a brother became an
Masai, 1985 Watercolor, 22 x 50 in.
Allen Blagden Collection of Allen Blagden
accomplished nature photographer. Following his own graduation from Hotchkiss, Allen traveled extensively in Greece and Egypt, sketching all the way and accumulating images that were later transformed into paintings, some of which are reproduced here. Later, on his way to a BFA at Cornell, he studied ornithology, an interest that would lead him first to a short stint illustrating birds at the Serengeti Park in Kenya and then to a job as illustrator for the Department of Ornithology at the Smithsonian Institution. From there he spent time in New Mexico working as a cinematographer for Denny McCoy on a film about Billy the Kid. Still, the lure of the canvas was never far away; McCoy, as it happened, was a nephew of Andrew Wyeth and cousin of Jamie, two of the giants of twentieth century American art whose influences can be seen in Blagden's work. Soon he returned to Connecticut, his mind filled with images, to set up his own studio and enter his paintings in the first of many solo and group shows. The works represented here are prefaced by a lengthy and perceptive intro-duction by the art historian, John Wilmerding, who does what art historians do and provides a context to Blagden’s performance, situating it in the flow of American art. We learn, for instance, how the influences of Thomas Eakins’ portraits, Homer’s landscapes, Audubon’s birds, Karl Bodmer’s American Indians, and the landscapes and still-lives of the Wyeths are all at play in Blagden's performance. And yet, as Wilmerding points out, “...like any original artist, [he] absorbs and transforms his sources into his own personal style.” That personal style shines throughout this book. Because his versions of birds and animals seem to reflect Roger Tory Peterson’s observation that exact representation renders the subjects static and lifeless, Blagden’s animals
The Country and Abroad v June/July 2018
19 BOOKS
Head Dress, 1991 Watercolor, 22 x 50 in.
have a reality all their own, with some features more suggestion than statement, giving them a vibrancy and an immediacy that transcends mere taxidermy. Then there are the portraits, shining with unexpected personality. Blag-
Allen Blagden Collection of Allen Blagden
den paints David Rockefeller’s wife, Peggy, in a faded denim jacket and old sweater as a warm, almost joyful figure in the Maine woods, brimming with curiosity.The actor Richard Chamberlain in two versions looks both at ease and
The Country and Abroad v June/July 2018
20 BOOKS
Cherry Picking, 1997 Acrylic on glass, vinyl collage, 49-1/2 x 53-1/2 in.
Stephanie Bernheim Stephanie Bernheim: From Paint to Pixels
contemplative, while the young Arnold Schwarzenegger appears to peer eagerly toward a future having nothing to do with muscles and Beatrice Straight's intense blue eyes seem to penetrate to the depths of the viewer’s soul. Friends and family members are depicted in scenes that suggest dialogs that are about to begin or else have recently concluded, though to uncertain ends. There are stories behind such works as “Bridesmaids,” “After the Bath,” “Mother and Child,” “Summer Reading,” “Osprey Nest,” and “Coffee in Bed” among others, but the artist leaves it up to his audience to imagine just what those stories might be. Blagden's paintings of Native Americans, originally inspired by his first trips to the Southwest in the 1970s, are by design more generic than specific. As the artist himself notes, “I chose not to name any specific group, and titled my paintings with unspecified words to create a distinct mood,” a mood that expresses both the strong individuality in the faces and the commonality of heritage that unites the figures. He does this by draping them in blankets, headdresses, and accessories not associated with any particular tribe while remaining clearly native in origin. Standing out in this series, as Wilmerding notes, and depicting a confusion between native and white European cultures is “Red Bandana,” in which a young Indian is drawn in monochromatic pencil with the red bandana around his neck holding a single feather in back. But what's this? He is also wearing a leather biker jacket with metal studs and staring out forcefully from the portrait as if to say that he belongs in whatever group he wants to belong in and challenges us to claim otherwise. Wilmerding also points out that this series of paintings is in the tradition of the Swiss-born Karl Bodmer, who, in the nineteenth century, produced a large body of works featuring Native American tribes and tribal members, paying particular attention to facial features and individual personalities. This is probably true, but I would also suggest that Blagden’s work in this area also owes something to the early twentieth century reservation photographs of
Rapunzel’s Dilemma, 2000 Acrylic on canvas, 138 x 125 in.
Stephanie Bernheim Stephanie Bernheim: From Paint to Pixels
Edward Curtis with which they share an expressiveness and a memorable inner power. But whatever source material he draws from, it must be stressed that Blagden’s results are his alone, their composition stemming from his artistic sensibility, the resolution of themes the product of his own consciousness and his own approach. This remains true no matter the subject, from the familiar representations of the natural world to the subtle touches that mark the individuals in his portraits. Finally it should be noted that this collection is published by David R. Godine in Boston and is marked by the fine execution and exquisite reproductions that are the hallmarks of that publishing house.
STEPHANIE BERNHEIM: From Paint to Pixels Monograph by Karla L. Rooney; Essay by Richard Milazzo Foliart Publishers, 192 pp. $60. Reviewed by James Polk Postmodernism in art comes to us without a widely accepted definition and without an agreed upon set of rules. It is a mix of sometimes contradictory theories, with no boundaries, no interchangeable formula for artistic expression, no standardized set of tools, no consistent techniques, no traditions save the absence of tradition: in short, postmodernism is an art form more or less without limits. What this loose collection of reference points does is offer the individual artist a wide range of options, almost (but not quite) an “it is art because I say it is art” freedom to define his or her creative territory. Meaning that the classic sense of some sort of objective truth has here begun to recede, giving way to a more conspiratorial and subjective union between artist and
The Country and Abroad v June/July 2018
21 BOOKS
Rdbkgry, 2014 Archival pigment Print, plexiglass mount, 29 x 36 in.
Stephanie Bernheim Stephanie Bernheim: From Paint to Pixels Pink Clouds on Chairs, 1993 Acrylic on glass, 27 x 34 in.
viewer in determining what each piece of “art” is really about. Part of that union requires that we as viewers pay attention to all aspects of production, for it’s not just a matter of paint on canvas any more. Instead the medium is often the message, and we must decide the significance of the artist’s choice of wood, or metal, or glass instead of canvas or paper to convey that message. Or if, for instance, instead of brush strokes we must consider how photography (both positive and negative) is used, or paper cutouts, or differently shaped pieces of wood, or print clippings, or, if paint remains the medium, it has been applied with such thickness that the texture takes on a topographical significance suggesting—what, exactly? Descended from the work of Duchamp, Magritte, DalÌ, and others in the Dadaist and surrealist schools, as well as later twentieth-century artists, such as Oldenburg,Warhol, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, and a whole host of pop and minimalist artists, one of the most notable aspects of postmodernism is the way in which it elevates the materials of the everyday, both the mundane and the commercial, to the level of art. Another is inclusivity. Because of its slippery resistance to easy definition, postmodernism is able to add conceptual, video, and performance art, as well as a wide range of artistic installations to its roster alongside their progenitors. And yet, after all the Sturm und Drang of trying to come up with a workable explanation of the term, post-modernism may really be quite simple to understand. It is really (and purely), to paraphrase Ad Reinhardt, one of its most important theoreticians, art about art, no more, no less. Or as he put it, “Art-as-art is nothing but art.” What all this means in practice can be seen in the work of Stephanie Bernheim. Influenced early on by Reinhardt himself and by such painters as Milton Resnick and Jasper Johns, she was later drawn to both the work and writings of Lucy Lippard, but from the beginning has carved her own way. She first came to public notice with a series of paintings in which she piled layers of acrylic on glass plates producing results that recalled topographical maps, the thick accumulation of her chosen medium suggesting the geographical details of a darkened moonscape. Noteworthy throughout her career is Bernheim's fascination with the materials she uses and with the process of producing the work. When using acrylics, she sometimes dilutes the paint to the point where what is left is more
Stephanie Bernheim Stephanie Bernheim: From Paint to Pixels
shadow than substance, while at other times piling in to such a thickness that the final product appears almost sculptural. She experiments with other unexpected media besides glass painting over such unconventional bases as discarded curtains, wire mesh, and epoxy resin. She places some still incomplete works out-of-doors, allowing the forces of nature to give them a final statement. She has used the camera in her outdated Palm Pilot and manipulated digital prints to add further dimensions to her art, recalling—but going beyond—the work of Lucas Samaras, who manipulated dyes in Polaroid images to create a unique body of work.While Samaras makes the photographs into the central fact of his work, Bernheim uses the ones here to supplement and give additional focus to hers. This well-produced collection is prefaced by a perceptive monograph by the artist Karla L. Rooney, which explains Bernheim's techniques and considers her sources while giving a critical overview of her performance. It also includes a more personal supporting essay by Richard Milazzo, the critic and curator. What it all amounts to in the end is a full portrait of the work and career of a gifted and courageous artist, willing and able to challenge the conventions of her chosen field, one who has staked her own path and followed it wherever it has taken her. James Polk, the co-owner of A New Leaf Used Books in Pine Plains, was for five years a contributing editor of Art/World in New York City.
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The Country and Abroad v June/July 2018
24 EDITORIAL
On Being an Immigrant: An Interview with Abdo Ballester By Jack Coraggio
My Home and My Family’s Chrysler New Yorker 1956, 2013 “I am on the left of the car, the way I looked as a teenager, and on the right the way I look today.—Abdo Ballester The painting is 23" X 28", It was painted in 2013.
Absolutely nobody who has ever met Abdo Ballester is surprised to learn he was neither born nor raised in the leafy Litchfield Hills of Connecticut. Ballester, who still bears a deeply Caribbean accent and penchant for the island music and salsa dancing which saturated his childhood in Cuba, is the anointed “Mojito King” of his otherwise quaint and quiet Washington Depot, CT’s community. He is locally known as the hip-shaking, cocktail-mixing bartender at the Washington Art Association’s Summer Solstice fundraiser, which once annually transforms his quiet neighborhood into the Latin festival of Ballester’s youth. Among the button-down Yankees of New England, this one-man-party kind of sticks out. But underneath his breezy attire and beaming grin, there is a man who betrays a worldliness, which circumnavigates far more than what can
Chris Osborne Acrylic on canvas, 23 x 29 in., after photos
be defined by his Cuban refugee origins. So he tries to steer away from the immigration title, because it doesn’t fit him and—perhaps doesn’t fit anybody, anywhere. “I don’t like the word ‘immigrant,’ because now it is used as a political football, and has become kind of derogatory,” said Ballester, who openly laments the recent trajectory of America, and its ill-conceived notion of being made great again. “This country became what it became because of immigrants. Plus we’re all immigrants—we all come from different parts of the world.” Ballester knows because Ballester has been there—to so many of these different parts of the world.While his journey began in Cuba, a place whose sorrowful political landscape made him a refugee, the Mojito King forever came to
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25 EDITORIAL
the United States in 1960, shortly after the island autocrat, Fidel Castro, muscled his way into power. The now Mojito King was already a student in America, so he knew the lay of the land and was familiar with the trans-Caribbean trek, but that final exit was made up of wooly fear and loathing. Mr. Ballester later discovered that his father, in essence, bought his son’s way out. Boarding a north-bound airplane wasn’t especially novel, but as he did it that fateful day, the younger Ballester looked back once more at his homeland and, for what would be the last time, his father.That long-ago memory is burned into his mind. But he took advantage of an American education, and studied political science at New York University. He followed a fruitful career that had him oversee the eventual establishment of an International Criminal Court. It was officially adopted in 1998, so it only took twenty-eight years, because “things at the U.N. don’t move very fast.” Still, they moved. And with it, so did Ballester. “I was so idealistic growing up, and thought I could bring peace to the world,” said Ballester. “I was lucky that I was the rep for the foundation of an International Criminal Court to the UN, and got to travel all over the world. So my dream of traveling became a reality, my contribution to make peace in the world became reality also. “The ICC, whose necessity was apparent after the Nuremberg Trials, is the global court, which puts individuals on trial for their crimes against humanity. People, such as Nazi soldiers, who tried to abdicate responsibility for some of the worst atrocities in the history of humanity—simply because they were just following orders. “The whole concept is to try individuals who commit crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, crimes against environment,” Ballester explained.“Not everyone jumps on board, because certain countries don’t want
to be judged by an international criminal court. But a reason it is becoming more successful is because the world is more interrelated.” Indeed it is, and no wall is going to stop that. Ballester is slowing down. He’s no longer in international law enforcement, rather he manages the gift shop at the Mayflower Grace Inn & Spa in Washington Depot. And once a year, he mixes up a super batch of Mojitos at WAA’s Summer Solstice. “I have tried them and they are delicious,” said Barbara von Schreiber, the executive director for WAA. “It sets the tone for the evening.” The island tenor of the whole event was essentially Ballester’s idea, steel drums included. Washington Art Association member, Ginger Nelsen, agreed. “Abdo came to us as the special events chair. We were discussing that year’s atelier sale, and he suggested a preview party,” she said. “He does make the best mojitos, and with the lively music and wonderful bargains, the Summer Solstice was a hit.” It’s now celebrating its tenth year, and is not only the flagship fundraiser for the Washington Art Association, it is also one of the biggest events in town. Last year it brought up to 400 people to celebrate the Solstice and see the art show. “They come for the art. They come for the mojitos and dancing.” Still, the Mojito King won’t reveal the recipe. But for Ballester, that’s not what it’s about, in Washington or in the wolrd. “I’m still with the belief of making the world a happier world,” said Ballester. “My greatest joy is seeing people happy and having a good time.” The Summer Solstice begins at 6 pm on Saturday, June 23rd. Everyone is invited. Jack Coraggio is a freelance writer and Quizmaster at Republic of Trivia. 203 449-0279 (Cell), @JCoraggio (Twitter), facebook.com/reptriv.
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The Country and Abroad v June/July 2018
27 MID-SUMMER EVENTS
MID-SUMMER EVENTS in Washington Depot, Bennington, Beacon, and Sharon
Havana Under the Stars, Summer Solstice Celebration at the Washington Art Association, Saturday June 23, 2018 from 6 pm
Washington Depot’s Summer Solstice: Havana Under the Stars Washington Art Association & Gallery presents the 10th Anniversary Summer Solstice Celebration: Havana Under the Stars on June 23, 2018. Exceptional food from local restaurants, music, drink, and decorations with a Caribbean theme will transform The Washington Art Association and Gallery into “Havana under the Stars.” Every year Abdo Ballester, the Mojito King, draws crowds with his signature mojitos. The dancers Ginga Brasileira will perform their unique blend of Samba and Capoeira, and Ochun will play live Cuban music. As always it will be a night to remember! The Washington Art Association & Gallery’s Atelier Sale takes place con-
currently, filling the galleries with one-of-a-kind art, a sale that is much anticipated by WAA members, interior designers, and western Connecticut and eastern New York residents. All proceeds from the Summer Solstice events directly support the Washington Art Association & Gallery’s programming for studio classes and workshops, innovative exhibitions, and special events. Founded in 1952, the Washington Art Association & Gallery is a nonprofit organization, dedicated to enriching our community through education, exhibitions, and special events. Tickets for the event are $60 in advance, $75 at the door, and may be purchased online at washingtonartassociation.org, or by calling the Washington
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Art Association & Gallery directly: 860 868-2878, or by email: washingtonart@snet.net.
Bennington’s Midnight Madness, 5th Annual Arts & Crafts Weekend, Homebrew Festival, and Garlic Festival
Abdo Ballester, the Mojito King, draws crowds with his signature Mojitos, Havana Under the Stars, Summer Solstice Celebration at the Washington Art Association, Saturday June 23, 2018 from 6 pm.
Midnight Madness is a decades-old tradition in the town of Bennington,VT. On the third Thursday of July from 7 to Midnight (July 19th this year), shops and eateries stay open, and folks come out in droves to enjoy a fun Vermont night of shopping, deals, and festivities. For the past twenty years, Bennington Potters has made Midnight Madness a highly anticipated event at Potters Yard that brings hundreds of visitors from near and far.The Potters stockpile thousands of pieces for the only pottery sale of the year—and throw a party that’s fun for the whole family. With music, tents, strings of lights, a food truck—even a bouncy for the kids—this event is not to be missed! And the Potters say their ultimate reward for making pottery with love is to see all the smiling faces and fun that night. Reactions and Tributes re 2017’s Midnight Madness Sale: Very nice sale. Very pleased with my finds. Staff was very hospitable. Drove seven hours, arriving at 1:30 pm to be sure I was at the head of the line. Glad I did— Jean S.
The dancers, Ginga Brasileira, will perform their unique blend of Samba, Havana Under the Stars, Summer Solstice Celebration at the Washington Art Association, Saturday June 23, 2018 from 6 pm
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Happy Treasure Hunters at The Bennington Potters’ annual Midnight Madness sale in Bennington, Vermont
Fresh home-brewed beverages include beer, wine, cider, and mead at Bennington’s Home Brew Festival
It was my first one. I will be coming back every year!!! The weather was nice, and it definitely had that festival atmosphere!!! – Kelley W., Pa. My first year too. Got some great buys despite being #730 to get in. – Sarah P.
Bennington’s 5th Annual Arts & Crafts Weekend, August 3rd-5th Suddenly, summer has sprung, and the world is wonderful with festivals flowering all across the region. Once again Bennington will host The 5th Annual Bennington Arts Weekend, the first weekend of August. Anchoring the weekend is the 40th Annual Southern Vermont Art and Craft Festival at Camelot Village, August 3rd -5th. As Bennington is the “gateway” to Vermont from the Berkshires and the Capital Region of New York, it is perfectly placed to host this successful longrunning event that still embodies the ideals of craft fairs from an earlier time. Not only supported by avid locals from Wilmington and The Shires of Bennington County, the show attracts legions of craft aficionados from the neighboring Berkshires and nearby Albany and Saratoga, NY, as well as from the Mid Hudson region and western Connecticut. In an earlier time, prior to malls and the Internet, craft shows brought
Bennington’s Four Corners North Homebrew Festival features the best home-brewed beer in the region!
the public innovative and creative works of art. Usually the settings were festive with live music, craft demonstrations, and delicious food served by food trucks. Today, it’s possible to return to the golden era of arts and craft shows by coming to the Southern Vermont Art and Craft Festival, and experiencing the Camelot tents, live music, craft demos, and an abundance of superbly hand-crafted works of 150 talented artists and artisans. Just a few of the artisans who exemplify craft excellence at the show include: Donna McGee, ceramicist, whose art on clay has a “Picasso” feel to it. Another artisan, Lynne Puhalla, combines weaving and pottery. Her clay pieces have a leaf grown from her garden embedded in them before they are fired in a kiln whereupon she connects an artistically woven basket.Then there are Charles and Caryn Donofrio, who carry on a multi-generational family leather business. Their “chic” leather bags are so stylish that they rival bags and purses of famous fashion designers at a fraction of the prices of Manhattan boutiques. Value is an integral part of craft shopping. The Festival has 140 “boutiques.” The public is invited to come and meet the artists, see their work, hear their stories, and buy their work.“Support the handcrafted movement,” says Tim Cianciola, of Craftproducers. Parking is plentiful, and adult admission is only $8, while kids are free. Rain or shine under colossal tents. For more info and the Festival, visit www.craftproducers.com. In fact, why not make a weekend of it. Visit www.benningto.com to explore the cornucopia of events throughout Bennington Arts Weekend, August 3rd-5th, including the Home Brew Festival.
