Arts

On March 18th at 11am and 2pm Sandglass’s beloved Winter Sunshine series begins with Double Image Theater Lab. I Laid an Egg is an original piece inspired by a dream the co-creator Margot had as a child. Margot goes on an adventure with her imaginary pal, Egg, in a world made of shadows and household items. A nonverbal, interactive show filled with many unexpected surprises and discoveries, I Laid an Egg bears elements of Shadow Theater, Object Theater and music, inviting the audience into a child’s realm of make-believe. It presents a poetic imaginative journey for the child in all of us.

West Brattleboro – Through the end of April, the foyer and other gallery spaces at All Souls Church (ASC) are featuring a group show of mixed-media, watercolors, and pastels by members of the Brattleboro Brush & Palette Painters and Saxtons River Art Guild. Participants include Carolyn Albee, Bob Askey, Barb Borek, Dawn Chattin, Maisie Crowther, Nancy DiMauro, John Dimick, Kathy Greve, Mike Hanley, Karen Hesse, Deedee Jones, Molly Martin, Patricia McPike, and Lois Reynolds. Some of these artists are members of both groups.

March is Student Art Month in Windham County. spotlights and gives public recognition to the outstanding visual art created by our elementary, middle school, and high school students. Make sure you don’t miss the 2017 displays in Downtown, Brattleboro and at Brooks Memorial Library.​

March 16 – April 30: Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts is proud to feature a retrospective of watercolor paintings by Vermont painter David Rohn in David Rohn Watercolors: 1974-2016 . For the first time, MGFA will devote the entire gallery to a single artist with this exhibition of over thirty-five paintings. An opening reception is set to take place Thursday, March 16 at 5, with an Artist Talk scheduled for Saturday, March 25 from 5-7pm.

BRATTLEBORO – With an up-cycled twist on basket weaving, a three-part workshop – taught by local artists Jackie Abrams, Jen Wiechers, and Janette Smuts – will benefit the Groundworks Food Shelf. The workshop, which takes place on three Thursday evenings (March 30, April 6, and April 20) at the River Gallery School’s Main Street Studio in Brattleboro, will cover the art of making ‘yarn’ from used plastic bags to crochet strong, colorful, and multi-purpose tote bags.

PUTNEY VT- On March 18th at 11am and 2pm Sandglass’s beloved Winter Sunshine series begins with Double Image Theater Lab. I Laid an Egg is an original piece inspired by a dream the co-creator Margot had as a child. Margot goes on an adventure with her imaginary pal, Egg, in a world made of shadows and household items. A nonverbal, interactive show filled with many unexpected surprises and discoveries, I Laid an Egg bears elements of Shadow Theater, Object Theater and music, inviting the audience into a child’s realm of make-believe. It presents a poetic imaginative journey for the child in all of us.

Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts presents an Artist Forum, complementing the large group show Spring Visions on Saturday, February 25, from 5-7pm. The Forum will feature gallery artists Matt Brown, Torin Porter, Donald Saaf, and David Holzapfel, with introductions by gallery owners Petria Mitchell and Jim Giddings.

Printmaker Matt Brown,  from Lyme, New Hampshire, creates work in the Japanese hanga method, utilizing separate hand-carved blocks for each color. From Glover, Vermont, sculptor Torin Porter explores “humanness” in his imaginative, stylized steel figures. Fine Art and Folk Art intersect in the collage paintings of Marlboro artist Donald Saaf. Also from Marlboro, wood artist David Holzapfel’s structural forms celebrate the imperfections, personalities, and inherent beauty of wood.

So like a mirror is the sea/So vast the vault above, an exhibition of works on paper and poems by JULIA ZANES featuring text from the work of F. Hopkinson Smith, will be exhibited at The Emblem Museum, 21 Elliot Street, 2^nd Floor, Brattleboro Saturday March 4, 2017-Saturday, April 22, 2017. The opening reception is on Saturday March 4, 2017 from 2:00-6:00 PM.

Save the date! Join former Library Director Jerry Carbone and his touring companions, Arthur and Carol Westing (Putney, Vt.), on January 28, at 3 PM, in the Library’s meeting room, for a talk on a recent hiking trip to Italy’s famed Sorrento peninsula. The group hiked and toured the area for two weeks in November. The slide presentation will include views and topography from the ancient trails and mule paths that line the limestone Latarri Mountain range and Tyrrhenian Sea.

Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts is pleased to announce a special “Winter Group Forum“ to take place at the gallery Saturday January 7th at 5pm. This Forum will be a “roaming style“ talk facilitated by gallery owners Petria Mitchell and Jim Giddings. Included will be MGFA’s most recent gallery artists Torin Porter and Anne Johnstone, as well as gallery artists Jackie Abrams, Will Finkel, Michele Ratté, Donald Saaf, and Chris Triebert.

