Arts section
IMPORTANT UPDATE ABOUT : I AM…2020 – The Statewide Exhibition
Coming to Southern Vermont (Posted to the Calendar for May 1 – May 31)
*NOW RESCHEDULED FOR MAY 2021*
Given the current landscape with COVID-19 we want to be cautious and will be rescheduling the I AM… exhibition to coincide with Diversity Day celebrations in May 2021. If you have questions, please inbox curator, Shanta Lee Gander.
This question is being explored in an event taking place on Wednesday, April 29 at 7 p.m. at the Brooks Memorial Library as a part of the Compassionate Brattleboro discussion series.
If we look closely at the words we are bringing together within the title of this discussion, compassion has its Latin roots com- together with + pati to suffer which means suffering together. A poet, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, a poet is: “writer of verse distinguished by particular insight, inspiration, or sensibility, or by remarkable powers of imagination, creativity, or expression…” There are many key words, one of them being sensibility from sensibili or the French etymology, both linking to the senses and feeling.
ACWC is pleased to announce the award of $15,000 through the Brattleboro Town Arts Fund to support six community-focused creative initiatives. The six grantees were selected from a competitive field of 39 proposals received in this first year of the Town Arts Fund (TAF) program. View the full press release.
The 2020 TAF grantees are:
The River Gallery School of Art has received funding from The Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foundation, The Vermont Community Foundation, Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, The Anne Slade Frey Fund, and the Windham Foundation to continue their Art for Social Change Program. The program, which started in 2019 focuses on the healing aspects of art and mindfulness for marginalized populations, community caregivers and the general public. The emphasis of these classes, offered free of charge, is not on art technique but offering an opportunity to play with art materials in a relaxed, supportive environment.
Asian Cultural Center of Vermont (ACCVT) celebrates the Lunar New Year of China, Korea and Vietnam Sunday, January 26thth, 1-3:00. You don’t have to be Asian or know anything about Asia to participate! Join us at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center to usher in the year of the White Metal Rat. The Rat is the first sign in the Chinese zodiac, and it marks new beginnings, fresh hope, and rising excitement.
Please join The ROOT’s Youth 4 Change and BIPOCC in welcoming Daniel Laurent, Boston-based artist and award-winning producer of the short documentary & music Video OUTSIDE. This will be an unplugged-type event with screening of the 20 min film, Artist’s Talk, Live Performance, Q&A and a community discussion on creative, therapeutic, and artistic responses to violence.
If you are not a poet, but know someone who might be interested, please re-share. This prize honors the life of Lucy Terry Prince who was an orator, activist, and first known African American poet in the U.S. This prize is being judged by celebrated poet Major Jackson who has authored five books of poetry collections and received a range of fellowships. Any individual who is a poet of color hailing from or living in a rural place is welcome to apply.
Next Stage Arts Project announced it has hired Keith Marks to be the next Executive Director following a nationwide search. He will assume leadership of the Putney, Vermont-based nonprofit presenting arts organization in January of 2020.
Marks will be moving from Jacksonville, Florida, where he founded Avant, a nonprofit organization dedicated to enriching community through the power of diverse arts experiences. His efforts earned him the 2019 Arts Innovator Award from the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville.
PUTNEY – This December Sandglass Theater brings you a celebration of the art of the crankie. A crankie, known in the 19th century as a moving panorama, is an old storytelling art form that has found new audiences and enthusiasts with performances and festivals across the country. This 7th Annual Crankie Celebration includes performances, a special event and a crankie building workshop. Experience the mystique and low-tech charm of pairing song and story with scrolling pictures.
Sandglass Theater presents When I Put On Your Glove by Shoshana Bass as part of the Thanksgiving Weekend Putney Craft Tour. This puppetry, dance and spoken word piece explores a daughter’s relationship to her father’s work and builds upon a premise that puppets are containers of memory. In it, a daughter explores what it means to slip into her father’s art – not just the form, but also the actual pieces.