Four Corners North Homebrew Festival, August 4th, 2018 Enjoy fresh home-brewed beverages including beer, wine, cider, and mead with a street-fair atmosphere with live music, an interesting variety of delicious food, and of course, the best home-brewed beer in the region! Live Entertainment and Beer Tents will fill County Street at 4 Corners North (just east of Rte7/North Street) so you can shop at local stores with specials, and enjoy food vendors, brewing demos and live music
Bennington’s Garlic and Herb Festival, September 1st & 2nd You’ll find garlic-everything at the 23rd Annual Southern Vermont Garlic and Herb Festival. Join garlic-lovers from throughout New England as they come to sample food and crafts from hundreds of different vendors, all made from garlic and herbs. Everything from garlic ice cream to garlic jelly, pickled garlic, roasted garlic, garlic braids, and of course, plain garlic bulbs of every vari-
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Three Tumblers
ety will be available for sampling and purchase, along with planting and braiding and cooking demonstrations. For aspiring gardeners, garlic growers, garlic-lovers or those simply looking for a fun way to spend a Vermont end-of-summer day, the event promises something for everyone. For the kids, there are great children’s activities, and you can relax at the Beer and Wine Garden under the tent listening to live music both days.
Beacon Celebrates Circus! At the Howland Cultural Center A multi-faceted window into the world of circus comes to the Howland Cultural Center this June and July. CIRCUS! @ The Howland will present a diverse panorama of art exhibits, a documentary film, two community skill workshops, a full-length musical opus for adults, and a one-ring circus featuring professional performers from around the globe. “This is the biggest, most ambitious multi-arts project the Howland has produced and we look forward to a summer of fun," said Craig Wolf, Howland Cultural Center president. An art show running both months is titled: The Art of Balance. “Balance serves as a connective spirit and integral element of every art form—be it musical, visual, movement-based, theatrical or literary,” says Karen E. Gersch, “ringmaster” and curator. Ten celebrated fine artists (from NYC, NJ, Westchester, CT, Dutchess, and Orange Counties) will feature paintings, drawings, wood carvings, prints, photographs, sculptures, jewelry, and puppets in the Main Gallery.Art by children from Beacon elementary and high schools will grace the balcony walls. The art exhibits and seven specialty events are curated and directed by Gersch, a celebrated visual artist and longtime circus acrobat (founding member of The Big Apple Circus). She has assembled a sterling cast of jugglers,
Donna McGee Southern Vermont’s Art & Craft Festival, Bennington , VT
hand balancers, and magicians from BAC and Ringling Bros. for the 2 pm matinee on July 1st of Piccolo Circus in the Gallery of the Howland. Gersch will also host a Family Fun Balancing Day each month, in which adults and children can try their hands (and feet) at simple balancing skills: walking a tightwire, a rolling globe, rola bolas, spinning plates, juggling, and partner acrobatics. “Family Fun Balancing Days” are Sunday, June 24 and Sunday, July 8, from 1- to 4 pm, on a drop-in basis. On Friday, June 22nd, World Circus, an award-winning documentary film by Angela Snow, will be shown at 8 pm. The movie chronicles the training and preparation of world-class acts entered in the Monte Carlo Circus Festival, the world's most prestigious and competitive juried festival. The footage takes us backstage, back lot. and to dressing rooms to see the daily lives of famous aerialists, clowns, acrobats, seal and lion trainers; then highlights those acts in the ring.Angela Snow will be at the screening to introduce the film and answer questions afterwards. Cirque de La Lune is a musical tribute to the circus in two acts (with popcorn included)! Acclaimed composer and classical pianist, Hayden Wayne, will perform his full-length opus for adults.This original, live music concert tells the tale of love, loss, and spiritual revelation in the realm of a big-top setting. Pinot & Augustine, an enchanting musical clown duet, is presented by the founders of Maryland-based Happenstance Theater, winners of five Helen Hayes Awards. It features charming sets and costumes, audience participation and lots of laughs. Mark Jaster and Sabrina Mandell work in the style and spirit of European clowning, mime, and Commedia del’Arte. Pinot & Augustine is one-night only: Wed., July 25th. The Howland is offering a Cheap Date Box Dinner beginning at 5:30 pm. The show starts at 7 pm. Box dinners
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31 MID-SUMMER EVENTS
will also be available after the show. This project is supported by the Ann and Abe Effron Fund of the Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley. In part, this project is made possible with funds from the Decentralization Program, a re-grant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Mid-Hudson. The Howland Cultural Center, is located at 477 Main St., Beacon, NY. Contact Info: information@howlandculturalcenter.org, Craig Wolf, 845831-4998 or Karen Gersch, 203-216-5002, keg37@frontier.com
22nd Annual Sharon Summer Book Signing, Friday, August 3, 2018, 6 to 8 pm
Photo of leaf being imprinted on wet clay
Lynne Puhalla Southern Vermont’s Art & Craft Festival, Bennington , VT
. Photo of finished basket with ceramic bottom with leaf Lynne Puhalla Southern Vermont’s Art & Craft Festival, Bennington , VT
30 Authors and Illustrators Gather to Sign Their Latest Work The Hotchkiss Library of Sharon is pleased to announce the line-up for the 22nd Annual Sharon Summer Book Signing. Featured guests will include former Congressman, Steve Israel, author of the satirical novel, Big Guns. Barry Blitt, a frequent cover illustrator for the New Yorker known for his political humor, will sign copies of Blitt, a retrospective of his wide-ranging work. New York Times fashion editor Vanessa Friedman will present Dress Like a Woman, a compendium of photographs depicting woman at work. Our history offerings include Michael Korda’s Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk and Ben Steil’s comprehensive look at The Marshall Plan. International bestseller writer, Simon Winchester, a long-time participant in the book signing, will introduce The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World. And The Promise and the Dream, by David Margolick, explores the interwoven lives of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Nadine Strossen, first woman president of the American Civil Liberties Union, addresses the crucial issue of Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech Not Censorship. Interested in the lives of others? We have a fabulous choice—from humorist, Henry Alford, who invites the reader on a journey through the world of dance in his mix of memoir and cultural history, And Then We Danced, to artist Duncan Hannah, who takes us back to the New York cultural scene of the 1970s in Twentieth-Century Boy, Eileen McNamara tells the compelling and complicated life story of Eunice Kennedy Shriver in Eunice. Julia Pierpont returns to Sharon with her fabulous, illustrated Little Book of Feminist Saints. And folk singer, Dar Williams, shares what she learned about thriving small communities in What I Found in a Thousand Towns. Nationally acclaimed cookbook authors, who also happen to live locally, present delicious recipes and tips. Jessie Sheehan will sign copies of The Vintage Baker, in which she updates classic favorites, and Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough offer The Kitchen Shortcut Bible and All-Time Favorite Sheet Cakes & Slab Pies. Gardener extraordinaire, Tovah Martin, returns with The Garden in Every Sense and Season. Nature lovers will enjoy Ben Goldfarb’s fascinating Eager: The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers. Beloved illustrator Lane Smith returns to Sharon with two picture books, A House That Once Was and A Perfect Day. He will be joined by local children’s writers Sarah Albee, April Stevens, Elise Broach, and Jennifer Morris. Admission to the book signing is $40, which includes complimentary wine, cocktails, and hors d’oeuvres. The signing will be followed by seven dinners in local homes featuring authors from the event. The Hotchkiss Library of Sharon, an architectural gem designed by architect, Bruce Price, is celebrating its 125th Anniversary in 2018. The 22nd Annual Sharon Summer Book Signing is the library’s major annual fundraiser and all proceeds fund adult and children’s programming, as well as literacy outreach programs in the broader community. More information on the event, including a complete list of authors and books, can be found at: http://sharonbooksigning.weebly.com/contact.html
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The Country and Abroad v June/July 2018
34 ARTISTS AND ARTISANS
Confessions of a Yard-Sale Junkie By Nick Lyons The yard-sale season is open again and I am glad. Check any local newspaper from Rhinebeck to Pine Plains to New Paltz to Woodstock, from April through October, and you're sure to find dozens of ads for weekend sales. The sales can be dull or pleasant or exciting, but they are always rife with suspense. Woodstock, where I live, teems with yard sales. Mari and I never needed any of the stuff, of course, and the sellers--because they were selling it--didn't either. But even the ads are irresistible to a yard-sale addict, of which I was one, as was my late wife, who called the whole business “redistributing the junk” and the “allure of the redundant.” Both of us, new to upcountry life, mad for it, loved our weekend excursions. Sometimes there was merely a table or two by the side of the road, sometimes we found a full yard and lawn bazaars in which a dozen or more families unburdened themselves of the redundant or the junk in their lives, converting silk purses and rusty tools into coin. What would we find? What glimpse would we have into all of these other lives? At various times we bought scarves, mirrors, a kimono that cost more to repair than we paid for it, dining plates (most chipped), a Japanese jar, a used Paloma Picasso pocketbook, a raggedy quilt, a busted spinning wheel, an old easel, two sculpture stands, ceramic pots (dozens), a fainting couch, books and more books, two end tables, trout flies and trout nets, hammers, a plumber's wrench: all of it the residues of lives gone, of overflowing basements and garages, the paring down and cleaning up of rural dwellings. We needed none of it, although Mari, a painter, always wanted to pose models on a genuine fainting couch and soon could and did. We were rarely early birds and thus nearly always lost the choice worms, and we also lost the crowds, but sometimes we got late-afternoon prices. We rarely went too far afield because we didn’t want to lose too much of a bright summer’s day. Tools always interested me, although I have three thumbs.We bought shelves full of local crafts and random ceramics. Books were the greatest prize, but here we were the pickiest. We once followed a trail to an advertised cache of books only to come away with a box of 48 canning bottles, of which we used two, three years later. Though we looked for hints in the ads that an odd item might indicate a cluster of like items--an old easel that might herald the presence of paints still viable, brushes, studio props, abandoned canvas, palette knifes--experience told us that coming upon the unexpected, in the unexpected place, was more the norm. There is not necessarily more chance of finding art supplies near Woodstock, fly-tying stuff near Roscoe, old furniture in Delaware or Columbia County. We regularly visited a place that for years has called itself simply,“Estate Sale,” a garage on Route 212 run by a good-natured guy named Jimi, from whom we bought an inlaid outdoor table, a cement rooster, a couple of fishing lures, a Buddha head, a swing, and a chair or two. Several years ago we could not come to terms on a carved marble horse, much higher priced than usual yard-sale fare. After Jimi sold it, I became convinced and lost sleep thinking it might have been a Brancusi. “In the Hudson Valley?” asked Mari. At a yard sale you never began by looking for a particular item the way you do when you go to a Target store or Sears, or even for the buy of the century. What you want is the shock of the unimagined. You want the fugitive glimpse into your neighbor's life. You want to understand a bit more about this disparate world of the Hudson Valley that you have grown to love. You revel in the thousand occasions for hope. Will you find a spoon with exactly the configuration of the one you once used for soup a dozen years ago in another country? An old weathervane,
Red Head Seated on Chez, 2004 Oil on linen, 57 x 73 in.
Mari Lyons, 1935-2016 Nick Lyons, Woodstock, NY
a hall mirror, an oak umbrella stand, a bamboo fly rod, something large or small, needed or not needed, from the array that's laid out before you, all of it redundant to someone, junk, not really needed by you or the seller, all of it new to you, perhaps to fit into some odd corner in the scheme of your life, something that for whatever reason you just can't pass up? Several autumns ago, on the last yard sale day of the year, I screeched to a halt on a road near Rhinebeck, made a hazardous U-turn, and pulled up to a batch of tables and bookcases. The books had drawn me; there were more than 100, and I could not imagine not finding one I could not live without. But it was just too eclectic a stew: romances by the yard, old Reader's Digest condensed books (I have always preferred getting all the words), books on Jesus and natural healing, and brothels in Butte, Montana. What was the subtext here? I remember how Mari settled gleefully on a spotted wooden cow that wiggled--offered as a piece of “authentic New England folk art”—and she knew just the grandchild who would love it, and if not, she herself already did. I watched her fork over $11 for the cow—the bargained-for price, since we were told that all prices were negotiable, as they usually are—and then she got into the car, deliriously pleased with her purchase. I showed her the hammer that I had bought for $1. I have four others, similarly purchased. At the price I could not pass it up. I like the patina on its handle too much, its exact heft. “Starting a hammer collection?” she asked, blithely. I did not respond—nor did I say one word about the absolutely authentic New England folk art with the wandering udders. But last October, with Mari gone, the tables turned. The houseful of things we had collected with such pleasure and excitement when we first came to Woodstock began to beg for new homes. They had never been junk to either of us but in the aggregate they had begun to border on clutter. So I decided to hold a yard sale of my own, my first. I placed what I thought was a fetching ad in the local newspaper, stressing the unique quality of the art supplies in this arty town. Being a creaky octogenarian, I hired three continued on page 83
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Summer Shows at the
MUSEUMS
In the Studio, 1881 Oil on canvas, 60 5/8 x 73 1/4 in.
Marie Bashkirtseff, Ukrainian, 1858-1884 Dnipropetrovsk State Art Museum, Ukraine, KH-4234. Photo: Dnipropetrovsk/Bridgeman Images. Courtesy American Federation of Arts The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA
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Evening Landscape at Stokkavannet, 1890 Oil on canvas, 45-5/16 x 78-3/4 in.
Clark Art Institute Presents Trailblazing Women Artists in Nineteenth-century Paris The Clark Art Institute’s summer 2018 exhibition, “Women Artists in Paris, 1850–1900,” celebrates an international group of artists, who overcame gender-based restrictions to make extraordinary, creative strides, taking important steps in the fight for a more egalitarian art world. Featuring nearly seventy paintings drawn from prominent collections across the United States and abroad, the exhibition includes works by renowned artists, including Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, and Rosa Bonheur, as well as their equally remarkable peers, such as Anna Ancher, Lilla Cabot Perry, Louise Breslau, Eva Gonzalez, and Marie Bashkirtseff. “Women Artists in Paris, 1850–1900” was organized by the American Federation of Arts and curated by Laurence Madeline. The Clark Art Institute will be its final venue, where it will be on view June 9th through September 3rd, 2018. “Given some of the issues around gender equality that are at the forefront of our current cultural discourse, this exhibition is both particularly timely and long overdue,” said Olivier Meslay, the Felda and Dena Hardymon Director of the Clark. “It is important to recognize that the struggles these women confronted more than 150 years ago continue to resonate today. It is quite moving to see these remarkable paintings and consider the strength and power of the artists who produced them. We trust that our visitors will delight in making new discoveries and will be fascinated by this still relatively untold history.” “At this moment in time, it is more important than ever to recognize the achievements of these women,” said Esther Bell, the Clark’s Robert and Martha Berman Lipp Senior Curator. “This exhibition is a celebration of the
Kitty Kielland, Norwegian, 1843-1914 The Royal Collections, Oslo, photo: Jan Haug. Courtesy American Federation of Arts The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA
extraordinary talent of a multinational group of women artists that deserve their rightful place in the canon of art history.” In the mid-nineteenth century, Paris was a cultural mecca, luring artists from around the world to its academies, museums, salons, and galleries. Despite the city’s cosmopolitan character, gender norms remained strikingly conservative, and women painters faced obstacles not encountered by their male counterparts. For example, the École des Beaux-Arts (Academy of Fine Arts)— the country’s most important art academy—did not admit female students until 1897. As a result, women pursued art education by attending private academies, where they produced a wide array of work, including portraits, landscapes, history paintings, and scenes from everyday life. In order to advance their art, they exhibited independently and formed their own organizations, such as the influential Union des Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs (established in 1881). Following their time in Paris, many artists, including Harriet Backer (Norwegian, 1845–1932), Kitty Kielland (Norwegian, 1843–1914), and Cecilia Beaux (American, 1855–1942), returned to their home countries to work, teach, and establish their own schools, creating the foundations for the training and development of future generations of women artists. The Art of Painting Depictions of artists in the studio, self-portraits, and representations of one artist by another are a familiar topic in the history of art. Women painters in the nineteenth century engaged in portraiture, as was common among their male peers, shaping an image of themselves and their contemporaries, not as
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Ernesta (Child with Nurse), 1894 Oil on canvas, 50 1/2 x 38 1/8 in.
Cecilia Beaux, American, 1855-1942 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Maria DeWitt Jesup Fund, 1965, 65.49. Courtesy American Federation of Arts The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA
hobbyist painters but as serious artists. In the Studio (1881) by Marie Bashkirtseff (Ukrainian, 1858–1884) captures a life-drawing class at the Académie Julian, one of the few studios that welcomed women, although in gender-segregated classrooms. Other paintings, such as the arresting Rosa Bonheur (1898), by her companion Anna Elizabeth Klumpke (American, 1856–1942), Elizabeth Nourse’s (American, 1859–1938) defiant Self-Portrait (1892), and Louise Breslau’s (Swiss, 1856–1927) intimate portrait of herself with friends, The Friends (1881), define the quality and variety of work produced during this period. The Lives of Women Social restrictions hindered women’s full participation in artistic circles. Taboos against women being in public without a chaperone limited their access to certain spaces and narrowed the range of subjects they could represent. As a result, many women artists focused on intimate scenes of daily life for which models were more readily accessible. Although domestic subjects have been considered secondary or negligible by some critics, the ways in which these artists treated their subjects were often innovative and unexpected, as in Backer’s Evening, Interior (1890) with its great attention to surface detail and careful rendering of light and atmosphere. Fashioning an Image A fashionable toilette—the ritual of bathing, applying cosmetics and perfume, and dressing—was fundamental to nineteenth-century social life for
the middle and upper classes, and images of the modern woman exhibiting her fashion sense abounded. Clothing was seen as an embodiment of modernity, and painters—both male and female—seized upon the depiction of contemporary dress as a novel subject. Artists attempted to decipher what fashion, through its complex visual codes, had to say about the wearer and her world. Morisot’s The Sisters (1869), a double portrait of the artist and her sister Edma, was probably painted shortly after Edma married and left her family’s home. Morisot used clothing and coiffure to communicate the sisters’ intimacy; they are wearing matching dotted dresses replete with beautifully rendered frilled collars and sleeves, their upswept hair is similarly styled with ringlets and both have black chokers around their necks. Rendering the details, sheen, or transparency of various fabrics allowed the painter to demonstrate technical mastery. Cecilia Beaux’s masterpiece in white, Sita and Sarita (Woman with a Cat) (1893–1894), depicts the artist’s cousin Sarah Allibone Leavitt. Through a bravura handling of pigment, Beaux imbues her subjects with wit and intelligence. Picturing Childhood In the late eighteenth century, the perception of childhood evolved as an important stage in the formation of healthy adults, and children were celebrated as the future of a family’s line. This new attention lavished on children coincided with the burgeoning aspirations of women artists. These painters produced images that poignantly celebrate the wonder of childhood and the profound nature of motherhood. Mary Cassatt specialized in maternal scenes and portraits of children. Her Children Playing on the Beach (1884) embodies the enchanted first years of life, depicting two toddlers absorbed in their play and seemingly isolated from the world. A Modern Landscape During the late nineteenth century, artists pushed the boundaries of landscape painting, participating in and helping to define artistic movements, such as Realism, Impressionism, and Symbolism. They engaged more broadly with the modern world by featuring landscapes with which they had a connection, such as Paris’s public parks and private gardens, the modern city, the resort beaches of Normandy and Brittany, or the familiar landscapes of their own countries. Of particular interest in the exhibition is a selection of paintings by a group of remarkable Scandinavian artists. Landscapes, such as Stokkavannet (1890) by Kitty Kielland and Autumn at Strålsjøen (1894) by Harriet Backer capture the grandeur and mystery of their homeland. Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick (Swedish, 1855–1932) beautifully illustrates the solitude of an artist painting en plein air in Beach Parasol, Brittany (Portrait of Amanda Sidwall) (1880). History Painting and Everyday Heroism History painting was traditionally reserved for male artists who had unlimited access to studying the human figure. The paintings in this exhibition highlight the artistic skill and bold creativity of women painters, who found heroic subject matter in the world around them. Careful observation, confident brushwork, and sizeable canvases served to elevate subjects—including workers, military recruits, and Sunday churchgoers—into monumental narratives worthy of reflection and admiration by fellow artists, critics, and the public. In eschewing traditional history painting, these artists celebrated a time of change and promise. Rosa Bonheur was a pioneer among her contemporaries. As was required at the time, she acquired special permission from the police to wear pants in public, and painted “masculine” subjects such as agriculture and hunting scenes, but was most celebrated for her depictions of animals, including cattle, horses, and lions. Bonheur painted the massive Plowing in Nivernais (1850) as a replica of another of her paintings, which was commissioned by the French state and completed in 1849.The power of her depiction of cattle plow-
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ing is amplified by the monumental size of the canvas, which measures nearly 4-1/2 x 8-1/2 feet. Jeunes Filles Jeunes filles—young women between childhood and adulthood— became an important theme in late nineteenth-century painting. Women artists often depicted this transitional moment, painting social relationships and reflective moments that were hallmarks of self-awareness. “Women Artists in Paris” presents a number of paintings showing young women engaged in everyday tasks, be it sharing a secret as in La Confidence (c. 1880) by Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau (American, 1837–1922) or picking cherries in Morisot’s The Cherry Tree (1891). Echo (1891) by Ellen Thesleff (Finnish, 1869–1954) depicts a girl finding the power of her voice in a sudden cry as it resounds against the landscape. Public Programs In a lecture on June 10 at 3 pm, curator Esther Bell will speak about the remarkable achievements of the artists represented in the exhibition, as well as the barriers they encountered in their artistic education and later careers. A conversation with Laurence Madeline, Chief Curator for French National Heritage, and curator of “Women Artists in Paris,” follows the lecture. The Clark will offer daily gallery talks from July 1–August 31, at 3:30 pm. Visitors can learn more about the incredible female artists who worked in France during the second half of the nineteenth century and about the obstacles they overcame to pursue their careers in the arts.These talks are offered at no additional cost and are limited to twenty people each on a first-come, firstserved basis. The Clark is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, MA. Galleries are open Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 to 5 pm. Admission is $20; free yearround for Clark members, children 18 and younger, and students with valid ID. For more information, visit clarkart.edu or call 413 458-2303.
