The Artful Mind May 2024

THE ARTFUL MIND

RICHARD CRIDDLE Photograph by Michael Hatzel

THE ARTFUL MIND

MAY 2024

They came. They saw. They Loved. They left smiling.

LORNA RITZ

BEYOND HABITUAL SEEING: A MEDITATION IN COLOR

Interview by H. Candee

Photography Courtesy of the Artist 10

RICHARD CRIDDLE SCULPTOR

Interview by H. Candee

Photography Courtesy of the Artist...16

ASTROLOGY FOR CREATIVES

D.M. Musgrave - May 2024 ...44

PROTECT ART: A LIST OF ASTROLOGICAL DATES FOR MUSEUMS, ART GALLERIES AND INSTITUTIONS

D.M. Musgrave 45

RICHARD BRITELL | FICTION THE ITINERANT DUCK

PT. 8: THE CONCLUSION OF VALERIA’S DREAM...47

Publisher Harryet Candee

Copy Editor Marguerite Bride

Third Eye Jeff Bynack

Distribution Ruby Aver

Carolyn Kinsolving

Contributing Writers

Richard Britell

D.M Musgrave

Contributing Photographers

Edward Acker

Tasja Keetman

Bobby Miller

ADVERTISING RATES

413 - 645 - 4114 artfulmind@yahoo.com

issuu.com | Instagram

FB: ARTFUL MIND GALLERY for Artful Minds 23

The Artful Mind PO Box 985

Great Barrington, MA 01230

Sundown" - Dorothy Fox

THE

ARTFUL

MIND Presents FLY ON THE CANVAS

“The Transience of life and the importance of cherishing every moment.”

ALEXANDRA ROZENMAN

ANDREAS ENGEL

BOBBY MILLER

BRUCE LAIRD

BRUCE MURPHY

BRUCE PANOCK

CANDACE EATON

DEBORAH H CARTER

DIANE FIRTELL

ELEANOR LORD

ELIZABETH CASSIDY

ERIKA LARSKAYA

GAIL GELBURD

GHETTA HIRSCH

HIDEYO OKAMURA

JANE GENNARO

JANET COOPER

JAYE ALISON MOSCARIELLO

JEAN BLACKBURN

JOHN LECLAIR

JONI CARRON

JORDAN NOBUKO BAKER

KAREN J ANDREWS

KATE KNAPP

KATHERINE BORKOWSKI - BYRNE

KATHLINE CARR

KEITH DAVIDSON

LESLEE CARSEWELL

LINDA MASON

LIONEL DELEVINGNE

LONNY JARRETT

MARCIA CLARK

MARILYN ORNER

MARY ANN YARMOSKY

MARY DAVIDSON

MATT BERNSON

MICHAEL CHELMINSKI

MOLLIE KELLOGG

PAMELA BERKELEY

PAMELA TUCKER

POPS PETERSON

RICHARD BRITELL

RICHARD CRIDDLE

RICHARD NELSON

RICHARD TALBERT

RUBY AVER

SALLY TISKA RICE

SARAH HORNE

S.R. AIKEN

SUSAN SABINO

SUZANNE LACKE

TAMARA KRENDEL

Saturday, April 13 — Sunday, May 12, 2024

Open daily 12 - 5pm

&

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRUCE MURPHY

Ghetta Hirsch

This is one of my Abstract Realism oil paintings focusing on shape with an emphasis on color. The contrast between the pink sky and the green/purple of nature emphasized for me the nakedness of this young tree. The little windows of sky manage to release the tension of form and color.

Please come and see this painting in my studio in Williamstown!

During Berkshires ARTWEEK 2024 which is taking place in May this year, I will have OPEN STUDIO AND OIL PAINTING DEMO on 5/19/24 and 5/20/24 at 30 Church Street in Williamstown. 12-4pm

Contact me: 413. 597. 1716. ghetta-hirsch.squarespace.com Ghettagh@gmail.com

“Naked Tree” 16” x 24” Oil on canvas, 2024

Erika Larskaya

"As an abstract artist, I search for ways to represent the invisible, subtle, and unexpressed. I am driven to lay out fleeting and intangible experiences on physical surfaces". —Erika Larskaya

Erika Larskaya Studio at 79 Main St. Torrington, CT www.erikalarskaya.art

I

LORNA RITZ

BEYOND HABITUAL SEEING: A MEDITATION IN COLOR

Interview by Harryet

paint every day. I take the painting with me into my sleep so I can continue to paint on it, ideas I did not see when I was right in front of the canvas. I paint while I weed the garden and wash the dishes.

I am drawn to one of your paintings, “A Different Sky.” While creating this painting what was going on in your mind?

Lorna Ritz: This painting gave me nothing but misery throughout, yet I simultaneously enjoyed the search. It was a color problem, yet the painting holds together. In other paintings, the color finds the relationships, but this painting had a mind of its own, not establishing the landscape/seasonal colors that always naturally find them. This painting was more cerebral and emotionally searching all the way through. Indeed, it was a struggle but also a pleasure to explore.

“Tall Trees” appears to have an ongoing characteristic in your work where we feel a sense of whirlwind, circular motion. Would this be an enjoyable part of the painting process for you? There is a strong sense of dance, sunlight, and curiousness coming from you.

LR: I sat on the ground and looked up through the trees for pieces of sky to go through them. This was in the town “Mount Gretna, PA.,” where cut-

ting trees is not allowed. Therefore, there was no sunrise or sunset like in the familiar open fields where I live back in Massachusetts. When I began this drawing, it was a challenge to find how to compose it, so the space behind and in front of tree branches moved. Nothing could be static. The foreground I sat in was like ocean waves, pushing the sky further from the top tree branches. The search is what gives the drawing its inner life. I trust my eyes to tell my hand how to move the oil crayon across the paper in each drawing. I kept my eyes ‘out there’ rather than looking at the drawing so the drawing would be in a constant state of seeing. How could I best express the most passionate realities I see in the landscape (the story beneath ordinary everyday life things), producing on canvas much of what people feel when they get religious? Everything in the drawing has equal importance; the trees are as important as the sky behind them, the sky as important moving behind them, and as important as the foreground coming up towards the viewer. Everything is democratically related, a conglomeration of spatial

—Lorna Ritz

movements interrelated, needing each other to survive.

There’s a pink brush stroke on one of the tree trunks in this painting, “Tall Trees.” Did this painting come together after this was added?

LR: For this and all my paintings, I set my easel overlooking one of the country’s only east-west axis mountain ranges, formed by glaciers. I reworked each drawing for many days, obtaining a specific light from the sky falling on the mountains that will never bring these particular colors again. (This is how I learn new color relationships that create harmony or dissonance, which will feed into my abstract paintings. Everything in the drawing has equal importance; the tree is as important as the mountain behind it, the sky is as important moving behind them, and the foreground is as important as the foreground coming up towards the viewer. Everything is democratically related, a conglomeration of spatial movements interrelated, needing each other to survive. Whatever goes on ‘out there’ goes from my eyes to my

Candee Photography Courtesy of the Artist

A Different Sky, Oil on canvas, 30 x 40” 2023

hands. Therefore, whatever is added last pulls the whole drawing together even more.

How would you describe the ways your mood affects a painting you are in the midst of? Do you have to set goals with your emotions to stay on the same path when you leave a painting and then return to it the next day?

LR: Good question, but I am already emotional, so whatever is going on in my life and the world brings that feeling to the painting. Why else would I paint if not to feel? To make viewers feel? I am not moody or emotional. Even how light from the sky falls on a tree or mountain or feels can evoke an emotion. I am consistently optimistic despite personal life problems, such as health challenges. My choices keep me happy, and when evil is in the world, I transform it in my mind. I even think one of my paintings can stop a war. When I paint, I am powerful. Good prevails, not evil. Concerning the last part of your question, feelings evolve throughout the day to the next day, which is how a painting gets formed. The search for wholeness

is formed through the changes.

What do you think are your primary strengths in artmaking?

LR: LR: Stubbornness (believing that I can ‘get it’ even when I begin a painting and have no idea how to begin or what I am doing) comes into the equation when I listen to the paint more than I do to everything I already know.

What medium/technique gives you the most gratification, and one that you do not feel is controlling you, but you are controlling it?

LR: Ideas come from outside of myself and are the ones I trust most, rather than my willfully making decisions. How ideas connect to the whole painting is what makes the painting. I have an incessant curiosity to stay present in the moment of seeing. I feel the right decisions rise from my feet through my body to my hands placing paint. Bruce Chatwin’s “Song Lines” describes aboriginal people communicating at geographical distances through the earth. I get my messages

from the earth. I was a dancer for decades and am now a yogi, relying on my body to guide me. My arms reach out to the canvas up from my feet rooted down. I best express my most passionate realities (the story beneath ordinary everyday life things), producing much of what people feel when they get religious on canvas. I look for spatial relationships right away. The picture plane in the paintings changes constantly through the volume that color creates (in a constant state of relational movement). What one thinks is coming forward then shoots back when in relationship to something else coming forward. I work oil on canvas (the abstract paintings) and oil crayon on paper (the landscape drawings). I scrape away what does not work: painting with a pallet knife and drawing with a razor blade to remove the oil crayon, then drawing back into the crayon with the razor. Nothing scraped gets discarded: I reuse everything. When oil paint gets scraped, the mud color is warmed or cooled down with another color to obtain the exact temperature range. Continued on next page...

Tall Trees, Holbein oil crayon, 14 x 10”, 2022

I even used the color that sank to the bottom of the can to begin another painting with thin washes. Just a really excellent quality of oil paint dictates the application thinner or straight from the tube, but all my colors are mixed. I only use five colors; with those, I can get every color: cadmium yellow light, cadmium red deep, cobalt blue, thalo blue, and titanium zinc white.

Describe your formal art training years, artist journey, and preferred style.

LR: I studied under ‘the ‘greats” (the realists Lennart Anderson and Gabriel Laderman, and then the abstract expressionists Jim Gahagan, Dugmore, and Ernie Briggs). What makes up a composition, how does color harmony express different times of day, how does one mix the exact temperature range of colors, and what color combinations emotionally move one? And, ‘how to see,’ not ‘how to paint.’ I would not have continued painting had the work not evolved, continually compelling me to do better and to push forward more with even more specificity. The Anita Shapolsky Gallery had shows of my undergraduate painting professors when I was in my 20s. I attended their openings at that time. Now Anita is showing my paintings. Three years ago, she did not recognize me at the fancy opening,

asking, ‘Who are you?’ I said, “Anita, you have my paintings on your walls!’ Then she told me, “Lorna, you got wild!” It must be how my paintings have formed me over the decades.

What did you learn from your formal art training professors that still influences your artmaking process and principles today?

LR: I learned how not to give up, that being lost is the best place to be (not to try to ‘be found as a goal), to stay curious, and to enjoy the search. Formally, I am still influenced by compositional problems taught at that time. I learned from the Impressionists (Pissarro, Monet, Bonnard), the expressionists Joan Mitchell, the last paintings of Monet, and those who knew about color harmony, such as the Japanese painter Chuto Kimura.

How and when do you know a painting is completed? How do you judge its level of success in your eyes?

LR: A painting is never over. I could essentially paint on it all my life, and it would continue to deepen in meaning, but at some point, I want to continue the search on a new canvas (lest I lose what’s already evolved, what is already holding together as a whole). One painting begets the one yet to come. Painting is like traveling and falling

in love with a new place, but knowing there is another culture to learn.

Your portfolio displays welded steel sculptures. I want to know where your artistic journey with this art form has led you. Have you moved on from it, or do you still have a passion for it that you might consider reigniting?

LR: I welded steel for 25 years, including casting in aluminum, bronze, and iron. The same compositional problems that engaged me on a flat canvas surface presented new challenges in 3-D. My goal was to entice the viewer to want to walk around it because each edge enticed one to do so, the same way I want the viewer to take time to be engaged with the spatial relationships on the canvas, ‘to be pulled in.’ While I understand how steel pushed me visually farther, I do not need steel like I need color.

Showing love for a place is one reason why people want to paint and express what they see in a landscape; they hold onto it in their loving way, keep it close, and then possibly, as artists tend to do, let it go to someone who feels the same way about it as they do. Are you expressing deep love for your surroundings and want to show appreciation by creating works of art?

Mud Season, Lorna Ritz, Oil on canvas, 30 x 40”, 2022

LR: I always look at the same mountain, and it is always new. The light changes on it constantly (throughout the day and seasonally), so I keep learning new ways of expression using the best quality oil crayon I can find (a pure pigment). I do not draw the mountain luring people who also love it; I just draw it as I see it through all its changes.

And when you were growing up, an art student at Pratt, what dreams did you have, and what was your life like when you returned home after being in art school all day? I went to college in the ‘60s, which should already inform you how lost I was when I returned to my roots. I never felt I fit in with my family, but I knew they loved me despite the mystery I was to them. I always knew I was a painter. I plotted and planned what circumstance I could create to keep me painting, even though the best painters at Pratt with whom I painted, whose studios I visited every few days and mine, no longer existed. I painted many of what I thought were brilliant paintings then, but back home, I realized they were lesser than me; the only person who believed in me was my Mother (a concert pianist who had compassion for my drive). I might add that one of my closest friends is one of the painters I admire most at Pratt.