Torin Porter, a sculptor from Glover Vermont working primarily in steel, engages our imagination with his playful, stylized figures. Painter and collage artist Anne Johnstone from Somerville, MA works in mixed media, oil, and wax to create dramatic works that use distortion and exaggeration to convey a curiously heightened emotional response. Jackie Abrams, a fiber artist from Brattleboro, explores themes of the feminine form and experience through her woven vessels. Will Finkel is a ceramic artist from Brattleboro whose glazes capture the colors and wonder of natural phenomena.

Friends of Music at Guilford’s 44th annual holiday program at Christ Church, the iconic New England landmark along Rt. 5 in Guilford, Vt., is set for December 16 and 17. Performances on Friday at 7:30 and Saturday at 4:00 p.m. will include vocal music, instrumental interludes, a holiday story, and a brief carol sing, the  traditional format. The “O, Happy Yule!” subtitle refers to this season’s thematic choice of Music from the British Isles.

The Guilford Chamber Singers, under the direction of Tom Baehr for a fifth season, present ten a cappella seasonal songs from England, Ireland, and Wales. These span several centuries and are interspersed with instrumental selections played by the Guilford Chamber Players under the direction of Amy Cann.

UVM professor Huck Gutman will look at the work and legacy of poet William Carlos Williams in a talk at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro on December 7 at 7 pm. His talk, “William Carlos Williams: America’s Most Revolutionary Twentieth Century Poet,” is part of the Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays lecture series and is free and open to the public. Gutman’s talk will consider how Williams changed American and world poetry forever by creating a new poetic language and new poetic forms.

Huck Gutman is Professor of English at the University of Vermont, where he teaches courses in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American poetry, and in modern poetry in translation. A former Chair of the English Department, he has twice taught abroad as a Fulbright Fellow. He has written or edited four books, and has been a regular political columnist for major newspapers abroad.  He has returned to teaching at UVM after six years in Washington, where he served as Chief of Staff to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The Gratitude Board is back, now located at the new MamaSezz Foods location on Route 9 in West Brattleboro!

West Brattleboro — The foyer and other gallery spaces at All Souls Church Unitarian Universalist are showing paintings — from race horses to raptors to farm animals and more — by retired veterinarian Robin Truelove Stronk through the end of December. The public is invited to an artist’s reception and book signing from 2 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, November 5.

This exhibit includes four large canvases featuring race horses and dressage horses painted with the fingers and palm of Robin’s left hand while she was recuperating from surgery on her dominant right hand. Several raptors and owls will also make an appearance: “My focus in my art is the eye of the animal, and they have such large, amazing eyes that I find them irresistible,” she says. Other works include two oversize florals; three large fabric feed bags with graphics creatively enhanced by many colorful breeds of chicken; and a “mixed bag” of other farm animals.

Famous children’s author and illustrator Jim Arnosky is featured as October and November’s illustrator in the top floor display cases. Arnosky has written and illustrated over 140 picture and nature books for kids. He has also written many Vermont nature guides for adults. He has won several awards for his work including the ALA Gordon Award, the Chirstopher Medal, and the Outstanding Science Book Award.

See lots more at http://www.jimarnosky.com/

Brooks Memorial Library224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT 05301
Contact us at info@brookslibraryvt.org or 802-254-5290

38th Annual Putney Craft Tour Named Top Ten Vermont Winter Event and Approved as an Official Vermont Arts 2016 Event

PUTNEY, VT—October 18, 2016—For the third year in a row, the Vermont Chamber of Commerce has named the Annual Putney Craft Tour as a Top Ten Winter Event (2016/17). The tour has also been approved as a Vermont Arts Council 2016 event. Also of note, the tour is the oldest continuing craft studio tour in North America.

Guilford Center Stage concludes its second season with A Battle of Wits by Vermont scenic artist and showman, Charles W. Henry.   The 4-act comedy-melodrama will be performed this coming weekend, with shows on Friday and Saturday, October 7 & 8, at 7:30 pm, and Sunday, October 9, at 2:00 pm, upstairs at Broad Brook Grange.

General Admission tickets are $10, available in advance at:    or  1-800-838-3006, or at the door.

(huffingtonpost.co.uk) Story: An exhibition entitled Slow currently on show at the China Exchange in the heart of London’s Chinatown. It’s a commission from an arts initiative called Shaire, based in London, Singapore and Beijing in which interdisciplinary groups are invited to explore the broad theme of nature.The most eye-catching exhibit in Slow is by the internationally acclaimed American sculptor, Brattleboro local, Aaron Distler. [Aaron Distler is the son of Arlene Distler, Brattleboro’s longtime art critic.]  It comprises what looks at first like a large caterpillar but, in fact, is a Chimera, a mythical fire-eating dragon (above) that supposedly vanishes when you look at it. So it has both a physical and ethereal presence about it.