Master Class: Northern European Art 1500–1700 from the Permanent Collection Opens at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center “Master Class: Northern European Art 1500–1700 from the Permanent Collection,” which opened on April 27th,will be on view through September 2, 2018 at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, NY. The exhibition, curated by Elizabeth Nogrady, was organized to celebrate the career of Susan Donahue Kuretsky,Vassar College Class of 1963 and Professor of Art. “Susan Kuretsky has spent more than forty years at Vassar introducing students to the art of Northern Europe, through her captivating lectures in Art 105/106 as well as her 200-level courses and seminars, many of them held in the Art Center,” said Nogrady. “After serving as acting director of the Vassar College Art Gallery in 1990/1, Susan has been among the Museum’s most ardent faculty collaborators and we are delighted to honor her contributions with this exhibition.” “Master Class” is composed primarily of drawings and prints by Dutch, Flemish, and German artists from the Art Center’s collection. The works displayed—which include an etching of a lively self-portrait by Rembrandt, an engraving of a dancing couple by Albrecht Dürer, and a new acquired original drawing by Jacob Jordaens—are organized roughly by their date of acquisition. This arrangement illuminates the dynamic relationship between the Museum and the classroom at Vassar, as well as its connection to the larger story of Northern European art in the United States from the 1860s to today. The Golden Age in the Gilded Age (1864–1945) In the US more generally, the period, 1865–1914, was a heyday for the collecting of Northern European art, particularly from the seventeenthcentury Netherlands. This trend contributed to strong support for public museums, most of which were still relatively new.At Vassar, alumnae and donors began giving works to the Vassar College Art Gallery, and, in 1941, a transforma-
The Cherry Tree, 1891 Oil on canvas, 57-5/8 x 35 in.
Berthe Morisot, French, 1841-1895 Collection of Bruce and Robbi Toll; Photo: CAPEHART Photography. Courtesy American Federation of Arts The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA
tive gift, comprised of prints by pre-eminent masters, such as Dürer, Lucas van Leyden, and Rembrandt, arrived from the family of German-born financier, Felix M. Warburg. Throughout this period, students learned the history of art from these objects. As early as 1865, Helen Seymour wrote to her father, “I am more than satisfied with my new school . . . I wish you could see the Library, Art Gallery, Geological rooms, etc. I spent the morning looking at some beautiful books of engravings; you can amuse yourself here any way you please.” New Arrivals and New Purchases (1945–1992) The mid-twentieth century was an exciting period for the use of original objects in art historical education at Vassar. The college experienced an
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Tulipa Persica, Tulipa Candia Hand-colored engraving Purchase, Betsy Mudge Wilson, class of 1956
influx of new faculty members, many of them German émigrés, who had fled Europe to escape the rise of Nazism and World War II.This wave of art historians transformed the field in the United States, particularly in the area of Northern European art. During the academic year 1969-70, Wolfgang Stechow of Oberlin College served as visiting professor, organizing with students at the Vassar College Art Gallery the major loan exhibition, Dutch Mannerism, Apogee and Epilogue. Breaking New Ground (1993–2018) In 1993, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center opened, and with it came new opportunities for the collection, display, and study of Northern European art. On a grander scale, projects at the Art Center continued to relate to material taught in the classroom: a course on ruins in Dutch art (examples of which are on view) fueled the innovative 2005 exhibition organized by Susan Donahue Kuretsky, “Time and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century Art.”
Crispijn de Passe the Younger, Dutch, c. 1597-1670 (Early Persian Tulip, Cretan Tulip) from Hortus Floridus (originally published Utrecht, 1614) Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
Meanwhile, as the physical form of the museum changed at Vassar, so too did the academic field of Northern European art as efforts were made to widen and diversify the field. A commitment to the interaction of art history with other disciplines, for instance, is evident in the current Vassar seminar, Art and Science in the Age of Vermeer. Questions raised in the classroom on scientific and artistic observation can be brought to bear on the Museum’s collection, including the precise anatomy of Large Cat by Cornelis Visscher or the optical effects captured in Saint Mark by Lucas van Leyden. Study of original objects remains relevant given that, even as the connoisseurship of the 1900s recedes, the fields of technical art history and art conservation remain unquestionably dynamic, particularly in the field of Northern European art. Several recent acquisitions reveal fascinating aspects of artists’ working processes, among them Abraham Jansz. van Diepenbeeck’s Mass of Saint Gregory (a design for an engraving) and Jordaens’s Annuncia-
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The Large Cat, c. 1657 Engraving
Self-Portrait in a Cap, 1630 Etching
Rembrandt van Rijn, Dutch 1606-1669 Gift of Mrs. Felix M Warburg and Her Children Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
tion (with additions to the sheet made by the artist). While these objects have remained largely unchanged from the 1500s and 1600s, their use in teaching has evolved many times, a tradition, which shows no sign of abating. Admission to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is free and all galleries are wheelchair accessible. The Art Center is open to the public Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, 10 to 5 pm;Thursdays, 10 to 9 pm; and Sundays, 1 to 5 pm. For additional information, the public may call 845 437-5632 or visit fllac.vassar.edu. Directions to the Vassar campus, located at 124 Raymond Avenue in Poughkeepsie, NY, are available at www.vassar.edu/directions.
“Art and the New England Farm” at the Florence Griswold Museum The Florence Griswold Museum is uniquely positioned to tell the story of “Art and the New England Farm,” on view now through September 16, 2018. Organized by Museum Curator, Amy Kurtz Lansing,“Art and the New England Farm” delves into the agricultural heritage of Florence Griswold’s family estate, the Lyme region, and beyond to examine the complex history and character of New England’s farms. Paintings, drawings, and photographs by artists from 1800 to the present day trace the pleasures and perils of farming the challenging New England land, with its pastoral landscapes crafted through intense labor. The exhibition opens with works that consider New England’s topography, and with early landscape paintings and prints that reveal the close ties between farms and the region’s economic development. Michele Felice Corné shows the 110-acre model farm of Ezekiel Hersey Derby in Salem, MA (c. 1800, Historic New England, Gift of Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little). A merchant
Cornelis Visscher, Dutch, c. 1629-1658 Purchase, Timothy Cole Fund and Pratt Fund. 2004 Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
and gentleman farmer, Derby stressed experimentation and innovation on his neat property, sharing useful advances with the public through the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture. Although that Yankee spirit of inventiveness is typically identified with the industrial era, Derby’s farm confirms that sensibility grew first on the region’s farms. The section, New England Farms, American Ideals, explores depictions of the New England farmstead by influential artists, such as George Henry Durrie, which became iconic emblems of mid-19th century rural American life. These artists captured the distinct landscape of the region with its rocks and hills and the farms developed from this difficult terrain. Durrie’s depictions of rural life became ubiquitous through their replication as Currier & Ives prints and came to represent the essence of New England—and American—rural life. A recent addition to the Museum’s collection, William Henry Howe’s, Repose, September Days in Normandy (In the Meadow), 1888–89 illustrates that just as patterns of farming were transferred by colonists from the old world to New England,American artists depicting the region’s farms found inspiration in European models. Howe lived for over a decade in Holland and France, where he learned to paint livestock. On sketching trips to Normandy, he captured portraits like Repose, an ambitious, nearly life-size view of two cows. He exhibited the painting at the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1889. Returning to America in 1893, Howe became the leading animal painter. Appreciation for his work was fed not only by his talent but also by a growing interest in livestock breeding that encouraged the establishment of academic programs like the Storrs Agricultural School (now University of Connecticut) around this time. Howe eventually made his way to Old Lyme, where his preferred subject—cattle—was in abundant supply, and set up a studio in a barn across the road from Florence Griswold’s boarding house. Purchased by the Griswolds in 1841, what today is the Museum’s grounds, became a country estate with barns, an orchard, gardens, and riverfront pastures where the family practiced small-scale farming during Florence Griswold’s life. The Griswold Farm section uses paintings of the site’s orchards and vegetable beds, census documents on its agricultural output, and depictions of its laborers to examine how the property is itself a case study of family farms in New England.
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Dawn, Sandy Hook, Connecticut, ca. 1933 Oil on canvas, 34 ½ x 44 ½ in.
Martin Lewis, American, 1881-1962 Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT
of suburbanization, with former farmland sprouting tracts of new houses like those in Martin Lewis’s Dawn, Sandy Hook, Connecticut (ca. 1933, Florence Griswold Museum). The Museum is located at 96 Lyme Street, Old Lyme, CT. Visit FlorenceGriswoldMuseum.org for more information.
Norman Rockwell Museum Presents “Keepers of the Flame: Parrish, Wyeth, Rockwell, and the Narrative Tradition” Barnyard, c. 1890–1900 Oil on canvas, 30 ¼ x 25 1/8 in.
John Henry Twachtman, American, 1853-1902 Florence Griswold Museum, Gift of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company
In Florence’s youth, the family enjoyed native produce, enhanced by special plants her ship-captain father brought from further afield.While farming on the grounds declined after his death in the 1880s, much of what was still grown supplemented the table for the artists who stayed at Miss Florence’s famous boarding house. According to Alice Lawton, writing for the American Motorist in 1928, visitors to Miss Florence’s boarding house could “gather about the long tables that fill her dining-room and feast on the delicious fresh vegetables from her farm. Beyond the flower garden, which is a veritable tangle of fragrant beauty, her cultivated fields stretch down to the sparkling waters of Lieutenant River that the artists love to paint.” Those fields are visible in Gregory Smith’s James in the Garden, (ca. 1920, Florence Griswold Museum). The Griswold family had a succession of hired farm hands, usually immigrants. Here, artist Greg Smith captures Miss Florence’s farm manager, Irishman James Kent (1867–1938), at work near beanpoles in those fields, which he tended for at least two decades. For the section, The Abandoned Farm, works by Thomas Nason, Martin Lewis, Walker Evans, and others, map the evolution and eventual decline of the New England farm under the influence of out-migration, industrialization, and urbanization. Thomas Nason’s engraving A Deserted Farm (1931, Florence Griswold Museum) depicts the depleted state of many New England farmlands following this period of decline. This image has persisted, as apparent in photographs like Walker Evans’s Early Dawn Farm (ca. 1955, Florence Griswold Museum), which finds beauty in vernacular buildings that are no longer in use yet remain fixtures of the landscape. New England’s farms faced the pressures
Exhibition Brings Centuries-Old Artworks to Museum for First Time, Demonstrating Continuous Thread Linking American Illustration and European Narrative Painting This summer, the Norman Rockwell Museum presents the first comprehensive exhibition to look at the work of master illustrators Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth, and Norman Rockwell in relation to the history of Western art. With more than 60 works by 25 American and European painters, along with more than 300 digital representations of some 50 other artists, “Keepers of the Flame: Parrish, Wyeth, Rockwell, and the Narrative Tradition” will reveal the lineage connecting American illustration to some 500 years of European painting through the long line of teachers, who have passed along their wisdom, knowledge, and techniques to generations of creators. Organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum, the exhibition is on view from June 9 through October 28, 2018. It is curated by Dennis Nolan, an awardwinning artist and professor of illustration at Hartford Art School, University of Hartford. “Keepers of the Flame” traces the student-to-teacher lineage of Parrish (1870–1966), Wyeth (1882–1945), and Rockwell (1894–1978)—among the most recognized narrative-picture makers of the past century—to their artistic forbears, reaching back to the Italian Renaissance. In so doing, it shows how these illustrators, all of whom painted with the same principals and techniques as their artistic ancestors—including a focus on the human figure, convincingly placed in space, atmospheric effects, and other illusionistic devices—created what would prove to be iconic imagery and unforgettable narratives that defined them as keepers of the flame of traditional Western painting. The exhibition occupies four galleries, the first of which is devoted to Maxfield Parrish and his forebears. This will include the artist’s Enchantment (Cinderella), 1914, shown next to Reverie, a 1912 work by Robert Vonnoh
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Apple Trees in Bloom, Old Lyme, 1904 Oil on panel, 25 x 30 in.
(1858–1933), one of the artists under whom Parrish honed his drawing and painting skills. Parrish's intriguing and beautiful Lantern Bearers, 1908, depicts a scene drawn entirely from the artist’s imagination. Indeed, with their fairytalelike mood, costumed figures, and saturated colors, scenes like these set Parrish apart from his contemporaries, but link him to such earlier works as The Language of the Fan, 1882 by Jules-Joseph Lefebvre (1836–1912) and Young Love, 1889 by William Bouguereau (1825–1905), both on view in this gallery. Parrish's artistic heritage is also represented here by paintings by his teacher, Thomas Anshutz (1851–1912), and Anshutz’s teacher, the great Thomas Eakins (1844– 1916); by Eakins's teacher, Academician Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824– 1904), and, in turn, by Gérôme’s teacher, Paul Delaroche (1797–1856), among others.
Childe Hassam, American, 1859-1935 Florence Griswold Museum, Gift of The Vincent Dowling Family Foundation in Honor of Director Emeritus Jeffrey Andersen
The following gallery focuses on N.C. Wyeth, one of the most successful illustrators of his day, and the patriarch of a family of artists. Evident in this gallery is the way in which, like his primary teacher, Howard Pyle (1853–1911), Wyeth looked carefully at the history of art. His In the Crystal Depths, 1906, for example, a powerful composition in which a Native American, canoeing between massive cliff faces, looks at his reflection in the still, crystal-clear water, shows nature to be at once peaceful and awe-inspiring, and it is reminiscent of both German Symbolism and 19th- century American landscape painting. In another nod to the history of art,Wyeth’s So the child was delivered unto Merlin, and so he bare it forth, 1917, also on view, harks back to the preRaphaelite era, as does Pyle’s nearby The Wicket of Paradise, 1902.
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The Lantern Bearers, 1908 Oil on canvas, 40 x 32 in.
Maxfield Parrish, American, 1870-1966 Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK photo: Dwight Primiano Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA
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Enchantment [Cinderella], c.1914
Maxfield Parrish, American, 1870-1966 Cover illustration for Harper’s Bazaar, March, 1914. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA
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The Stay at Homes (Outward Bound), 1927 Oil on canvas 45 x 38-1/8 in.
Norman Rockwell, American, 1894-1978 Illustration for Ladies’ Home Journal, October, 1927, p. 24 Norman Rockwell Museum Collections. ©Norman Rockwell Family agency. All rights reserved
Norman Rockwell, the youngest and perhaps best known of the three illustrators, is the subject of the third gallery, where a range of his work and examples of others is on view. Rockwell’s Girl at Mirror, 1954, belongs to a long tradition of paintings of women contemplating their reflection. Here, however, in a masterful depiction of the in-between-ness of early adolescence, the subject is an everyday girl holding a fan magazine. She poses in front of the mirror as if to try on a new, more grown-up identity, while beside her are lipstick and a hairbrush and, just a bit further away, a child’s doll. Also in this gallery is Rockwell’s dynamic composition titled Heart’s Dearest Why Do You Cry? 1938, depicting a glimpse of an encounter between a man and woman on a rainy street as a passerby rushes past them, his head already out of the picture frame. It is shown next to Henri Lehmann’s (1814– 1882) The Adoration of the Magi, 1854, an earlier example of a complex, multi-figure scene. Examples of work by Rockwell’s teachers, Thomas Fogarty(1873–1938) and George Bridgman (1865–1943), are also on view here, with work by their teachers in turn, including Henry Siddons Mowbray’s (1858– 1928) flower-filled fantasy, Rose Harvest, 1887, Gustave Boulanger’s (1824–1888) painting from his travels in Morocco, Arab and Hound, 1868, and Gérôme’s Young Greeks in the Mosque, 1865. Artwork from 1400 to the mid-1960s will be further documented in the richly illustrated exhibition catalogue, which includes essays by Nolan; Norman Rockwell Museum trustee, educator and historian, Alice A. Carter; and
In the Crystal Depths, 1906 Oil on canvas, 38 x 26 in.
N. C. Wyeth, American, 1882-1945 Illustration for N. C. Wyeth, “The Indian in His Solitude,” The Outing Magazine, vol. L, no. 3, June 1907. Brandywine River Museum of Art Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA
Norman Rockwell Museum Chief Curator, Stephanie Plunkett. A members’ opening event for “Keepers of the Flame” will be held at the Museum on Saturday, July 14, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., with commentary by exhibition curator, Dennis Nolan at 6 pm.The event is free for members, $20 for not-yet members. Located on 36 park-like acres in Stockbridge, MA, Rockwell’s hometown for the last twenty-five years of his life, the Museum is open seven days a week, year-round; closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. Museum hours from May through October are: 10 to 5 pm daily, open until 7 pm on Thursdays during the month of August; Rockwell’s studio is open May through October, 10 to 5 pm. Museum admission is $20, $18 for seniors, $17 for military veterans, $10 for students, and free for children 18 and under. Norman Rockwell Museum welcomes EBT cardholders and active US military members with free admission throughout the year. Additionally, we offer active US military personnel and their immediate family, complimentary admission from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Visit the Museum online at www.nrm.org.