The artists we call masterful and original, the ones we have no words for, are the ones that seep into our souls and give us an intuitive gift of some sort if we are open to it. Who might that artist be who gave you this or a similar experience?

LR: The painter James Gahagan used to tell me I was a romantic and idealist just as he was (www.jamesgahagna.com). A film of him can be viewed at “Paint Until Dawn” (http://www.paintuntildawn.com).

Please share with us, Lorna, what your life is like now as an artist. Additionally, we would like to know about your significant achievements, epiphanies, learned lessons, and humorous and tender moments you experienced in the past five years as an artist or otherwise. LR: I paint every day. I take the painting with me into my sleep so I can continue to paint on it, ideas I did not see when I was right in front of the canvas. I paint while I weed the garden and wash the dishes.

When I don’t have money for the high-quality paint I need, I conjure up ways to get it. I experience more pleasure in painting than ever before. I found a way to enjoy the search instead of fear of being lost (not knowing what to do).

My painting is an act of faith. I searched for that, which I have yet to experience but can feel. Painting is a solitary way of life, but I am steadfast in living the life I most want. When I make a painting breakthrough, I am exhilarated and accomplished, which gives my life meaning. I share my inspiration with those around me. Challenges with my health became opportunities to relearn gratitude. I got to know the caretakers in the hospital and their lives. The hospital hired doctors who saved my life this past October, so I gave the hospital a painting for their art collection. Losses that broke my heart in 2022 reminded me that the sooner I got back to painting instead of grieving, the thick veil of sadness would lift, and it did. (I did not ‘move on,’ I ‘moved forward). I learned I could because I love painting as much as I do. I learned how to give others hope by shining my light brightly.

Apple Trees and Mt. Norwottuck, Holyoke Mountain Range, Lorna Ritz, Holbein oil crayon, 15 X 22", 2022

MARK MELLINGER

My two careers, art and psychoanalysis, concern what can be said and what remains mute. In painting, collage and constructions of wood and iron I’m interested in the eloquence of the materials.

Avoiding a recognizable style in favor of experimentation, I explore the possibilities of the media. Our world and culture are dissolving. Art can create precious islands of meaning and joy.

Mark will be showing his work at Hotel on North, February 2 - March 31, 2024, 297 North St., Pittsfield, MA 01201

Mark V. Mellinger, Ph.D.914-260-7413, 75 S Church St, Pittsfield MA, instagram@mellinger3301

RUBY AVER STREET ZEN

Growing up on the Southside of Chicago in the 60s was a history rich and troubled time. As a youth, playing in the streets demanded grit.

Teaching Tai chi for the last 30 years requires a Zen state of mind. My paintings come from this quiet place that exhibit the rich grit of my youth . Movement, shape and color dominate, spontaneously combining raw as well as delicate impulses.

Ruby AverHousatonic Studio open by appointment: 413-854-7007, rdaver2@gmail.com, Instagram: rdaver2

FRONT ST. GALLERY

Pastels, oils, acrylics, and watercolors…abstract and representational…..landscapes, still lifes and portraits….a unique variety of painting techniques and styles….you will be transported to another world and see things in a way you never have before…. join us and experience something different.

Painting classes continue on Monday and Wednesday mornings 10-1:30 pm at the studio and Thursday mornings out in the field. These classes are open to all...come to one or come again if it works for you. All levels and materials are welcome. Personal critiques are available.

Kate will be showing “My Garden” series of paintings at 510 Hudson Gallery, 510 Warren St, Hudson, NY. Feb 1- through the 25th. Reception is Saturday, February 10, 2 - 6pm.

Front Street Gallery, Housatonic, MA. Gallery open by appointment or chance, anytime. 413528-9546 at home or 413-429-7141 (cell) www.kateknappartist.com

PAINTING BY KATE KNAPP

Pamela Berkeley

The Pig Trough

Current/Upcoming Shows

RISD Alumni, 615 Dearborn St, Baldwin City, KS 66006

Bees and Mead – 4/1/24 to 4/30/24, Closing Reception on 4/27/24, 5-7pm

Rockland Arts Festival, 77 Bardonia Road, Bardonia, NY 10954 USA

The Color of Skin –2/26/24 to 4/26/24, www.RocklandArtsFestival.org

The Artful Mind at Time & Space, Ltd, 434 Columbia St, Hudson, NY 12534

Fly On The Canvas – 4/14/24 to 5/12/24

MVA Gallery, 35 E. Elizabeth Avenue, Suite 313, Bethlehem, PA 18018

Portals and Passages – 5/1/2024 to 5/26/2024

Oil

Canvas, 12in x 12in, 2023

Pamela Berkeley

Email: therealpamelaberkeley@gmail.com

Website: https://www.pberkeley.com/

(Artist videos of exhibitions are attached)

Gallery: https://www.bluemountaingallery.org/

Artsy: https://www.artsy.net/artist/pamela-berkeley Cell: (413) 717-8264

Jane Eckert Fine Art Gallery + Consulting, 10 Titus Rd, Washington Depot, CT 06794

Summer Show -- 6/29/24 to 7/26/24, Opening Reception TBA

Blue Mountain Gallery at Marblehead Arts Association, 8 Hooper St, Marblehead, MA 01945

Earth, Wind, Fire and Water – 8/10/24 to 9/22/24, Opening Reception TBA

in the Garden

on

“I

RICHARD CRIDDLE Sculptor

am like the performer at the circus spinning plates in the air. Any piece of work is likely to be just as valid, irrespective of how long it took to produce. The truth is I don’t have a formula recipe, I just show up and move stuff around, both inside and outside my head.”

When we see your sculptures, we feel a sudden rush of excitement and awe. But what excites us is the energy and momentum you put into creating them, the thrill of discovering new pieces, and the sense of playfulness that we can sense in your work. Your sculptures bring animation to life, unfold memories, and tell stories. As we stand in front of one of your massive sculptures, we can’t help but feel a kneejerk reaction of “wow!” Tell us about one of your sculptural pieces that gives you the most excitement and why.

Richard Criddle: Well, making sculpture is a labor-intensive, often protracted, and complicated process that, more often than not, requires you to get suited up in the appropriate safety gear to get the job done. So sometimes those “wow” moments are a shock to the system—the sort of surprises that make you stop and think, “Where did that come from?” It is also true that the bigger the

—Richard

Criddle

sculpture, the harder the work to create it and the greater the surprise factor.

Certainly, “Rigors of the Heart,” which I made in 2002 in collaboration with the Ross Valve Company in Troy, NY, as part of the “Factory Direct” initiative organized by the Arts Center for the Capital Region, ended up being a “wow”.

Factory Direct was curated by artist Michael Oatman and involved about twelve selected artists being paired up with a variety of commercial businesses around the Troy/Albany area. I was coupled with the Ross Valve Manufacturing Company, a long-established family firm that makes massive water distribution valves. They cast and engineer all of the components in their red-brick factory building on the edge of Troy. I thought to myself ,“Oh, valves, we have valves inside us, in our hearts.” So then I set about modeling a large anatomical human heart in polyurethane foam and fiberglass (yuck) based on a biology lab model I

purchased online. My heart had to be cast in iron in seventeen separate sections at Ross Valve and finished and reassembled back in my North Adams studio. Cast iron is heavy, unforgiving stuff, and that beast put up quite the fight against my attempts to put it back together. It weighed about 975 lbs and was exhibited on its custommade gantry with the iron heart suspended from a giant meat hook. I remember the whole thing being fraught with challenging engineering problems that, once solved, added to the “wow” sense of achievement and the surprise of “Did I make that?” Years later, I sold the sculpture to a private collector who lived in Williamstown and installed it in his back garden. However, he recently moved to Northampton, so I had to deinstall the stand and store it for the winter. Soon, I will have to figure out the transport and logistics, and we will see it hanging again in a new site. Sometimes, I feel like a rock and roll roadie moving my workaround,

Interview by Harryet Candee Photography Courtesy of the Artist

At Mac Steel in Rutland, VT. Photo credit: Jack Criddle

but maybe that means another “wow” moment is waiting.

It is said that knowing something about an artist adds depth to the experience when viewing their artwork. I am curious about the behindthe-scenes—what an artist’s studio looks like, where their sense of humor lies, and more. So, I want to know what sparked your interest in creating 3D sculptures using scrap metal and other natural and manufactured objects.

RC: I am also always curious about the behindthe-scenes of an artist’s life. My favorite art books and catalogs feature the artist “in their natural habitat. “ The through-the-keyhole insights into that very private space where dreams gain form. I have always been inspired by the photographs of David Smith welding up at Bolton Landing or Giacometti modeling in his Paris studio.

My current studio is on a farm in the hills above Readsboro, Vermont. It is a big, modern barn with electric rolling doors, a concrete floor, and a good power supply. Possibly the best sculpture studio I have ever had, and I have had a few in my life. My studio is my retreat, a Frankenstein’s labo-

ratory, and Geppeto’s workshop all rolled into one. It’s full of tools and equipment gathered over a lifetime of making sculpture, a vast accumulation of materials, and found objects that feed and inspire my work.

I have always made sculptures from scrap or recycled materials. In my mind, it dates back to me as a little boy building dens in the back garden of the house where I grew up. Finding discarded junk and harnessing our imaginations to repurpose these treasures into props for our adventures was what we did as kids. So that little imaginative scavenger grew, went to art college, and never wanted it to be any different.

Sculpture can be an expensive business, so you get toh

\7 use your wits, ingenuity, and imagination. As a young sculpture student in London in the mid1970s, I climbed into dumpsters daily to drag out wood, steel, and other cool stuff. I once found a plaster cast of the head of a killer whale in a dumpster behind the Natural History Museum South Kensington, and it nearly killed me when I was carting Orca’s noggin back to the sculpture school. These days, I enjoy going to flea markets

and tag sales and haggling over strange and interesting stuff. My studio has rows of shelves to accommodate my inventory. I have stacks of steel drawers with labels that read, “cast plaster teeth,” “antlers,” “index file pins,” and “hand grenades.” It’s not called hoarding if you know what you’ve got and can put your hand on it immediately.

While browsing your website, I came across previous work, when you lived in England before coming to the United States. I saw an image of a plaster cast for the bronze “Freedom Fighter and Eagle” sculpture for Nikolas Kotziamanis, commissioned by the Archbishop of Cyprus, while you were working at Mentmore Sculpture Services. This was an impressive sculptural piece of art. I’m curious about your experience with this project and how this business you created with Ian Payne came about.

Mentmore Sculpture Services Ltd was a business, a partnership between Ian “Tex” Payne and myself in the late 1980s. Tex and I had similar art education backgrounds, skills and experience; we Continued on next page...

Richard Criddle, Rigours of the Heart 2002. Cast iron aluminum. Private collection

Rigours of the Heart, 2002. (detail) cast iron aluminum, 2002. Photo credit: Art Evans

formed the partnership out of the need to make money from the craft of making sculpture. We first met separately as production out workers for another commercial sculpture studio and individually casting ornate pub signs in fiberglass - very stinky. The partnership just sort of grew out of the need for one another to help each other. I worked full-time as a sculpture technician at the Central/St—Martens College of Art. Debora and I had a house, a mortgage, and our first baby arriving anytime soon, so I needed the work. Casting smelly fiberglass, making complicated rubber molds, and various other sculpture services eventually took over my regular day job at the art school. Mentmore became the “bread and butter.” The business plan was simple enough - we needed to receive at least one whacky phone call per week, an inquiry requesting us to construct something like a giant sneaker for a photo opportunity at a major charity run. Sculpture for a publicity stunt! Or the time we modeled a likeness of Mt. Rushmore with the presidents holding Budweiser cans for an advertising campaign. We worked for all sorts of clients: T.V. props, public art commissions…anything and everything. We had our studios in railway arches under the line into London Bridge station. For a while, we were the blokes

who would make another artist’s work look BIG! We would carefully enlarge an artist’s scale model to some gigantic proportions in styrofoam and plaster so that it could be cast in bronze at a foundry.

We employed a ragamuffin bunch of ex-sculpture students on a fairly regular basis, and they all ended up smelling of stinky fiberglass, too. I’ve been thrown out of pubs in the East End for reeking of polyester resin!

Grigorius Afentiou, the Greek Cypriot Freedom Fighter and Eagle, was enlarged from a 7ft. tall original model to a height of 21 ft. Styrofoam horizontal profiles were cut with the hot wire machine (of our invention) and then stacked and glued together to form the figure’s core, over which glass-fiber-reinforced plaster was modeled to capture the details of the artist’s original work. Sitting on the scaffold, twenty feet up in the air in winter, modeling a giant mustache, is one of those memories that doesn’t fade. The eagle’s wingspan ended up 15 feet, and the scaled-up Thompson sub-machine gun slung across the freedom Fighter’s back was about 9 feet long. Once our team had completed the enlargement to the artist’s satisfaction, the giant was dissected and transported to the Meridian Fine Art Foundry Peck-

ham, South London. Eventually, the finished monument was installed on a mountain in Cyprus close to where Afentiou was killed by the British in 1958.

