The Artful Mind October 2023

THE BERKSHIRE’S SOURCE FOR PROMOTING ARTISTS TO THE NEXT LEVEL | IN PRINT & FREE SINCE 1994

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023

GARY CAPOZZIELLO Violinist Photograph by Caroline Kinsolving

Visual Artist LYN HORTON

Lorraine Klagsbrun Collage

See‐Saw, Paper Collage, 8” x 10”

lorraineklagsbrun.com

Mothers, Paper Collage, 10” x 15”

Lklagsbrun@me.com 914‐907‐3113

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 Where ever you go, eyes will be following you and inquiring how do you do that art?

STEPHAN MARC KLEIN Ego Tripping: An Exploration in Self-Portraits INTERVIEW BY H. CANDEE ...10 GARY CAPOZZIELLO VIOLINIST COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY CAROLINE KINSOLVING

...20

GERALD WOLFE SCULPTURES AND PAINTINGS 2016-2023 Still—Full—Ness / TurnPark Art Space

...28

INTERVIEW BY JEANETTE FINTZ

VIRTUAL GALLERY OF ARTISTS ...34 ASTROLOGY FOR CREATIVES With Deanna Musgrave - October 2023 ...45

RICHARD BRITELL | FICTION THE PRODIGAL DOG CHAPTER 1 ...47

Publisher and Graphic Designer Harryet Candee Copy Editor

Marguerite Bride

Third Eye Jeff Bynack Contributing Writers Richard Britell Deanna Musgrave Jeanette Fintz Contributing Photographers Edward Acker Tasja Keetman Bobby Miller

Editorial and Advertising information: 413 - 645 - 4114 artfulmind@yahoo.com issuu.com | Instagram FB Group: ARTFUL MIND GALLERY for artful minds 23

The Artful Mind Mailing address: PO Box 985 Great Barrington, MA 01230 FYI: : ©Copyright laws in effect throughout The Artful Mind for logo & all graphics including text material. Copyright laws for photographers and writers throughout The Artful Mind. Permission to reprint is required in all instances. In any case the issue does not appear on the stands as planned due to unforeseeable circumstances beyond our control, advertisers will be compensated on a one to one basis. All commentaries by writers are not necessarily the opinion of the publisher and take no responsibility for their facts and opinions. All photographs submitted for advertisers are the responsibility for advertiser to grant release permission before running image or photograph.

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 1

Carolyn M. Abrams

“Main Street, USA” OIL / COLD WAX, 11” X 14”

“Natural Elements" ART ON MAIN GALLERY, 38 MAIN STREET, WEST STOCKBRIDGE, MA October 5 - October 16 Thurs-Sun 11-4 with special hours Monday Oct 9 www.carolynabrams.com

GHETTA HIRSCH This painting of the Hoosic River in Williamstown is to be viewed in my Home Studio.Alive, muddy and flowing dangerously, the Hoosic River has been jumping over rocks, pulling at the plants on the banks and changing our perception of flowing waters. We still have heavy rains and, observing that same location, I wonder about potential flooding. The “Gold Window” gives me hope.

30 Church Street, Williamstown, MA Call or text for more information: “Gold Window” 20”X24” oil on Canvas 2023

413. 597. 1716 Website: ghetta-hirsch.squarespace.com

2 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

ELEANOR LORD

Landscape, Pastel

To see more of the Artist’s Landscapes, Still-life, Portraiture and more, please visit—

www.eleanorlord.com

OILS • SCULPTURE • MIXED MEDIA

ANN GETSINGER Leonhardt Galleries • Berkshire Botanical Garden OPEN EVERY DAY THROUGH NOVEMBER 19, 2023

www.anngetsinger.com • www.berkshirebotanical.org THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 3

Ruby Aver

FRONT ST. GALLERY

KATE KNAPP, LANDSCAPE

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!

Small Town Series: Housatonic, The Village Acrylic on canvas, 18” x 20”

Gallery hours: Open by chance and by appointment anytime 413. 274. 6607 (gallery) 413. 429. 7141 (cell) 413. 528. 9546 (home) www.kateknappartist.com

rdaver2@gmail.com Instagram: rdaver2.

Housatonic Studio open by appointment: 413-854-7007

SPIRIT GUIDES Acrylic and mixed media 24” x 24”

DON LONGO www.donlongoart.com Facebook: Don Longo Instagram: don_longo Email: dljoseph55@yahoo.com

4 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

Front Street, Housatonic, MA

FLIGHT OF STEPS Acrylic and mixed media 36” x 36”

“Creating abstract art is so very cathartic to me. It allows me freedom to choose the colors, textures, and design format from my intuition and see what develops. Sometimes it takes days of layering, and other times it comes out in a few hours. The more intricate the layers, the more interesting I find the final composition.”

Little Thieves | Mollie Kellogg THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 5

Future Father

Games in a Box

BRUCE LAIRD Clock Tower Business Center Studio #307 75 South Church Street, Pittsfield, MA 01201 6 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

From the Journal of Carolyn Newberger

“Living in the Berkshires, my summers are filled with music and dance.

Most evenings you can find me in darkened dance and music concert halls with a pen or pencil in my hand and a sketchbook on my lap. When the performance is sublime it flows through me, and almost magically, a drawing dances forth on the page.”