The Gallery at Next Stage presents A Mind of Winter by Michaela Harlow, November 14th through February 11, 2020. The Gallery is open for viewing 30 minutes before each Next Stage event, as well as Saturdays from 10:00 am–1:00 pm, and by appointment with the artist.
Artist Statement:
Earlier this year, a writer friend reminded me of a favorite old poem: Wallace Stevens’ “The Snow Man”. I recall the first time I read the line “a mind of winter”’ nodding in agreement as I pictured shadow-blue branches dancing across the snow on a brisk January day.
Sunday November 10th, 2-4pm, at C.X. Silver Gallery, 814 Western Avenue, Brattleboro, VT for the opening reception of Gordon Jones Landscapes and Cai Xi Portraits – Works on Paper.
“Many of my remembrances have, indeed, settings perhaps best forgotten—times of grim weather, of cloggy mud and wet feet, of ruined and rutted roads. … Many, even most, of my paintings are to some extent about water … and the reflections we find in the depths of its surface are really my subject: … the capacity of the settled or turbid surface of water to bring us to our own depths.” – Gordon Jones
Please come join sculptor, Art Costa, at the River Gallery School “Gallery 34” November 1st Gallery Walk reception from 5:30pm-8pm. New Works in cardboard based on amazing animals being discovered in the deep seas. The show runs the entire month of November and is always visible at this wonderful store front gallery on Main St. Brattleboro.
For its fall production, Guilford Center Stage will present a staged reading of”It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis. There will be three performances October 18-20 at Broad Brook Community Center in Guilford.
Todd Mandell and Richard Wizansky will direct a cast of 11 community actors in this adaptation for the stage by Tony Taccone and Bennett S. Cohen.
BRATTLEBORO, Vermont, October 4, 2019: In the fall of 2020, lovers of literature and local history will be able to experience the Brattleboro Words Trail — self-guided walking, biking, and driving tours exploring the peoples, places, and history of words in our region. The Words Trail will be available digitally, on mobile devices, as well as on beautifully rendered, physical maps.
A Japanese artist creates amazing animal sculptures out of balloons.
Masayoshi Matsumoto, 29, has created a wide range of intricate figures from the animal kingdom, including a monkey, an ostrich, a parrot, an octopus, a hermit crab, a deer, an ant and a buffalo.
Join InterPlay and special guest, Oakland dancer and activist Sonyika Rahim, for “Changing the Race Dance,” a night of racial justice work through singing, dancing, drumming, and storytelling.
Soyinka Rahim, GSP, is a Grassroots Spiritual Practitioner, and the founder of BIBOLOVE, which stands for breathe in, breathe out love. She is a performing artist, a Conference Weaver, and an InterPlay Leader from Oakland, California.
Do you have a kid or know a kid who loves to draw and wants to get really, really good at it? The Drawing Studio is offering a Drawing Skills for Older Kids (9 and up) class on Thursdays from 330 to 5 beginning September 19th. There will be a healthy snack, lots of drawing materials and all the help they need to fulfill their drawing visions. Kids will also be given a sketch box and sketch book so they can work at home or during a boring Algebra class.
Asian Cultural Center of Vermont (ACCVT) presents the 21st annual Mid-Autumn Moon Festival (Zhongqiu Jie) which is celebrated in China, Korea, Vietnam and other places around the world. Celebrate the Autumn Moon Festival with crafts, songs, food, taiji, paper lanterns, Chinese exercises, the Korean rope tug and more.
Shoot the Moon Theater Company has earned a reputation for out-of-the-box presentations during its four years as the company in-residence at the Hooker Dunham Theater, but this next project may be their boldest yet.
White Rabbit Red Rabbit is an internationally acclaimed one-person play by Nassim Soleimanpour with very rigid guidelines for how it can be performed. The first being that the actor is not allowed to read the script until they open the sealed copy waiting for them on stage.
