Arts Calendar: Vermont Arts 2018

Ages 8+, $225
Instructed by Matthew Perry
This week we take risks and explore being creative by challenging ourselves outside our usual comfort zones. Be prepared to get messy, throw some paint around (literally) and work with the elements. All the while making fires, sharpening axes and discovering unchartered water. A blacksmith forge will be set up for those who wish to bang some steel and create. An array of power tools and equipment will be introduced as well as visits from the State Police, Bennington EMTs and the North Bennington Volunteer Fire Department…all invited of course! Last year we dropped a TV from twenty-foot tree, this year, what will it be?

Arts, Crafts and Games with JoAnne Russo and Bradie Harris
Mon. - Fri. August 13-17 (5 days)
1:00 - 4:00pm
Ages 6-11
$120 Scholarships Available

Join us for a fun week of arts, crafts and games. Unleash your creativity and explore all sorts of exciting projects. We will draw, sculpt, design, explore outdoors, sing songs and play games. Activities such as sun prints, paper mache, fairy houses, make journals and other creative crafts will make time fly! We'll spend time both indoors and out.

George Matthew Jr., the Carillonneur for both Middlebury College and Norwich University, will play the final concert of the summer, before Language Schools Graduation. Middlebury College’s Summer Carillon Concert series celebrates its 33rd season with a fine group of musicians from around the world, performing from the soaring tower of Mead Chapel. The melodic sounds of the carillon bells are a staple of summer life on the Middlebury campus. Free. Learn more at http://go.middlebury.edu/carillon

*Beer and Wine on sale courtesy of Bentleys Restaurant*

Master Ballafonist, Ousmane Camara leads Sabouyouma (Pronounced sah-boo-yoo-MAH), as they take listeners on a cultural journey to West Africa, to the roots of jazz , funk and, blues. Sabouyouma is a high energy 7-piece polyrhythmic groove machine that formed through ongoing musical relationships in Burlington, Vermont’s vibrant West-African dance and drumming scene. Sabouyouma is led by Guinean-born Ousmane Camara: the band’s front man, composer, and master Balafonist (the Balafon is a West-African marimba). In 2017 Sabouyouma opened for nationally touring acts like Xenia Rubinos (Brooklyn), Polyrhythmics (Seattle), Ikebe Shakedown (Brooklyn), and Jonathan Scales Fourchestra (Asheville, North Carolina), and has performed at music festivals that have become staples of the Vermont music scene: Burlington Discover Jazz Fest, Waking Windows, and The Manifestivus. Ousmane Camara is a 6th generation Griot: Historically, in West Africa, Griots passed messages from the king throughout the kingdom before pen and paper. Griots continue to play an important role in Africa today as poets, musicians, singers, and historians, preserving their ancient traditions through song. At the age of seven, Ousmane left his family’s home to go live with his teacher, Djeli Sana Camara. He would study and play balafon with his teacher for the next fifteen years. Ousmane continued to play throughout Guinea and traveled through nine other African countries. He has subsequently taught students from around the world.

Traditional West African Rhythms, Funk, Reggae, Blues, Jazz

$35 | $30 | $25 |$15

Join Kizuna Dance for a cross-cultural production that blends Japanese culture, streetdance, and contemporary dance; featuring works that span the company’s history, including a brand-new work that pushes the boundaries of contemporary floorwork. Follow three businessmen as they struggle to balance an insatiable drive to succeed with a desperate desire to rediscover intimacy in “Koibito”; discover the three sins in Buddhism through comedic tidbits of pop culture in “Three Poisons,” and explore Manabu Ikeda’s complex visual artwork through flowing, hyper-physical movement in “Foretoken.”

We’re also hosting a Saturday show at 7:30 PM on August 18, and a workshop at 10:00 AM on August 18.

Main Stage

• Aug 10 - 19
The Fourth Wall • Oldcastle has produced nine of A. R. Gurney's plays, but none quite like this thoughtful comedy that includes five Cole Porter songs. Laugh, and enjoy witty tunes while contemplating what is real and what is theatrical artifice with a splendid cast.