— Carolyn Newberger

CAROLYN NEWBERGER

WWW.CAROLYNNEWBERGER.COM

CNEWBERGER@ME.COM

617. 877. 5672

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 7

Erika Larskaya

Layers #12 Mixed media on canvas 36”x 36”

On view at Alofft Gallery, 41 West st, Litchfield CT

"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

8 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

Richard Nelson

digital art Contact : nojrevned@hotmail.com THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 9

ANOTHER REMBRANDT? Quadryptich four 12 x 12 inch oil on canvas paintings 2006

STEPHAN MARC K L EI N EGO TRIPPING : AN EXPLORATION IN SELF-PORTRAITS 510 WARREN STREET GALLERY / OCTOBER 2023 Interview by Harryet Candee

Photography Courtesy of the Artist

“Ego Tripping is a show about many things: It is about growing old and looking back. It is about anonymity and fame. It is about longing. It is about exploring issues of synchronicity and diachronicity. It is about exploring the dialectic of surface and volume—what is inside. It is a form of autobiography. Most of all, it is a collection of individual works that strive together to address larger questions of identity.”

Harryet Candee: There’s bravery and honesty when we create a self-portrait and let the world see it; you have been creating self-portraits since you were 13. Why the focus on self-portraits? Are you also trying to explain something about people in today’s society?

Stephan Marc Klein: At times, I’ve used myself as subject matter just because I was an available and handy model—sometimes literally so, as I’ve made many drawings over the decades of my hand (and feet). I have included some of these in Ego Tripping, including Twenty-five Hands High, a montage of drawings of my right hand going back to 1959. I have also been attracted to selfportraiture as a way to explore other issues, some that I think are particularly timely today.

We are living in a time of glorification of the self, of self-improvement, self-fulfillment, self-importance, of a cultural and social emphasis on our own uniqueness. Our cellphones and other cameras are designed to take “selfies.” Through social media outlets like Instagram and Facebook, we 10 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

diarize, publicize and share the quotidian events of ourselves. So often when I read interviews with artists, no matter what their medium or genre, the discussion comes around to self-expression and self- exploration. But when we—artist or not— express ourselves, what is the ‘self’ we are expressing? How is it formed, controlled, directed, and contained? My work may not answer the question, “Who am I?” but it explores diverse ways to ask. Ego Tripping, a show devoted entirely to self-portraits, both responds to and critiques the self-involved zeitgeist of our times.

“The Great Monumental Sculpture Exhibition.”

It is cleverly designed as a self-portrait experience with many layers and ideas contained within. Please tell us about this piece; I am sure there are things about it we will only know if you tell us.

I have been fascinated with models and smallscale worlds since childhood. I was born in 1938.

I spent most of my childhood without a television

and before the age of personal computing. My childhood was filled with building models and creating all kinds of structures—houses, cities, ships, etc. out of building-blocks. I have carried that interest in making models and creating miniature worlds with me through life.

Some years ago I discovered a store, DOPL, in Soho in Manhattan where you could get three dimensional models made of yourself—in different sizes. Monumental! The Greatest Collection of Really Famous and Very Large Sculptures Ever Assembled! uses two of these figures. Klein is one of the allegedly “really famous” and “very large” sculptures assembled by the Universal Museum of Western Art for its supposedly “blockbuster” exhibition. The other miniature ‘me’ is the one person among the visitors who has any interest in looking at the sculpture of Klein. In this sense the piece is a double self-portrait. It contains both the “largest” and “smallest” self-portrait in the show.

This is, of course, all tongue-in-cheek, but it plays with the question of what we privilege or valorize

MONUMENTAL! THE GREATEST COLLECTION OF VERY FAMOUS AND REALLY LARGE SCULPTURES EVER ASSEMBLED! Mixed media model 12 x 24 x 12 inches 2003

in the cultural realm.

I’ve also tried in this piece to play with both scale changes, and humor. It operates as a kind of theatrical performance. By inviting viewers to Ego Tripping to suspend disbelief and view the exhibition through the eyes of the scale-figures in the model, the viewers begin to see the sculptures which are only about 6 inches high as monumental. Also, by necessity but also by design, there are strange discordances of scale. Michaelangelo’s David is about the right size in relationship to the visitor figures but other sculptures such as Rodin’s Thinker and The Venus de Milo are far larger in relation to the visitors than they should be.

There are some strange or perhaps not so strange manifestations of visitor behavior going on amongst the crowds at the exhibition. The seminaked female The Venus de Milo seems to have attracted mostly men; conversely the naked David has attracted only women. Has the show attracted visitors for art, or for prurience, or just because these are famous works of art that our culture instructs them to admire? The introductory paragraph printed on the entrance wall states that all photography is allowed except “selfies.” Yet there is a woman clearly disobeying this rule. And what part of David behind her is she including in her

“selfie?” Children have no interest in the exhibition. On the line waiting to get in, a child wants to leave and tugs at her mother. Inside, children are running around showing no interest in the sculptures.

Part of this work includes a photograph of the “enormous” crowds at the exhibition on Opening Day. People are holding their cellphones high to take pictures of the assembled monumental works. But what are they focused on photographing?

Along with mixed media art, you’re presenting Another Rembrandt?, a Quadryptich oil on canvas, made up of four 12-inch squares. How challenging was this project for you?

To begin with, it is important to note that I morphed myself into four actual portraits that these artists had painted: they are not generic. I think that a lot of art is produced to a large extent intuitively. It is only justified, rationalized or explained post-hoc, after the fact, if at all. I began these paintings in a similar fashion—it seemed like fun, and it was, as well as challenging. If I had an inspiration for this project it was probably my interest in the photographs of Cindy Sherman.

