Williamstown Artists Open Studios

John MacDonald

Stephen Dankner

Ellen Joffe-Halpern

Ghetta Hirsch

Marilyn Cavallari

Saturday July 15, 2023 10am - 4pm

Sunday, July 16, 2023 11am - 4 pm

Rain or Shine!

PAINTER OF METAPHORS

This year was the year to go all in as an artist and invest in myself. It is difficult to put yourself out there, but I have reaped the benefits.

It's been a productive winter, and hopefully, it will be a successful summer. I am proud to announce that I was awarded BEST water media artist nationally for 2023 by ADC, Art Design Consultants, a Juried show, "Art Comes Alive".

My two-month show at Woodfield Fine Art in St Petersburg, Florida, opened a whole new world for me by putting me face-to-face with other artists and potential clients that knew nothing about me. I had good sales and was well received by a vibrant and young arts community, and I am happy to say I have a Florida gallery home.

In the Berkshires, I am represented by the Wit Gallery in Lenox and will participate in the June Art Walk June 10th and 11th.

My paintings are more than just pretty flowers. They tell stories about the world, politics, and women.

Last year I changed the way I approached my paintings. I started to work in series and better communicate my work's Metaphorical nature. To date, my series include "Lady Paints the Blues," the war in Ukraine, “Women's Voices”, and “The secret life of Sun”. "Flowers and just plain Happiness." This has proved to be successful for me.

My husband and I will be traveling to Asia this spring, and I anticipate being inspired by this experience; perhaps a Zen series will follow. I welcome visitors to my Lee, Massachusetts studio and enjoy painting commissions.

You can view my work virtually @www.Ellenkaiden.com, www.thewitgallery.com

FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY

I create landscape images to highlight my reverential relationship with the environment through which I walk daily. My process begins with the discovery and exploration of a subject, and then moves on to imagining what the image could become. I see landscape as an invitation to the viewer to enter imaginary worlds, ones which may suggest past or future visions, offshoots of the moment that the shutter clicked. I take natural details of streams, waterfalls, moss rocks, and decaying tree trunks and put them in new contexts building imagined landscapes and new worlds. These provide a larger perspective that emphasizes the importance of climate change to even the smallest niches within nature. I give my images an otherworldly appearance to impart distance from the ordinary reality in which these spaces are threatened by global warming and to pay them respect as places of beauty.

I use perspective and scale to magnify tree stumps into craggy cliffs and small waterfalls and streams into mountain cascades. I pause at natural wonders to make images of them to preserve their existence and enlarge their importance as records of what natural beauty can be. I wish to set apart their beauty from threats of climate change by keeping their settings pristine, their surroundings otherworldly, their scale majestic.

As I have unbound myself from representing reality, I have freely expanded the time of the image far beyond the duration of one shutter click, compositing pieces of the landscape with satellite views, stars, and galaxies. A great advantage of making art is the ability to recapitulate reality. A photograph is an opportunity not to copy nature, but to allow the imagination to take one to new places.

I print my own images using archival methods to last, with technical excellence, and in limited editions to increase its value.

My work is exhibited in national and international galleries and has been acquired by noted collectors.

The Becket Arts Center (BAC) has announced its 2023 summer schedule filled with art exhibits, lectures and workshops, music, theater, storytelling, and so much more for art enthusiasts of all kinds, young and old, near and far.

The highlights include: five juried art shows, four special exhibits, and a BAC member show (all free and open to the public); Music Brings Communities Together - free, live, outdoor music on select Saturdays through September ; Monthly Speaker Series lectures (free for BAC members; $5 for non-members); Live Art Demonstrations every Monday (in-person and livestreamed on Facebook); Art classes, storytelling, theater, yoga, and dance workshops (discounts available to members). For full schedule, dates, and complete details, the website.

The Becket Arts Center gallery and gift shop are open to the public Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, 12:00-4:00 pm. The BAC gift shop, featuring carefully crafted items by local artisans, can be accessed online - www.becketartscenter.org/shop or in person during open hours.

Programs are supported by grants from the following: Mass Cultural, Berkshire Bank; Central Berkshire Fund, a fund of Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation; Feigenbaum Foundation, towns of Becket, Blandford, Chester, Hinsdale-Peru, Lee, Otis, Sandisfield, Tolland, Tyringham, and Washington, local agencies which are supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. Many thanks to our BAC members and business sponsors for their enthusiastic support of arts in our communities.

For more than 50 years, the Becket Arts Center (BAC) has been a mainstay of culture and art in the Berkshires. The Becket Arts Center’s mission is to ensure that creative expression is a vital and vibrant part of the everyday lives of the regional community. As a membership organization that supports the cultural and artistic needs of the Hilltowns, the Center offers diverse experiences that serve the full spectrum of artists, from the professional to the avocational, and arts appreciators, to inspire, educate, and enrich their lives.

Becket Arts Center –

Richard

Alan Cohen

Richard@richardalancohen.com www.richardalancohen.com

Instagram: @richardalancohen

7 Brooker Hill Road, Becket; email: office@becketartscenter.org 413-623-6635.

To become a BAC member and support community arts visitwww.becketartscenter.org/membership