Reclamation \ re-klə-ˈmā-shən \ will feature nationally-acclaimed, contemporary figurative women artists painting women from their perspective, reclaiming and transforming the way women are portrayed. Join us for the opening reception Friday, June 15, 5pm-7pm.

A juried show of artists from the northeast looking to explore "the book" as concept, object and format. The broad theme of "UNBOUND VOL. VIII" encompasses all of the possibilities of what we may think or may not think a "book" is. Is it story? An entry to another world? An exploration? What does it indicate? This juried show looks to explore this idea of "the book" and all the ways artists use that format as a stepping-off point or as material to explore new ideas.

Opening Reception: Friday July 27th, 5:30-7:30pm

Special Bookstock Weekend Hours: Sat July 28th & Sun July 29th, 11am-4pm

Exhibit Dates: July 27th - August 25th

Opening in conjunction with the kick off of Bookstock! Please visit bookstockvt.org for more information about this great event!

A witty reinvention of the classic Jane Austen novel. By Kate Hamill.

The outspoken Elizabeth Bennet faces mounting pressure from all sides to secure a suitable marriage. But is marriage suitable for a woman of Elizabeth’s intelligence and independence? When she meets the standoffish, tall, vaguely handsome, mildly amusing, and impossibly aristocratic Mr. Darcy, they clash initially, but is there something deeper behind their animosity? Literature’s greatest tale of manners, society and love has never felt so theatrical or spirited than it does in this effervescent adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic romance from acclaimed writer and actress Kate Hamill (Bedlam’s Sense and Sensibility).

Details
Wednesday-Sunday Evenings at 7:30 pm
Wednesday & Sunday Matinees at 2:00 pm
Ticket Price: $30 - $58
Tickets Available Online dorsettheatrefestival.org or by contacting our Box Office
(802) 867-2223 ext 101, boxoffice@dorsettheatrefestival.org

The landscape paintings of Susan G. Scott come from exploring the stream that runs beside her woodland studio in Chelsea, Vermont. Each summer she sketches ankle-deep in water to convey the abstract privacy and intricacy of this natural space. In the winter months, she paints in her Montreal studio from these watercolor studies. Scott’s large, oil on canvas paintings, Streams of Light, evoke the delicate open aesthetic of Asian watercolors, allowing the white of the canvas to convey light and space, along with her rich shades of undulating tone.
OPENING RECEPTION AUGUST 4, 4 - 6 pm, with Artist's Talk

NATURAL INSTINCTS is a combination of Emily Brown, painter from Philadelphia, and Russell Fellows, woodworker from Jericho, VT. Brown's sumi-e brush strokes of water, grasses, and forest are contrasted with Fellows pieced and turned wood bowls. The whole effect in the former church / historic general store, now gallery, is one of meditation and natural beauty.

A comic sequel to the famed modern drama.
Written by Lucas Hnath
15 years after Nora Helmer rejected her domestic life, she returns to the place she once called home with an urgent request. This hilarious and bold new play examines marriage, family, and traditional gender roles nearly 150 years after the original A Doll’s House was written.

Tuesday - Saturday Evenings at 7:30 pm 
Wednesday & Saturday Matinees at 2:00 pm
Sunday Matinee at 3:00 pm

Run Time: Approx. 1 hour 30 minutes

Ticket Price: $43. Does not include sales tax or possible fees.

The Drawing Water Project is an engaged creative movement to dismantle social marginalization through the arts. For the past 3 years, the painters of Forty-Seven Main Street together with their paintings and poetry travel beyond the social construct that separates and marginalizes the creative voice of ‘the other’. They work together to challenge the convenient labels of disability, mental illness and poverty to transform barriers into opportunities for mutual beauty and growth.

Group exhibition on view at Edgewater Gallery in Stowe: through August 30, 2018.