To create the paintings, I had the canvas in front

of me, leaning on an easel, and a print of the original portrait taped to the easel next to the canvas.

Next to the easel I kept a full-length mirror. In visually darting back and forth between my own reflection and the picture of the original painting, I began to feel as if I was painting with an independent vision in each eye, the morphing taking place in my mind’s-eye. As I worked on a portrait I also began to feel that I was stepping into the shoes of the artists, imagining that I was feeling what they were feeling as they painted. I had previously thought of Van Gogh as a painter who painted quickly and emotionally; I never realized before I morphed myself into Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear how meticulous and careful he was and that he too had taped up a print for inspiration.

In his case it was a Japanese woodblock print. If you look carefully at another piece in Ego Tripping, at the work entitled Triple Double Self-Portrait with Norman Rockwell, Rockwell has also pinned up four ‘famous’ self-portraits for inspiration. In the original Rockwell painting, these images are well-known works of art; in my version they are ‘prints’ of the four paintings comprising the quadryptich Another Rembrandt?

Although Another Rembrandt? is another attempt Continued on next page...

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 11

STEPHAN MARC KLEIN

Stephan in photo from 1971 demonstrating Sideburn Balance; With Luis Camnitzer. Sideburn Balancer NY Times Ad 11-01-70

Stephan stands along side of Inner Me II

at injecting humor into the plastic arts, it does have a serious side that I hope raises questions about conferring value on artistic work based on fame. At the same time it tries to remind us that the sense of individuality and self-identities that we so prize are to a large extent composites of the exposures and influences that we’ve had. We make art on the shoulders of those who’ve come before us. Our “innovations” are bounded by what we’ve been taught and internalized. We create our identities and they are created for us.

The Perfect Etching 1971; With Luis Camnitzer.

The Perfect Etching NY Times Ad 1-23-71

12 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

Stephan, can you describe other examples of the use of humor in your work and also how your work has resonated with societal issues?

(Please tell us about the Perfect Etching story and the face mask made to shave sideburns evenly.)

Using humor in art goes back to a project I did in the late 1960s and early 1970s with a colleague and friend, artist Luis Camnitzer. This was an art project that used commerce as a kind of ‘canvas’ and played with issues of commercial-popular culture and the language of advertising. In those days the back page of the “Sunday Sports Section” of the New York Times each week was given over to a kind of classified section of small, oftenillustrated advertisements for all kinds of strange

products—from nautical rope, miscellaneous hardware, to cheap supposedly original oil paintings. Luis and I formed a fake company with the name CLIP, an acronym that stood for “Controlled Life in Packages.” The company’s motto on all our stationery was “We take the randomness out of life!” We invented a series of products whose purpose was to bring order and rationality to some otherwise chaotic or irrational life activity. One of these products, for example, was the “Sideburn Balancer.” A plastic device men could wear that would enable them to keep the bottoms of their sideburns even when they shaved each morning.

It consisted of a plastic strip worn around the jaws and cheeks and tied at the top of the head. The strip had holes in it. A pop-out arrow at the bottom enabled the shaver, by looking in the mirror, to center the piece on his head. The shaver could then dab a bit of shaving cream on the same numbered hole on each side. When the device was removed, the dabs of shaving cream showed the shaver where to start applying the shaving cream and where to start shaving down from his sideburns.

Another product was The Perfect Etching. We created a simple etching, an intaglio-raised oneinch-wide square on a 3 ½ x 4-inch piece of coldpress watercolor paper. We, the Board of CLIP,

INNER ME I Mixed media prints of CT Scans, MRIs, & Xrays 20 x 16 inches 2023 INNER ME 2, DetailI

declared this to be “the perfect etching” and sent it off with an official company letter to such institutions as the National Bureau of Standards, asking that it be included alongside the perfect foot, the perfect pound, etc. Of course, we never received any reply, but when we advertised the product, we included “as sent to the National Bureau of Standards, etc.” We also, with the fanfare of official company letters signed by CLIP Company President and CEO, donated copies to some major museums here and abroad. With museums we had better results in terms of response. The Museum of Modern Art in NYC, The Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art all sent us letters officially accepting The Perfect Etching into their permanent collections, where it remains to this day.

Inner Me II, mixed media, looms over me, all 78 inches of this structure! All parts of your body have been x-rayed or scanned, but two.

Why is that? Is there an Inner Me I? Inner Me II is in part about the play between surface and volume. I have long been interested in the visual amnesia we all practice when looking at any object, art or not. What, if anything, do we assume the volume beneath the surface is made of? When we see a stone figurative sculpture do

we assume that the figure has a skeleton, organs, or is just solid stone? If the sculpture is large enough, for example The Statue of Liberty, we can literally go inside and we find a “forest” of structure, an exciting inner world. Inner Me II exploits the double-sense of the meaning of the inner person. It is entirely composed of x-rays, CT scans and MRIs taken of my body over the years.

As such it is also a record of growing old, of the intrusions our bodies are subjected to through the world of modern medicine, both diagnostic and surgical, as we age.

To produce Inner Me I have spent many hours at the computer reviewing 1000s of images of my insides. It has indeed been a strange, fascinating and often disturbing experience. I have lived with this body for over 84 years but until I began Inner Me I did not think much about what I have carried along inside me for all this time. Poring through the images I felt the excitement of an explorer, a kind of metaphoric journey to the center of the earth.