Mentmore Sculpture Services thrived for a while, but eventually, we had to dissolve the partnership, and Tex and I went our separate ways. Long periods of economic recession in Britain were not fertile times for receiving whacky phone calls, and inquiries for our sculpture problem-solving skills gradually dried up.

Tex died at the age of 43 of a brain tumor in 1997. Sharing much and working so hard together is rare and special. I miss him (and the teatime pint), but not the smell of fiberglass.

The constant issue of earning a living through the “trade” learned in art college has been a lifelong pursuit for me. When I was a visiting lecturer in British art schools, I used to give a slide presentation titled “BREADWINNER - Making Art and Supporting the Habit. “

I must bridge the gap and ask you what it was like for you and your family when you left England and came to the U.S. to live. How did you find your way to settle in the foothills of the beautiful Berkshires, close to MASS MoCA?

Mentmore Sculpture Services ad. 1993.

RC: Debora and I lived and worked in the east end of London as a couple of self-employed artists. Debora was designing and making stained glass commissions and teaching on the Public Art course at Chelsea College of Art. I was working in art foundries, doing bits of teaching in art schools here and there, and the odd public art project, so being self-employed was stressful and unpredictable. The East End, where we lived, was a rough area and not a great place to bring up two young kids. I have lost count of burglaries, car thefts, and muggings. It was a violent place. At about the same time that I accepted a position in the sculpture school at Cheltenham College of Art in the West of England, Debora received a phone call out of the blue from the director of a small commercial stained glass studio based in North Adams, MA. The studio was looking for a glass designer and painter to produce designs for new windows for St. Mary’s Cathedral in Portland, Oregon.

The family moved from London to Cheltenham, and we rented out our house and studios in London. Debora began working on an extensive series of designs that she presented to the Archbishop of Portland, and the three-and-a-half-year project moved forward. We decided to emigrate to keep

our family together.

Once we arrived in North Adams, Debora was working through a visa at the stained glass studio, and I felt disempowered by not being allowed to work in the United States. I suffered homesickness, culture shock, and depression and missed my country of origin. It was a difficult period of transition for the entire family.

I met Joe Thompson, the founding director of MASS MoCA, and he offered me an old mill building as a studio in exchange for me completing various fabrication projects for the museum before its opening to the public. No money changed hands; I volunteered at MASS MoCA with my imported MIG welder and power tools on a series of projects, cemented my relationship with Joe and the start-up museum. By 1998, our green card status was confirmed, and I was offered the position of Director of Fabrication and Art Installation, a role that I held for the next 23 years.

I loved the video your son, Jack, made for you. It is so beautiful and interesting. Can you tell us about that, please?

RC: Jack went to City College in N.Y. to study film and lived in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. He needed

a new computer for editing purposes, and we wanted to help him, so Debora and I commissioned him to make videos about our respective artwork, and Jack got a check for a computer. There is no such thing as a free lunch!

I would have a solo exhibition at Gallery 51, on Main St. North Adams, in 2012. I asked Jack to collaborate on a biographical video strung together with music of particular meaning to me and representing the twists and turns of my creative life. After figuring out the soundtrack, we raided the family photos. Jack is very skilled and creative at editing and very resourceful in finding and combining images to evoke the right mood or era. It was a “Ken Burns” documentary style accompanied by music from the Clash, Elvis Costello, Sting and Johnny Cash. Sting, and Johnny Cash. (www.vimeo.com/50492495)

“The Cabinet of Dr Criddle, a Tribute to my Father” is very special, and I love it. The endless phone calls discussing the film and my absolute childlike excitement when he would send me a clip were magic!

Jack also, more recently, created a video that encapsulated the Mac Steel residency. Hunting for junk in the yard, welding, grinding, and Anthony Continued on next page...

Breadwinner, 1992. Welded steel sculpture for the Black Country Route, Bilston, England.

Photo credit: Tim Hill

Cafritz and I living like a couple of hobos. The short documentary is on YouTube and was commissioned by Josh Mac to promote the residency program in Rutland, VT. (https://youtu.be/ygkyfB_eJ1Y?si=UtED1GLV42ITM_gP)

What time frame do you spend outdoors creating art compared to indoors in your studio? Unravel some of the process you go through, please.

RC: The answer to that question centered around the weather issues in New England. I looked out the window on April 1st, and there was still snow. I have a friend, another expatriate sculptor originally from North Wales, who reckons making sculpture here is a seasonal activity, as when it is too cold to go out to the studio, you stay home and make drawings. That is true for me to some extent, although the sculpture studio is well insulated and has propane heat, and I wear plenty of layers to work there year-round. Once the weather warms up a bit, open the big rolling doors and let the outside air in, as well as the curiosity of the kids who live on the farm.

We are very fortunate to live up in the Green Mountains. We heat our house and Debora’s adjoining stained-glass studio with wood stoves and hike daily on Dutch Hill with my dog, Anubis. We

were still snowshoeing until mid-March this year. So that kid from England, the boy scout deep in me, loves this lifestyle and its strong connections to outdoor life. Of course, I also benefited from outdoor experience through residency opportunities like the one I did in Monson, Maine, and my stays at Salem Art Works.

What has your indoor studio become since its inception to better suit your creative process, and how have its transformations led to your growth as a sculptor?

RC: Sculptors should only move studios occasionally. I have moved three times since 2017. I had a studio in an old building at MASS MoCA for about 19 years from when I first emigrated, but eventually, as the museum grew and expanded, my neighbors started becoming James Turrell and Anselm Kiefer; I thought it was time to move on. My studio is close to the “day job” and has had advantages and disadvantages over the years, but now I value my privacy and lack of distractions.

I then moved to a large pole barn adjacent to a defunct indoor riding arena in Stamford, VT, where I rented about 1800 sq ft. of unheated space with no bathroom. This was fine until the entire property was sold, and the new owners wanted to in-

crease my rent by 333%! It was just at that time, after recently leaving MASS MoCA, that losing my studio made the challenges of adjusting to retirement even greater.

My new studio, in the hills above Readsboro, which I moved to in the summer of 2022, is wonderful, but like any workshop, it’s still a work in progress. It’s a little further from home, but my commute is through the most wonderful landscape, and I love it there. I can’t believe I have filled it so quickly - making sculpture creates a constant storage problem. It is where experiments take place, where I delve into the sculptural index of possibilities and fuse them together. I have built white partition walls that conceal my floor-to-ceiling shelves of found objects in an attempt to maintain order. On the front side, these walls provide me with a means to view work in progressing photographs of finished sculpture. Sometimes, it is hard to see the wood for the trees.

The Lost Wax method of metal casting, used while you worked in the Mentmore business, was always taught to first-year foundation art students in schools such as SVA in NYC. How and when did you master the Lost Wax method technique, and what ways have you discovered to manipulate it to work for your process?

Clockwatcher, 2023, aluminum steel and resin Chip Off the Old Stumbling Block, 2005 Mixed media assemblage.

Photo credit: Art Evans

RC: I first encountered the magical mysteries of Lost Wax casting in 1976 when I was an undergraduate sculpture student at the Central School of Art and Design in London. The school was built in 1896 and grew directly from the Arts and Crafts Movement and artists like William Morris. Dedicated studios and workshops for teaching etching, enameling, and stained glass were rooms filled with mysterious tools and equipment for students who wanted to explore specific processes. Practicing artists were employed as parttime lecturers and were specialists in these fields. In the basement was a purpose-built bronze foundry and metal shop staffed (mainly at the time) by Henry Abercrombie. “Ab” was grumpy but a magician who led me through my first experiences in bronze casting. If you showed interest, had the right work ethic, and he approved of you, then you received the best introduction to the alchemy of his world. Most of the work I exhibited in my final degree show was life-size figurative sculptures in cast aluminum and brass inspired by studies of primitive rituals and human sacrifice. These sculptures started with taking body casts using plaster bandages from a live model, which was quite the ordeal for my unsuspecting victim. These negative molds and the wax impressions that I made from them were further

manipulated to create the forms and images I was after. I suppose I was using the life model as a found object. Sadly, none of this period’s cast metal sculptures exist anymore. Years later, I sold them to a scrap man when money was short before Christmas to buy two little bikes for my kids. However, bronze casting was something I was hungry to learn more about, and I was very fortunate to be accepted on the Foundry Course as a postgraduate student at the Royal College Of Art. No more than three students a year were accepted under the direction of Master Founder Tissa Ranasingha, who was originally from Sri Lanka. The Royal College Sculpture School foundry functioned like a commercial art foundry, accepting projects from professional sculptors, and the foundry students worked on casting that work. It was a technical apprenticeship unmatched in art education, for which I will be forever grateful. This realm of skills of working with such a broad range of materials, tools, and techniques was pivotal in my growth as a sculptor. But most captivating of all was the magical transformation that happens when you become acquainted with this most ancient of crafts and learn to master the fire. Also, whilst still a student at the Royal College, I started teaching one day a week at Dyfed College of Art in Carmarthen, South West Wales. I got this

job on a recommendation from Ab, and the Professor of Sculpture allowed me to take the day off every Friday to teach. This involved me catching the “newspaper train “at ten to one in the morning from Paddington Station and sleeping in a jostling train carriage, traveling west across the country into the farthest reaches of rural Wales. I would arrive in Carmarthen at 7 am, start teaching at 9.00 and be back on the return train to London at 5.00 pm. I did that insane commute for two years before moving to Wales to live and work.

When have you found metal to be unforgiving, frustrating to manipulate, and want to reach out to something softer and friendlier to work with? For example?

RC: I don’t find working in metal ever unforgiving or frustrating. Experience provides my solutions, and challenges provide greater rewards. I don’t subscribe to being type-cast as I only work in metal; I work with all sorts of stuff! My sculpture is made from a wide variety of materials, mixed media assemblage. Working in welded steel is immediate and direct - a MIG welder is like using a hot glue gun. When working directly in welded steel, there is no longwinded molding and casting process to follow, and I frequently Continued on next page...

Duck and Cover, 2019. (detail) aluminum, wood, steel and cinderblock

MASS MoCA, Huang Yong Ping installation, Nightmare of George V, 2006. Reinforced concrete life sized Indian elephant covered in cowhide, being craned into the museum.

bring seemingly incompatible objects together to express an idea. If I do include fabric in a work, it might be because there needs to be the inclusion of contrast or dramatic color. There are no material boundaries for me to make sculpture.

Have you taught this and other similar processes in metal casting to students in the past?

I am aware that you recently taught in a great, innovative artist residency program at Salem Art Works along with Anthony Caffritz and other artists. What did you teach? Are you doing that again for the 2024 season? Tell us about it.

RC: I have yet to teach metal casting in the USA, but I did teach foundry work in art colleges throughout the U.K. before emigrating. Over the last couple of years, I have taught welding to various groups at SAW. Last summer, I co-taught a welding course with Anthony inspired by an exhibition of David Smith’s work at the Hyde.

A sculptor needs to have physical strength for one thing and the ability to see and create in 3D from an idea that might have started on a sketch pad. What are some differences in principles you believe differentiate sculpture from 2D art?

RC: I am not getting any younger, but my physical ability to make sculpture has yet to diminish. Determination still wins out over fatigue. When I first started at the local art school in Southend-onSea, England, in 1973, I enrolled in a one-year foundation course, thinking I wanted a career in graphics or illustration. I was inspired by exciting book cover art and cool album covers of that time.

A foundation course was structured to give a young and inexperienced student a taste of everything: a weekly timetable packed with painting, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, photography, and much more. This exposure would diagnose a future path, help you produce a successful portfolio, and help you apply for a degree course. When the direction towards graphic illustration

faded, superseded by what I was being initiated into in the sculpture studio, my love for drawing never faded. Now, I needed to learn to draw like a sculptor, and I voraciously studied examples of sculptors who drew in a manner to convince you of volume, weight, and scale. I buried that closet illustrator in me for many years. Sometimes, years later, the skills of the illustrator would serve a useful purpose with a proposal for a public art commission. I feel sure this is how I won a commission for a series of seven 1-ton welded steel sculptures incorporated into the boundary wall of the Black Country Route in the West Midlands, U.K.

For many years, when working full time to earn a regular living, any free time I had to work on my art was always prioritized toward making sculpture. It’s eye-grabbing nature made it the center of my attention. Exhibition drawings often materialize almost as an afterthought because I ought to have some in a show.

I have recently shifted to a more balanced view and draw more frequently. Whilst on the residency at Monson Arts, I did nothing but draw for a month. Now, I no longer keep the inner illustrator locked in a cupboard. Drawing is liberating and direct. Over recent years, since I got an iPad, I have had many virtual sketchbooks. I mockup assemblage possibilities in the studio, snap a couple of photos with my phone, and use them as starting points for iPad drawings using a variety of apps. If I get inspired to take it further, I will enlarge the images, often onto primed wooden panels, and then the fun begins.