Opening reception: July 27th from 4:00-7:00 pm during the Stowe Arts Festival week, featuring music and meet/greet with Spruce Peak Chamber Music Society Artistic Director Jia Kim

Edgewater Gallery at Stowe, in partnership with Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center, launches a second exhibition space for Exploring Air in celebration of honoring the environment and global community.

On July 27, during Stowe Arts Festival week and gallery walkabout, Edgewater Gallery will have a reception beginning at 4:00 pm to include a musical performance and a meet and greet with Jia Kim, Artistic Director/cellist for Spruce Peak Chamber Music Society. Jia Kim is the recipient of the prestigious 2017 career grant from the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund for the Performing and Visual Arts, and leads a dynamic musical life as a performer, educator, and a passionate advocate for the Arts. Ms. Kim has appeared on stages across the United States, South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. She performs on a Testore cello made in 1748. The Spruce Peak Chamber Music Society is committed to bringing Stowe area audiences world class musicians of extraordinary repertoire dating as far back as the Renaissance, and continuing through the centuries to the greatest contemporary works of our time.

Exploring Air at Edgewater in Stowe features selections ranging from big sky landscapes to industrial scenes including monoprints, photography, woodblock prints, and contemporary sculpture from kinetic to cast glass to wearable art. “The movement and visual abundance of air is the magic in Vermont...the moisture, floating, rolling and dancing over the weathered soft slopes of the Green Mountains are what gives air a structure or vehicle to travel,” describes painter Rory Jackson. The Exhibition is curated by Kelly Holt, featuring artists: Jon Black, Matt Brown, Galen Cheney, Tom Cullins, TJ Cunningham, Micah Dudash, Rory Jackson, Erika Senft Miller, Rachel Moore, Marshall Noice, Mark Reamy, Sean Thomas, Homer Wells and Judith Wrend.

Artists in this exhibition are responding to many aspects of air, from big sky paintings, to music making and language, to climate change, to communication and celebrating global community. All are working from the following ideas: “Air is essential. It is life giving. It is the breath that emanates through all of us, and unites us in a common ground. Air makes language possible.The vastness of air evokes the spiritual. Air ushers the flight of birds in the sky while it connects with people rushing past one another on a bustling sidewalk. In a time of boundaries and borders, air allows us to be in a relationship with the earth, all of its inhabitants and forces of nature. While air is a medium of consciousness, it also transcends culture.”

The exhibition attempts to answer questions from many viewpoints -
“...air as a conduit of music or language, both uniting and breaking” - Rachel Moore
“As air changes, the relationships of light, space, color and reflection also change” - Judith Wrend
“And the image of air as a material in our lives that, even more than water, is shared and connecting us? What a sweet idea...: - Matt Brown
“If we can share air, can we share our memories? What common past could we conjure in the same mountain vista? In the same cul-de-sac?” - Mark Reamy

Exploring Air will be on view at Edgewater Gallery and the Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center through August 30th. This event is hosted in participation with the Stowe Arts & Culture Council’s Stowe Arts Week as well as VT Arts 2018 with the Vermont Arts Council.

Edgewater Gallery in Stowe hours:
Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5pm, Sunday 10am-4pm, closed Monday
Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center hours:
Thursday-Saturday 12pm-6pm, and prior to performances and events 122 Hourglass Drive • Stowe, Vermont • 802.760.4634

The Vermont Arts Council, in partnership with the Vermont Folklife Center, presents “New American Artists: Celebrating Tradition and Culture." The exhibit is a tribute to the work of Gregory Sharrow, who established the Vermont Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program while working at the Vermont Folklife Center. The program ensures cultural retention of Vermont’s traditional arts  -- including those of new Americans -- by providing support to master artists working with apprentices in their communities.

The exhibit will feature photographs of seven cultural groups and accompanying text. There will be an opening reception on July 10 from 5-7 p.m. 

