Arts

Renowned puppeteer, filmmaker, performance artist, and political satirist Paul Zaloom will perform his hit at this year’s festival. Zaloom will be recognized by many as the Bread & Puppet Domestic Resurrection Circus ringmaster. Well-known for his long-running CBS series Beakman’s World, Paul has garnered wide popularity and national acclaim for countless projects over the course of his illustrious career.

Performances o White Like Me will take place on September 11 and 12 at 8 p.m. at the New England Youth Theatre. Additionally, Zaloom will teach an exclusive workshop in object theater on Tuesday, September 15 from 7-9 p.m. at Brattleboro’s newest wheelchair-accessible venue: 118 Elliot Space.

Brattleboro has a connection with the famous art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The guard on duty that night lives here.

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Mr. Abath, now 49 and living in Brattleboro, Vt., where he works as a teacher’s aide, could not be reached for comment. But he has long denied any role in the heist. Reached by phone on Thursday his wife, Diane, said, “I can’t deal with this right now,” and hung up.

I thought it might be handy to have a list that highlights all of the project proposals submitted for the Our Town grant. The Screening Committee is almost done narrowing this list, and the Selectboard will be authorizing 12 or 13 of these to prepare more detailed responses.

Here’s a quick look at the full list of 35 proposal submitted, and . Which ones inspire you the most?

The Brattleboro Selectboard is accepting applications for interested people to become a part of an ad hoc Selection Committee to review the final proposals submitted by artists in conjunction with funding through the Town’s NEA “Our Town” grant. The Selection Committee will consist of several local residents and other members with expertise in the arts.

The Brattleboro NEA “Our Town” Grant Screening Committee will meet on Thursday, August 6, 2015 at 10:00am in the Hanna Cosman meeting room at the Municipal Center.

Jan Anderson
Executive Secretary
Brattleboro Town Manager’s Office
(802) 251-8100

Thanks to the English as a Second Language Summer Class at Northfield Mount Hermon for coming to the WVEW studio, playing their soundscape of the Farmer’s Market, sharing their podcasts, and being generally incredible.

On Thursday, August 20 from 5 – 7pm the public is invited to attend an opening reception for a new featured exhibit at Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts at 183 Main Street, Brattleboro. Father and Son, Malcolm and Shaun Wright (ceramic and bronze sculpture and photography respectively) are teaming up for an exhibit showcasing their work along with the oil canvases of Petria Mitchell.

The name Malcolm Wright will be familiar to many in Southern Vermont and beyond as a ceramic artist and sculptor. His work is widely collected  privately and publicly. Collections include the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Denver Art Museum, The Currier Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and the Bennington Museum.

Please join poet Rachel Hadas and video artist Shalom Gorewitz on Wednesday, July 29, at 7 PM, for a presentation where they will fuse poetry and digital filmmaking through a collaborative process that is not illustrative or narrative, but a kind of syncretic linking. The presentation is free and open to the public. 

Rachel Hadas is is the author of The Golden Road (poems), 2012, and the prose work Strange Relation: A Memoir of Marriage, Dementia, and Poetry (2011). Her awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the O.B. Hardison Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters.

Guilford Center Stage, a brand-new project of Broad Brook Grange, announces auditions for its first production, Tourists Accommodated, a comedy by noted Vermont author Dorothy Canfield Fisher.  Auditions will be held on Wednesday, July 22, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm at the Grange in Guilford Center.  No reservation is required; just show up anytime during that 2 hour period. Those unable to attend may contact the directors for an audition.

Actors from all towns are welcome!

Grange member Laura Lawson Tucker and I are forming Center Stage in response to community requests for more arts and other events on the building’s small, but chariming stage.

BRATTLEBORO PUBLIC ARTS PROJECT(S)
CALL FOR ARTISTS/REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS
ADDENDUM # 2
JULY 14, 2015

1. The Budget for the Project(s) has increased.

Additional donations have been received. The total budget for the project(s) is now $56,000.

2. What is/is not a U.S. Artist?

The Brattleboro Selectboard is accepting applications for interested people to become a part of an ad hoc Screening Committee to conduct the initial screening of proposals submitted by artists who apply for funding through the Town’s NEA “Our Town” grant. The Screening Committee will review all application materials submitted by all artists and will recommend to the Selectboard a group of finalists. The Screening Committee’s work will occur during the week of July 27-31. The Selectboard will consider the Screening Committee’s recommendations on August 4. The only minimum requirements for service on the Steering Committee are residence in Brattleboro and/or prior experience in judging artistic ability and experience.

BRATTLEBORO PUBLIC ARTS PROJECT(S)
CALL FOR ARTISTS/REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS
ADDENDUM # 1
JULY 6, 2015

1. If you are receiving this addendum you have either registered at rfrancis@brattleboro.org or you have received this via another point of contact through which the Town of Brattleboro is spreading the word about this Public Arts Project. Please register if you are contemplating making a submission to ensure that you will receive any additional information released in the future, including answers to any additional questions potential respondents may ask. The Q+A format of this addendum provides answers to questions asked during the first 2 weeks following the initial release of the CFA/RFP.

2. Who may make submissions?

CALL FOR ARTISTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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