Inner Me II clearly shows the parts of me, right shoulder, left knee for example, that are prosthetic. It is as such a record of parts wearing out, of aging. It also shows the few parts of me, my left toes, my right forearm, a patch of skin on my left forearm and right lower leg, that have so far

escaped being scanned.

There is, in fact, an Inner Me I, in the show. It is smaller, two-dimensional, and is a view in profile, allowing me to show my inner self from a different perspective, including my jaw and teeth and nasal cavity. I created Inner Me I as a kind of study model for Inner Me II. When you get an MRI or CT scan the machine produces 100s of images, visual cuts as if through a meat slicer. These slices usually include three points of view, frontal, profile and horizontal. I have a plan for perhaps a future Inner Me III that would consist of horizontal layers.

You practiced architecture as an adult and loved model-making since childhood; I wonder if any of these two focuses resurfaced and overlapped into any of your fine art, and if so, in what ways?

As I have mentioned, I have since childhood always loved making models. I have a deep appreciation for craft in model-making (as in other aspects of art-making). When I visit MOMA in NYC I often stop by their architectural model sections. Those models credit the architects in whose offices the models were made. When I see these highly skilled creations I always think that the Continued on next page...

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 13

STEPHAN MARC KLEIN

Stephan Marc Klein, THREE GENERATIONS Giclée print 16 x 20 inches 2023

model-makers themselves should have received recognition, too. When I was in architectural school as an undergraduate and then later in architectural practice I often turned to models, to study and create designs and for presentation purposes. It’s extraordinary how a three-dimensional model can help me visualize and even transform my conception of a project. I have enjoyed reprising some of the model skills I acquired and honed in my architectural practice in making the two models included in Ego Tripping. I am looking forward to using models in future art projects.

Three Generations is a series of 16” x 20” pencil drawings. In the middle, it depicts three men: Solomon, Kalman, and you. A sense of time, age, and remembrance is captured along with something unique in all three men. What drew you to these portraits?

This print that is in the show is a composite of three separate pencil drawings done at different times. The self-portrait sketch and that of my father were drawn from life. My father was quite old, in his early 90s when I drew him. He had had a stroke and when I visited him, usually twice a week, we mostly watched television together. I sketched him as he watched the screen. My grandfather died in 1965 and I didn’t really know him because he mostly spoke Yiddish, which I never learned. My grandfather was born in 1869 in Bolechow, a small town in Eastern Galicia, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1892 and spent the rest of his life in the New York City area. After my father 14 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

died I became very interested in my family history, even making a trip with my wife to visit Bolechow. I have spent a lot of time thinking about my grandfather whom I always knew as a little old-man in a rocking chair speaking Yiddish to my father while I played on the floor. I have thought of what courage it must have taken for him to have left everything and everyone he knew behind and travel almost penniless, first across Europe and then across the Atlantic. I did that drawing, from memory with glances at some old photographs, as an act of honoring the grandfather that I never got to really know.

By combining the three drawings I have hoped to introduce the notion of time into the work. The three drawings could all have been done at the same time. Yet something else is at work here. Do we read this across three generations, three overlapping life spans? What is the thread that knits the images together? Do we search for the visual evidence of the commonality of DNA? Is it found in the commonality of technique, of media, of scale?

Which of the works in the show examines the most synchronicity and diachronicity? Can you explain, please?

The terms synchronic and diachronic come from linguistics, first used by Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, in the early 20th Century to describe ways of studying language. The synchronic looks at language in the present and the diachronic looks at the development and history of language. These terms have also been applied to describe the arts,

performative and plastic. I think that most examples of western plastic arts throughout history (some cubist and futurist work notwithstanding) is synchronic, a snapshot capturing an instant in time. Although of course, time is encoded, the time of making it, in a work of art, the conceptual frame is synchrony. I have long had an interest, both in my life choices and in creating art, in doing what sociologist Erving Goffman in his book, Frame Analysis, called “breaking frame,” of operating in the borderlands of commonly defined territories. In this spirit I have had a long interest in exploring the notion of time passing, bringing the diachronic into works of art. I think of it in the Goffman sense as “breaking frames.”

I have thought of Ego Tripping not only as a show of individual works but as a work or meta-work, itself a form of autobiography. I hope that in visiting the show that the viewer can feel that passage of time, of a life-time. I have also tried to play with time passing in individual works: FiftyThree Years superimposes images of me from 1970 and from the present. Inner Me I and II describe chronically with dates, the history of intrusions, diagnostic and surgical, into my body.

Do any one of your art pieces better explains the show’s title: Ego Tripping. How did you come up with the title?

I don’t think there is any one piece that by itself exemplifies the show’s title. The intention with the title is that the entire show, all the works with the same theme of self-portrait in one form or another, is an ego-trip. Creating this show of self-

works, as I discussed earlier, is a product of and a reaction to our self-involved and self-indulgent times; calling it an “ego trip” implies a critique of the present zeitgeist. There is also a double-entendre embedded in the title. “Ego-trip” is a common expression, often used pejoratively as a criticism, but the word “trip” can be read in more than one way: as a voyage of exploration, and also as a failed attempt, as in tripping over oneself. Ego Tripping is an exploration. Is it also a stumbling?

Does anyone help you generate your ideas?