MUSEUMS art and the New England d Fa arm
PARRISH = WYETH = ROCKWELL Maxfield Parrish. The Lantern Bearers, 1908. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR. Photography by Dwight Primiano.
May y 11– September 16
SUMMER/FALL 2018
Exhibition supported in part by Dena M. Hardymon and TD Bank.
NRM.org 413.298.4100 Stockbridge, MA
This exhibition is generously sponsored by Connec ticut Humanities , the State of Connec ticut , The Har t ford Steam Boiler Inspec tion and Insurance Company, and the Nika P. Th T ayer Fund.
open year-round
William Henr y Howe (18 4 6 –1929 ) . Detail of Repose, Septem ber Days in Normandy ((IIn t he M Me eadow) , 18 88 – 89.
terrace cafĂŠ studio
Oil on canvas. Florence Griswold Museum Purc hase, David W. and Mar y S. Dangremond Acquisitions Fund.
Crash to Cre ativity The Ne w Deal in Vermont June 1 through Nove ember 4
Francis Colburn (1909-1984), Charley Smith and His Barn, ca. 1939, (detail), Oil on canvas, 38.5 x 33.25 inches, Collection of Bennington Museum
Fostering a culture of creativity and innovation among writers, artists, and civil workers.
Master Class
Northern European Art1500 -1700 from the Permanent Collection
On view through September 2, 2018 The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Vassar College 124 Raymond Avenue Poughkeepsie, NY 12604
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Bennington, VT • 802-447-1571 • benningtonmuseum.org
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Jewelry Artists Gregore Morin and Jennifer Rabe Morin Present Their Creations at McTeigue & McClelland, Great Barrington
Ume 2, Earrings 18-karat White Gold, Black Ruthenium, Black and White Diamond, Pink Opal
Gregore Morin McTeigue & McClelland, Great Barrington, MA
This is an event that was born from pure serendipity—that magical, indefinable element that allows artists to meet, to connect, to bond, to laugh … and to agree that “we ought to do something together.” When McTeigue & McClelland, the jewelry atelier in Great Barrington, MA welcomes the imaginative work of husband and wife team, Gregore Morin and Jennifer Rabe Morin, to an exhibition of their work on August 2nd, the magic of their first meeting will resolve into a dazzling display of their jewelry as art. Their presentation will be in place until August 18th with a reception inviting the public to meet the artists scheduled for Thursday, August 2nd from 4 to 6 pm. Gregore and Jennifer will also be present in the gallery on Friday and Saturday August 3rd & 4th to talk directly about their process and pieces. “We met years ago at the Tucson Gem Show, and have become friends,” recalls Tim McClelland, a celebrated jewelry designer in his own right.“We love Gregore and Jennifer’s playful and masterful pieces, and invited them to come to Great Barrington to present their creations.” Gregore Morin and Jennifer Rabe Morin met while working in Santa
Falling Ladies, Earrings 18-karat White and Red Gold, White Diamond, Pink Sapphire, and Pink Tourmaline
Gregore Morin McTeigue & McClelland, Great Barrington, MA
Barbara, CA. He from Vancouver, BC and she from Spain, they shared the motivation of having been encouraged from childhood to use their imaginations, to experiment and learn … and mostly, to let their creative energies become form and substance. “My goal is to create beautiful forms with rare materials to inspire wonder and joy in the viewer,” asserts Jennifer, who has won awards for her superb designs, and continues to create jewelry that is simply dazzling in its use of gemstones to bring color and depth. Not only does Gregore create innovative jewelry, he also revels in the creation of objets d’art like his sublime Kokeshi Dolls that are crafted from gemstones and precious metals.They are collected and eagerly anticipated when he introduces new pieces each year. Tim McClelland summed up the mutual attraction between the Santa Barbara artists and the unique environment he and Walter McTeigue have created in Great Barrington.“We create all our own jewelry on the premises, so we fully realize what it takes to bring this kind of beauty to life. The event gives us the chance to celebrate jewelry artists, like ourselves, who speak to a sophisticated market with simply elegant works.”
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Pearly Dragonfly, Brooch Platinum, Oyster Pearl, Feather Pearl, Abalone Pearl, 2 x 2-1/2 in.
Midnight Lady, Ring 18-karat White Gold, Black Ruthenium, White and Black Diamonds, Black Jade, and Mexican Opal
Jennifer Rabe Morin McTeigue & McClelland, Great Barrington, MA
Gregore Morin McTeigue & McClelland, Great Barrington, MA
Big Moth, Brooch 18 karat Yellow Gold, Ocean Jasper, Spessartite Garnets, White Diamonds, 1.5 x 4 in.
The work of Gregore and Jennifer Rabe Morin will be on display at McTeigue & McClelland, 454 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA. Atelier hours are Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 to 5 pm. For additional information, please
Jennifer Rabe Morin McTeigue & McClelland, Great Barrington, MA
call 800-956-2826 or 413 458-6262. McTeigue & McClelland is located at 454 Main St, Great Barrington, MA 01230.
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Connecticut and Massachusetts
ART GALLERIES
After the Bath
Mary Adams WAA Sculpture Walk, Washington Depot, CT
Washington Art Association Sculpture Walk 2018 The Washington Art Association & Gallery is proud to announce WAA SCULPTURE WALK 2018 a Public Art Exhibition featuring nearly forty internationally and nationally recognized artists and emergent sculptors. WAA
Wilhelm, detail
Peter Meuhlhausser WAA Sculpture Walk, Washington Depot, CT
Wave Form VI Painted bronze, 18-3/4 x 16 x 19-1/4 in.
Cornelia Kubler Kavanagh WAA Sculpture Walk, Washington Depot, CT
SCULPTURE WALK 2018 opens to the public on July 1st and remains on view until November 1, 2018. Curated by WAA Trustees, Mark Mennin and Barbara Talbot, the exhibition is organized by the Washington Art Association & Gallery in collaboration with community partners and the Town of Washington. Curators’ Statement: “WAA Sculpture Walk 2018 is an exhibition with no obvious narrative except for the town itself, the hills around it, and the river that runs through it. Washington Depot, named long before our capital, is a focal point in the larger
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Putto
Marsha Pels WAA Sculpture Walk, Washington Depot, CT
community of Litchfield County, which has a huge tradition of artists, writers, architects, dancers, and musicians, both internationally known and self-exiled. The landscape is what gives the pieces in this exhibition a narrative commonality. This would include both the creative protagonists that live in Litchfield County, as well as the geography that beckoned them to settle here. This is an exhibition that is as eclectic—full of variety of material, image, and idiom—as its landscape. It demonstrates the different properties of traditional media with works in steel, stone, wood, as well as plastics and earth materials. These are conceptual and site-specific installations and kinetic pieces; there are fully rendered figurative works and large gestural works in both temporary and permanent materials. The bond of the background is what holds these placements together. Painters Hugh O’Donnell, Caio Fonseca, and Julian Schnabel have been selected for their three-dimensional accomplishments. Michael Steiner, Fitzhugh Karol, and Tom Doyle weigh in with large constructions; Wendell Castle and Ned Smyth have included beautifully modeled abstractions, Marsha Pels and Robert Taplin contributed fully rendered figurative pieces from different methods; while Tim Prentice and Momix bring kinetics to the landscape.” Other participating artists include: Mary Adams, Lauren Booth, Joy Brown, Arthur Carter, Ralph Derby, Sam Funk, Joe Gitterman, Philip Grausman, Timothy Hochstetter, Peter Kirkiles, Elizabeth MacDonald, Ann Mallory, Peter Meuhlhauser, Tim Prentice, Frank Stella, Norman Sunshine, and William “Bill— Talbot The Washington Art Association & Gallery (WAA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to enriching our community through education, exhibitions, and special events. Media contact: For more information, please contact Katharine Manning, | katmanning.art@gmail.com, Social Media: Instagram: @washingtonartassociation @sculpturewalk2018 #WAASculptureWalk #washingtonartassociation Facebook: @WashingtonArtAssociationandGallery.
Side by Side: Process and Collaboration at Washington Art Association John Willis / Joseph Byrne and Dudley Zopp / Susan Finnegan are collaborating artists whose works will be displayed in the Washington Art Association’s Art Gallery in Washington Depot, CT, from July 7th through August 4th, 2018. There will be a reception for the artists on Saturday, July 7th from 4
Drawing Dialogue #31, 2006 Graphite and acrylic on paper, 20 x 20 in.
Joseph Byrne Washington Art Association, Washington Depot, CT
to 6 pm. This summer exhibition brings together two pairs of artists where collaboration has been a significant part of their process and influential in their individual work. Willis’ and Byrnes’ collaboration has involved an initial critique session of their drawings, an exchange of each other’s work, “living” with the pieces, and ultimately meeting again to share in-depth dialogue. Zopp’s and Finnegan’s year-long collaboration took place when they both lived in Louisville, Kentucky. Their process involved “dialogues” on largeformat drawing paper, using various drawing materials and eventually paint. These drawings happened “on the spot, purposefully eliminated any verbal exchange, and developed a system of investigation for each artist. One of the interesting differences in process between the artist pairs is the element of time. Byrne/Willis give a greater amount of space and time in considering each other’s work on individual formats. Zopp/Finnegan have had a process of direct exchange on a shared format that has included the immediacy of direct response. These collaboration experiences have been ways to access valuable insights into the working process and are useful counterpoints to the solitary artist in the studio. Joseph Byrne is a painter and Professor of Fine Arts at Trinity College, Hartford CT. John Willis is a sculptor and printmaker and Associate Professor of Printmaking at Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, CT. Dudley Zopp is a painter and installation artist. She has had visiting artist positions and residencies at universities and colleges. Susan Bogle Finnegan is a painter and visiting professor at Trinity College and a part-time professor at the Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, CT. Dudley Zopp lives in Lincolnville ME while Byrne, Willis, and Finnegan
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An Arts Workshop at Hollister House Garden, Washington, CT Painting photo: Plein Air Painters invited to Hollister House Garden on select dates in July.
all live in West Hartford.
Art Workshops and Special Open Days for Artists at Hollister House Garden, Washington, CT Hollister House Garden in Washington, CT, announces a series of visual arts workshops for this coming summer. Following last year’s sold-out workshops, the program has been expanded with two new workshops and special open hours for artists who would like to paint or draw in the garden. The first two workshops of the series, led by renowned botanical artist, Carol Ann Morley, are “A Garden Sketchbook: Using Graphite Pencil,” June 11th-12th, and “A Garden Sketchbook: The Colors of June,” June 13th-14th. “Twilight in the Garden” is a special evening event that takes place at Hollister House Garde on Saturday, July 14th at 6 to 8 pm. Savor the enchantment of Hollister House Garden in the cool of the evening and in the company of like-minded garden enthusiast and friends. See the garden at its early summer peak while enjoying a selection of wine and hors d’oeuvres. HHG Members, $25. Non-Members, $35. RSVP www.hollisterhousegarden.com/events. A two-day painting workshop “Introduction to Botanical Watercolor,” July 19th-20th , will be led by Betsy Rogers-Knox, a noted botanical painter new to Hollister House Garden. As the garden reaches its full summer glory, Rich Pomerantz, back by popular demand, will teach his photography workshop, “The Camera as a Garden Tool” on August 10th-11th. Detailed information including dates, times and reservation options for each workshop can be found on the website at www.hollistergarden.org/events. New this year, Hollister House Garden will host "Plein Air Painting in the Garden" on three consecutive Wednesdays in July from 9 am to 12 pm. Artists, both amateur and professional, are invited to set up their easels and paint in the garden on July 11th, 18th, and/or July 25th. Reservations required: call the office at 860-868-2200. “Flower Arranging in the Garden” is a special event on Friday, August 3rd, 2018 from 2 to 5 pm. Learn how to use the bounty of the summer garden to create beautiful arrangements. This workshop, led by florist and horticulture professional, Debbie Brown, will begin with a short lecture in the barn, followed by a walk in the garden to learn about cutting and conditioning flowers. Then back to the barn where you will master the art of creating wonderfully unique arrangements by making one to take home with you. Bring your clippers and a favorite vase suitable for a cut flower arrangement. Locally grown floral material will be provided. Limited to 18 participants. HHG Mem-
“The Camera as a Garden Tool” Photography Workshop
bers $50 / Non-Members $55. Hollister House Garden, a non-profit corporation, is one of only sixteen exceptional gardens currently designated a Preservation Project by the Garden Conservancy, whose mission is to identify and preserve important private gardens across America for the education and enjoyment of the public. Hollister House in 2010 achieved its prestigious listing on the National Register of Historic Places, and the property was also named a Town Landmark Site by the Town of Washington. Hollister House Garden is open to visitors April 27th through October 6th. Friday hours are 1 to 4 pm and Saturdays 10 to 4 pm. Private group visits are welcome weekdays by appointment only. Directions to the Garden’s 300 Nettleton Hollow Road location are also available on the website. Contact: Pamela Moffett, 860 868- 2200 office@hollisterhousegarden.org
Custom Frame Design Plus the Works of Prominent Local Artists at Gregory James Gallery, New Milford, CT Gregory James Gallery, Fine Art and the Art of Framing is located at 93 Park Lane Rd (Rte 202) in New Milford, CT. In business for more than twenty-
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Two Dobermans at Play Oil on canvas, 16 x16 in.
Meg Lindsay Gregory James Gallery, New Milford, CT
two years, Greg Mullen, owner, lead designer, and gallery curator says, “What separates local custom picture framers from the big boxes and on-line framers, is that with a local custom framer, you get a personal design professional that is a design partner and advisor. We are passionate and invested with customer satisfaction and experts in the field”. In addition to custom frame design, the Gregory James Gallery represents many prominent local artists. A few of the artists represented include; Thomas Adkins, Christopher Magadini, Woldemar Neufeld, Joel Spector, Robert Ferrucci, Scott Zuckerman, Bill Rice, and many others. Greg Mullen states, “I have enjoyed building personal relationships with the artists, the region, and collectors. I feel fortunate to be one of the lucky ones that looks forward to Mondays.” In this issue of The Country and Abroad, the Gregory James Gallery features the art of Meg Lindsay and Jorge Silveira. Both artists feature their “ownperson” contemporary twist to traditional subjects, and explore the use of a variety of media. Gregory James Gallery is located at 93 Park Lane Road (Rte 202) New Milford, CT 06776. For more information, contact Gregory James Mullen at 860354-3436.
the beauty of western Connecticut. Included are four barn-quilt paintings by New Milford artist, Lorraine Ryan. These original paintings depict traditional American quilt patterns as seen on barns along the New Milford Barn Quilt Trail. Information is available at: http://newmilfordfarmlandpres.org/barn-quilttrail/. Maps are available at Gallery 25. The New England Watercolor Society members and other artists join Gallery 25 on June 9th and 10th for “It’s Happening in New Milford,” a plein-air event for artists. Four sites will be featured or artists may choose other New Milford locations. This event is intended to encourage water-media plein-air painters, but artists of all media are welcome. Participation is free. Artists are asked to pre-register at Gallery 25.The gallery will host a reception on June 9th from 4 to 7 pm. During September 21st to October 20th, the New Milford Historical Society will host their second “Eye on New Milford” art show, featuring some of these plein-air paintings as well as studio work by numerous artists depicting many New Milford views and historic landmarks. Applications are available from the Historical Society. Sponsored by the New Milford Commission on the Arts, Gallery 25 was founded in the Fall of 2014 as a cooperative-style art gallery, representing local and regional award-winning artists and artisans. Gallery exhibitions, both then and now, include a wide variety of unique fine art and fine artisan creations in a wide range of styles and media. Renewing interest and growth in the local art scene is a priority of the Gallery and its member artists. Gallery 25 is conveniently located at 11 Railroad Street at the historic train station in New Milford, CT (http://newmilfordgallery25.blogspot.com). Gallery hours are:Thursday & Sunday 12 pm to 5 pm, Friday & Saturday 12 pm to 7:30 pm, or by appointment (phone 860-355-6009). Admission is free. Ample free parking is available.
“Our Towns” Group Show at Gallery 25 in New Milford
Liberty Art & Framing, Torrington, CT
Rock and Roll Dandy Mixed media, found objects on panel, 33 x 24 in.
Jorge Silveira Gregory James Gallery, New Milford, CT
Gallery 25 artists have joined together for a summer show celebrating
The old adage, “Find what you love and do it,” has been bandied about
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Cascade Mountain, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada Oil on canvas,16 x 20 in. River and Bridge Acrylic, 18 x 36 in.
Marc Stolfi Liberty Art & Framing, Torrington, CT
Ann Quackenbos Gallery 25, New Milford, CT
by life coaches and gurus for decades. In the case of Laura and Marc Stolfi of Liberty Art & Framing in Torrington, Conn., this statement truly applies. Established in 2011, this family owned custom frame shop and gallery has thrived in a town, which is changing from a depressed post-manufacturing mill town to an emerging leader in the arts. Marc Stofi is a fine artist, and Laura Stolfi began framing his work as a way to help him and to satisfy her love of woodworking and design.This went on for many years, and Laura amassed knowledge about the finer points of custom framing and conservation. When others began asking her to frame their pieces, a business was born. After years of research and experience with everything from sports jerseys to valuable antique maps, Laura has become an expert in the industry. Liberty Art & Framing sits on Riverside Avenue in a sturdy 1940 brick building located in an old neighborhood of multi-family homes and small businesses. Being only ten minutes from the center of Goshen and fifteen minutes from Litchfield, the location is ideal to serve the Northwest Corner of CT and beyond. Opposite the design table in the store, is a gallery space, Wrong Way Studio, featuring Marc’s artwork as well as guest exhibitors’ works. This husband and wife team truly compliment each other as they work together to continue to learn, build their business, and most importantly, serve their clients. Laura’s eye for detail and uncompromising perfectionism compliment Marc’s professional training in color and design. Laura and Marc enjoy educating clients and working to make the custom framing experience enjoyable whether the subject is a budget poster or a high end original painting.
Berkshire Art Gallery, Great Barrington, MA Stanley Allyn Schaeffer studied with William Lester Stevens, at the National Academy of Design with Ivan Olinsky, and with Robert Brackman at the Art Students League. An instructor at the DuCret School of Art, he was a popular teacher with classes and workshops throughout the metropolitan New York area, specializing in anatomy, figure drawing, and painting. Schaeffer’s many honors included awards from the Pastel Society of America (where he was a Master Pastellist), the Salmagundi Club, Springfield (MA) Museum of Fine Arts, Hudson Valley Art Association, National Arts Club, and the Jersey City Museum, among others. In addition to many one-person
On a Park Bench, 1974 Oil on canvas, 8 x 10 in., SLL,
George L. Wilson, American, 1930-2003 Berkshire Art Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
shows, Schaeffer exhibited at museum shows in New York, New Jersey, Utah, and Georgia. A member of the Salmagundi Club, Pastel Society of America, and the Hudson Valley Art Association, Schaeffer authored several books on the technique of painting, including The Oil Painters Guide to Painting Trees. He was also a highly regarded equestrian painter. William Lester Stevens’ influence shows in Schaeffer’s Stream in Early Winter Woods, but more so Schaeffer’s abundant talent for painting trees, snow, and landscapes. George Wilson was an African-American artist acclaimed for his ability to capture the liveliness, moods, and spontaneity of young people in his post-Impressionist figurative paintings.