Does most of your present artmaking rely on memory and experience? When does it happen that an art piece is created off the cuff?

RC: When I get lucky, a fusion takes place - a material, an object, a memory or thought, or sometimes even a single word might kick the whole thing off. Listening inwardly and being tuned in to those possibilities is essential. It’s like kindling a fire in the bushcraft sense; it’s fragile; go slow and gentle, feed that conceptual ignition, and don’t blow too hard! Sometimes stuff will sit around in the studio for years waiting (cooling) to be employed in a work. Often, I mock things up and walk away, wait and see, and come back later. Why should I labor over a complicated sculpture I am not fully invested in? I tend to have multiple pieces of work going on at any one time. I am like the performer at the circus spinning plates in the air. Any piece of work is likely to be just as valid, irrespective of how long it took to produce. The truth is I don’t have a formula recipe; I just show up and move stuff around, both inside and outside my head.

After a fun dinner with you and Deborah, you mentioned the antique school desk chairs and what you did with them. Well, I want to revisit that with you now. Can you explain the underlying story of these old, discarded desks that sparked your creativity and became quite a unique series of sculptures?

RC: This was the “Desk Project, “during which a

Trojan Horse, 2022.

Welded steel, Made whilst on residency at Mac Steel in Rutland, VT.

Mr. Goodbody, 2005.

Mixed media assemblage, Desk Project, Gallery 51, 2005

large number of vintage school desks were discovered in the basement of Murdoch Hall at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams before the building was renovated.

Jonathan Secor, who was in charge of the Downstreet Art program and Gallery 51 in North Adams, selected about a dozen regional artists and gave them an old desk as a creative starting point. They were shown in a group exhibition and sold in an auction to raise money for student scholarships. Each artist responded to their desk in entirely different ways. Nick Zammuto of The Books’ band turned his desk into a musical instrument. David Lachman incorporated a video screen under the desk playing a Cold War public information film, “Duck and Cover.” (Hide under your desk when the bomb drops!) My wife Debora built an intricately painted stained glass panel into her desk related to a book she had been reading about experiments on communicating with apes.

I took possession of my desk just before we went off on a family camping trip in New Hampshire, and I recall drawing in my sketchbook by the light of the campfire, pondering what to do with it. I went back down memory lane to when I sat at an identical desk during my school days in England and wrote the following text:

“MR. GOODBODY”

I grew up in a coastal resort town, Southend-onSea, in Essex, England. The boy’s secondary school I attended from eleven to seventeen is a strange mixture of old and new buildings in a predominantly working-class area. It was staffed by an odd assortment of “fossils” who specialized in the finer points of indoctrination, intimidation, victimization, and sadism.

A good provincial English education. Invisible and heavy bonds shackled us. We were the “Lost Boys” but had no Peter Pan to guide us to NeverNever land. Maybe a crystal fantasy would settle for a second but sink into leaden well. I sat at desks with iron legs (useful for wrapping your numbed fingers around after you had received a whacking across both hands). I carved my marks into the history of their grainy surface. For years, I wore out the elbows of my blazer, leaning on the lid whilst gazing at the patterns of the raindrops on the dirty windowpane.

“Criddle! You, boy! You miserable specimen.” He snapped his fingers loudly, smashed his fist down the lid of his desk, and simultaneously lowered his crippled leg with a thump on the wooden classroom floor. He knew we all called him” Peg” behind his back. The man was a monster, the very thing my worst nightmares are still made of. He

moved between the rows of other desks, fellow pupils frozen still, heads down, so glad when he had passed. The monster was heading straight for me!

When I returned to the studio, I pulled the desk apart and used it to build the monstrous “Mr. Goodbody.” Ironically, the people who purchased the sculpture auction donated it back to MCLA, and it is sited permanently on the second floor of Murdoch Hall.

When and why do you work back and forth between drawings and sculptures? The drawings have the same intensity as your sculptures. Please tell us about one specific drawing that truly speaks to you, the creator. Are they all meant to be preliminary ideas for 3D work?

RC: No, the drawings are a parallel activity to the making of sculpture. No rules, nothing is preliminary. I’ve spent years trying to stop myself regarding drawing as the poor relation, the second class activity. It all just sort of happens here and there, bit by bit—equal footing for drawing and sculpture now, at last. In fact, the last time I was at Mac Steel, I set up a drawing board right in the middle of the huge shed where we were welding and set to it, and I found it incredibly useful to alContinued on next page...

ternate back and forth between drawing and sculpture. I think both benefited from my split attention, and the spontaneity is clearly visible to me.

Your sculpture is much more labor-intensive and physically demanding than your drawings. I don’t know which is more rewarding for you, but the photographs I have seen of sculptures in the making are intensely exciting and dramatic. Please tell us about the process involved in the Trojan Horse piece and the thought process that led to its creation.

RC: From a very early age, I was fascinated by Greek mythology: the stories of the Iliad and, of course, the siege of Troy. I had done some drawings of my “Trojan Horse,” which resembled a giant kid’s soft pull-along toy. Still, the head was fashioned from a woman’s purse, the type with a snap clasp and opened like a mouth, and I wanted the mouth to have scary teeth inside—a Tim Burton-like interpretation of the siege of Troy. When the opportunity to live and work at Mac Steel for a month came along, the chance to work on a huge scale, with unlimited scrap inventory,

would be the perfect time to make the horse. Josh Mac was excited about the idea and was very supportive, providing me with access to materials and assistance. I had to adapt my original concept to benefit from what was available at the yard, but at a larger scale, these changes made the whole thing better. Huge scrap steel roofing trusses were hauled out of the woods with a back-hoe, and a massive cylindrical propane tank was cut to compose the body. These were the parts of my giant “Erector Set.” I probably seriously underestimated just how much physical labor would go into it, leaving me precious little time to work on any other sculptures. However, I still produced seven smaller assemblages collectively described as the” Proclaimers.” The Trojan Horse has been exhibited in Rutland, Salem, NY, and is currently on show in North Bennington, Vt, next to the historic railroad station.

What

are you presently working on, Richard?

RC: Recently, I have been working on a series of strange portraits on wooden panels that incorporate real objects onto the drawing surface, rem-

iniscent of Rauschenberg’s “Combines.” These works originate from a series of self-portraits I did for my” It’s Rude to Stare” exhibition at Kidspace at MASS MoCA in 2008. I had abandoned these self-portraits and rediscovered them on some storage shelves in the back of the studio. I thought I would just sand the surface of the wood panels and re-gesso them. Something stopped me in my tracks, and I started working directly on top of the original images in a variety of media. Then, I started fixing objects to the surface. They are a strange bunch; I am still digesting my feelings about them. I am also trying to finish stuff and completing work that has been unresolved for ages. You know, procrastination is my failing; I only have to drill a hole and add a bolt, but that could take a year! With opportunities to exhibit looming, I have the motivation to finish my work.

Do you consider yourself an artist who veers away and rebels against mainstream society and culture? How do you see yourself?

RC: Oh, certainly not. Although we enjoy living in the Vermont countryside, and my studio is

Richard Criddle Photo credit: PJ Couture Big Bomber, 2005. Mixed media drawing on wood panel. Private collection

Death Eater, 2024.

somewhat remote, I don’t feel like a rebel against mainstream society. We don’t have television, but who needs that twittering away in the corner? I have an iPad that can inform and entertain me. We belong to a CSA for our fresh vegetables, and our milk comes from a happy, local cow. Supermarkets and big box stores only feature necessary things in our lives.

My job at MASS MoCA immersed me in contemporary culture for twenty-three years so that I couldn’t see myself as a rebel against it—quite the opposite. Now it’s my turn, and I have a greater opportunity to concentrate on my work.

I also wanted to find out what plans you foresee for the future. Where can we see your sculptures?

RC: By the time this interview is published in May, I will be happy to be back in residence in Mac Steel’s scrapyard. It has become a second home to me (this is my third time here). It is a totally immersive situation where daily material encounters constantly ignite my creative energy. Sculptor: Hunter-Gatherer.

I am excited to have a one-man show of sculpture and drawings at the Rooted Gallery in Salem, NY, in August. The exhibition, “Battenkill Crossing,” is named after one of the sculptures. In October, I will be in a joint exhibition with Joanna Klain (printmaker and collage artist) at the Eclipse Mill Gallery in North Adams, MA. I still have two outdoor sculptures at the Southern Vermont Art Center in Manchester, VT.

How did you entertained yourself as a child and developed a gritty, cool sense of humor. RC: A sense of humor is essential, and I try to incorporate humor into my work. The whimsical and witty in the artwork of others frequently appeals to me; the playful and childlike strikes a chord. The sculptures of H.C. Westermann, Eduardo Paolozzi, Bill Woodrow, and Barry Flanagan are favorite sculptors who all wield humor as a significant ingredient in their art. As a child, as early as I can remember, I always built things and made stuff. I come from a working-class background where honesty, integrity, and hard work were the examples we were set.

My dad was a Royal Air Force veteran and a fighter plane mechanic, and after the war, he worked as a gas tanker truck driver for Mobil Oil until he contracted Multiple Sclerosis when I was about 15. So, having a sense of humor was a very useful survival strategy. Better to laugh than cry. Being the funny kid was handy; the other kids didn’t want to beat you up if you made them laugh. Having a sense of humor and sharing it got you noticed and included. I think that throughout our lives, we can be dealt a shitty hand from time to time, and humor can certainly reduce mental swelling or emotional injury.

In the words of Eric Idle’s song during the crucifixion scene in “The Life of Brian,”……” Always look on the bright side of life.”

Stealth: Hello Neighbor, 2024. Mixed media drawing on wood panel with wood and bronze objects

Mixed media drawing on wood panel with aluminum objects

PARADISE CITY ARTS FESTIVAL MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND

Paradise City Arts hosts New England’s premier and most celebrated shows of contemporary fine and decorative arts. For nearly 30 years our events have drawn thousands of art buyers, designers, and enthusiasts seeking to connect with our 220 exceptional artists & makers from across the country. Our festivals are known for their diverse and lively atmosphere - offering a weekend full of live music, local eats, and a calendar of activities for the whole family to enjoy. The festival extends over three buildings, each connected by covered walkways, keeping patrons comfortable and protected rain or shine.

Peruse our special exhibition “The Art in Gathering,” which explores how objects displayed together become greater than the sum of their individual parts, sparking conversation and fostering community. Our latest addition, The Paradise Pavilion, features 1500 square feet of delicious snacks and charcuterie by Fed by Foley, lively demonstrations, a second wine bar, and creative activity stations hosted by Paper City Art Kids. And the Silent Art Auction benefits the International Language Institute of Massachusetts (ILI).

Paradise City Arts keeps its visitors hands-on and engaged all weekend long. Stephen Procter of Brattleboro, Vermont, recently profiled in the New York Times, demonstrates and shares his process for making colossal human sized vessels. Alan and Rosemary Bennett, known for their lifesized, realistic renditions of fish and sea creatures, lead very popular clay sculpture workshops for the kids (and the young at heart).

Paradise City Arts Festival, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, May 25, 26 & 27, at Northampton’s 3 County Fairgrounds, on Old Ferry Road off Rt. 9. For complete show and travel information, advance online tickets and discount admission coupons, visit www.paradisecityarts.com

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC NERVOUS SPLENDOR

Sunday, May 19, 4 PM at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington

The imperial “City of Song” has played an essential role as a leading European cultural center, hosting major personalities in the development of music, as well as literature, painting, psychiatry and intellectual thought, from the 16th to 20th centuries. As in the architecture, musical styles that sprang up are a mix of Baroque, Classical, Art Nouveau, Modernist and sleek contemporary. During the 19th century, the café became a meeting place for the creative set in town. Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms, Johan Strauss Jr., Mahler, Korngold, all of whom are represented on the program, could be found in their favorite coffee houses, penning compositions while greeting the likes of Gustav Klimt, Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, Rilke, Freud, Kafka, Werfel, or Wittgenstein.

This program takes a cross-section of Viennese musical modes—from operetta to waltz, Beethoven’s Piano Trio which spins on a popular song by Weigl, to Schubert’s sublime testament to his beloved métier, “An die Musik.” And of course, the quintessential café music of Fritz Kreisler, “Caprice Viennois.” In charm, verve, and artistic sophistication, Vienna’s past is unsurpassed. Performers joining artistic director and cellist Yehuda Hanani are Ieva Jokubaviciute, piano; Xiao-Dong Wang, violin; and Emily Marvosh, mezzo-soprano.

Close Encounters With Music - Tickets, $52 for Orchestra and Mezzanine and $28 for Balcony seats, can be purchased at www.cewm.org or by calling 413-528-0100. A virtual option is also offered —$28 for individual programs, delivered to your email address.

