Lots of big art events this weekend…
Pulp Science Fiction: Spring Open Studios and Installation Event at Paper City Studios: Friday 6-9pm at Paper City Studios in Holyoke.
Arts Night Out in Northampton: Friday 5-8pm downtown Northampton.
Flywheel Record Fair: Saturday 10am-3:30pm. Fundraiser 10am-3pm at their new space in Easthampton’s Old Town Hall.
Art Walk Easthampton: Saturday 5-8pm.
In Baltimore on Sunday, and made my regular pilgrimage to Hampden. One of my fave places in the city is Atomic Books in Hampden, the coolest indie bookstore you’ll ever visit, full of crafty things, zines, comic books, fringe novels, Japanese toys… aaahhhh it’s heaven. I popped in yesterday and stumbled into the FOUND “Denim and Diamonds Tour” which had just started.
FOUND Magazine is a collection of found paper items: notes, shopping lists, photos, love letters, etc. This stuff is found on the street and sent in to the magazine from all over the country. The magazine’s founder, Davy Rothbart, is on tour reading a selection of these items and telling stories and reading from his new book, Requiem for a Paper Bag. Davy’s brother Peter also plays some great acoustic guitar and sings songs inspired by some of the found items. This was a great event – very funny.
Valley folks: this show is coming to The Rendezvous in Turners Falls on May 11th. Definitely go and check it out!
Art note: Hampden is a hip, funky part of Baltimore full of indie shops and cafes. It’s probably best known as the area John Waters is from and where he shot many of his films. It’s also home to the Hon Cafe (just look for the giant pink flamingo) and the Hon Fest, which happens in June.
PACE (Pioneer Arts Center of Easthampton) is a gem in downtown Easthampton. They have regular open-mike comedy and jam nights, jazz twice a month, music performances, a small cafe, as well as some superb shows. Their current space is small, so larger theater productions take place at the Academy of Music in Northampton.
May 1-10, PACE will bring the Tony Award-winning musical, Falsettos to the Academy of Music in Northampton, directed by PACE co-founder, David Fried-Oppenheim. PACE’s website describes the play:
Tony-Award winning William Finn/James Lapine musical about Marvin and his unconventional family and friends who plan his son’s Bar Mitzvah as Marvin’s lover, Whizzer, faces the challenges of HIV.
Falsettos originally opened off-broadway in 1992.
PACE recently purchased the old Dye Works mill on Cottage Street in Easthampton, with a view to making over the place into a regional performing arts center with a 350-seat theater, performing arts space, and retail space. I sincerely wish them the best success with this project, as it will not only be great for PACE to have a permanent home, it will also be wonderful for downtown Easthampton.
Art trivia: the late, great Keith Haring designed the poster art for Falsettos.
Valley Art Share is a new online arts community for the Pioneer Valley. It’s a joint project of Commonwealth Center for Change (C3) and the Northampton Center for the Arts, and is maintained by the tireless Julia Handschuh. Huge props to them all for creating this and helping to make our fabulous arts community more visible.
This is an exciting project. Such a wonderful idea to help connect our large fragmented arts community. If you’re familiar with facebook, this has some similarities, for example you can friend other artists and arts organizations. It’s a great way to network with artists and organizations. Some great collaborations could come about via this site, as artists and organizations connect and share ideas and resources.
As part of this online community you can upload images of your work, connect with other local artists, share skills and ideas, post to the calendar, even create a blog. I’d encourage anyone involved or interested in the arts in the Valley to sign up as a member. It’s free to join. Go join now!
Ran upstairs to the 4th floor gallery at Open Square to see this small show before it comes down this evening. Very cool pieces by David Poppie and Roger Sayre.
A note on the wall read, “Re-mixed Media” is a travelling show that originated at the University of Wisconsin: Oshkosh and was curated by Prof. Andrew Redington.
I couldn’t find any more information about the show, so wasn’t sure if they collaborated on the pieces or worked separately. I’m assuming that Sayre did the photograms and Poppie did the other pieces.
Poppie’s work typically involves re-use and re-purposing everyday items for his art pieces. He has produced some stunning work, with matchbooks, 6-pack holders, pencils, even onion skins. His pieces in this show use old cassette and DAT tapes, including the cases and tape. A stunning piece in the center of the exhibit consisted of three voluminous columns of old tape suspended from the ceiling and cascading to the floor.
This is the first time I’ve seen Sayre’s work. Loved his large colorful photograms of cassettes tapes and vinyl records.
I really loved this show – hopefully you got to see it too. Some photos are posted on my flickr account.
Gives me some ideas of what to do with the 500+ cassette tapes sitting in my attic…
Update 24 April: Roger Sayre left a comment on this post letting me know that he and David did indeed collaborate on the pieces in the show.
Image: analogue II, 2008 by David Poppie and Roger Sayre
Popped in to the opening reception of “Out of Print” Saturday evening, at Zea Mays in Florence (in the Arts & Industry Building). The show features the work of local artists Doris Madsen and Lillianna Pereira. Really lovely work. Both re-use, re-purpose and collage paper and printed items in their work for this show.
Lilly’s work is collage on old book covers and pages, which are then printed on old book pages. There is such a charming vintage feel to the resulting prints on the old pages.
Doris’ prints combine old library catalog cards, colored paper pieces, thread, and other bits & pieces, into delightful abstract compositions. The results are pretty and colorful with a light-hearted, cheerful springtime feeling about them.