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Breezy Blonde Highlander, 2018 Oil on linen, 30 x 24 in.
Grazing Holsteins, 2018 Oil on linen, 12 x 24 in.
Leslie Peck Greylock Gallery, Williamstown, MA
Ostia Antica II, 2018 Oil, acrylic on paper, 28 x 20 in
Stan Taft Greylock Gallery, Williamstown, MA
Leslie Peck Greylock Gallery, Williamstown, MA
Wilson's exhibitions included a pivotal solo show, “Depicting Our Youth” at Fisk University, and exhibits at the Metropolitan, Brooklyn, Oakland, and High Museums, among others, receiving many awards. Paintings of children in their daily activities, like his illustrations in 1970 for the series, “Interracial Books For Children,” were an important part of his oeuvre, as were urban scenes. His work is in many public collections.
Leslie Peck and Stan Taft at Greylock Gallery, Williamstown, MA JUNE AND JULY Greylock Gallery, located at 71 Spring Street at the heart of Williamstown, specializes in showcasing a variety of traditional and contemporary art from both emerging and established artists. Featuring new artists, Leslie Peck and Stan Taft, with additional paintings from Tracy Helgeson, and bronze sculptures by Susan Read Cronin. Greylock Gallery represents work from seventeen artists, including Stanley Bielen, Susan Read Cronin, Gracia Dayton, Diane Firtell, Joe Gitterman, Mary Sipp Green, Curt Hanson, Tracy Helgeson, Hale Johnson, John MacDonald, Teri Malo, Leslie Peck, Ben Shattuck, Bill Shattuck, Stan Taft, John Traynor, and George Van Hook. Greylock Gallery’s hours of operation are Wednesdays through Saturdays from 10 to 5:30 pm, and Sundays 11 to 4 pm. Greylock Gallery is located at 71 Spring Street in Williamstown, MA 01267. For more information, contact Rachele L. Dario, Director, at 413 884-6926, director@greylockgallery.com and
www.greylockgallery.com.
LITCHFIELD ARTS Hollister House Garden Visit ~ Learn ~ Enjoy
Fridays 2-5PM and Saturdays 10AM-4PM
For directions and a list of our special events visit
www.hollisterhousegarden.org 300 Nettleton Hollow Road Washington, CT 06793
C t m Fr i g . Fi Fr R ir . Ph
.
Art i n
332 Riv d A Avve T CT 860.618 7092 w w w. w.L bert yA rtandFraming com
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CONNECTICUT/MASSACHUSETS ARTS NOW: PRESIDENT’S JURIED SHOW
3 U H V L G H Q W ·V 6 K R Z - X G J H ( U L Q 1 D ] ] D U R ´ ' H V H U W ' U L I W H U V µ D F U \ O L F
JUNE 30TH TO O JUL LY 22ND
NEXTT: MEMBER SHOW II AUGUST 4TH TO AUGUST 26TH Continu uing a 95 year tradition of creatiivity LQ WKH /LWFKÃ&#x;HOG +LOOV Thursday — Sunday from 1-5 pm during shows 21 S. Main St, PO Box 202, Kent, CT 06757 860-927-3989 860 927 3989 • www w.kentart.org .kentart.org
SALON . BOUTIQUE . ART
• CUTTING • COLORING
•SKIN CARE •WAXING Y •LIGHT THERAPY
• MANICURE • PEDICURE Early Winter Woods S. Allyn Schaeffer, American, 1935 - 2009 Oil on canvas, 31 x 25 in., SLR.
BERKSHIRE A RT G ALLERY 19th and Early 20th Century American and European Art • BARBERING
• BEARDS
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80 Railroad Street
•
Great Barrington, MA
Saturdays and Sundays 12 to 5 pm, or by appointment www.berkshireartgallery.com
10 TITUS ROAD W WASHINGTON ASHINGTON DEP DEPOT POT T,, CT 06794 , 860-619-0422 www.byrrdeandtheb.com
413 528-2690
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New York and Vermont
ART GALLERIES
Untitled Man Aboard Ship Pencil and charcoal on paper with some wash, 8 x 7 in.
Rockwell Kent, American, 1882-1971 Green River Gallery, Boston Corners and Cold Spring Harbor, NY
Gertrude Fisk and Rockwell Kent at Green River Galleries in Boston Corners and Cold Spring Harbor, NY Gertrude Horsford Fiske (1879-1961) was an American figure painter, as well as painter of still lifes and landscapes. In the early twentieth century, Fisk was part of the Boston School of painters, and in 1929, she was the first woman appointed to the Massachusetts State Art Commission. Fiske was born in Boston and was the daughter of a prominent local lawyer. Sometime around 1904, Fiske enrolled at the Boston Museum School where she studied with Edmund C. Tarbell, Frank Benson, and Philip Hale. She also studied with Charles H. Woodbury in Ogunquit, Maine, and incorporated his recommendation to “paint in verbs, not in nouns.” Fiske was a cofounder of the Guild of Boston Artists in 1914 and of the Boston Society of Etchers in 1917. In 1928, she became a co-founder of the Ogunquit Art Association. Fiske became known for her strong depictions of women in traditional scenes, such as women in interiors but with power instead of gentility and fragility. She included both men and women and used bold colors, and often portrayed New England tradesmen, including florists, craftsmen, postmen, fish-
Still Life Oil on canvas, 14 x 11 in.
Gertrude Fiske, American, 1879-1961 Green River Gallery, Boston Corners and Cold Spring Harbor, NY
ermen, and clerics. Her works have been exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Academy of Design, the Corcoran Gallery, and the Rhode Island School of Design. Currently, Fiske’s artwork is the subject of an exhibition, “Gertrude Fiske: American Master,” April to September 2018 at Discover Portsmouth in Portsmouth, NH.“Fiske,” says Lainey McCartney, Curator,“challenged established stereotypes for women with her extraordinary talent, dignity, and work ethic. Painting during a time when conservative traditions and social roles were firmly set for women, Fiske forged her own path.” Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) was born in Tarrytown NY, the same year as fellow American artists, George Bellows and Edward Hopper. Kent lived much of his early years in and around New York City and attended the Horace
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Lost in Space, 2013 Mixed media, acrylic, 24 x 18 in.
Sometimes I Feel Like Old Paint, 2018 Mixed media, 36 x 15 in.
Roxie Johnson Roxie Johnson, Hyde Park, NY
Mann School, Columbia College, and the Art Students League, where he studied with Arthur Wesley Dow. A transcendentalist and mystic in the tradition of Thoreau and Emerson, Ken found inspiration in the austerity and stark beauty of the wilderness. In addition to Monhegan Island, he lived for extended periods of time in Winona, Minnesota (1912-1913, Newfoundland (1914-15), Alaska (1918-19), Vermont (1919-1925), Tierra del Fuego (1922-23), Ireland (1926), and Greenland (1929, 1931-32), (1934-35). His series of land and seascapes from these often forbidding locales convey the Symbolist spirit evoking the mysteries and cosmic wonders of the natural world. “I don’t want petty self-expression, Kent wrote, I want the elemental, infinite thing; I want to paint the rhythm of eternity. Green River Gallery in Boston Corners is located at 1578 Boston Corners Road, just north of Millerton, NY, off Rte 22, and is open Saturdays from 10 to 5 pm, Sundays from 12 to 5 pm, or by appointment. Green River Gallery in Cold Spring Harbor is located at 117 Main Street, and open Thursdays from 12
Roxie Johnson Roxie Johnson, Hyde Park, NY
to 5 pm and Fridays from 11 to 5 pm, call 631 692-8188.Also contact Art Kerber at 518 789-3311 in Boston Corners for more information, and to schedule appointments at either gallery.
Roxie Johnson’s Art & Poetry, A Collaborative Affair, Hyde Park, NY “Sometimes I feel like old paint,” muses visual artist and poet, Roxie Johnson, as she contemplates her most recent mixed media collaboration with author, Cassandra Alfred. “There are times I really do,” she states. One can see laughter in her eyes. The opportunity to respond to the poem “Muted Color” by Ms. Alfred was a particularly cathartic one for the artist. She reflects on this first attempt to visually interpret another writer’s verse. “I can’t help but smile,” Roxie remarks.“Cassandra’s whole concept of being different and unseen strongly resonated and led me to re-visit my own childhood vulnerabilities, as well as to embrace the human condition and those subtle beauties found in the muted and unexpected.” The icing on the cake? “Sometimes I Feel Like Old Paint” is now available online to art enthusiasts and buyers at Roxie’s newly enhanced website: roxiejohnson.com.“Fresh and exciting, this new presence has been a true labor of love,” indicates Roxie,“It’s one that has compelled me to look at what’s been accomplished over the last two decades, and somehow bring it all together under one roof. There are common threads revealed that I had not seen over
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Balloons over the Cambridge Valley Print, 18 x 14 in.
Will Moses Mt. Nebo Gallery, Eagle Bridge, NY
time. It remains an ongoing journey.” Viewers will find the new site crisp, clean, and user friendly, while giving the artist’s work center stage. Sign up for studio news and learn about those professionals behind the scene who made it all happen. “They Made the Cut” @ Spencertown Academy Arts Center Opening on Saturday, July 21st, 4 to 6 pm, Spencertown Academy showcases the work of six uniquely diverse women artists in “They Made the Cut.”“I am so pleased to have been asked to display in this long-standing cultural center and community resource,” states Roxie. The Academy serves Columbia County, the Berkshires and the Capital region. Come join the crowd for a delightful summer eve in Upstate NY. All are welcome and work will remain on display through August 12th. The gallery is located at 790 Route 203, Spencertown, NY and may be reached at spencertownacademy.org or 518 392-3693. Roxie Johnson is a Hudson Valley-based artist and poet whose studio is located in Hyde Park, NY. Open for scheduled visits throughout the year, studio appointments may be arranged by contacting Roxie at 845-233-8504 or through her new website: roxiejohnson.com. Cassandra Alfred and her creative wisdom may be found on Instagram at “TheWomynWhoWrites”.
18th Century Italian Tall Case Clock New to Montage, Millerton, NY This past week, we brought a wonderful, 18th Century Italian Tall Case Clock, decorated in “Lacca Povera” to our antiques shop in Millerton, NY. Lacca Povera loosely translates as “Poor man’s Lacquer,” which is an imitation of tradi-
Sanctuary Watercolor, 20 x 16 in.
Betsy Jacaruso Betsy Jacaruso Gallery, Rhinebeck, NY
tional Chinese lacquer. This decoration, upon close inspection, is really a kind of decoupage. The painted wood has small, intricately cut-out vignettes from prints or engravings (which were often printed specifically for this use), glued to the surface, and then the whole piece is covered in many layers of varnish, to bring it up to a lacquer-like gloss. This aesthetic originated in the 17th Century, when the taste for Chinese decoration evolved a style for lacquered furniture, with “chinoiserie” decoration on it for the English and European markets. The example in our shop formerly had its original clock works inside the case, but when we got it, the works were long gone. Instead, the interior had been fitted out with small shelves to form a narrow cabinet, and the clock face and hands are now run by a neat battery-powered works. This transformation has given the old clock a new lease on life and dual purpose, still marking the passage of time, but doing so with an added practical and useful design. Montage, located at 25 Main Street in Millerton, NY 12546, is known for their fine furniture, antiques, lighting, and home furnishings from the 17th through the 20th centuries, 518 789-6004. Montage is a fresh approach to creating great interiors
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Hunt 4, 2017 Oil and mixed media on canvas
Murray Zimiles Warner Gallery, Holbrook Arts Center, Millbrook School, Millbrook, NY
Hunt 9, 2017 Oil and mixed media on canvas
Murray Zimiles Warner Gallery, Holbrook Arts Center, Millbrook School, Millbrook, NY
Mt. Nebo Gallery in Eagle Bridge, NY, Features the Work of Will Moses
is open Mondays through Fridays from 9 to r pm, Saturdays, 10 to 5 pm, and Sundays, noon to 5 pm.
Born and raised in Eagle Bridge, NY, Will Moses creates paintings that reflect the quiet beauty of the countryside, nestled near the borders of Vermont and Massachusetts. The farmhouse and barn where Will lives and has his studio is the place where his great-grandmother, Grandma Moses, began her career. Will’s grandfather, Forrest K. Moses, encouraged Will to develop his own style of art, carrying on a family tradition with a style that is unmistakably reminiscent of his forebears, yet distinctive as his own. His paintings are a patchwork of scenes of an earlier time when life was simpler, when tradition and community were the anchor bolts of society. At Mt. Nebo Gallery, you will find Will’s art works, including original oils, etchings, serigraphs, prints, posters, and a lively selection of illustrated children’s books, jigsaw puzzles, note cards, and calendars. We invite you to stop in, visit our website, or request a free catalog. Mt. Nebo Gallery is located at 60 Grandma Moses Road, Eagle Bridge, NY 12057. For more information, call 1 800 328-6326, www.willmoses.com. Mt. Nebo Gallery
“Edge of Light” Exhibition with Cross River Artists at Betsy Jacaruso Gallery in Rhinebeck, NY The Betsy Jacaruso Gallery is exhibiting “Edge of Light,” works in watercolors by Betsy Jacaruso and the Cross River Artists from June 8th through July 29th. This exhibit includes original landscapes, botanicals, and street scenes, and archival pigment prints will also be available. Betsy Jacaruso received her BFA with honors from the Pratt Institute of Art and Design in Brooklyn, NY. In her luminous landscapes, Jacaruso captures the essence of light that is specific to the vistas and waterways of the Hudson River Valley. The Cross River Artists is an artists’ guild, representing fifteen watercolorists who live and work in the Hudson River Valley. These artists have been studying with Betsy on an ongoing basis, some for many years. The gallery is located in the Rhinebeck Courtyard at 43-2 East Market Street in Rhinebeck, NY (adjacent to the back entrance of Bread Alone). For
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Lower Buttermilk Falls Oil on canvas, 28 x 50 in.
Thomas Merwin Southern Vermont Art Center, Manchester, VT
more information about artwork, events, or classes in watercolor, please visit our website, betsyjacarusoartist.com. Gallery hours are Thursdays through Saturdays 11 to 5 pm and Sundays, 11 to 4 pm or by appointment, 845 516-4435.
Murray Zimiles’ “Hunt Paintings” at Millbrook School, Millbrook, NY All his artistic life, Murray Zimiles has been challenged by the difficulty of showing movement on a two-dimensional canvas. While in Italy, Zimiles became acquainted with the pageantry, rivalry, and even danger of the famous horse race around the campo in the Tuscan city of Sienna, called “The Palio.” Four-legged creatures lend themselves well to this exploration. After painting several canvasses showing the whirl and medieval pageantry of the Palio, it dawned on Zimiles, one Fall morning as the Millbrook hunt gathered once again by his home, that there was action, grace, movement, and tradition enough right here in Dutchess County. Thus began Murray’s fox hunting series. What he did not want to do was follow the venerable and popular tradition of English hunting prints. Rather Zimiles turned his contemporary eye on the landscape, the riders, hills, fences, hounds, barns, and wood lots of our own Dutchess County, tossing them into different angles of perspective and using overlapping images to show movement. Just as he had sought to reinvent landscape painting for at least eighteen years before that, he created works unlike anything done on the subject.They are perfectly readable as images of the hunt, but entirely new. The fifteen large hunt paintings by Murray Zimiles will be on exhibit at The Warner Gallery at The Hollbrook Arts Center at The Millbrook School from June15th through August 1st. An opening reception will be held from 5 to7 pm on June 15th, everyone invited. Gallery hours at Holbrook Arts Center are Mondays through Fridays from 8 to 2 pm. For more information please contact Bill Hardy, bhardy@millbrook.org.
Summer Solo Shows and George Kalinsky’s Sports Photography at Southern Vermont Art Center, Manchester, VT Summer Solo Shows, June 9th-July 8th Works in a wide range of media, including sculpture, photography, collage, landscape, abstract, portrait, and encaustic paintings are presented by the 2018 Solo Artists: Keith Ballen, Patricia Busso, Anne Cummings, Myles Dansher, Tanya Gabriele, Walter Lauf, Stephen Lorber, Thomas Merwin, Robert O’Brien, Todd Reuben, and Katie Runde. Opening Reception: Saturday, June 9th from 2 to 4 pm. Faces of Champions: George Kalinsky Sports Photography, June 30July 22 George Kalinsky, the official photographer of Madison Square Garden,
Madison Square Garden Series Color print
George Kalinsky Southern Vermont Art Center, Manchester, VT
has captured many celebrated moments in sports history. George depicts the highs and the lows athletes face. He has shot unforgettable championship moments and been on the sidelines for agonizing defeats.“Faces of Champions” focuses on George's iconic sports photography. Opening Reception: Saturday, June 30, 4 to 6 pm. Captions:
Cafe Sora: Japanese Home-style Cooking at Southern Vermont Arts Center Hours: Thursdays-Saturdays, 11:30 to 2:30 pm; Sundays 12 noon to 2:30 pm Japan Week, June 18th -June 23rd Café Sora and SVAC celebrate Japanese culture, cuisine, and art with an exhibit of original prints by Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858), sushi-making classes, and more. The week culminates in the Japan Festival, Saturday, June 23rd. Fun for the whole family: dress up in kimonos, learn calligraphy and origami, and experience a live koto music performance. Adults, stay late for karaoke!
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Betsy Jacaruso Studio Gallery Luminous Landscapes in Watercolor Works by Emerging Regional Artists Classes in Watercolor . Drawing . Pastel
River of Life
43 E. Market St . Rhinebeck, NY 12572 . 845-516-4435 www.betsyjacarusoartist.com Hours: Thur-Sat 11-5, Sun 12-4 & by appointment or chance
Serigraph 16"x 28"
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Summer MUSIC FESTIVALS
Anton Rubenstein, composer of The Demon The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents Anton Rubenstein’s The Demon, Directed by Thaddeus Strassberger, American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, Sosnoff Theater, July 27th at 8 pm; July 29, August 1,3, & 5 at 2 pm, tickets start at $25, fishercenter.bard.edu, 845 758-7900
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The Demon, Efim Savalny, Baritone The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents Anton Rubenstein’s The Demon, Directed by Thaddeus Strassberger, American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, Sosnoff Theater, July 27th at 8 pm; July 29, August 1,3, & 5 at 2 pm, tickets start at $25, fishercenter.bard.edu, 845 758-7900
The Demon, Tamara, Olga Tolmit, Soprano The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents Anton Rubenstein’s The Demon, Directed by Thaddeus Strassberger, American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, Sosnoff Theater, July 27th at 8 pm; July 29, August 1,3, & 5 at 2 pm, tickets start at $25, fishercenter.bard.edu, 845 758-7900
Bard SummerScape and Summer Music Festival 2018— Highlights by Genre Music: Bard Music Festival, “Rimsky-Korsakov and His World Founded by co-artistic director, Leon Botstein, it is the Bard Music Festival that provides the creative inspiration for SummerScape. Since its inception nearly three decades ago, the Bard Music Festival has enriched the standard concert repertory with a wealth of important rediscoveries; as the New York Times points out, “wherever there is an overlooked potential masterpiece, Leon Botstein is not too far behind.” Botstein serves as music director of both the American Symphony Orchestra, which will anchor two orchestral programs as well as the annual staged opera, and of The Orchestra Now (T�N). Now in its third season, this unique graduate training orchestra—designed to help a new generation of musicians break down barriers between modern audiences and great orchestral music of past and present—takes part in the remaining orchestral programs.