TW MCCLELLAND & DAUGHTERS

CREATIVE FINE JEWELRY

Tim McClelland is a fine jeweler in Great Barrington, MA known for his 20+ years as the creative hands and mind behind McTeigue & McClelland Jewelers. He has been practicing the art of jewelry making for more than 50 years.

Engagement rings from his Wildflower Collection are worn by editors of Vogue, Vanity Fair, W, Town & Country, Martha Stewart Weddings, and acclaimed by many more. TWM original pieces have graced the red carpets of the Oscars and Cannes.

Tim uses ancient and traditional jewelry making techniques to bring to life timeless, inspired jewelry. His work is known the world over by jewelry connoisseurs and those who seek out originality, beauty and quality. In his designs Tim is inspired by nature, humor, light, balance, and the materials themselves. He uses his his work to create a joyful expression in a tiny space. Most importantly Tim hopes to be of service to his community and customers.

Beginning this Autumn the TWM atelier doors will open to the public, Thurs., Fri, Sat, 11 - 5pm! Please join our mailing list via twmcclelland.com for an invite to the opening.

Contact us directly about all things jewelry at info@twmcclelland.com or 413-654-3399. Follow along on Instagram and Pinterest at @twmcclelland

DINNER PARTY

EMILY MARVOSH

CLASSIC FLORA, WILDFLOWER ENGAGEMENT RING

Scott Taylor

May Flowers

CARLOS CAICEDO ABSTRACT AND CONCEPTUAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Paper and pencil have been my lifetime companions, not simply tools. In a digital age, these humble objects remain stubbornly useful, and our connection goes back to memory. It’s a physical relationship. A yellow pencil in a child’s fist moving on blue-lined paper. The weight of a book and the sound of a page as it turns, the curve it makes, and how its shadow moves. These are pleasures that haptics can’t mimic.

My photos are a journey of discovery with these old friends to see if we can still surprise each other. It’s looking at them with a new eye. It’s discovering how shape color and light can take us into a new and refreshing world. It’s a game where what we see comes from us, not what’s there. It’s a game of imagination. It’s an invitation to play and to see what you never imagined.

Carlos CaicedoEclipse Mill, Loft 306, North Adams.

TAMARA KRENDEL

“Moths, caged birds & cats are among my most recent subjects.

I painted the moths for an exhibit I curated called “Winged & Whispered” which was themed around flying creatures; birds, bugs etc. or art that evoked the feeling of flight.

I had wanted to paint moths for years. For this exhibit I spent two years raising Luna moths in a large, netted cage inside my studio’s bay window in an attempt to capture something of their mysterious poetry. I was first captivated by moths as a very young, very myopic child, experiencing them like messengers drawn to our light from another realm, especially the ones that appeared suddenly out of complete darkness with their hidden flashes of color. The Luna is perhaps the most astonishing of all moths, with its otherworldly hue, brief life span and rare appearances.”

Tamara KrendelTamarakrendel@aol.com www.tamarakrendel.com

The perfect gift to show friendship and love. Find charms that delight and fascinate. Hand-made beaded jewelry, plus there’s so much more to see on Laura’s online site!

— Commissioned pieces welcome —

www.LoopeyLaLa.Etsy.com

FLY ON THE CANVAS

Art Exhibit goes through May 12.

Come see Joni’s and other’ Artist’s fine ART.

“This one will

434 Columbia St. Time & Space LTD. HUDSON NY

Open daily 12 - 5pm.

JONI CARRON COLLAGE ARTIST

The inspiration for my collage art stems from my fascination with the beauty in the mundane and my love of story telling.

Collected scraps and cut images, draw me in with their angles, color, and substance. My unruly process begins with what seems to be random and sometimes arbitrary placement evolves from the ordinary to visually obscure, and then into something wondrous!

Each piece becomes its own story. I am always curious, surprised and intrigued, to known what story each piece tells to others who are meeting it for the first time.

Someone once asked, “How do you know when a collage, is finished?”

A good question and one I have often asked myself. I find that when I am attempting to incorporate something more to a piece, and it does not add substance or depth, and it actually takes away from what is, then I know the collage is complete. It is “the end” of the story.

Joni Carron

jonicarron416@gmail.com, @awestalker ( Instagram)

WARRIOR, ANALOG COLLAGE, 9 1/4 X 14 1/8”, 2023

“Bluze” Czech Glass Beads

BRUCE LAIRD

Homage to Anne Frank Acrylic on canvas,

x

Found Father Acrylic on canvas, 30" x 40" H

SCOTT TAYLOR

Early in life I was someone who always kept myself occupied drawing things that were around me…often the trees, fences, flowers and buildings of the local landscape. When it came time to go to college, the decision was made to get some type of business background and a few years later I graduated with a degree in Broadcast Management. After a short stint in radio, I landed in the retail electronics industry and eventually opened Taylor’d Sound, which kept me busy for the next twenty-five years. It was only after I closed the business in the mid-nineties that I had time to rekindle my love for art making while living in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

After moving back home to Pittsfield, I began to paint the beauty that I saw in the Berkshires. In 2008 I was looking to move my studio out the basement of my house and joined an artist collaborative. When asking around, I was directed to a group on North Street in Pittsfield whose name at the time was Art on No. I met with the leader of the group, Annie Laurie, who over the next seven years would become a mentor and friend who helped me to begin my actual art practice. The basics of that practice have continued to guide me throughout the last eighteen years.

Annie will be opening her dream art gallery in the beautifully quaint town of Chester, Massachusetts and this May will be the first artist in her new space, A “Reason to Pause” Art and Artisan Gallery on Main Street. It is located in the historic A and L Market building in the heart of town (just across the street from Chester Common Table). With great windows facing the street in the front of the gallery and fresh white walls inside, the space was crying out to be an Art Gallery in its next life.

Annie sees the place becoming a great community space for all types of artistic endeavors. The first of these endeavors will be a show of my works entitled MAY FLOWERS which draws its inspiration from my from my wife Gina’s flower gardens.

The Gallery will be ready the first of May with an opening show party on Saturday May 4, 35pm. The public is invited to attend. Also if you’re in town for “Chester on Track” on Saturday, May 18, stop into the gallery and check out the work.

PAMELA BERKELEY

The painting, The Song of the Wandering Aengus, is derived from the poem by William Butler Yeats, one of my favorites from childhood. A trout fisherman catches a silvery trout, which transforms herself into a nymph who runs off into the forest. He is transfixed and spends his life searching for her.

“The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the Sun”

I was very much into the Pre-Raphaelites at the time when I did this painting, and especially the paintings of Sir John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt. Millais’s painting of Ophelia had the exact magical background for my Wandering Aengus work. My actor friend Mark Metcalf, an avid fisherman agreed to pose for the painting. He showed up at my studio in full fly-fishing regalia! Mark is a well-known actor in film, TV and stage, and has always been recognized as Neidermeyer, unforgettable in the film Animal House (1978).

The nymph is portrayed by the lovely Lisa Rutledge, a friend and fashion model.

Thus, the connection between Fly Fishing and Fly on the Canvas art exhibition was made. Pamela Berkeleywww.pberkeley.com therealpamelaberkeley@gmail.com

Artsy:

https://www.artsy.net/artist/pamela-berkeley

TARGETED 3, 12 X 16"

JAYE ALISON MOSCARIELLO

I am passionate about creating art, painting on flat, smooth surfaces, and using materials that won’t harm the earth or myself in the process.

My series “Abstract Memories - Envisioning Emotional Connections Between Objects, Memory, Time, and Experience" (“Targeted” and “Targeted 3” are included), came about as a result of my desire to express the great influx of memories and emotions that overtook me when I was reunited with my possessions-objects; art, photos, clothing, books and music that I hadn’t seen for the decades-they had been stored while I was living on the West Coast.

I relocated from California (following numerous wildfires) during the pandemic; I was raised in New England and coming back I became disturbed by the increase of hate crimes toward African American, Gay, Jewish and Asian people. I sought to pour all of that input: fear, hurts, injustices, and painful memories into my pigment and transmute it into something that I hoped would become beautiful just as Mother Nature takes what is given to her and does her best to heal.

Jaye Alison Moscarielloartisall@earthlink.net jayesplacegallery.com

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

- Albert Einstein

SONG OF THE WANDERING AENGUS, PORTRAIT OF MARK METCALF, OIL ON CANVAS, 54” X36”, 1992

BLUETS

KEITH DAVIDSON

A native of the Berkshires, Keith has been painting for the last 20 years, motivated by the natural beauty of his surrounding environment. Keith shares a studio with his wife Mary, at their home in South Egremont.

Keith’s dazzling collection of colorful, creative, “fish” paintings are inspired by his love of fishing and boating. He also has a tree collection, flowers and vibrant experimental paintings by combining objects in nature with geometric forms.

Keith has had many paintings juried into the Housatonic Valley Art League summer shows, receiving six “Best in Show,’ eleven “Awards of Excellence,” and seven “Honorable Mentions.” Keith is an artist who has had regional influence, and many of his paintings hang in private collections throughout the tristate area.

Keith considers himself to be a self-taught artist, although he has participated in classes at BCC and IS 183. His medium of choice is acrylic paints, used in a very watery base like watercolor. Paintings are framed under acrylic glass and double matted.

Keith Davidson413-717-2152 kjdavidsongio@aol.com www.davidsondesigncompany.net

GHETTA HIRSCH

As I am writing this page, the news is filled with information about our 2024 eclipse!

I have done many paintings with the moon, and in 2019 I did a series of art pieces with this theme. Painting a “nocturne” is often received as a very dark artwork, but for me “nocturnes” or night paintings can be very mysterious. I have to say that I am a night person, producing my best work in the evenings. People have accepted not to ask me anything in the mornings. Even my pets learned the routine and do not ask for food until 9am! This cascading water illuminated by the moon grabbed my fancy and I am sharing it with you in the hope that you would have seen the eclipse. The power of the moon is under-estimated! Think of this planet obscuring our sun! Here we are protecting ourselves with special glasses, but our moon is just taking a walk! A walk she will not take again until the next total eclipse in 2044! I have much respect for our moon and I will keep on painting the many aspects of lunar lights. By the way “Moon”, “la lune” is feminine in French. This could be the reason I feel such an attraction for it?

Please come to the last days of the Hudson, New York exhibit at Time and Space LTD/TSL that will close on May 12. The address is 434 Columbia St., Hudson, New York. It will be open daily from 12 to 5. Curated by Harryet Candee, this group exhibition is attracting a lot of art aficionados!

During Berkshires ARTWEEK 2024 which is taking place in May this year, I will have OPEN STUDIO AND OIL PAINTING DEMO on 5/19/24 and 5/20/24 at 30 Church Street in Williamstown. 12-4pm

SALLY TISKA RICE BERKSHIRE ROLLING HILLS

Born and raised in the captivating Berkshires, Sally Tiska Rice possesses artistic prowess that breathes life into her canvases. As a versatile multi-media artist, Sally seamlessly employs a tapestry of techniques, working in acrylics, watercolors, oil paints, pastels, collages containing botanicals and mixed media elements. Her creative spirit draws inspiration from the idyllic surroundings of her rural hometown, where she resides with her husband Mark and cherished pets.

Sally's artistic process is a dance of spontaneity and intention. With each stroke of her brush, she composes artwork that reflects her unique perspective. Beyond her personal creations, Sally also welcomes commissioned projects, turning heartfelt visions into tangible realities. Whether it's capturing the essence of individuals, beloved pets, cherished homes, or sacred churches, she pours her soul into each personalized masterpiece.

Sally's talent has garnered recognition both nationally and internationally. Her career includes a remarkable 25-year tenure at Crane Co., where she lent her hand-painted finesse to crafting exquisite stationery. Sally is a member of the Clock Tower Artists of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Guild of Berkshire Artists, the Berkshire Art Association, and the Becket Arts Center. Follow on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

“It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.”

—Vincent Van Gogh

I am also planning a surprise exhibit in North Adams, MA and I will tell you more about it later. Keep informed by looking at my website ghettahirsch.squarespace.com or with Instagram @ghettahirschpaintings to learn more about it. You may visit my studio in Williamstown by calling 413-597 1716.

Sally’s work is on the gallery walls of the Clock Tower, Open Monday-Friday 9:00-5:00 pm for self-guided tours.

Sally Tiska Rice - Berkshire Rolling Hills Art, 75 South Church St, , 3rd Floor, Studio 302, Pittsfield, MA. 1-413-446-8469.

SallyTiskaRice@gmail.com; www.sallytiskarice.com

https://www.facebook.com/artistsallytiskarice

Fine Art Prints (Pixels) - Sally Tiska Rice

Twitter - Sally Tiska Rice

LinkedIn- Sally Tiska Rice, Instagram

Sally Tiska Rice, YouTubeSally Tiska Rice TikTok - Sally Tiska Rice.

CASCADING AT NATURAL BRIDGE OIL ON CANVAS 2019, 30 X40”

SILENCE

RESEVERATROL MIXED MEDIA BOTANICAL COLLAGE, 30X 40”

MARY ANN YARMOSKY

“Each person I meet intrigues me with their different stories and life experiences. My paintings are a dance of spontaneity and intention based on observation. With each stroke of my brush, I try to create a feeling, a story, a challenge to the imagination of the viewer.”