You have so many clever ones, all coming from you? Who can you give an award to for the best supportive person in your life who might be there to whisper a few hints on a future art project idea?

While I don’t turn to another person or source for ideas, I am, like all people, a product of a lifetime of diverse inputs—from people, books, events, etc. I have tried to show in Ego Tripping that the sense of self and of individuality that each of us prizes so dearly is the result of a multitude of influences. We are our histories and our cultures. I have, by inserting myself into other artists’ works, into other artists’ own images of themselves, and into monumental sculpture shows, tried to undermine a bit the idea of the sacredness of the self. I have also tried to play with the notion of insertion.

Self-insertion, the artist inserting her or himself into a work that ostensibly is about something other than self-portrait, has a long and somewhat subterranean history in art going back at least to the Renaissance. Artists such as Caravaggio and Botticelli frequently and furtively, in costume, inserted themselves into their paintings. Insertion has also played a role in literature with the author appearing in the book either in person or in disguise. Somerset Maugham and Kurt Vonnegut and others have inserted themselves into their novels, and, of course, Hitchcock into his films.

It’s a kind of signature, but also an insistence on the presence of the creator in the work. The work is independent of but not independent of the artist.

There is one person who is indispensable in my life and in my work, and that is my wife, Anna Oliver. Anna is an artist and writer. Our relationship is one of love but also of collegiality. There isn’t a single work in the show or in any other show in which I’ve participated that has not been discussed at length with her, influenced by her.

She critiques my work and I critique hers, to our mutual benefit. She is always the first audience for all my ideas, all my projects.

You founded a graduate museum exhibition design program at Pratt Institute. When was this? Your students were fortunate to have you as an instructor since you probably had a clever way of broadening their imagination, giving them food for thought that helped create ideas outside the box. What were one or two of the lessons you taught, and can anyone at any time learn from them?

I created the Exhibition Design Intensive, (known by its initials as the EDI) in the Graduate Interior

Stephan Marc Klein, FIFTY-THREE YEARS 1970-2023 Mixed media Vacuum formed plastic life-mask & inkjet print of photograph 20 x 16 inches 2023

Design Department at Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, in 1997 where I had been teaching since 1967.

The EDI was conceived as an alternative program that students could opt to take in lieu of doing a normal interior design thesis. I have had an interest in interpretive museums going back to my childhood when my parents would take me on weekends to visit the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. When I was about ten my parents started taking us on vacations to Tucson, Arizona. We stopped off for a few days in Chicago and they took me and my brother to the Museum of Science and Industry there and I fell in love. I was smitten with that museum and museums in general. In succeeding years on trips out west we stopped in Chicago again and I was able to again visit that museum. It was the beginning of a love that has lasted a lifetime. When it came time to select a topic for my thesis design project in the Architecture School at Cornell, I chose to

do a museum of science and industry for San Francisco. The EDI was a project I had been wanting to do for many years. I had a sabbatical year off in 1997 and used it in part to create the program.

With the EDI I was interested in interpretive museums. That is, history museums, science museums, etc. Not art museums, although we did cover these as well. I was and still am interested in museums and narrative, museums and epistemology, how museums tell ‘stories,’ create ‘truths’ through claims to authority regarding knowledge. As an architect and professor of interior design I was particularly interested in the relationship that design has to these narratives. I used to describe interpretive museum exhibitions to my students using the metaphor of a theater.

Museum exhibitions are like theatrical plays.

Continued on next page...

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 15

STEPHAN MARC KLEIN

Stephan Marc Klein TRIPLEDOUBLE SELF-PORTRAIT WITH NORMAN ROCKWELL Mixed media model 12 x 12 x 12 inches 2003

Stephan Marc Klein, Weeping Series: A STATUE OF LIBERTY, RAISING THE CROSS

However, in a play the audience sits stationary and the play comes to it via the stage while in a museum exhibition, the ‘play’ remains stationary and the audience—the visitors—move through the ‘play.’ Another thing I like about designing museum-based exhibitions is that the process employs multi-media and multi-skills. You need to think outside the box of your prior professional thinking. You need to “break frame.”

When I taught the EDI I never harbored the illusion that most of my students would go on to work in the field of museum-based exhibition design, although a few of them did. I think I was successful, however, in teaching them the potential for design to tell ‘stories’ that could sway hearts and minds, as well as to affect how we think and act. My graduate education for a Ph.D in Environmental Psychology, a field that studies the interactive effects of environment and people, had focused me in this direction.

You asked for a lesson I taught that would be of value for anyone at any time. One comes to mind that I call “Klein’s crossword puzzle theory of creativity.” I have long been a crossword puzzle add16 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

ict. I discovered many years ago that when I was stumped by a puzzle I would put it down and forget about it for a while, and then, when I picked the puzzle up again, I would just tear right through it. I realized that even though I had stopped consciously thinking about it, even gone to sleep for the night, that my subconscious was still actively attacking the problem. So, I would tell students that when they reached a point with a design problem where they could not make progress and were just staring at their tracing paper or model, to stop work, do something else, go to a movie, read a book, watch TV, go to sleep. And not to worry, their brains would keep on finding solutions to the problem. Students were often shocked by this advice because they were so used to teachers throughout their educations mostly chiding them for not working hard enough.

Getting back to Ego Tripping, creating Monumental! has given me the opportunity to again indulge my love of museums and exhibition creation. I have ideas for future art projects that incorporate museums.