The subject of this season’s Bard Music Festival is a composer whose vast contribution contrasts starkly with the slightness of his reputation in the West. “Rimsky-Korsakov and His World” comprises an illuminating series of chamber, vocal, choral, and orchestral concerts—as well as pre-concert talks, commentaries, and panel discussions—devoted to examining the life and times of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908). A member of the Kuchka, or Mighty Five, Rimsky-Korsakov played a pivotal part in shaping the now-familiar Russian musical style, using folk and fairytale elements, innovative sonorities, and orientalism to create a carefully crafted sound. His radical tonal language and mastery of orchestral color exerted a profound influence at home and abroad, not only on subsequent generations of his compatriots, but also on French symbolists, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. He was a prolific orchestrator, without whose vivid version of Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov the opera might never have won its exalted place in the repertoire. A leading pedagogue for whom the St. Petersburg Conservatory is now named, his students included such eminent figures as Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev, subjects of the 2013 and 2008 festivals, respectively. His illuminating and endearing autobiography has been recognized as “one of the best source-books on the history of Russian 19th-century music” (New York Times). Yet neither this autobiography, nor Rimsky-Korsakov’s books on harmony and orchestration, are currently in print in English. Furthermore, there is no scholarly biography of the composer available—even in translation—in any
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Washington Friends of Music, left to right: Samuel Magill, violoncello; Jonathan Allen, timpani; Vincent Lionti, viola; Song-A Cho, 1st violin; Daniel Stackhouse, oboe; Roderick MacDonald, trumpet, horn; Douglas Myers, Artistic Director and founder of The NBS, trumpet, horn; Amanda Hardy, oboe; Jennifer Choi, violin; Benjamin Woodward, keyboard, organ photo: Carl Weese
western European language. And although his extensive output includes some sixteen operas and a wealth of choral, orchestral, vocal, piano, and chamber music, in the West, he is known almost exclusively for just three beloved orchestral staples—the Capriccio Espagñole, the Russian Easter Festival Overture, and Scheherazade—as well as for such brief operatic excerpts as the “Flight of the Bumblebee” (from The Tale of Tsar Saltan) and “Song of India” (from Sadko). Indeed, as Russian music specialist, Richard Taruskin, notes, beyond his homeland Rimsky-Korsakov remains “perhaps the most underrated composer of all time.” Drawing on recent scholarship, the Bard Music Festival’s signature thematic programming, multidisciplinary approach, and emphasis on context and reception history provide the perfect platform for a reexamination of the Rimsky-Korsakov riddle. The numerous offerings that make up the 2018 Festival take place during SummerScape’s two final weekends. On August 10–12, Weekend One considers Inventing Russian Music: The Mighty Five, and on August 17–19, Weekend Two addresses Rimsky-Korsakov and His Followers. Through the prism of Rimsky-Korsakov’s life and career, the Bard Music Festival investigates a century of Russian music and culture from Mikhail Glinka to Stravinsky. Twelve concert programs spaced over the two weekends explore such themes as music under Tsarist autocracy; the legacy of Pushkin; nationalism and exoticism; and the folk traditions of the Russian Empire.
The Festival will feature a broad sampling of Rimsky-Korsakov’s own music, including rare choral and chamber works, his one-act opera, Mozart and Salieri, and a semi-staged production of his seldom-seen opera, The Tsar’s Bride, with which the entire seven weeks of Bard SummerScape will draw to a riveting close. Music by many of his countrymen will also be heard, including his immediate predecessors, Glinka and Alexander Dargomyzhsky; his mentor, Mily Balakirev, and their fellow members of the Mighty Five, Alexander Borodin, César Cui, and Mussorgsky; other contemporaries, from Anton Rubinstein, Alexander Serov, and Sergei Taneyev to the great Pyotr Tchaikovsky; Rimsky-Korsakov’s illustrious students, Anton Arensky, Alexander Glazunov, Anatoly Lyadov, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Nikolai Tcherepnin; and other members of the next generation, such as Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Rachmaninoff. The world beyond Russia will be represented by composers, including Debussy, Ravel, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Italian student, Ottorino Respighi. Finally, two thought-provoking panel discussions will be supplemented by informative pre-concert talks and commentaries; illuminating each concert’s themes, these are free to ticket holders. Since the founding of the Bard Music Festival, Princeton University Press has published a companion volume of new scholarship and interpretation for each season, with essays and translated documents relating to the
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A view from the WSO trumpet section as Maestro Leif Bjaland addresses the audience at last year picture perfect: “28th Annual Picnic & Pops” in Woodbury CT
featured composer and his world. Scholar-in-Residence Marina FrolovaWalker, author of Russian Music and Nationalism: from Glinka to Stalin, is the editor of the forthcoming 2018 volume, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and His World.
Bard SummerScape 2018 Presents Rare New American Production of Anton Rubinstein’s Demon (July 27–Aug 5) Committed since its inception to reviving important but neglected operas, Bard SummerScape has long proven itself “an indispensable part of the summer operatic landscape” (Musical America). Offering a rare new Ameri-
can production of Demon by Anton Rubinstein as its operatic centerpiece, this year’s immersion in “Rimsky-Korsakov and His World” is no exception. With Olga Tolkmit and Efim Zavalny heading an all-Russian cast in an original staging by renowned American director, Thaddeus Strassberger, with the support of the American Symphony Orchestra under the leadership of music director and festival co-artistic director Leon Botstein, Demon runs for five performances between July 27 and August 5, with an Opera Talk, free and open to the public, before the matinee on July 29. Anton Rubinstein’s Demon (1871)
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Fine Arts Quartet, l to r: Ralph Evans, Efim Boico, Gil Sharon, and Niklas Schmidt, Hotchkiss Portals—Piano Concerts 2018
It was Anton Rubinstein (1829–94), Rimsky-Korsakov’s senior by fifteen years, who founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory, now named for the younger composer. Both men had an enormous influence on the next generation of Russian composition, and although in his lifetime Rubinstein was best known as a keyboard virtuoso and star pedagogue whose students included Tchaikovsky, he was also a prolific composer with no fewer than twenty operas to his name. The most popular of these was Demon (1871), one of the two operas mounted most often in 19th-century Russia, and the country’s first to be produced in Britain.Yet despite its rich choruses and fiery libretto, today Rubinstein’s masterpiece has fallen into neglect and is almost never staged in the English-speaking world. Composed in three acts to a libretto by Pavel Viskovatov, Demon was based on a narrative poem by Mikhail Lermontov that was initially banned as sacrilegious. Like the poem, Rubinstein’s opera depicts a demon, or fallen angel, who meets Tamara, a mortal princess, and falls desperately in love, trying everything in his power to seduce her. Tamara’s struggle to resist him becomes a battle not only for her soul but for the fate of the earth itself. When at last she weakens, the price of her redemption is death, and the demon is condemned to eternal solitude. On the few occasions it has been heard in the West, Demon has received a warm welcome. After a concert performance by the Kirov Opera at the 2003 Lincoln Center Festival, the New York Times admired the composer’s “sure lyrical gift and command of the orchestra,” while a 2009 London presen-
photo: courtesy Fine Arts Quartet
tation prompted Gramophone to admire “Rubinstein’s colourful and lyrically expressive score.” As The Independent declared: “You can see why it did, and still does, carry the wow factor in Russia.” Bard’s full staging represents an all-too-rare opportunity to see Rubinstein’s opera mounted outside the composer’s homeland. Conceived expressly for SummerScape 2018, the new production is by renowned American director, Thaddeus Strassberger, whose previous SummerScape productions are among Bard’s most resounding success stories. Making his US debut in Demon’s title role is baritone, Efim Zavalny, first prize-winner at the International Shtokolov Vocalists’ Competition. Singing opposite him as Tamara is soprano, Olga Tolkmit, a nominee for Russia’s prestigious Golden Mask Award, in her third major role at Bard. Belarusian bass, Andrey Valentiy, who has appeared at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre and Milan’s La Scala, sings Tamara’s father, Prince Gudal. Her Nanny is portrayed by mezzosoprano, Ekaterina Egorova, a frequent leading lady at St. Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Opera. Likewise tenor, Alexander Nesterenko, who sings Tamara’s fiancé, Prince Sinodal, regularly headlines productions at Moscow’s Stanislavsky Opera. Bard’s all-Russian cast is completed by bass-baritone, Yakov Strizhak as Sinodal’s Old Servant, mezzo-soprano Nadezhda Babintseva as the Angel, and tenor Pavel Sulyandziga as the Messenger.The opera's thrilling dance sequences will be performed by the highly respected Georgian dance troupe, Pesvebi Georgian Dancers. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri (1897), Bard Music Festival
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Program 8 No 19th-century composer contributed more substantially to Russia’s opera repertoire than Rimsky-Korsakov, who wrote sixteen examples of the genre. Based on the same Pushkin verse drama that inspired Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, his one-act opera, Mozart and Salieri, covers the same territory, animating the rumor that Salieri, official composer of Vienna’s Hapsburg court, so envied Mozart’s genius that he was driven to poison him. There will be a talk before the concert by festival co-artistic director Christopher Gibbs, who is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music at Bard College. Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride (1898), Bard Music Festival Program 12 For his tenth opera, Rimsky-Korsakov combined the fantastic with the historical, turning to the so-called Time of Troubles, the same period of Russian history that inspired Boris Godunov and SummerScape 2017’s Dimitrij. Based on a play by Lev Mey, The Tsar’s Bride depicts Marfa, the merchant’s daughter whom Ivan the Terrible (a silent role, in accordance with Tsarist censorship laws) chooses from among thousands of pretty girls as his third wife. Unfortunately she is already in love with another and subject to the unwanted attentions of a third, who attempts to give her a love potion. When poison is substituted, and the man she loves is blamed and executed, Marfa loses her mind, providing the opera with a bona fide mad scene. Although the familiar Slava anthem functions throughout as a leitmotif, Rimsky-Korsakov explained that he intended The Tsar’s Bride as a reaction against Wagner’s ideas, and aimed for “cantilena par excellence.” This proved successful in his homeland, where the opera was warmly welcomed at its premiere, and has remained in regular rotation ever since. In the West, by contrast, revivals are rare. Bard’s semi-staged production features The Orchestra Now (T�N), Bard’s graduate training orchestra, under Botstein’s leadership. In the title role of Marfa, it stars Lyubov Petrova, Demon’s Andrey Valentiy sings Marfa’s father, Vasily Sobakin, and Mozart and Salieri’s Gerard Schneider takes the role of her falsely accused suitor, Ivan Likov. Efim Zavalny, the Demon himself, plays her third admirer, Grigory Gryaznoy, with mezzo-soprano Nadezhda Babintseva, who as Lyubasha, his murderous mistress. Joel Sorensen appears as the Tsar’s physician, Yelisey Bomeliy, with bass-baritone Yakov Strizhak, first-prize-winner at the Rachmaninov International Music Competition, as an oprichnik, or member of the imperial police force. Rounding out Bard’s stellar cast as Petrovna, the Sobakins’ housekeeper, is mezzo-soprano Teresa Buchholz, winner of the female division at Carnegie Hall’s Nico Castel International Master Singer Competition. With lighting by Anshuman Bhatia, Bard’s semi-staged production is designed and directed by Doug Fitch, the co-founder of Giants Are Small. Before the opera, there will be a talk by Bard’s 2018 Scholar-in-Residence, Marina Frolova-Walker, author of Russian Music and Nationalism: from Glinka to Stalin and editor of the forthcoming volume Nikolai RimskyKorsakov and His World.
Washington Friends of Music Summer Concert Festival with The New Baroque Soloists by John Payne A critic recently stated, “The New Baroque Soloists comprises one of the most elegant ensembles in the world. They capture the essence of what baroque music is all about… a trip to their glorious concerts is not to be missed.” So what is baroque music all about? What happens in these “glorious concerts” to make this group one of the world’s “most elegant ensembles? Why are they “not to be missed”? First, about baroque music. Methodical types categorize “baroque” as any music created from 1600 to 1750. Historians define “baroque” as evolving from renaissance music and forming the foundation for the classical era. Ana-
Leonel Morales, Hotchkiss Portals—Piano Concerts 2018
photo: courtesy Leonel Morales
lysts focus on the unique elements: a basso continuo (keyboard bass) maintaining one mood throughout each piece, a major/minor key system, featured strings, and expansion into many forms of music, always with exuberance, contrasts and ornaments. For those trying to relate to the familiar, think of composers Bach,Telemann, and Handel writing music for trumpets and horns of all (early) types, oboes, flutes, tympani, continuo, organ, the human voice, and stringed instruments of all types and sizes. Washington Friends of Music chose The New Baroque Soloists (a chamber group from 8 to 15 players) to match the intimacy of the 1801 Meeting House in Washington, CT, and to provide the audience the discovery of individual instruments played by first-class soloists. Arrangements are faithful to both the history and intent of each piece by the noted baroque music scholar and musician, Douglas Myers, who formed The New Baroque Soloists twenty years ago. WFM concerts typically include duets, trios, quartets, etc. up to and including a full ensemble, all providing diverse and colorful performances in one evening. The works are performed on the best-sounding instruments available, including the unique ”corno da caccia,” or piccolo French horn and violins crafted in 1686 (one year after Bach’s birth) and in 1736, thus providing the best quality sound available to audiences.The baroque pieces presented at each WFM concert feature different moods and different instruments to make each concert a comprehensive tour of the baroque range from intimacy to exuberance.The variations keep audiences alert from start to standing-applause finish. The members of The New Baroque Soloists are gifted artists, and soloists in their own right, as the group name implies. Drawn from New York City and Boston, they also perform with groups, such as Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, New York Philharmonic, Orpheus, the Boston Pops, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The 2018 WFM Summer Concert Festival, now in it’s 6th year, takes place at 5:30 pm on four succeeding Fridays, July 20 and 27, August 3, and 10 at Washington’s Historic Meeting House on the Green, 6 Kirby Road, Washington CT. Concerts 1 and 4 will feature larger numbers of soloists and greater breadths of baroque variations. Concert 2 will focus on baroque works that have influenced classical and later music genres. Concert 3 will feature worldrenowned cellist, Sergey Antonov, Gold Medal winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition. Advance tickets are available on the WFM website: WashingtonCT4Music.blogspot.com for $25 (held for you at the door) and for
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sale at The Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot. Tickets are always available at the door before the concerts; $30 for adults, $15 for students and children free of charge. Seating is random: there is not a bad seat in the house (people have favorite seats from the front to the back to the balcony).The audience can look forward to a remarkable experience. —John Payne, Board Member, Washington Friends of Music
Looking Ahead: The Waterbury Symphony Orchestra To subscribe to the 18-19 Season Atlas Of Sound: Reserve your seats in advance to the 2018-19 Season! Call us for more information at 203-574-4283. To purchase your subscription. Mail in subscription form: 2018-19 Season at a Glance Subscription Form: pdf Subscriptions renewal packages for the 2018-2019 currently available. Call today: 203 5744283 New season subscribers online purchases will be available beginning on June 5. https://waterburysymphony.secure.force.com/ticket, seating fulfillment is completed by contacting the WSO Administrative Office 203 574-4283. Single tickets will go on sale August 1st. You may download the 2018-19 Subscription, complete the form, and mail with your payment to: Waterbury Symphony Orchestra 160 Robbins Street Waterbury, CT 06708
Upcoming Events: Great American Songbook | Taft School | June 10 Summer Soirée| Mill House Antiques & Gardens | June 16: 80th Anniversary Celebration Join the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra for an exquisite evening at Mill House Antiques & Gardens! The Waterbury Symphony Orchestra will host a Garden Party on Saturday, June 16, at 5 pm, on the stunning grounds of Mill House Antiques & Gardens, located at 1068 Main Street North, Woodbury. Music Director and Conductor, Leif Bjaland, and guest musicians will set the tone with a musical backdrop that captures the celebratory spirit of the evening. Gather with new and old friends for a musical soirée to toast the Waterbury Symphony 80th Anniversary with a champagne tribute. $65 | person. Summer Cocktail Attire. Reservation appreciated by June 12th. All proceeds to benefit the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra Picnic & Pops, Disney Classics! | July 15 The WSO begins the season with Picnic & Pops, in Woodbury’s Hollow Park, Sunday, July 15th at 6 pm. General admission tickets begin at $15, purchased in advance through the WSO website or office, and $20 purchased the day of the event. Pack a blanket, picnic basket and your beverages of choice and head out to Woodbury's Hollow Park for an evening of music as the sun sets! A WSO tradition since 1988, Summer Pops brings families and friends from across the community together for the shared enjoyment of a live outdoor concert. Music Director/Conductor: Leif Bjaland The program to include: Friend Like Me, Under the Sea, Beauty & the Beast, I Wan'na Be Like You,The Incredibles, I Just Can't Wait to Be King, Let It Go,Alice in Wonderland, Disney Salute
Subscription Concerts: Northern Lights | NVCC | Saturday, September 22 – 7:30 pm 2018-19 Season Opening Nights Leif Bjaland, Conductor Orion Weiss, Pianist Saturday, September 22, 2018 | 7:30 pm* NVCC Fine Arts Center *Pre-Concert Insights from 6:30-7:00 pm, with WSO Cultural Ambassador, Dr. Vincent DeLuise.