On display in August 2018

Edgewater Gallery’s Merchants Row location On The Green in Middlebury is excited to present recent paintings by Timothy Horn in a solo exhibition on view for the month of August, with an opening reception on Friday, August 10th from 5:00-7:00 pm.

Horn paints scenes of rural areas, vibrantly capturing the simplicity of daily life. The spontaneity of portraying everyday moments inspires Horn’s creative process. He is drawn to unexpected subjects and compositions, finding random inspiration to be an essential element in his work. His subject matter often includes structural elements such as old buildings, antique cars, and Airstream trailers.

Born and raised in a rural Ohio town, Horn graduated from The Cooper Union School of Art in NYC and worked as a graphic designer for almost 15 years before discovering his love for painting. He has won numerous awards, has been featured in several magazines, including the cover of South West Art in 2012. Horn has a national reputation, and is represented from the coast of California to the coast of Maine. We are honored to have the opportunity to introduce his newest body of work to our local community.

For further information on “The View From Here” by Timothy Horn, please call Edgewater’s Gallery on the green at 802-989-7419, email info@edgewatergallery-vt.com or visit edgewatergallery-vt.com.

On display in August 2018

Edgewater Gallery’s Mill Street location in Middlebury is proud to present recent works by Ellen Granter in a solo show on view for the month of August, with an opening reception on Friday, August 10th from 5:00-7:00 pm. Ellen’s new work migrates from the subject of birds to the environments they inhabit. Her paintings of coastal wetlands offer a tranquil escape into an endless horizon where the water meets the land fading into sky.

Granter’s work strives to capture the essence of her subject matter with plenty of space for emotional undercurrents and trascendental moments. The artist states “I get inspiration from the changing colors, patterns, and atmosphere of the landscape around me. In each painting I am searching for an elegant balance of sparse compositions over large fields of luminous color.”

Granter currently lives in Brookline MA, and grew up outside of Rochester, NY. In 1984 she received a BA from the University of Vermont and then went on to study Chinese in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Middlebury College, returning to UVM to finish her Chinese studies, where she earned a MA in Chinese History in 1988. Granter’s preference for minimalism and flat perspective are inspired by traditional Chinese art.

For further information on “High Tide” by Ellen Granter, please call Edgewater’s Mill Street Gallery at 802.458.0098, email info@edgewatergallery-vt.com or visit edgewatergallery-vt.com.

Men, Mountains, Sky, an exhibit of paintings by Neil Berger, will be on exhibit at the Gallery at River Arts June 28 – September 2, 2018.

These paintings came from one year Berger spent painting at Battery Park in Burlington. The far Adirondacks, framed by the trees of the park, and the regular group of guys, Berger grew to look forward to. “I identified with them – men beneath the sky, at the foot of the mountains, touched by lake breezes, on no clock, of a free and easy disposition, taking in the passers-by, part of the whirring cosmos.” Berger noticed his seeing progressed over the year, particularly of the men. Slowly he started to see figures not in sociological terms of Tourists or Refugees, into shapes and colors more than figures. By giving himself over to the retinal sensations, his figures acquired more life. The very reason he had stopped painting from life years ago- the almost desperate, mindless speed required and the utter din of information, now grew into, from the necessity of being a bit of a new refugee to Vermont himself and lacking a studio, something to embrace. Returning again and again to this site brought a meditative deliberateness to his outdoor practice.

Berger was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1971. Specializing in oil painting and printmaking, he has received several awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in painting (2004), a Pollock-Krasner Award (2011), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in printmaking (2007) and two Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grants (2007, 2001). He moved to Shelburne, Vermont two years ago and paints in a renovated barn on his property while teaching painting and drawing at the Shelburne Craft School.

Gallery open Sunday-Friday from 9am-4pm. Free admission, and accessible to those with disabilities. For specific accessibility requests, contact Heidi at Heidi@RiverArtsVT.org or 802-888-1261.