The show runs until May 9th.
Note: Zea Mays is a great place, run by artist Liz Chalfin. Central to its mission is finding safer and non-toxic alternatives in printmaking (if you’ve ever done any printmaking you know that some of the traditional printing inks and solvents can be highly-toxic). They offer workshops, exhibits, and coolest of all (in my opinion), artist memberships which give one access to the studio and its equipment. A fascinating place, and it’s wonderful to have a collaborative art space like this in the valley.
“Pioneer Women” is a group show at the Tabla Rasa Gallery in Brooklyn showing work by women artists from the Pioneer Valley. From the press release:
More than 20 women who have settled upon the fertile ground of the Pioneer Valley (Connecticut River Valley) have created new artworks that will premiere in New York City at Tabla Rasa Gallery from April 18 – May 30. Many of these female artists are transplants from many parts the country, such as curator Brooklyn native Terry Rooney (whose mother was born on the same street as the gallery), who will bring her Statue of Liberty series to New York for the first time.
It’s curated by Terry Rooney, and features the work of:
Don’t miss this awesome amount of talent in one gallery. The show runs April 18 to May 30. Opening reception is this weekend, Saturday April 18, 3-6pm.
Cat’s out of the bag! Some of you have already guessed who I am (there have been some fabulously funny wrong guesses too).
My last post at the end of August coincides with my taking over The Valley Arts Newsletter (previously known as “The Arts Newsletter Experiment”). This blog got neglected while I got up-to-speed managing and publishing the newletter. The newsletter is still evolving, and it seemed to be a good fit to roll the blog in with it.
I’ve missed blogging about art, and am happy to revive The Art Parlor. It was originally started as a way to challenge myself to go see a lot of local art, and small attempt to make up for the lack of local coverage of local art and artists. Local art reviews were few and far between. It was surprising to me that our largest local newspaper, had a food critic, a music critic, even a beer critic, but no art critic. Why not? In an area that has so much art going on, why not?
I thought the anonymity would be fun, and leave me free to write uninhibited. I wanted a way to write about art in a semi-critical way, without reference to myself or getting too personal. Trying for a perhaps more honest style of writing. Using “we” got a bit tiresome though 
(plans had also been in the works for this to be a small collective of “art critics,” but that never materialized. Perhaps this may still happen?).
Over a decade ago, I reluctantly returned to the Valley from London, a city that is incredibly rich with art and immensely supportive of the arts. I slowly realized that the Pioneer Valley is full of art, but so much of it is hidden.
This has been changing in the past couple years, as municipalities realize the importance of the creative economy for economic revitalization, and as more artists and creative people move to our beautiful Valley. We now have monthly art walks in three towns, some exciting new galleries and art spaces, but still a lack of visiblity and media coverage. (I’ve always wondered why something as subjective as sports dominates news media. Why not the arts?). I love that there is so much art happening here, and so many amazingly-talented artists! Let’s tell the world!
This blog is not just for artists and art-makers. As the newsletter aims to spread the news of local art to everyone in the Valley (and beyond), I hope this blog will stimulate and help facilitate more discussion about the arts.
So… more posts, more art reviews/discussion/etc, and maybe I’ll even show you some of my own work…
p.s. I’ve updated the links list, added some news ones, deleted some broken ones. Let me know if you have a link you’d like to add. I’m adding a page to this blog to list local artist websites, it’s going to be a big list, so send me links! (can you tell by now that I’m a inveterate list-maker?) It will be nice to have a comprehensive list of local artists and hopefully this will add some more traffic to their websites too.
The British Museum announced that a solid-gold staute of model Kate Moss by artist Marc Quinn will be part of the exhibit Statuephilia, which opens October 4th at the museum.
From BBC News:
A £1.5m solid gold sculpture has been made of supermodel Kate Moss as part of a British Museum exhibition.
Entitled Siren, the 50kg statue was made by Marc Quinn, who described Moss as “the ideal beauty of the moment”.
From the museum’s press release:
Marc Quinn’s solid gold statue, Siren, of supermodel Kate Moss – icon of contemporary beauty and Aphrodite of our times – will find fitting setting at the centre of the Nereid Gallery, interacting with the great Greek beauties that surround it. Quinn’s work is the largest gold statue since Ancient Egypt and will premiere at the Museum.
The museum has released a teaser close-up photo. The statue will be unveiled to the public when the exhibit opens on October 4th.
FYI: £1.5m = $2.8m USD
Art note: Marc Quinn is a “Young British Artist,” a group of conceptual artists who first came to public prominence at the Saatchi Gallery’s 1992 exhibit, Young British Artists. The YBAs often challenge the public perception of art with the controversial art pieces, such as Quinn’s Head, a sculpture made of the artist’s own blood, and Damien Hirst’s animal installations.
We got this via email today from artist Justin Brown, an artist at Eastworks:
I am moving out of my studio at Eastworks at the end of this month and I have a ton of stuff to get rid of. I plan on being in the studio this Friday 8/29 and Saturday 8/30 from 11-2. I’ll have a bunch of stuff for sale including shelving(ranging from very large to small), tables and misc surfaces, a portable set-up that is great for craft/art shows, a ton of fabric, lots of stuff for that mixed-media side of you and a bunch more too plentiful to list. A good amount will be free too! There will even be some cheap paintings!
Eastworks, Suite 256
116 Pleasant St
Easthampton, MA
www.eastworks.com