PROGRAM Alvén Dance of the Shepherdess Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor Sibelius Symphony No. 2 in D major Scary Tales | NVCC | Saturday, October 28 – 3:00pm Leif Bjaland, Conductor Sunday, October 28, 2018 | 3 PM* NVCC Fine Arts Center Pre-concert Insights 2-2:30 pm.(guest speaker to be determined)
2018 Hotchkiss Portals—Piano Concert Series, July 15thJuly 28th All Concerts are Free Admission The Hotchkiss School welcomes the community, neighbors, and friends to enjoy its annual summer series of world-class musical concerts—free and open to the public. Whether for a pre-concert picnic at Hotchkiss or just to take in spectacular views of Lake Wononscopomuc and the southern Berkshire Mountains, visitors are invited to come early before enjoying performances inside the School’s renowned Katherine M. Elfers Hall, Esther Eastman Music Center. The hall is air-conditioned and handicapped accessible. The Hotchkiss Summer Portals program hosts gifted young pianists from around the world for intensive study with resident and guest artists. Students, mentored by a faculty of professional musicians, participate in weekly master classes and give free public performances. This year, featured performers include pianists, Oxana Yablonskaya of Tel Aviv University, Israel performing July 15th, and Yuri Bogdanov of Gnessin Russian Academy of Music, Moscow, performing July 18th. Other musicians and pianists to perform include the Fine Arts Quartet with Fabio and Gisele Witkowski, appearing July 21st, Hotchkiss favorite, Leonel Morales, appearing July 23rd, and Leonel Morales-Herrero on July 26th, both of Universidad Alfonso X, Madrid, Spain. Grand finale Concert on July 28th, 7:30 pm. Please visit our website for the schedule and full program information, including a schedule of concerts by student pianists, which includes an engagement at The Hotchkiss School Fairfield Farm and a special engagement at Carnegie Hall. To find out more: visit hotchkiss.org/summer, phone the concert hotline at 860 435-3775; or e-mail summer@hotchkiss.org. The Hotchkiss School is located at 11 Interlaken Road, Lakeville, CT. All concerts take place in Katherine M. Elfers Hall, Esther Eastman Music Center in the main building, which is airconditioned and handicapped-accessible. 2018 Summer Portals Piano Concert Series SCHEDULE July 15 - 28 All concerts take place in Katherine M. Elfers Hall, The Esther Eastman Music Center and are free admission unless indicated with (*). hotchkiss.org/summer. July 15 — Oxana Yablonskaya, 4 pm July 18 — Yuri Bogdanov, 7:30 pm July 21 — The Fred and Mary Tanner Franck Concert, featuring: The Fine Arts Quartet; Fabio Witkowski, Gisele Nacif Witkowski, piano, 7:30 pm July 23 — Leonel Morales, 7:30 pm July 26 — Leonel Morales-Herrero, 7:30 pm July 28 — Grand Finale Concert, 7:30 p.m. Young Artist Concerts July 21, 4 pm July 22, 4 pm *July 24, 8:pm — Hotchkiss Piano Portal at Carnegie Hall. For tickets visit carnegiehall.org. *July 25, 7:30 pm — Fairfield Farm, The Hotchkiss School (weather permitting) July 27, 7:30 pm
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Summer Dance Productions
[L to R] Lindsey Jones, Dylan Crossman, Maile Okamura, Christine Flores, and Jason Collins in rehearsal at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, April 24, 2018 The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents the World Premiere/SummerScape Dance Commission, Four Quartets, July 6-8, 2018 fishercenter.bard.edu, 845 758-7900 photo: Maria Baranova
Kaija Saariaho and Pam Tanowitz working at Saariaho’s Paris apartment, December 23, 2017 Baryshnikov Arts Center, April 24, 2018 The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents the World Premiere/SummerScape Dance Commission, Four Quartets, July 6-8, 2018 fishercenter.bard.edu, 845 758-7900 photo: Gideon Lester
Kathleen Chalfant and Jason Collins in rehearsal at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, April 24, 2018 The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents the World Premiere/SummerScape Dance Commission, Four Quartets, July 6-8, 2018 fishercenter.bard.edu, 845 758-7900 photo: Maria Baranova
Bard SummerScape Presents World Premiere of Four Quartets—New Interdisciplinary Dance Commission from Pam Tanowitz, Kaija Saariaho, and Brice Marden on 75th Anniversary of T.S. Eliot’s Poems (July 6–8) Seventy-five years ago T.S. Eliot published Four Quartets, a poetic meditation on time and memory that is widely regarded as his crowning achievement. Now, to celebrate this milestone anniversary, Bard SummerScape 2018 presents the world premiere of Four Quartets, the first authorized dance performance ever to be based on Eliot’s modernist masterpiece. A SummerScape commission, the new work is an inter-disciplinary collaboration that draws on the talents of three of today’s most potent artistic voices. Since making her acclaimed festival debut at SummerScape 2015, Pam
Tanowitz has been recognized as “one of the most formally brilliant choreographers around” (New York Times), with honors including a Bessie Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the prestigious 2017 Cage Cunningham Fellowship. For Four Quartets’ music, she turned to the work of Grawemeyer and Grammy Award-winning Finnish composer, Kaija Saariaho. The creative trio is completed by American modernist painter and Hudson Valley resident, Brice Marden, who was the subject of a major retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The performance features nine members of the Pam Tanowitz Dance Company, with a complete narration of Eliot’s poem cycle by Tony-nominated actress Kathleen Chalfant. Saariaho’s music will be performed live by four members of The Knights, the celebrated orchestral collective. This world premiere will be performed three times on July 6–8 in the Sosnoff Theater. Four Quartets is co-commissioned with The Barbican Centre in London and The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, and the work will be performed in London and Los Angeles in 2019. Pam Tanowitz said of this performance,“Living inside Eliot’s poetry has been a process of training myself how to look at the world. I am experimenting with how to pair dance within his rhythm of words while activating the audience’s imagination to create meaningful images and connections.” Kaija Saariaho added,“I have loved Eliot since my youth, and think of his words often in relation to my music. It’s a pleasure to partner with Pam and Brice to create a new way of encountering these rich and significant poems.” Brice Marden said, "It’s a pleasure to reconnect with Four Quartets. The poems are elemen-
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Miki Orihara in Resonance II, for Kaatsbaan
photo: Antonia K. Miranda Ephrat Asherie Dance, at Jacob’s Pillow
tal, preoccupied with the turning world, the seasons and elements, and the ineffable, highest qualities of our lives." Sosnoff Theater Friday, July 6 at 8 pm* (with opening-night reception for members) Saturday, July 7 at 8 pm (with post-performance conversation) Sunday, July 8 at 3 pm* (with pre-performance conversation at 2 pm) Tickets start at $25
”Resonance II with Miki Orihara at Kaatsbaan Saturday, June 16, 2018 It is with the greatest pleasure that Kaatsbaan brings Miki Orihara’s “Resonance II” to its stage with pianist/composer, Senri Oe, on Saturday, June 16, 2018 at 7:30 pm. Ms. Orihara, solo dancer and principal artist with the Martha Graham Company, picks up where she left off in 2016 when she presented “Resonance” at Kaatsbaan. For this solo performance, Ms. Orihara explores her Japanese dance heritage and its confluence with the work of American dance masters past and present. Miki Orihara is best known for her work as a principal dancer in the Martha Graham Dance Company, which she joined in 1987. In addition to performing the Graham repertory, she has worked closely with the renowned Japanese-American dancer, choreographer and director, Yuriko, preserving her unique approach to Graham Technique. The list of her achievements goes on and on, but most recently Ms. Orihara produced and curated the benefit concerts “Dancing for JAPAN 2014" and “Dancing for JAPAN 2017”, and also produced her first solo concert "Resonance" at the La MaMa theater in New York in May, 2014, and “Resonance II” at the LaGuradia Performing Arts Center, NY in April 2017. In May 2018, she curated and directed the inaugural Nu Vu Festival presenting seven established, mid-career and upcoming dance artists. In 2010 she was awarded the prestigious Bessie Award for Sustained Achievement in Dance. Senri Oe, jazz pianist and composer, joins Ms. Orihara throughout the program with musical reflections and as the composer and performer of Charlotte Griffin’s work. A New York resident for the past decade, Senri Oe is making a name for himself as an innovative, engaged, and highly creative member of the Jazz community. Though he has proved his skill as a songwriter, pianist, singer and more, he prefers to describe himself simply as a jazz musician, who loves to write music as well as perform on piano. In the four Jazz albums Senri has released as a leader since 2012, he’s shown himself to be both versatile and adventurous, exploring different facets of Jazz with each CD
photo: Matthew Murphy
The evening’s program highlights work by four influential and celebrated choreographers of Modern Dance: Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Lar Lubovitch and Charlotte Griffin. The works were carefully chosen by Ms. Orihara in order to bring the compositions of American Dance pioneers close again to audiences. Martha Graham’s Lamentation (1930) is “not the sorrow of specific person, time or place but the personification of grief itself.” (Graham’s Program Notes) Of her costume Graham said,“I wear a long tube of material to indicate the tragedy that obsesses the body, the ability to stretch inside your own skin, to witness and test the perimeters and boundaries of grief.” Kaatsbaan is a nonprofit, professional creative residence and performance facility situated on a 153-acre historic site in Tivoli, NY. Founded in 1990, it provides dance companies, choreographers, composers, set designers and all dance artists with a setting where they can create and showcase new work, rehearse, perform and develop new productions. It serves dance communities across the US and around the world.
Extreme Ballet Showcases at Kaatsbaan: All showcases are free and last about one hour. Interviews available upon request. Please contact Prudence Garcia-Renart, Program Manager at 845-7575106 x110 Showcases: Saturday, July 7th at noon Saturday, July 28th at noon Saturday, August 18th at noon.
Jacob’s Pillow Presents Festival 2018 with Season Opening Gala & After Party, June 16th Jacob’s Pillow kicks off Festival 2018 with a Season Opening Gala, its signature fundraising event, on Saturday, June 16th. Considered the start of the summer season in the Berkshires, the Season Opening Gala includes the official opening of all 2018 Exhibits, the presentation of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award to acclaimed choreographer and director, Faye Driscoll, and a tribute to Honorary Chair and 2018 Kennedy Center Honoree, Carmen de Lavallade; in addition to exclusive programming, an evening of delicious food and drink by The Old Inn On The Green, and a festive After Party with live music and dancing. The Gala program includes a cocktail hour performance of POP-UP Duets by Scotland-based Janis Claxton Dance in their US debut; an exclusive
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Monica Bill Barnes & Co in “Happy Hour” at Jacob’s Pillow Batsheva—The Young Ensemble at Jacob’s Pillow
photo: Grant Alverson
photo: Gadi Dagon
preview of Ephrat Asherie Dance’s Odeon, prior to its world premiere at the Festival (June 27-July 1); a world premiere performed by the Ballet Program dancers of The School at Jacob’s Pillow, choreographed and set in just four days by internationally sought-after choreographer, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa; and Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Amanda Smith performing Carmen de Lavallade’s “signature solo,” Come Sunday, as a tribute to the Honorary Chair. The Gala program also includes a live auction featuring an original painting created specially for the Jacob’s Pillow Gala by American landscape painter, Stephen Hannock, whose work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of Art, among others. A Fund the Future paddle raise will occur to support the Pillow’s programming. In celebration of its first summer in use, cocktail hour will be held in the new $5.5 million Perles Family Studio, an anchor of the Pillow’s recent transition to a year-round center for dance development and research as outlined in its five-year plan, Vision ‘22. The cocktail hour also features the official opening of Gotta Dance, Too!, an original movie poster exhibition in Blake’s Barn from former film executive, Mike Kaplan’s collection, signature cocktails, and a silent auction with rare and priceless packages. Following the performance, guests will enjoy dinner and drinks under an elegant tent on The Great Lawn catered by New Marlborough-based AAA 4-Star The Old Inn On The Green, just prior to the grand opening of their three brand new, on-site dining venues at the Pillow, June 20th. The Season Opening Gala begins at 5 pm; After Party begins at 9 pm. Gala tables of ten are $5,500-$15,000; individual tickets are $600-$1200; individual After Party tickets are $75, 4-pack After Party tickets available for $200. The silent auction will be open throughout the event and is available online; bidding opens May 31, with items available for preview now at biddingforgood.com/jacobspillowdance/2018Gala. TICKET DETAILS: Season Opening Gala at Jacob’s Pillow June 16, 5pm-Midnight Purchase tickets online: jacobspillow.org/events/gala Gala After Party at Jacob’s Pillow June 16, 9pm-Midnight Purchase After Party only tickets online: jacobspillow.org/events/gala-afterparty/ Tickets are on sale now; purchase online or contact Gretchen Weber, Jacob’s Pillow Gala & Special Events Manager at 413 243-9919 x126. Jacob’s Pillow is located at 358 George Carter Road, Becket, MA, 01223.
Season Opening Gala June 16, Ted Shawn Theatre An annual night of exclusive performances with a program that features a world premiere by sought-after Colombian-Belgian choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, performed by students of the Ballet Program of The School at Jacob’s Pillow, the presentation of the 2018 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, POP-UP Duets by Scottish company Janis Claxton Dance in their U.S. debut, and more. Janis Claxton Dance June 16, Season Opening Gala June 21, Pittsfield’s Third Thursday Scottish company Janis Claxton Dance makes its U.S. debut with POPUP Duets (fragments of love), performed as part of the Season Opening Gala and at Pittsfield’s Third Thursdays street festival. POP-UP Duets is a series of five minute, multi-site specific contemporary dance duets, based around the theme of love and designed for a wide range of public spaces. Translucent Borders: Cross-cultural collaborations June 24-27 Translucent Borders will host a three-day residency at Jacob's Pillow, bringing together for the first time its global collaborators from Cuba, Israel, Ghana, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States, and Italy, with some artists making their US debuts. The residency will culminate in the debut presentation of intercultural works-in-progress with more than twenty musicians and dancers as part of the Inside/Out Performance Series, June 27. All Styles Dance Battle July 1 at 8 pm, Doris Duke Theatre After an epic inaugural event in 2017, Ephrat “Bounce”Asherie steps up to host the second annual dance battle, featuring Festival artists, participants of The School at Jacob’s Pillow, regional street artists, and surprise judges. Monica Bill Barnes & Company’s Happy Hour July 26-Aug 4, Sommers Studio Monica Bill Barnes & Company turns Sommers Studio into an afterwork office party hosted by company member Robbie Saenz de Viteri with a karaoke machine and dime store decor. Dressed in a pair of everyday men’s suits, Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass hijack the party playing two instantly familiar guys.
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Summer Theater Productions
Jaki Bradley, Vassar Powerhouse’s Radio Island (June 28-July8) by Liza Birkenmeier, directed by Jaki Bradley
Lisa Peterson, Vassar Powerhouse’s The Waves (July 19-July 29), adapted from the novel by Virginia Woolf, book by and directed by Lisa Peterson
Vassar & New York Stage and Film Announce 34th Powerhouse Theater Season Vassar & New York Stage and Film are thrilled to announce the programming lineup for their upcoming 34th Powerhouse Season, the annual summer season which brings to the Hudson Valley some of the most influential theatrical voices working today for fully-staged productions of new plays, workshop presentations of new plays and musicals, and readings of other works in progress. The programming includes new works by Spring Awakening creators and two-time Tony® winners, Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik; three-time Tony® winner, Jason Robert Brown, and playwright, Halley Feiffer, among many others. The 34th Powerhouse Season will be presented at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY from June 22nd through July 29th, 2018. For more information, visit powerhouse.vassar.edu. Vassar & New York Stage and Film’s Powerhouse collaboration continues to be the launching pad for some of the most ground-breaking new works for the American theater, with countless productions in New York City, regionally, and internationally. Notably, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton and Stephen Karam’s The Humans—the 2016 Tony® winners for Best Musical and Best Play, respectively—received early development at Powerhouse, and Powerhouse presented first-look productions of two daring new works that were named finalists for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, which moved directly from its Powerhouse premiere to recent celebrated runs at The Playwrights Realm and Lincoln Center Theater in NYC; and Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, which is currently on an international tour. The upcoming 34th Powerhouse Season will feature two main stage productions in the Powerhouse Theater: Radio Island (June 28 – July 8) by Liza Birkenmeier
Directed by Jaki Bradley Ellen is an expert hostage negotiator facing her biggest challenges yet. In this high-stakes thriller, she works from her rural childhood home to free an oil tanker from pirates—while also balancing her injured mother’s rehab, salvaging her crumbling love life, and tracking down a mysterious visitor from her troubled past. Home life and international crisis converge in this inventive new play from Liza Birkenmeier, directed by Jaki Bradley (Good Men Wanted, 2017 Powerhouse main-stage production). The Waves (July 19 – July 29) Adapted from the novel by Virginia Woolf Book by Lisa Peterson Music and Lyrics by David Bucknam With Additional Music by Adam Gwon Directed by Lisa Peterson Creative Consultant Raul Esparza Six childhood friends and their shifting relationships come vibrantly to life in this captivating chamber musical inspired by Virginia Woolf’s celebrated novel. Over the course of one day—or is it a lifetime?—The Waves illuminates the interior yearnings, ambitions, and defeats of these extraordinary individuals with stirring choral music and Woolf’s signature text. Writer/director Lisa Peterson (An Iliad) and composer Adam Gwon (Ordinary Days) revisit and reimagine Bucknam and Peterson’s lush and layered musical, which premiered off-Broadway over thirty years ago. The musical workshop presentations, presented in the Vogelstein Center for Drama & Film and the Susan Stein Shiva Theater, will include four exciting new projects: Alice By Heart (July 5-7) Book by Steven Sater with Jessie Nelson Music by Duncan Sheik Lyrics by Steven Sater Directed by Jessie Nelson In the rubble of the London Blitz, Alice Spencer’s budding teen life is turned upside down, and she escapes with her childhood friend, Alfred, into their most cherished book. They journey down the rabbit hole to Wonderland,
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Duncan Sheik, Vassar Powerhouse’s Alice by Heart (July5-7) Music by Duncan Sheik, Lyrics by Steven Sater
finding first love, loss, and the courage to move forward, and their imaginations transform even the harshest circumstances. Tony® and Grammy® Award-winning creators of Spring Awakening, Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik, reunite for their new musical inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, directed and co-written by Jessie Nelson (Waitress). The Connector (July 13-15) Music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown Book by Jonathan Marc Sherman Directed by Daisy Prince New York City, 1995. Aspiring writer, Ethan Dobson, has his first article published by The Connector, a magazine with a storied history. As Ethan strives to be part of the magazine’s legacy, he navigates editors with god complexes, fact checkers with vendettas, proofreaders, lawyers, and the challenges of his own history. In this new musical, playwright Jonathan Marc Sherman (Women and Wallace), composer-lyricist Jason Robert Brown (The Bridges of Madison County), and director Daisy Prince (The Last Five Years) tell a story about telling stories. What is the difference between facts and truth; journalism and entertainment? What happens when a gifted storyteller’s stories begin falling apart? Can anyone stop him? Little Orphan Danny (July 26-29) Book, lyrics, and music by Dan Finnerty Created by Dan Finnerty and Sean Daniels Additional music by Dan Lipton Directed by Sean Daniels The hilarious and candid musical memoir of The Dan Band’s front man, Dan Finnerty: Growing up a small-town altar boy in a nice conservative family doesn’t always suit our adopted protagonist. Childhood outbursts of blasphemy in church only lead to pathetic adolescent attempts at playing sports. But of the many lessons he’ll learn, none could prepare him to navigate the road ahead after the fateful day he and his mother meet the woman who gave birth to him. An irreverent-yet-tender story of an adopted boy and the women who made him. Cowboy Bob (July 27-29) Created by Molly Beach Murphy, Jeanna Phillips, and Annie Tippe Music and lyrics by Jeanna Phillips Book and additional lyrics by Molly Beach Murphy
Steven Sater, Vassar Powerhouse’s Alice by Heart (July5-7) Music by Duncan Sheik, Lyrics by Steven Sater
Additional music by Alex Thrailkill Directed by Annie Tippe Peggy was a good neighbor, a good daughter, and a great bank robber. Disguised as a man in a fake beard and a ten-gallon hat, “Cowboy Bob” evaded detection for more than a decade. In a score that's equal parts Riot Grrrl rage and Texas two-step, the small-town legend inspires an assortment of competing wannabe rebels to claim her story as their own. Now in its 34th year, Powerhouse Theater is collaboration between Vassar College and New York Stage and Film dedicated to both emerging and established artists in the development and production of new works for theater and film. The Powerhouse program consists of an eight-week residency on the Vassar campus during which more than 350 professional artists and 45 students in the Powerhouse Training Program live and work together to create new theater works. In 2016, three productions that trace their developmental roots to Powerhouse ran simultaneously on Broadway – Hamilton, Bright Star, and The Humans – and in 2017/18, twelve projects premiered in New York City that had been developed and presented at Powerhouse: Junk (Lincoln Center Theater on Broadway); Head Over Heels (Broadway); Transfers (MCC Theater);Amy and the Orphans and The Last Match (Roundabout Theatre Company); The Wolves (Lincoln Center Theater); Dido of Idaho (Ensemble Studio Theatre);
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Erin Markey as Wendy and Peter Smith as Peter Pan. The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents SummerScape Theater’s New Production of Leonard Bernstein’s Peter Pan, June 28July22, 2018, fishercenter.bard.edu. 845 758-7900 photo: Maria Baranova
Leonard Bernstein conducting New York City Symphony in 1945
This Isn’t No Disco (Atlantic Theater Company); The Great Leap (Atlantic Theater Company); The House That Will Not Stand (New York Theatre Workshop); The Portuguese Kid (Manhattan Theatre Club); and The Homecoming Queen (Atlantic Theater Company. Other projects developed at the Powerhouse include the Tony Award-winning Side Man and True; the multi-award-winning Doubt by John Patrick Shanley; the groundbreaking Broadway musical American Idiot; and A Steady Rain. Vassar College (Ed Cheetham, Michael Sheehan, Producing Directors) is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential, liberal arts college founded in 1861. New York Stage and Film (Johanna Pfaelzer,Artistic Director;Thomas Pearson, Executive Director; Mark Linn-Baker, Max Mayer, Leslie Urdang, Producing Directors) is a not-for-profit company dedicated to both emerging and established artists in the development of new works for theater and film. Since 1985 New York Stage and Film has played a significant role in the development of new plays, provided a home for a diverse group of artists free from critical and commercial pressures, and established itself as a vital cultural institution for residents of the Hudson Valley and the New York metropolitan region www.newyorkstageandfilm.org.