Vermont Comic Creators is an arts organization representing over 170 Vermont based comic book creators, cartoonists, and other artists who make narrative sequential 2d art. Vermont Comic creators promotes member projects and events as well as the greater Vermont comics scene in general. The Vermont Comic Creators members include a diverse group of professionals, Indy creators who self publish, and amateurs who enjoy engaging in the medium – all are welcome. Vermont Comic Creators offers workshops and other community projects for youth and adults. Their philosophy is – everyone can make comics!

Rock and Roll history comes alive.
Written by Floyd Mutrux and Colin Escott.

Be a fly on the wall of the greatest jam session of all time. Inspired by the famous recording session that brought together rock and roll legends Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins, this high-energy musical is an event you won’t soon forget.

Details

Tuesday - Saturday Evenings at 7:30 pm 
Wednesday & Saturday Matinees at 2:00 pm
Sunday Matinee at 3:00 pm

Run Time: Approx. 1 hour 30 minutes
Ticket Price: $54 - $68. Does not include sales tax or possible fees.

Bryan Memorial Gallery presents THE HEAD OF THE CLASS. An invitational group show of 30 artworks by 9 Lamoille County present and former elementary and high school art teachers, are included in this Middle Room exhibit.

Bryan Memorial Gallery presents "The Sky's The Limit", a juried group show by 72 artists of artworks featuring the sky as the predominant element of the composition.

Artist Reception: Sunday July 1st, Roundtable at 1 PM and Reception 2-4 PM

ON VIEW IN THE GALLERY AT HIGHLAND CENTER FOR THE ARTS
JULY 14 THROUGH SEPTEMBER 9
Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much?
have you reckon’d the earth much?
From Song of Myself, Walt Whitman

Eric Aho has reckon’d a thousand acres, and continues to do so – brush in hand. A thousand acres – the earth – is a wondrous thing and Aho’s paintings evoke that wonder, that contemplation, and marvel.

Aho’s paintings evoke a sense of place rather than a specific place. He paints what can be sensed, not necessarily seen, in observed places and ultimately – his paintings simply, expertly, radiate joy.

In the winter of 2016 the Hood Museum of Art presented Eric Aho: Ice Cuts curated by Katherine W. Hart. Aho’s paintings of stark holes cut into a frozen pond, some exhibited here, prompted Hart to call Aho “one of the leading painters of landscape and the environment of his generation.” Sebastian Smee, Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for the Washington Post, call Aho’s work “a major accomplishment.”

“While traditional landscape surveys the world from an objective distance, placing the viewer in an omniscient position, an Aho painting puts us inside nature, where light and form are always changing…we feel his immersion in the forest, his ability to capture the ever changing colors, the sounds, and movement of the living environment.”
Daphne Anderson Deeds, The Art Critic, happeninginthehills.com

The paintings exhibited at HCA celebrate the landscape in all seasons and are drawn from specific bodies of work painted over several years.

OPENING RECEPTION
Thursday, July 26 at 5:00 PM
Eric will speak about his paintings and his process at 5:45 PM

Above, left to right:
1. Pine, 2013, Oil on wood panel, 20 x 16 inches
2. Ice Cut (1937), 2015, Oil on linen, 74 x 95 1/2 inches
3. June Twilight, 2013, Oil on linen, 30 x 36 inches

For more information about The Gallery at Highland Center for the Arts, please contact Maureen O’Connor Burgess, Curator, at maureen@highlandartsvt.org.

Dian Parker’s exhibit features abstract oil paintings on canvas, as well as mixed media works on black walnut stained paper.

Chelsea-based artist Nick DeFriez’s paintings and drawings blend the energy, abstraction, and matrix of Vermont’s agricultural activity and landscape. DeFriez’s exhibit presents a visual narrative, incorporating the painter’s strong appreciation for and insight into today’s family farms, working landscape and farmers markets. Opening reception Friday, July 13, 4:00-7:00 PM. PHOTO ID REQUIRED FOR ENTRY.