You have had a few shows already at 510 Warren Street Gallery. What makes this show different from any of the others you have had?

Can you tell us about last year’s exhibit and the Weeping Series exhibit? What is the connecting thread we can see throughout your artwork?

It is important to understand that we are a cooperative gallery of artist/owners. Each month we rotate to hang our work at a different wall spot in the gallery and periodically each member is featured in the largest space at the front of the gallery, facing the street. I decided over a year ago to devote my featured artist show to exploring self-portraits. I don’t know why or how I got this idea—as I mentioned, I think a lot of art springs from intuition. Also as mentioned, I have been creating self-portraits on and off since I was 13, a long time ago. I have at times drawn traditional selfportraits but also used the genre to explore various aesthetic issues. For example, one of the works in Ego Tripping is entitled Me in Boxes. I created this work in 1970 by making a life-mask of my face and then getting about 50 masks made in vacuum-

Stephan Marc Klein ME IN BOXES Vacuum formed plastic life-masks in painted wood boxes 46 ½ inches high 1970 (Right: Detail of Me In Boxes)

formed plastic both in white and clear. The masks went into wooden boxes that were modular. They could be stacked in all kinds of configurations to create different overall shapes by the user who engaged with the work. I have had a long-standing interest in user participation in the design process, or democratizing design as it also called. In our professionalized society we are taught that doing design or making art is only for trained professionals. I think that user-participation attacks this notion. I was for many years a co-chair of the Participation Network at the Environmental Design Research Association. We were dedicated to exploring design as a partnership where the user’s creativity is a critical component, where the professional/non-professional division was broken down. User-participation is about “breaking frames.” When I created Me in Boxes I was exploring the idea of user participation in the art object. Me in Boxes had no fixed form. Its form was to be the creation of the user, fluid, unfixed, changeable.

I do think that Ego Tripping is different from other work I’ve displayed at 510 Warren Street Gallery,

although I have tried to play with underlying intellectual concepts in all my work. I also hope that my sheer joy in creating comes through in all my work. One show I produced right after the Capitol riot on January 6th, 2021, has some similarities to Ego-Tripping in that it is also more narrative-focused than my normal monthly showings. I called it The Weeping Series.

On that horrendous day, watching the news coverage of the rioters storming the Capitol, I became fascinated by the signs of identification that they carried with them: the flags, lettering on T shirts, costumes, body art. I was struck by the stark hypocrisy of their appropriation of both secular and religious symbols and identifications. The originating idea for Weeping Series began with what I perceived as the dissonance between the symbols they carried with them, both patriotic and religious, and the havoc they were wreaking. I created a series of 16 works made up of somewhat abstracted photos of the rioters, each framed either by an image of a weeping Statue of Liberty for the images of the perversion of symbols of American patriotism, or by an image of a weeping sculpture

of Christ for the images of what I perceived was the perversion of Christian religious symbols and the real teachings of Christ.

I think that the idea for creating Ego Tripping, a show of self-portraits going back to my childhood, has also grown out closing in on my 85th birthday. Of late I find myself becoming more conscious of my mortality, of being in the phase of the endgame of life. Ego Tripping is both a looking-back, and a looking-forward.

Stephan, what are the October show dates and details, please?

Ego Tripping: An Exploration in Self-Portraits will be at the 510 Warren Street Gallery, 510 Warren Street, Hudson, NY. The Show will run from October 6—October 29, 2023. There will be an artist’s reception on Saturday, October 14th from 2 PM to 5 PM. The Gallery hours are Fridays and Saturdays 12-6 PM, Sundays 12-5 PM. Thank you, Stephan!

u THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 17

DON’T WAKE ME UP DADDY

BALANCING ACT, OIL ON CANVAS 2021, 20”X20”

I try to keep a balance between my Realist pieces and my abstract work. I will frequently do two or three “ serious” drawings, usually portraits of people who interest me, or dogs or automobiles, and then follow them up with a couple of abstract pieces. Like having a beer after work.

The focus and concentration of drawing a realistic piece followed by undisciplined, anything goes abstract piece is very satisfying to me. And it seems that the freedom of that abstract work carries over, a bit , into the realistic stuff, giving it a looser , more casual feel. Likewise, the realistic stuff helps to create a somewhat less random and a bit more focused abstract. I will at times do a little purging and draw something in great detail which touches upon something more personal and at times kind of scary, which is very cathartic, but then obscure it by exaggerating lines and shapes until the original drawing is completely obfuscated and a different , abstract image replaces it.

Better than therapy, I gotta tell you.

Now it is time for me to show my work. I hope you enjoy it.

Richard Nelson nojrevned@hotmail.com

I painted this farmhouse in 2021 and I returned to visit it this year. This place is in Jackson, New York, close to the Battenkill River, surrounded by luscious foliage and facing a corn field that seems to expand forever between the house and the mountains. Nature is changing its colors already, but I like to remember it like this, with its gentle greens, its cut grass and its twin trees welcoming visitors.

I am happy to tell you that “Balancing Act” was accepted in a Juried Exhibit in Spencertown, New York. And you can see it at Spencertown Academy Arts Center during the month of October. The gallery is located at 790 Route 203.

Phone 518-392-3693 for more information or directions.

I am also excited to tell you that the class of Seniors I teach in Williamstown will be having a show of their work, Saturday, October 14 from 11 to 4pm. The Williamstown Council on Aging is a Social Services Organization in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It is located at 118 Church Street.