First Major Revival of Leonard Bernstein’s Peter Pan, Launches Bard SummerScape on June 28th Bard’s New Production, Directed by Christopher Alden— to Honor Bernstein Centennial On August 25th this year, Leonard Bernstein would have celebrated his
100th birthday.To honor this centennial, the 2018 Bard SummerScape festival launches with the first major revival of the composer’s Peter Pan. Commissioned from Olivier Award-winning director and Bernstein specialist, Christopher Alden, and presented complete in an intimate new chamber arrangement, Bard’s new production is the only one of Bernstein’s theatrical works to be staged in the New York area during the centenary year. Alden’s psychologically gripping treatment reveals the childhood fantasy’s darker side, combining new choreography from Jack Ferver, with Bernstein’s joyous, shimmering score. By turns whimsical and sinister, the production’s cast is led by William Michals as Captain Hook, Peter Smith as Peter Pan, Erin Markey, as Wendy, and Ferver as Tinker Bell. The new production premieres in twenty-five performances in the LUMA Theater of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, between June 28th and July 22nd. Critics are welcome as of July 5th, for an official opening on July 6th. The production is suitable for audiences aged twelve and above. Originally an Edwardian play by Scottish dramatist J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan, or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, owes its status as an enduring children’s classic chiefly to two popular American adaptations, both of which date from the 1950s: the 1953 Disney animation and 1954 Broadway musical, a hit whose regular revivals included a star-studded 2014 telecast. Yet, as is far less well-known, the post-war years yielded an earlier American adaptation as well: a Broadway show that opened in 1950 and ran for 321 performances, with music and lyrics by Leonard Bernstein.To accommodate the vocal limitations of its cast, however, the original production featured only five of the composer’s nine songs, and since then there has been just one fully staged revival at which they were performed complete. To commission its contemporary new staging, Bard turned to two key figures in the Bernstein field. As Vice President of Project Development and Senior Music Editor for the Leonard Bernstein Office, it was Garth Edwin Sunderland who created the first theatrical performing edition of Peter Pan. For Bard’s intimate take on Peter Pan, Sunderland rescores Bernstein’s music for a band of five musicians, all of whom will appear onstage, fully integrated with the action. This will be the creation of opera and theater director, Christopher Alden, whose original productions have graced the stages of the New York City Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and San Francisco Opera, to name just a few. His
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Left to right: Robert St. Laurence, Ensemble, and Josh Aaron McCabe in The Almost True & Truly Remarkable Adventures of Israel Potter, Oldcastle Theatre, 2018 rehearsal
Peter Smith as Peter Pan. The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents SummerScape Theater’s New Production of Leonard Bernstein’s Peter Pan, June 28-July22, 2018, fishercenter.bard.edu. 845 758-7900 photo: Maria Baranova
history with Bernstein’s work includes, most notably, a game-changing take on A Quiet Place, the composer’s sole full-length opera, for New York City Opera. This altered the course of history for the formerly unpopular work, conjuring such “theatrical magic” that the New York Times was moved to exclaim:“If only Bernstein could have been there.” Peter Pan’s Music Director is Michael A. Ferrara, a graduate of the Bard College Conservatory of Music’s Master of Music program in orchestral conducting. He will be joined by sound designer Stowe Nelson, who has been recognized with a Drama Desk Award nomination and the NY Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Sound Design. Leonard Bernstein’s youngest daughter, Nina Bernstein Simmons, said of the production, “I can’t wait to see what Christopher Alden does with this piece. I have a feeling it’s going to be quite surprising. … It should make for a great theater experience.”
Film Series at BardSummerScape: “Rimsky-Korsakov and the Poetry of Cinema” Through their use of Russian nationalism, exoticism, and folk music, Rimsky-Korsakov, his fellow members of the Mighty Five, and their musical godfather, Glinka, have long represented a source of inspiration for filmmakers worldwide. Held between July 26 and August 19, the 2018 film series highlights these composers’ cinematic influence through films of three continents, spanning seven decades. Both Russian Ark (2002), Aleksandr Sokurov’s single-shot exploration of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage museum, and Grigori Aleksandrov’s socialist-realist biopic, Man of Music (1952), use Glinka’s music to address the role of aesthetics in the tumultuous history of modern Russia. Nationalist concerns are also central to Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Cranes are Flying (1957), which, like Man of Music, demonstrates the dramatic stylistic transformation that took place after the death of Stalin. The quintessential film of the Soviet “thaw” period, its score is by Mieczysław Weinberg, a protégé of Dmitri Shostakovich, who studied in turn with Glazunov. Glazunov’s own teacher was Rimsky-Korsakov, whose Capriccio Espagñole is woven into the score of Josef von Sternberg’s Marlene Dietrich vehicle, The Devil is a Woman (1935), while Louis Malle’s romantic crime drama Atlantic City (1980) features the evocative “Song of India” from his opera Sadko. A pair of animated films—the French short A Night on Bald Mountain (1933) and Disney’s Fantasia (1940)—adapt Mussorgsky’s orchestral masterpiece in strikingly original ways. Likewise, the same Borodin string quartet that provides the inspiration for Vincente Minnelli’s Hollywood musical Kismet (1955) may be heard to heartrending effect in Terence Davies’s Edith Wharton adaptation, The House of Mirth (2000).
Oldcastle Theatre’s 2018 Season, Bennington, VT What do history, silliness, Cole Porter, mathematical genius, comedy, George Washington, new works, Herman Melville, a Nobel Prize, mystery, a Pulitzer Prize, music, Ethan Allen, America's greatest drama, the Civil War, Ben Franklin and the Tony Award for Best Play, all have in common? Each will be found in Oldcastle Theatre's 2018 season, the company's 47th Season, opens June 15th and will run through October 14th. “Programming theater seasons in this era of rapid, often disturbing change, is difficult,” according to Oldcastle's Producing Artistic Director, Eric Peterson. “By looking back in history to plays that deal with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and always relevant family dynamics, we’re hoping to give insight and historical resonance to some of the issues facing us today. In addi-
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Jonathan Botwick and Anna Anderson in 2017 Oldcastle’s Comedy of Tenors
previously been seen in the company's productions of I’m Not Rappaport and My Children! My Africa! August 10th-19th Oldcastle has produced nine of A. R. Gurney's plays but none quite like The Fourth Wall, a thoughtful comedy that includes five Cole Porter songs. Audiences will laugh, and enjoy witty tunes while contemplating what is real and what is theatrical artifice in our every day lives. A splendid cast includes Sarah Cory and Amy Hayes, both of whom were in last season’s acclaimed production of Broadway Bound and David Joseph, who has been seen with Oldcastle in Shipwrecked, which last year won the Best Acting Ensemble Award from the Berkshire Theatre Critics Association, and The Consul, the Tramp and America’s Sweetheart. Tim Howard who directed Oldcastle hugely successful production of the musical Big River returns to direct. For further information, visit the Oldcastle website at www.oldcastletheatre.org or call 802 447-0564. Carla Woods, John Hadden, David Joseph in Oldcastle’s production of Shipwrecked, 2017 Berkie Award Winner for Best Ensemble
tion, of course, we will entertain audiences giving them an opportunity to put aside their burdens for a couple of hours, simply sit back and enjoy some laughs and some music.” June 15th-June 24th The season kicks off with Herman Melville’s captivating novel, The Almost True And Truly Remarkable Adventures Of Israel Potter, which has been transformed into a rollicking new play by Joe Bravaco and Lary Rosler. Join young Israel as he goes from a small Berkshire town to the American Revolution, then on to motherland England, and back again.Along the way he meets historical figures, falls in love, fights the British, becomes a spy, escapes imminent death a few times and sings some songs. The cast will include long-time Oldcastle veterans, Richard Howe, the company’s Associate Artistic Director, Christine Decker, and Gary Allan Poe. The play will be directed by Nathan Stith, who directed Oldcastle’s production of 39 Steps. July 13th- July 22nd Matthew Lopez’s The Whipping Man is an extraordinary play about redemption and forgiveness, about the lasting scars of slavery, and the responsibility that comes with freedom. Set during the American Civil War, The New York Times calls the play, “vivid and emotionally potent, Haunting, striking and powerful.” The cast will include Herb Parker, who returns to Oldcastle having
Living Room Theatre, Park-McCullough House, North Bennington, VT For its 7th season in North Bennington, Vermont, Living Room Theatre presents the American premiere of Chekhov’s Three Sisters in a new version by Lucy Caldwell. Set in Belfast as the Troubles end in the 1990s, Christopher McCann will direct a cast of twelve in this exceptional contemporary adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. LRT is known for its canny direction of new and classic plays and outstanding New York actors. Their site-specific productions have transformed Historic Park-McCullough’s gardens and intimate 19th century Carriage Barn into a Russian dacha, a wacky surrealist kingdom, a corporate Board room, and the Garden of Eden. Garnering rave reviews for their work, one of their plays transferred to NYC in 2017. This is a theater experience like no other. Don’t miss it. Three Sisters will run Thursday-Saturday evenings at 7:30 pm, Aug. 2nd through Aug. 18th .Tickets $25.00 Reservations: info@lrtvt.org or 802 442-5322. View photos and reviews on our website to find out more about us. lrtvt.org.Randolyn Zinn & Allen McCullough, Artistic Directors, info@lrtvt.org, @lrtvt, 917 375-6592.
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THE ROYAL FAMILYY OF BROADWA B AYY WORLD RLD PREMIERE
JUNEE 7––JULYY 7
A DOOLL’’SS HOUSE, PPAART 2 JULYY 12–28
WESST SIDE STORY
2018 SEASON
- OnStage
Macbeth BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Morning After Grace BY CAREY CRIM
AUGUST UST 3–SEPTEMBER 1
Creditors
THE GLASS MENAGERIE OCTOBER 3–21
BY AUGUST STRINDBERG ADAPTED BY DAVID GREIG
ST.. GERMAIN STAGE
As You Like It
TYPHOID MARYY
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
MAYY 23–JUNE 16
THE CAKE JUNEE 21–JULYY 15
THE CHINESE LADY WORLD RLD PREMIERE
Heisenberg BY SIMON STEPHENS
Love’s Labor’s Lost BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
JULYY 20–AUGUST 11
WELLL INTENTIONED WHIITE PEOPLE WORLD RLD PREMIERE
AUGUUST 16–SEPTEMBER 8
Mothers and Sons BY TERRENCE MCNALLY
HIR BY TAYLOR MAC
YOUUTH THEATTRE
413-637-3353 shakespeare.org
ATT THEE BERKSHIRE MUSEUM
Th cast off Ragtime The R i , 2017 (Phot (Ph o: Daniel D i l Rader). R d )
ROALD LD DAHL’S JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH JULYY 26–AUGUST 12
www.BerkshireTheaatreGroup.org (413) 997-4444 June 14–30 at The Unicorn Theatre
WORLD PREMIERE
J June 28–July 21
July 5–August 11 at Thee Unicorn Theatre
att The Fitzpatrick p Main Stage g
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July 26–August 16
August 2–25
August 16–31
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at The Unicorn Theatre
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The Country and Abroad v June/July 2018
82 AN APPRECIATION
Philip Roth: Out and About of an Evening by William O’Shaughnessy, WVOX and WVIP
Charlie Kafferman and Philip Roth at West Street Grill, Litchfield, CT
Philip Roth has died. He was 85, tall, trim, an attractive man, who carried broad shoulders and a smoldering genius for the English language. And in his 85 years he wrote some forty books that caused him to be accused by The New York Times of being “a giant of American letters” and “a pre-eminent figure in 20th century literature.” Dwight Garner, the Times’ graceful book critic, who can bang words around pretty good himself, called Roth “an arch wizard whose best books eat into the mind like acid.” And Michael Chabon, the prolific American novelist and short story writer said, “He was a giant, an artist as versatile and virtuoso as Sinatra and
graceful and fireballing as Koufax” Philip Roth would have liked that. I bought and collected a few of his books, but I never read one of them. I much prefer non-fiction and, as Roth himself once confessed, he did too. I “knew” him mostly through our mutual patronage and affection for the West Street Grill, the estimable country restaurant on the Village Green in tony Litchfield, which has been lovingly operated for almost thirty years by two marvelous and dear souls, Charlie Kafferman and James O’Shea. Philip Roth got there long before I darkened the door of the eatery. For years he was a member in-good-standing of “The Roundtable,” a weekly
The Country and Abroad v June/July 2018
83 AN APPRECIATION
private luncheon and lemon squeeze featuring the writers William Styron, John Updike, Arthur Miller, and the actor Richard Widmark. In recent years, Roth would dine at the Grill on Sunday nights with Mia Farrow, still a knockout at 73. She would drive over from her Frog Hollow Farm in Bridgewater. And the great writer would journey down from his farmhouse in the woods of Warren, CT. And on one of these agreeable nights, the proprietor Charlie Kafferman, as I was about to sit, steered me over to the adjacent table #22. My compadre, Gregorio Alvarez and I were at table 21. Here is a snippet of dialogue from that evening: Kafferman: “Philip ... Bill writes books too.” O’Shaughnessy: “Charlie, don’t do this to me. I am not worth to loose the strap of his sandal ...” Roth: “I know Bill, Charlie ...we talk baseball. You know Mia (Farrow). We thought you were in Radio. What kind of books do you write?” O’Shaughnessy: “Anthologies ... but my new one is about Mario Cuomo and our friendship ... I admired him.” Roth: “Well ... so you do anthologies ... about whom? Who do you write about ...?” O’Shaughnessy: “Oh, New York characters ... Toots Shor ... Nelson Rockefeller ... Sirio Maccioni ... John Lindsay ... Cardinal O’Connor ... characters ...” Roth: “Oh, I see ... you really write about all your friends!” (laughter) Here’s another marvelous anecdote that comes out of our favorite restaurant in the Litchfield hills ... The great writer couldn’t count the number or frequency of the literary awards bestowed on him or the encomiums showered on the canon of his prolific works. So one day Roth called his friend Charlie to beg a favor. “Charlie ... I’m being given some big award up in Hartford by the governor, and I just don’t feel like schlepping up there. Could you ‘represent’ me and accept on my behalf ...?” So Kafferman and his partner, James O’Shea, journeyed to Hartford to accept the award, a two-foot tall bronze with outstretched hands in a “winged victory” stance, from the Governor’s hands, and lugged it back to the Grill where it sits to this day. But the story doesn’t end there. A few weeks later Roth was summoned to Washington to be honored as “America’s Greatest Living Novelist” by President Barack Obama. When Mr. Roth came in for dinner the next week, his friends at the restaurant inquired how the Presidential Award ceremony went: “It went fine ... but when I went up to receive the award ... the president whispered, ‘Where’s Charlie’?” He was really disappointed! (Roth swore it was a true story). Someone once said he could have been a stand-up comic. When he wasn’t out and about of an evening making people laugh, Philip Milton Roth published almost ninety books, including Hispanic and foreign editions of his American classics, and including Goodbye Columbus ... American Pastoral ... Portnoy’s Complaint ... My Life as a Man. And then in 2012 he closed down his computer and put a lid on his genius for all time to come. “I was by this time no longer in possession of the mental vitality or the physical fitness needed to mount and sustain a large creative attack of any duration.” He actually put a Post-it note on his computer: “The struggle with writing is done.” He also said: “Old age isn’t a battle, old age is a massacre.” And, “When I write, I’m alone. It’s filled with fear and loneliness and anxiety, and I never needed religion to save me.” He was a self-professed “atheist,” who had a deep and abiding distrust of Organized Religion. But despite his strong feelings on the subject, he was a nice man, to be sure, with an altogether attractive persona, who in his eightyfive years entertained millions and made them think ... while causing some of us to laugh of an evening at his favorite watering hole. He left us earlier this week with all those books I never read ... his great good nature ... and that marvelous sense of humor. I was not worthy to loose the strap of his sandal.
Footnote: Philip Roth was buried at Bard College in Annandale-on-the-Hudson on Memorial Day, May 28th, 2018. Invitations to a reception at the residence of Leon Botstein, long-time president of Bard, went out a few days before the service on the college campus. Charles Kafferman and partner James O’Shea were of course invited. But as their country restaurant was fully booked for the holiday weekend, they had to reluctantly decline. When a torn and conflicted Kafferman told Mia Farrow of his anguish about the decision to stay at their post, she texted: “Don’t worry, Charlie. He won’t be there either. And he’d much rather be at the Grill with you guys. Love, Mia.” William O’Shaughnessy, a former president of the New York State Broadcasters Association, was chairman of Public Affairs for the National Association of Broadcasters in Washington. He has been a point man and advocate for the broadcasters of America on First Amendment and Free Speech issues, and is presently chairman of the Guardian Fund of the Broadcasters Foundation of America, the national charitable organization. He is also a longtime director and member of the Executive Committee of the Foundation. He has operated WVOX and WVIP, two of the last independent stations in the New York area, for fifty-six years as president and editorial director. He is the author of AirWAVES (1999), It All Comes Back to Me Now (2001), More Riffs, Rants and Raves (2004), and VOX POPULI: The O’Shaughnessy Files (2011), He has also written Mario Cuomo: Remembrances of a Remarkable Man (2017) a tribute to his late friend Governor Mario M. Cuomo. He is currently working on his fifth book for Fordham University Press, another anthology.
Confessions of a Yard-Sale Junkie
contiued from page 34
able helpers, for the heavy stuff, to handle the laying out of my goods, for selling better than I could. I offered four dozen or so items and in the end we sold $310 worth of stuff. But there was a problem. I missed the spotted wooden cow and the old fishing creel and a few of the other items, bought with love and almost a part of my family. The real problem was this: with expenses, I had lost $107.35. Nick Lyons , 115 Meads Mountain Road, Woodstock, NY 12498, lyonsnick@earthlink.net.
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“Country Morning”
Acrylic on mahogany panel, 15 by 20 inches
“An Evening with Vincent”
Acrylic on mahogany panel, 36 by 24 inches
“Manhattan in Moonlight”
Acrylic on mahogany panel, 36 by 30 inches
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