— Mary Ann Yarmosky

FLY ON THE CANVAS Artist

Time & Space LTD. TSL

434 Columbia St, HUDSON NY

Through May 12. Open Daily 12 - 5

Time Flies Mixed media on Canvas 12” X 12”

Lady in Waiting Acrylic on Canvas 18” X 24"

Demise of the Fly Acrylic on Canvas 13.5” X 17.5”

MIXED MEDIA, 8 X 8” 2024

ELIZABETH CASSIDY Artist, Illustrator, Writer,

Peace Lover

I am an award-winning mixed media artist who believes that the world is imperfect.

I am imperfect. My art is imperfect.

I am a lover of colors and movement, but I so appreciate the crispness of black & white and stillness. This piece also comes with red so that I could use that title. What I love best about mixed media is that it takes my hand and lets me follow along while we create something new and I hope…exciting.

I am one of the artists whose work will be featured in the big group show:” Fly on the Canvas: The transience of life and the importance of cherishing every moment” exhibit. April 13th – May 12, 2024 at TIME & SPACE LIMITED/ TSL, 434 Columbia Street, Hudson, NY. Open Daily 12 - 5. Elizabeth Cassidywww.elizabethcassidystudioworks.com elizabethcassidyart@gmail.com

MARY ANN YARMOSKY

We long for a way to be heard from the moment we are born. For some, words suffice; for others, there needs to be a deeper form of expression.

That is how artists are born. Where one might send their message through an instrument in the form of music, another might write poetry or prose. Still, others speak in something more tangible through painting, photography, pottery, or sculpting. Words only bring us so far…art is the language of longing…a longing never fulfilled.

I have always found expression through art. At age five, I began speaking through the piano that sat waiting expectantly in our den, an instrument that brought me peace throughout the years. Later I took to creating through fashion design, dreaming up and constructing costumes for the Boston Opera Company and outfits for the fashionable elite of Newport, Rhode Island. From there, my path took many twists and turns as I lived as a wife, mother, caretaker, and professional career.

DEBORAH H. CARTER MULTI-MEDIA ARTIST

Deborah H. Carter is a multi-media artist from Lenox, MA, who creates upcycled sustainable wearable art. Her couture pieces are constructed from post-consumer waste such as food packaging, wine corks, cardboard, books, wire, plastic, and other discarded items and thrifted wares. She manipulates the color, shape, and texture of her materials to compel us to question our assumptions of beauty and worth and ultimately reconsider our habits and attitudes about waste and consumerism.

“The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it.”

– Paul Klee

When my youngest son passed away unexpectedly several years ago, my longing to be heard returned with a vengeance. Words did not suffice. There are no words to express grief and hope for what is lost. On that journey of anguish, I met other women who had or were experiencing their style of pain. I marveled at their resilience and ability to go on despite different types of loss or simply dealing with the uphill complexities of life’s challenges. I began to recover my voice through paint and a bit of canvas, but it was not just my voice. The women I create in paint are a composite of the many amazing women I have met and continue to meet. I paint their humor, joy, hidden heartbreak, and longing. These women do not exist except on canvas, and their stories are yours to imagine. Hear them.

Mary Ann Yarmoskymaryannyarmoskyart.com maryannyarmosky.shop

A sewing enthusiast since the age of 8, Deborah first learned her craft by creating clothing with her mother and grandmothers. Her passion took hold as she began to design and sew apparel and accessories. After graduating with a degree in fashion design from Parsons School of Design in New York City, she worked as a women’s sportswear designer on Seventh Avenue.

Deborah’s art has been exhibited in galleries and art spaces around the US. She was one of 30 designers selected to showcase her work at the FS2020 Fashion Show annually at the University of Saint Andrews, Scotland. She has featured in the Spring 2023 What Women Create magazine.

Deborah H Carter has been featured in the Berkshire Magazine, What Women Create magazine and was a finalist in the World of WearableArt competition in Wellington, New Zealand 2023.

Deborah H Carter413-441-3220, Clock Tower Artists, 75 S. Church St., Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Studio 315, 3rd floor. Instagram: @deborah_h_carter Debhcarter@yahoo.com

FLY ON THE CANVAS ArtistsApril 13 - May 12, 2024

434 Columbia St., HUDSON NY

Time & Space Ltd. / TSL

WHAT IS BLACK AND WHITE AND RED ALL OVER?

TIME FLIES, MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 13.5 X 13.5 2023

MARY DAVIDSON

This body of artwork, “MY NEW HAT SERIES,” presents colorful, geometric, large scale feminine forms, that are mysterious, bold, dramatic, captivating and complex. The many elegant, amorphic, intricate shapes which flow through out, keep the eyes moving. These playful, dynamic, creative works, give the viewer a chance to pause, lifting your spirit to a happy place.

Mary Davidsonmdavidsongio@aol.com www.davidsondesigncompany.net

LONNY JARRETT BERKSHIRE SCENIC PHOTOGRAPHY

My initial memory of awakening to the creative impulse was hearing the first chord of the Beatles, Hard Day’s Night, when I was six years old. I knew something big was happening at that moment, and I had to get on board! I began studying at the Guitar Workshop, the first guitar school in America. I’ve performed music most of my life and play jazz fusion with my band Redshift.

My interest in photography blossomed as an electron-microscopist publishing neuro- and molecular-biological research out of UMASS/Amherst and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx in my early 20s.

What are you waiting for!

Time to show your art! ...413. 645. 4114

As a lifelong meditator, martial artist, musician, and photographer, everything I engage with comes from the same unified intention toward engendering the true, the good, and the beautiful. I endeavor to capture the light that seeps through everything in landscape and nature photography.

Lonny JarrettCommunity: Nourishingdestiny.com

Books: Spiritpathpress.com

Art: Berkshirescenicphotography.com

Teaching: Lonnyjarrett.com

THE DESIGNER SHOWCASE CONSTRUCT, INC.

Construct, Inc., a nonprofit provider of affordable housing and supportive services to residents in fifteen towns across the Southern Berkshires, announces its first Designer Showcase event. Slated for the entire month of June 2024, the Designer Showcase will highlight the work of more than a dozen local and regional designers, as well as landscape architects and visual artists. Each exhibitor has been assigned a space at Cassilis Farm, a 27-acre, Gilded Age estate that Construct, along with the New Marlborough Housing Development Committee, purchased at auction with the intention of renovating and converting it into 11 much-needed affordable housing apartments.

The Designer Showcase, themed “Nature in the Berkshires,” will be a timed, ticketed walkthrough and will be open to visitors five weekends in June, Friday through Sunday, 11 am to 5 pm. Additional events surrounding the fundraiser include a free New Marlborough community day as well as a special Opening Night tour and reception at Cassilis Farm.

Participating designers includeBarrington Outfitters, C. Herrington Home +Design, Carly Jane Design, Danielle Sweet Interiors, Gallery315Home, Germain Interiors, Hammertown, Harry Heissmann Inc., Irwin Feld Design, Jennifer Bianco Design, Jess Cooney Interiors, Pryor & Peacock, Staged Ryte, Tillett Textiles, and Wingate.

Designer Showcase information will be updated on Construct’s dedicated website, https://constructberkshires.org/construct-designer-showcase/, as well as via Construct’s social media handles. Tickets may be purchased online only beginning in early April.

THE ICE HOUSE

DEEP WATERS

CANDACE EATON

In this Jazz /Horse painting I express the enchantment of the great wineries, now such a part of our lives, and the eternal mystery that love and a full moon brings on magic nights.

The artist welcomes visits to her Sheffield studio by appointment. Paintings are available as originals, custom-sizes and signed reproductions.

Candace Eaton (631) 413-5057

www.candaceeaton.com candaceeatonstudio@gmail.com candace@candaceeaton.com

Full Moon Oil on canvas, 50”H x 40”w

Painting classes on Monday and Wednesday mornings 10-1pm at the studio in Housatonic and Thursday mornings 10am - 1pm out in the field. Also available for private critiques. Open to all. Please come paint with us!

Gallery hours: Open by chance and by appointment anytime

413. 274. 6607 (gallery) 413. 429. 7141 (cell)

413. 528. 9546 (home) www.kateknappartist.com

Front Street, Housatonic, MA

Peony Persuasion Acrylic on canvas 24” x

KATE KNAPP, SPRING RUN OFF, 24” X 30” OIL ON CANVAS

Red Dragonfly Acrylic on canvas 12”x12”

Landscape, Pastel

CANDACE EATON

This photo is from about 8 years ago as I was breaking down a solo show of 25 of my Jazz/Horse works at the Borghese Vinyard Gallery on Long Island’s East End. It was the first time so many of my pieces were shown together. The original earliest five Horse paintings ultimately lead to my human figurative Icon series, such as the one in this month’s issue of the Artful Mind. I realized that in the earliest paintings I used the horse as a stand-in for the human condition and soon began my American/Icon figurative works using a model and was able to express so much of the influence from Jungian archetypes that had influenced my perceptions of human nature and of Time. The Jazz/Horse pieces actually came years later when a model switched on a Jazz station from my habitual classic music, and thus my double creative vision began to express itself(s) and my two muses coexist! To paraphrase the Buddhist Hymn of Creation: “Two birds sit on a branch, one sings and the other looks on”.

Candace Eaton631-413-5057, www.candaceeaton.com

candaceeatonstudio@gmail.com

candace@candaceeaton.com

MARGUERITE BRIDE WATERCOLORS

Jazz Visions II will be on display at Hotel on North in Pittsfield through May. Featuring 30 watercolor paintings on paper and canvas, the exhibit is a combination of scenes based on Berkshires events like the Pittsfield CityJazz Festival, Monday Jazz at Mission, and other venues, as well as legacy events that took place at the Apollo, Preservation Hall, and the Montreal International Jazz Festival, among others. There are also a halfdozen facial portraits of long- or recently-deceased jazz legends.

“The Master’s Hands”, painted by Bride in 2009 and signed by Dave Brubeck. is on display and being offered by a private collector, who is donating the proceeds to Berkshires Jazz, Inc. Viewing is free, of course.

Marguerite Bride will be on hand on Friday, May 3, 5-7 pm at the exhibit, which will also be the opening of Pittsfield’s Friday festivities. And don’t forget… commission work is always welcome and any time is a great time to commission a house portrait or favorite scene you would like captured in a watercolor. Paintings (or even a personalized gift certificate, then Bride will work directly with the recipient) make a cherished and personal gift for weddings, retirement, new home, old home, anniversaries…..any occasion is special.

Be in touch directly with the artist and she will answer all your questions. See the “House Portrait” pages on the website….lots of information and details.

ART ON MAIN GALLERY

The Art on Main Gallery, a member gallery of the Guild of Berkshire Artists will present a new exhibit every two weeks throughout the summer and into the fall. Opening receptions for each of the exhibits will be held on the first Saturday of the exhibit. Light refreshments will be served along with an aesthetic journey into the artwork presented by the artists. So come, meet the artists, learn their process and enjoy their creations. The Gallery located at 38 Main Street in West Stockbridge is open Thursday - Sunday from 11 - 4 pm.

Gail Gelburd’s art is a psychological profile of our environment and shows humanity’s relationship with nature. Pat Frik’s path to fiber art evolved from many years as a hand weaver, as evidenced by the emphasis on process and surface texture in her current work. Doane Perry started making photographs as a cultural anthropologist in the southern Peloponnesus Mani region of Greece. Anne Ferril fires her jars in several atmospheric kilns using smoke from hard wood dust, wood fire, soda firing, gas reduction and finally electric oxidation.

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” – Andy Warhol

Marguerite Bride –Home Studio in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Call 413-841-1659; margebride-paintings.com; margebride@aol.com; Facebook: Marguerite Bride Watercolors

These are just a few of the artists who will be sharing their work and process at the gallery this season. Check out our ad in this issue for a listing of all artists exhibiting through July. For more information about these exhibits and more throughout the season go to the Guild’s website at www.berkshireartists.org

FLY ON THE CANVAS ARTISTS

434

THROUGH MAY 12, 2024

ARTWORK BY DOANE PERRY

SIDEMAN, WATERCOLOR

Presented by

THE GUILD OF BERKSHIRE ARTISTS

April 25 - May 5 — “ Abstracting from Nature” Cindy Mathias and Katherine Borkowsky-Byrne

May 9 -19 — “A Family Affair” with artists Jane and Julian Craker

May 23 - June 2— “Interludes” with artists Sue Aiken, Lisa Townson and Natalie Tyler

June 6 - 16 — “Artistic Feast” with Serena Granbery, Gary Schieneman and Doane Perry

June 20 - 30 —“Of Earth and Sky” - Bronze Sculptures and Oil Paintings with Kay Lerner, Pattie Lipman and John Huffaker

July 4 -14 — “Imaginings on Heaven and Earth” with Anne Ferril and Pat Frik

July 18 - 28 — “The Nature of Our Mind” art by Gail Gelburd

Art on Main - Gallery

38 Main Street, West Stockbridge, MA 01266

Gallery Hours: Thursday - Sunday, 11 - 4pm

For more information about the exhibit and current Art on Main Gallery Shows and hours go to our websitewww.berkshireartists.org

Presented by the Guild of Berkshire Artists

Patti Lipman

Katherine Borkowsky-Bryne

Jane Craker

Anne Ferril

Astrology for Creators May 2024

Sudden Growth

Western Tropical Astrology. Time Zone EST/EDT

D. M. MUSGRAVE

Overview of May 2024:

I feel May to be a month to process what went on last month during eclipse season and especially, what occurred on April 20th with Jupiter conjunct Taurus. As I write this on March 29th, 2024, I am wondering if another attack or protest on art occurred around that date and if this will be revisited in May?