The show will take place during Artweek Berkshires, an annual celebration of local creativity, when many art events will take place October 14 - 22. Berkshires artists are invited to exhibit or demonstrate their work in different venues. Please follow Artweek Berkshires 2023 events in The Berkshires Eagle and at https://berkshires.org.

You will be impressed with the spontaneous art created by our Seniors.

One of my paintings was chosen to be exhibited as a banner in the streets of Williamstown during Artweek Berkshires and Fall 2023. Look for it if you come to Williamstown or call to visit my home studio. Plenty to see as I paint every day.

Ghetta Hirsch - ghetta-hirsch.squarespace.com; 413-597-1716.

GHETTA HIRSCH

RICHARD NELSON

MY NEW HAT SERIES #10 ACRYLIC, 42” X 34”

MARY DAVIDSON Mary Davidson has been painting regularly for the last 16 years. Davidson’s paintings are a twodimensional decorative visualization of line, color, design, shape, patterns, and stamping. As you begin to study the paintings, you will find that the foreground and background tend to merge with overlaid patterns. “I love the intense complexity and ambiguity of space and dimension.”.

The effect can be startling: the longer you look at the piece, the more you see.

Davidson’s New Hat series consists of 70 paintings. “I start with a basic drawing, building with color and shape, coming to life with gesture and flow. As the title suggests, the hats are important, and the millinery designs emerge. There is much joy in their creation, and my passion for playful designs is reinforced by their bright colors, linear rhythms, and patterns leading our eyes around and through the painting. My newest series is even more abstract, with an even stronger emphasis on design. I do like to use stamping, along with painting, because I love the result.

When I finish with a painting, I adhere the canvas with mat gel to gator board, creating a nice tight surface. My paintings are always framed.”

Mary Davidson will be in the Spencertown Juried Regional Show for the month of October.

Mary Davidson 413-528-6945 / 413-717-2332, PO Box 697, South Egremont, MA mdavidsongio@aol.com marydavidson83155@gmail.com www.davidsondesigncompany.net

ARTFULMIND@YAHOO.COM Join us ... Promote your artistic side 413. 645. 4114 18 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

RAVEN, WATERCOLOR ON COLD PRESS PAPER, 8”X10”

PIANIST: ADAM GOLKA

SALLY TISKA RICE

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC

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.

- Sally’s work is on the gallery walls of the Clock Tower, Open Monday-Friday 9:005:00pmfor self-guided tours. 75 South Church Street, 3rd floor, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

- Soma’s Aroma’s, 81 East Street, Pittsfield.

Thurs and Fri 3-8pm, Sat and Sun 10am-6pm, Closed MTW. - Open Studio Friday, October 6 / November 3, 5pm-8pm and Saturday, October 7, 11am4pm or call to set up a studio appointment at the Clocktower Business Center, 75 South Church St., third floor, studio #302, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 413–446– 8469.

- Art Week Gala at The Clock Tower with music from Soultet, cash bar, and nosh. Buy tickets visit Autumn Art & Music Fest at The Clock Tower Tickets, Fri, Oct 20, 2023 at 6:00 PM | Eventbrite.

Sally Tiska Rice https://sallytiskarice.com

VIRTUE AND VIRTUOSITY CEWM presents “Virtue and Virtuosity” on Sunday, November 5, 4 pm at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center.

The words are intricately related but diverge.

Virtuosity: music that glorifies the possibilities of the instrument and the prowess of the performer—that titillates and stuns the audience in the Romantic tradition of Paganini. It’s the violinist tight-rope walking on the strings, performing impossible feats, stretching the capabilities of the instrument, creating pacts with the Devil. Sarasate and Saint Saëns will dazzle (his gorgeous Rondo Capriccioso, a minefield for the violinist, will be performed on the cello, exponentially more challenging!). And introducing Russian/Ukrainian composer Nikolai Kapustin, whose Preludes offer a “Red and Hot” fusion of jazz and classical forms. Pyrotechnics and acrobatics?

Mastery of content and form? Craft plus magic as the ideal… According to Rodin, the greatest virtuosity is when you don’t notice it. The program touches on some of the most fundamental questions about the nature of art and culminates with the emotionally compelling and ineffably beautiful Brahms Piano Trio Op. 8.

Adam Golka, piano; Giora Schmidt, violin; Yehuda Hanani, cello; Philip Thompson, cello CEWM stands at the intersection of music, art, and the vast richness of various cultural traditions. Entertaining, erudite, lively commentary puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich and enlighten your concert experience.

Tickets, $52 (Orchestra and Mezzanine), $28 (Balcony) and $15 for students, are available through the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center or by calling 413-528-0100. Subscriptions are $250 ($225 for seniors) for the series of 7 concerts (a 35% savings!). Season subscriptions are available online.

Close Encounters With Music - cewm.org, cewmusic@aol.com; Facebook: @closeencounterswithmusic, Instagram: @closeencounterswithmusic.

CLASSIC FLORA, WILDFLOWER ENGAGEMENT RING

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.

This Autumn the TWM atelier doors will open to the public! 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

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 19

Photograph: Caroline Kinsolving

GARY CAPOZZIELLO VIOLINIST Interview by Harryet Candee

Photography Courtesy of Artist

“Truth. Trust. Service.” I’ll start by borrowing from one of the greatest string players in the world; YoYo Ma. In this motto, he sums up an artist’s highest purpose, and I try to stretch myself towards these ideals. He’s more than just a musician, he’s a humanitarian, which inspires me. My purpose, every day, is to seek this as both a performing musician, and as a private teacher.

