Arts

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.

Mitchell-Giddings Fine Arts is pleased to present Passaggi, a collection of artwork by Marlboro, Vermont, artists Michelle and David Holzapfel. Opening with an Artist Reception September 22, 5-7pm, the exhibit continues through October 23. Of special note, MGFA welcomes folklorist and co-director of the Vermont Folklife Center, Greg Sharrow, to facilitate an Artist Talk on October 8, 5pm.

David’s unique, locally sourced hardwood furniture and sculpture highlight both his material’s inherent beauty and the artist’s unexpected and sensitive response to it.

Michelle’s exquisitely turned and carved bowls, vases and vessels transport the viewer to places where magic and fancy are transformed into handheld objects of singular delight and beauty.

West Brattleboro – On Sunday, September 11, from 2 to 4 p.m., the public is invited to an artist’s reception for Stu Copans’ exhibit “Peace, Gratitude & Stones from the River,” gracing gallery spaces at All Souls Church Unitarian Universalist through the end of October.

A continuation of Copans’ long-term paper-cutting project using the Hebrew Arabic, and English words for “Peace,” this year’s exhibit includes black, painted, and multilayered papercuts, as well as a number of word paintings exploring the importance of Gratitude as a way of being incompatible with Hatred and War. It also explores flow, the passage of time, and the interaction of water and rocks through an exhibit of stones from a 50-year collection of local and regional river rocks.

The Michael S. Currier Center, Putney, VT September 10 – November 6, 2016, open daily to the public on the campus of The Putney School. This survey of Cai’s work includes her portraits and landscapes of the 1980s, ‘Edge’ series of the ’90s, ‘WuJi (Infinity Within)’ series of the past decade and recent monumental portraits. For further information: (802) 257-7898 or caixiart [at] gmail [dot] com. 

You are cordially invited to the Artist Reception, Saturday September 24, 4:30 – 6:00 pm., at the Currier Center Galleryon the campus of The Putney School, 418 Houghton Park Road, Putney, VT. Inquiries: (802) 257-7898 or caixiart [at] gmail [dot] com.

 Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts is pleased to host an Artist Talk on Saturday, September 17, at 5pm as part of current exhibits featuring the work of Jackie Abrams and Karen Kamenetzky.

The exhibits, Jackie Abrams: Elemental Vessels and Karen Kamenetsky: Hidden Agenda will continue through September 18.

 Abrams’ unique pieces showcase  40 years of  basket making experience; new, non-traditional materials reflect the artist’s movement toward more intuitive, abstract sculptural forms. According to the artist, “These are forms that are universal, familiar from both nature and from daily use in every culture. The bowl-shaped vessels may hold our important invisible things: dreams, thoughts, and wishes. The suspended forms are echoed by their shadows on the wall.”

You are cordially invited to an artist reception, Friday, August 19, 5-7pm at C.X. Silver Gallery for Selections from ‘Edge.’ Cai’s ‘Edge’ paintings 1991-1994 are on view at C.X. Silver Gallery, Brattleboro, VT, through September 18, open daily by appointment, closed August 20-22 and 27-30. Inquiries: Contact Adam Silver, Operations Manager / Co-Director, (802) 257-7898.

Cai is featured in two exhibitions during August, her 1980s portraits in .

“I returned to my gymnastics and calligraphy experiences as a child, finding myself jumping, stretching, and reaching as I painted. Chinese traditional breathing exercise (Qigong) continued to help me channel energy when I painted. Throughout the nineties, materials, surface and texture were self-renewing areas of exploration. I derived a lot of inspiration from living in New York City. On the street and subway, on the ground in the cement sidewalk, a peeling wall, everywhere I went, I kept discovering: ‘Oh, look. There’s a painting!’ The experience of ‘Edge’ is about stepping into and out of myself. My art-making is characterized by this existential process. For me, Art is about Paradox: appearance-disappearance, life-death, nothingness-wholeness, chaos-groundedness, emptiness-substance, movement-fixity.”

Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts is pleased to introduce Elemental Vessels, an exhibition of recent mixed-media vessels by basket-weaver and fiber artist Jackie Abrams, and Hidden Agenda, new fiber wall hangings by textile artist Karen Kamenetzky, with an artist reception and opening Thursday, August 18, 5-7 pm. The two solo exhibits continue through September 18, with an Artist Talk scheduled for Saturday, September 17, 5pm.

Abrams’ unique pieces showcase  40 years of  basket making experience; new, non-traditional materials reflect the artist’s movement toward more intuitive, abstract sculptural forms.