One of the key features of May 2024 is Pluto in Aquarius stationing to turn retrograde on May 2nd – 3rd and heading back to Capricorn for September 1st – November 19th, 2024. While Pluto is retrograding in Aquarius from May 2nd – September 1st we will be reviewing a lot of changes that occurred in our life since January 20th, 2024. There will be something transformed in your life since January 20th such as a change of job, relationship, the self, simply the energy around daily activities or something else.

A lot is going on in Taurus this month. On the 7th we have a New Moon in Taurus with its ruler Venus also being present. This combo will bring new energy around the arts, food, security, money, values, possessions, and love. This would be a great energy to use as artists to plant seeds for our creative endeavours. It’s a positive day to start a new creative project.

The other key feature of May is Jupiter and Uranus in Taurus being frequently activated between the 13th –31st. As I have written in previous columns, when Uranus in Taurus has been activated with a harsh aspect it has aligned with attacks on artwork such as soup being thrown on the Mona Lisa. While these aspects don’t involve Malefic planets, I still have some concerns that there may have been a major attack on art around April 20th that may spur a series of copycat activities during the month of May (I hope my concerns will be proved unnecessary). A more positive manifestation would be forward momentum and something visionary in the arts. In general, Uranus brings innovation, shocks, rebellion and forward-thinking. We have witnessed that Uranus in Taurus has brought forth farmer protests, earthquakes, shocking things around art or advancements in food technology. Of these dates, I feel the most important is the 18-19th. On the 18th Venus will conjunct Uranus in Taurus which might bring something surprising around relationships, money, the environment, or the arts. On this same day, the Sun will be conjunct with Jupiter in Taurus adding the power of growth to whatever is occurring. The day after on the 19th Venus will become Conjunct with Jupiter in Taurus which has the potential to be very beneficial. I would advise journaling what comes forward upon each of these dates that Uranus is activated as it will personally relate to a place in your life where you are experiencing forward momentum and evolution. Pay-

ing attention to what happens in the collective may give you clues as to the next visionary moment to align within the arts.

Another key date for this month is the Full Moon in Sagittarius on the 23rd. What is interesting about this Full Moon is that its ruler Jupiter will be in opposition and Conjunct with Venus in Taurus. This likely means that there will be a new beginning or ending around those previously discussed Taurus themes. Venus will also enter Gemini within the same day which might pull the flavour of the Full Moon from Taurus themes of art, food, security, and money into discussions of polarized truths, conversation, learning and the media.

Rising Sign Analysis:

Aries Rising

Journal anything you notice on May 7th, 13th, 16th19th, 23rd, 25th and 31st that deals with themes around your values, possessions, self-worth, how you make money, your mouth or what you put in it. These are the dates that Uranus is showing you visionary changes that are occurring in your life. After the 2nd take note of any reflections you have around transformation, death, obsession, or power struggles having to do with your larger community, friends and networks.

Taurus Rising

This month has the potential to be an intense month for you! Get ready to gain some insights about yourself. You may be noticing a reflective period around the transformation you have been experiencing in your career, public image, or legacy since the beginning of the year. Take notes on May 7th, 13th, 16th - 19th, 23rd, 25th and 31st on any events that deal with themes around your body, self, and identity. These are the dates that Uranus is showing you visionary changes that are occurring in your life.

Gemini Rising

Since the beginning of the year, have you been noticing that you are going through a transformative change around your beliefs, higher learning or considering long-distance travel? You are about to enter a reflective period to review these changes for the next few months. Journal on May 7th, 13th, 16th- 19th, 23rd 25th and 31st about things that come up around your mental health, spirituality, dreams, or something unseen. There is a general theme of spirituality and beliefs this month.

Cancer Rising

This month is going to bring a reflective period on any deep trauma you have been transcending from this year. You may also have been going through a deepening of intuitive senses. You may also be examining changes made to the way you share with others such, as in taxes or intimacy. Journal on May 7th, 13th, 16th - 19th, 23rd, 25th and 31st about things that come up around your friends, networks, or larger community.

Leo Rising

Journal anything you notice on May 7th, 13th, 16th19th, 23rd, 25th and 31st around your career, public image, or legacy. These are the dates that Uranus is showing you visionary changes that are occurring in these areas of your life. After the 2nd take note of any reflections you have around transformation, death, obsession, or power struggles in the area of life having to do with relationships and partnerships.

Virgo Rising

This month will begin a reflective look back at the past 1-4 months with changes to your daily life. These changes could involve power struggles that have transformed you. It could involve any daily life habit like

pets, health, or interactions with coworkers. Journal anything you notice on May 7th, 13th, 16th - 19th, 23rd, 25th and 31st around your beliefs, higher learning or foreign travel.

Libra Rising

Have you experienced a transformation, power struggle or death around romance, creativity, what brings you joy or children in the past 4-5 months? May through September is asking you to reflect deeply, look back at the changes and evaluate. Journal anything you notice on May 7th, 13th, 16th - 19th, 23rd, 25th and 31st that is deeply transformational, brings up trauma, reflects on intimacy or how you share with others (including taxes).

Scorpio Rising

Be prepared to have a lot of movement, insight, and emotions around relationships this month. Journal anything you notice that is surprising or shocking on May 7th, 13th, 16th - 19th, 23rd, 25th and 31st having to do with relationships and partnerships. This is Uranus bringing you into revolutionary energy around your relations. Also start to notice if you are reflecting on the past 4-5 months on your role as a nurturer, your family, home, ancestry, or deep emotions.

Sagittarius Rising

This month is going to be bringing you a lot of insights and surprises around your daily routine, health, work, coworkers, or pets. Journal anything you notice that is surprising or shocking around these themes on May 7th, 13th, 16th - 19th, 23rd, 25th and 31st. Is there something in common happening on these dates? You may also be reflective this month on deep transformations involving the way you communicate and think. This could also involve siblings or neighbours.

Capricorn Rising

You may find yourself being pulled into reflection this month around transformational experiences since the new year that involve money, values, self-worth or possessions. Have you had power struggles or obsessions in these areas? Journal anything you notice that is surprising or shocking on May 7th, 13th, 16th - 19th, 23rd,25th and 31st having to do with creativity, romance, joy, or any children if you have them.

Aquarius Rising

This will be an important month of reflection for you. Since January, Pluto has been influencing your sense of self, the body and overall identity. You might have noticed a new sense of power coming in or transformation. You have been through a “phoenix rising out of the ashes” period and now you are meant to sit back for a few months to reflect on it. You may find your attention also turning towards your family, deep emotions and/or home around May 7th, 13th, 16th - 19th, 23rd, 25th and 31st.

Pisces Rising

The past few months have likely brought transformations having to do with your mental health, spirituality, something unseen or retreats. It is right for you to start reflecting on these changes in May – September. Be aware you will be brought a lot of surprises and insights this month around the way you communicate or think. It may have to do with a sibling and/or neighbour. Pay attention to these themes around May 7th, 13th, 16th- 19th, 23rd, 25th and 31st.

—D.M. Musgrave .... read more....

Protect Art

A List of Astrological Dates for Museums, Art Galleries and Institutions

While attacks and vandalism on art have been common throughout history, there seems to be an escalation in 2022 that has continued into 2024 with a focus on throwing substances, liquid, and food onto artwork as an act of protest for environmental issues and sustainable food. While most actions have been harmless, the most recent protest on the “Portrait of Lord Balfour” by Philip Alexius de László involved cutting and the destruction of an artwork. I should disclaimer here that I am not offering up my virtues and judgements about these actions in this column but, am seeking to provide a list of dates where there is a higher probability of an art attack so, that museums, institutions and galleries can be on the higher alert with their security on these days to protect precious artworks we could all agree would be a tragedy to lose. I also want to remind readers that I don’t see the planetary energy as causing these events but, being an influence that is no different than rainy weather causing a person to use an umbrella. People should be accountable for their actions regardless of whether Uranus had a part in compelling them to do it on a particular date.

As an astrologer and artist, I couldn’t help but notice a pattern around this and have been writing about it off and on in my “Astrology for Creators” column. After analyzing the data, I have come to the determination that these attacks or protests on art occur when Uranus is activated in Taurus. Specifically, there is a higher likelihood when there is a harsher aspect to another planet like a square and if this other planet is a Malefic such as Mars or Saturn. This makes sense as Uranus’ transit in Taurus represents the protestor or rebel (Uranus) concerns for the environment, food, security, art, and beauty (Taurus). When Mars is involved, it will bring up anger, passion, cutting or weapons while Saturn brings in boundary-setting and harsh lessons.

While many protestors were gluing themselves to artworks in early 2022, it wasn’t until the fall that we began to witness rebels throwing substances at artwork which could be considered a more violent act. What occurred astrologically in the fall of 2022 was that Saturn in Aquarius held a square aspect with Uranus in Taurus for several months. I can’t possibly list every artwork and protestor involved but, here are a few highlights:

October 24th, 2022 – “Haystacks” by Claude Monet - Two activists from the German environmental group, Letzte Generation, threw mashed potatoes at Monet’s artwork.

October 27th, 2022 –“Girl With a Pearl Earring” by Johannes Vermeer - Two protestors in “Just Stop Oil” shirts approached Vermeer’s artwork and tried to glue their heads onto the work.

November 4th – 7th, 2022 — “Sower at Sunset” by Van Gogh - Protesters from the action group “Ultima Generazione” glued themselves to a wall after throwing soup on the painting.

November 11th, 2022— “The Scream” by Edvard Munch - Three protestors demonstrated on behalf of the Norwegian activist group “Stopp ol-

jeletinga” (Stop Oil Exploration) started gluing themselves to the wall around Munch’s painting.

November 12th, 2022— “Stumps and Sky” by Emily Carr - Three protestors from an environmentalist group “Stop Fracking Around” threw maple syrup at Carr’s artwork.

November 15th, 2022— Death and Life by Klimt Two activists for Letzte Generation (Last Generation) threw a black liquid at a painting by Klimt When we get to 2023 – 2024, a significant attack on art was when pink paint was thrown at Tom Thompsons’s “Northern River” around August 28th – 29th, 2023 when Uranus went retrograde. The next one was when soup was thrown at the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci around January 27th 2024 when Uranus was stationing to turn direct. The most recent example at the time of writing this article was the spray paint and cutting of the “Portrait of Lord Balfour” on March 8th, 2024, which aligned with Mars in Aquarius squaring Uranus in Taurus. What is unique about this instance is that this painting was cut, and Mars represents the cutting away of something or the use of weapons.

Based on these observations, I want to offer a list of dates that Museums, Galleries, and institutions may want to have more protections and security for precious artworks. These dates will space the period that Uranus is in Taurus however, there are possibilities of this style of protest continuing in the future with certain degrees of Gemini.

High Concern Dates:

July 6th – 24th, 2024

(Mars conjunct Uranus in Taurus)

August 31st, - September 3rd, 2024

(Uranus stations to go Retrograde in Taurus)

January 29th - February 2nd, 2025

(Uranus stations to go Direct in Taurus)

June 2nd – 27th, 2025

(Mars in Leo Square Uranus in Taurus)

September 5th – 7th, 2025

(Uranus stations to go Retrograde)

November 3rd – 5th, 2025

(Mars in Scorpio Opposite Uranus in Taurus)

February 2nd -5th, 2026

(Uranus stations to go direct)

February 19th – March 7th, 2026

(Mars Aquarius in Square Uranus in Taurus)

June 24th –July 13th, 2026

(Mars in Taurus conjunct Uranus in Gemini)

September 10th - 12th, 2026

(Uranus stations to go Retrograde in Gemini)

Moderate Concern Dates:

October 16th – November 3rd, 2024

(Mars in Cancer Sextile Uranus in Taurus)

January 21st – 28th, 2025

(Mars Retrograde in Cancer Sextile Uranus in Taurus)

February 18th - October 11th, 2025

(Saturn in Aries Sextile Uranus in Taurus)

October 27th - November 12th, 2025

(Mars in Scorpio Opposed Uranus in Taurus)

December 16th 2025 – Feb. 28th, 2026

(Saturn in Aries Sextile Uranus in Taurus)

April 3rd, 2026 – April 13th, 2026

(Mars in Aries- sextile Uranus in Taurus)

—D.M. Musgrave

If you would like to offer feedback, please email me at: astro_dee@yahoo.com

Please join the discussion at: www.facebook.com/groups/astrologyforcreators/ D.M. Musgrave is an artist, energy worker and hypnotherapist. www.artisthehealer.com

BERKSHIRE DIGITAL

Since opening in 2005, Berkshire Digital has done Giclée prints/fine art printing and accurate photoreproductions of paintings, illustrations and photographs.

Giclée prints can be made in many different sizes from 5”x7” to 42”x 80” on a variety of archival paper choices. Berkshire Digital was featured in Photo District News magazine in an article about fine art printing. See the entire article on the BerkshireDigital.com website.

Berkshire Digital does accurate photo-reproductions of paintings and illustrations that can be used for Giclée prints, books, magazines, brochures, cards and websites.

“Fred Collins couldn’t have been more professional or more enjoyable to work with. He did a beautiful job in photographing paintings carefully, efficiently, and so accurately. It’s such a great feeling to know I have these beautiful, useful files on hand anytime I need them. I wish I’d called Fred years ago.” ---- Ann Getsinger

We also offer restoration and repair of damaged or faded photographs. A complete overview of services offered, along with pricing, can be seen on the web at BerkshireDigital.com

The owner, Fred Collins, has been a commercial and fine art photographer for over 30 years having had studios in Boston, Stamford and the Berkshires. He offers over 25 years of experience with Photoshop, enabling retouching, restoration and enhancement to prints and digital files. The studio is located in Mt Washington but drop-off and pick-up is available through Frames On Wheels, 84 Railroad Street in Great Barrington, MA (413) 528-0997 and Gilded Moon Framing, 17 John Street in Millerton, NY 518-789-3428. Berkshire Digital413-644-9663, or go online to www.BerkshireDigital.com

The Prodigal Dog

Part 8

The Itinerant Duck

Perhaps you have forgotten all about Otis, the dog belonging to the circus clown, who decided to run away after his traumatic experience in the dog fighting ring. It was not long after Valeria’s prophetic dream that he showed up early one morning to say goodbye. He was extremely troubled in his mind, and for an obvious reason. He loved Valeria very much, as a matter of fact, he loved her more than he realized, and the entire meeting was to say goodbye to her forever.

He had made up his mind to run away, but the prospect of never seeing Valeria again was impossible for him to think about. This conversation between the dog and the girl was conducted exactly in the same way as the conversations with Bruno the Elephant, and Valeria. People who overheard her various conversations with animals thought nothing of it, just like when a child has a long serious conversation with one of their dolls.

Otis, sitting down in front of Valeria said the following. “I have decided to run away forever Valeria, we will never see each other again.” He said this bluntly, and unfeelingly. He had decided the previous day that he would fortify his heart with an affectation of indifference, knowing full well that if he allowed himself to feel anything at all he would lose his resolve.

“You know Otis,” she replied, “I am sometimes clairvoyant, and there are times I can see the future. Would you like me to tell you about your future, so as to get an idea of what is in store for you?”

Then, not waiting for him to reply, she took hold of both his ears in exactly the same way that you would take hold of a very large two handled tea cup, and closing her eyes said the following.

“You are not who you think you are, and I am not who you think me to be. You and I will never part, even if you flee from me, beyond the sea.”

But before I can tell you what other things Valeria said to Otis, I must tell you why that dog and that girl were so profoundly attached to each other, especially when you consider that Otis was not even Valeria’s dog in the first place.

Their relationship began seven years before this particular day we are describing, and they weren't friends to begin with. Actually, when Valeria was five years old, she developed a phobia, a paranoia, specifically, a fear of dogs.

Valeria was not thought to be a precocious child. Actually, she was so precocious that indeed, she often appeared to be obtuse, so absorbed in herself and her own thoughts and perceptions that the adults in her world paid very little attention to her. One day Thomas the bus driver was entertaining a group of carnival workers with an account of ancient history. For some reason Thomas liked to study ancient history and he was narrating to his listeners the story of how Romulus and Remus had founded Rome. It

was the absurdity of the twins being raised by wolves he was expounded on to his bored listeners, and he exclaimed. “How the devil did those children fall into the hands of a bunch of wolves in the first place? What happened, do you suppose? Where they carried off from their cradles one at a time or the two together?” Getting no answer to his question, which was important to him but to no one else, he changed the subject to the Punic Wars. He began to consider the question of Elephants. How could elephants have ever crossed the Alps, he wanted to know, but it was not a question that agitated anyone else in his company.

It is odd how a pointless conversation, and the irrelevant observations of a half educated bus driver, could on the one hand be entirely forgotten two minutes after they were uttered, and on the other hand, overheard by a child, be remembered for a lifetime.

From this conversation Valeria drew one conclusion, children might be abducted by dogs. Otis, who also happened to overhear the conversation, concluded that wolves might abduct a child. Bruno the Elephant, who was also listening, realized that humans have a very limited understanding of the true strength, tenacity and intelligence of elephants, himself in particular.

It was almost immediately after the bus driver's dissertation on the Romans that Valeria developed a terror of dogs, and at the very same time, Otis began to fear that children might be carried off by wolves. He could not imagine in his wildest dreams that any dogs would ever do such a thing, but wolves, they were another matter.

In the shelter of a carnival, a small universe unto itself, Valeria was put out to play in the morning, and usually called in for lunch and dinner. At five years old, she would sometimes show up where the Elephant was being fed, the acrobats practicing, or in the kitchen where dinner was being scraped together. Like a cat that belongs to everyone and throws herself down in front of any passing stranger, Valeria belonged to everyone.

But after the day of Thomas’ history lesson, Valeria would only with great reluctance leave the patch of grass outside her mother’s trailer, and fled inside in silent terror if Otis appeared anywhere in the distance.

Otis did not, at first, understand that it was he himself that was terrifying the child, but employing his doglike reasoning, he assumed there must be some danger lurking in her vicinity. Gradually he developed the habit of taking his occasional naps in the vicinity of the child, but even when he was resting contentedly a great distance away, she would notice him and run inside.

Finally he realized that his very existence was a source of torment and fear to the child. This was a terrible blow to his ego, to his very idea of himself. It was a crisis of the idea of the self, when a being is forced, against their will, to realize that they are not the being they thought themselves to be but some offensive opposite.

At the same time he was feeling rejected by the five year old, he was developing a paternal affection for her. This is how he thought and felt. From a distance he watched as she learned, after many tries, to do a somersault. He watched from behind a tree as the training wheels were removed from her little bike. After seeing these typical things he would later see the image of her in his mind and think ‘She rides a bike now, she does a summersalt now.’ Then the inevitable happened, he assigned to himself the role of her protector. So Valeria acquired a champion, a

knight in shining armor, a being she was terrified of in her innermost being.

So Otis was always somewhere in the distance, but Valeria did not become accustomed to his presence. She always had one eye out for him, and if he even changed his position she would stop what she was doing and go inside. Things might have gone on forever in this way except for an exceptionally intelligent, itinerant Duck who, about that time, began to accompany the carnival in its travels. The Duck just showed up one day, and made the acquaintance of everyone at the carnival. He soon became good friends with Otis, and often took a nap with him in the afternoon. The dog however only pretended to be asleep, he would have one eye half open all the time, and one ear would twitch around this way and that, at the slightest sound.

He was keeping an eye on his charge who would be playing in the yard in front of her trailer. These are the things she would be doing at that time of day. She liked to make houses for ants, four sticks in a square was an ant house. The ants had small cars they liked to drive around in, and a car was made of two twigs side by side, and four pebbles for the wheels. There was a grocery store in the yard that consisted of a half of an egg carton next to an empty cylindrical container of oatmeal. When she was tired of playing with her ant family, she would climb up in the remaining branches of an almost entirely destroyed sumac tree.

So things might have gone on unchanged except for the Duck who began to notice the dog's odd nervous behavior, and being especially observant he soon figured out the entire situation of the dog and the child. He felt it was a difficult problem because Otis, although he would never hurt anyone, was a very frightening dog to begin with. He was not frightening in the way that ugly dogs scare people, on the contrary, he was scary because of his rather beautiful wolflike aspect, and also he was a monochrome dog, specifically he was entirely black. The Duck was aware of a certain rule of dog aesthetics; the rule being that the polychrome dog is always preferred to the monochrome dog. He had been wont to say, “Consider the collie with its beautiful color combinations of white, golden brown and gold. Why even a collie with rabies is considered adorable, not to mention the cocker spaniel, with its dark brown coloring, and the white patches above the eyes. So the most obnoxious Cocker is instantly coddled and adored. But a big monochrome brute is often a terror to behold.”

The duck thought to himself that he might try to explain to the dog Herman Melville's theory of how the white whale was so terrifying because he was pure white, and so, pure white being the most terrifying color…. But he thought better of it, knowing as he did that literary references are usually lost on even the most perceptive of dogs.

The Duck set himself the task of solving the dog's problem. His truly brilliant, almost divine solution we will discuss next month.

—RICHARD BRITELL APRIL, 2024

KAREN J. ANDREWS

Honing her eye as a photographer, Karen Andrews has been developing her skills as a watercolor painter for the last twenty years. Her sense of color and composition as well as emotion and spiritual connection remain constant throughout both mediums.

Karen’s interests span a wide range of subject matter, including landscape, figure & face, dance & movement and the built world. She often uses her own photographs as references and is “here to capture the fleeting beauty of the moment.”

“I feel like life is always speaking to me through the things I see… I want to open people up to their inner vision.”

Inner Vision Studio is also the name of her personal gallery space located next to her home in West Stockbridge/Richmond. She plans to host several OPEN STUDIOS this coming summer and fall, exact dates to be announced.

Karen has also become obsessed with creating beautiful, affordable functional art products out of her watercolors: placemats, charcuterie boards, aprons, scarves, yoga pants and more. Her fine and functional artwork is available online at InnerVision-Studio.com as well as at Inner Vision Studio in West Stockbridge (open by appointment) and local/regional crafts events.

Karen J. Andrews413-212-1394.

karen@innervision-studio.com InnerVision-Studio.com

BRUCE LAIRD

I am an abstract artist whose two- and threedimensional works in mixed media reveal a fascination with geometry, color and juxtapositions. For me it is all about the work which provides surprising results, both playful and thought provoking.

From BCC to UMASS and later to Vermont College to earn my MFA Degree. I have taken many workshops through Art New England, at Bennington College, Hamilton College and an experimental workshop on cyanotypes recently at MCLA. Two international workshops in France and Italy also.

I am pleased to have a studio space with an exciting group of artists at the Clocktower Building in Pittsfield.

Bruce LairdClock Tower Business Center, Studio #307 75 South Church Street, Pittsfield, MA

JOHN LIPKOWITZ

For a quarter of a century, I have considered myself a serious photographer, primarily interested in nature and wildlife. Still, with a broader eye, which results from the travels my wife and I have shared during this period, most of my photography has been travel related and many of our destinations, (some by myself) have concentrated on nature. We have especially sought out the wildlife of Africa and the ice, light and wildlife of the Polar regions.

Traveling to Polar regions, especially the Arctic in summer with 20 to 24 hours of daylight, presents opportunities to maximize one’s day. If a polar bear is sighted at 2 AM it is up, pile the layers on, and go out on deck no matter how cold, to await the long approach of our ship, as the captain seeks to minimize the alarm for the bear.

As sentient beings, each bear has a personality and some exhibit fear as these giant “creatures” (the ship) approach which causes us to break off contact. In contrast, others are curious, and either pay us little attention, or if the bear is one of the rare ones it actually approaches us.

Much further south, southern and eastern Africa offer wildlife and scenery on a much different platter. Although the numbers of many species have plummeted since we were first there in 1997, due to human encroachment causing habitat loss, hunting and poaching, many countries in Africa have well-developed protected lands consisting of national parks, tribal areas, and private concessions, recognizing the educational and economic benefits for their people of preserving as much as possible of what wildlife is left.

“It is important to express oneself...provided the feelings arereal and are taken from your own experience.”

—Berthe Morisot

John Lipkowitz’s photography work, “Bears, Cats, Dunes, Ice and Two Elephants, will be on display at 510 Warren Street Gallery, May 3May 26, 2024. Artist’s Opening Reception is planned for Saturday, May 4, 2 - 6pm.

510 Warren Street Gallery is located at 510 Warren Street in Hudson, NY. Open Fridays and Saturdays 12 - 6pm, and Sundays, 12 - 5pm. JohnLipkowitzPhotography.com JLIPKOWITZ1@aol.com

HILLSDALE FARM AT DUSK WATERCOLOR ON PAPER

FOUND FATHER, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 30" X 40" H

Deborah H Carter Springtail

Upcycled Wearable Art

@deborah_h_carter

Photo by Korenman.com

Model: @brooke.e.roy

Clock Tower Artists

Represented by the WIT Gallery