Harryet Candee: Gary, I want to know more about the violin in your life and the relationship you have with this instrument.

Gary Capozziello: I started when I was 8 years old. I was a troublemaker in school and I didn’t come from an artistic family, but my teachers noted my mind for music and my good ear.

The cello teacher, Cheryl Labrecque, knew I couldn’t afford lessons but believed in me and so - even during a teacher’s strike - she met me before school to give me private lessons every week.

My relationship with the violin has always been about curiosity and I have always needed to seek the answers on my own. When I was small, I used to take violin method books home from school and simply teach myself the exercises or pieces in them. I had no technique, just curiosity, and a natural facility. I remember teaching myself Vivaldi’s Concerto in A minor - an intermediate piece - when I was a beginner. I just HAD to know how to do it! I remember the teachers organizing for me to perform it by memory at a gym assembly 20 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

only a year after I started to play the violin. I was in fifth grade. Later on, this performance would inspire my fifth-grade gym teacher, Joy Snyder, to learn and continue to play the violin into her retirement. We still talk and she plays to this day and that’s so moving to me.

In sixth grade, I was a member of the Townwide Orchestra. I played in the second violin section, but was bored and itching to play in the first violin section. The conductor, Debbie Graser, gave me a challenge and said that if I could prove to her that I could learn the part, she would bump me up, despite being too young for it. I met her challenge and she became my mentor ever since. She was a musical portal through which I did everything: regional competitions, Allstate competitions, youth orchestras, etc. Debbie introduced me to all of my future teachers, and programs, and helped me find instruments. She also became close with my mother.

My large working-class family was surprised and quite amazed as they watched me go through

SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music for my Bachelor’s and New England Conservatory for my master's degree. I was awarded a full scholarship to the Hartt School’s Doctoral Program and their 2020 Chamber Music program when my father died suddenly and my mother became terminally ill. During one of the last conversations I had with her, she made me promise that no matter what happened, I would fulfill my doctoral studies and pursue my musical path. I kept my promise to her.

How would you describe pre-concert time for you? What's it like behind the scenes that the audience does not see?

Focusing on being of service to others is the best way I can take the focus off of myself and any performance nerves that I feel. Sharing music is like sharing a gift with others. It comes down to those three words again: truth, trust, and service.

As musicians, we are transmitting a gift between us and the audience, but on stage, we are giving

The Hotchkiss School Photograph: David Palmieri

and receiving between each other. To help this I have cultivated ways for myself to open my heart and my mind. So over the last fifteen years - ever since I studied the Alexander Technique - I’ve developed exercises that I still use to create my sense of ‘openness.’ I also teach this to my students. Practicing different forms of meditation also helps me which is to get me out of a “practicing mind” - or an analytical mind - and into a “performance mode,” - which, to me, is about intuition, creativity, and selflessness. The goal is openness.

And always tea! I love tea.

And just before a concert, after saying hello to my fellow players, I check difficult spots in the music, make sure all the page turns are good to go, put rosin on my bow, and make sure my fly isn’t down!

When you study up on the composer whose music you will be playing, what do you look for that is most relevant?

I become more excited about music when I understand its place in musical history and its construction. I don’t know why, but I get chills when I hear sounds that I know Beethoven was creating for the first time, or a new formal technique that a composer is building off of something that Bach

was doing 200 years earlier. I also always find the composer’s life stories to be deeply intriguing.

They are usually tragic and I feel great compassion and empathy for them. I’m always curious to know what they were going through when they were writing a specific piece of music: Beethoven’s constant life trials - his deafness being the most well-known, Mozart’s early rise to fame as a wunderkind, Bach’s children’s deaths, Tchaikovsky’ homosexuality, and the list goes on.

What musicians are you now discovering to be cutting-edge because they are turning familiar music into a new sound? You may have or have not worked directly with them but have been inspired by their thinking.

Katie Lansdale, my professor at Hartt, another cherished mentor, and now a teaching colleague is one of my main resources of new music and original sound. She is always challenging herself by playing new or unknown works and I am always so inspired by her curiosity and talent.

As a proud member of the Hartford Symphony, I’m lucky to be exposed to new composers through their composer-in-residence program.

Most recently, we played several of Quinn Mason‘s new compositions.

I’m passionate about championing new com-

posers and am always open to new sounds. So many classical musicians are making what we do more relevant and accessible. With the advent of social media, countless musicians are using this tool to create their paths, while also reaching a broader audience. This is keeping classical music alive, and it's also something that I participate in as well. I use social media to reach people with music, and during the pandemic this became vital.

It enabled me to help other musicians, feed my musical soul, and keep my playing alive while we were all unemployed.

There is a group, known as “Two Set Violin,” that is probably making classical music more accessible than anyone else, and purely with social media. Also, international soloists such as Ray Chen, Rachel Barton Pine, Nicola Benedetti, YoYo Ma, Hilary Hahn, and others are creating meaningful content in the realms of classical music accessibility and, even more importantly, string education. These are all wonderful musicians to admire and see what they’re doing. I also try to stay visible on social platforms as both a performer and a teacher. An artist can make videos about anything they like, such as tutorials, explanations of their practicing process, short performances, etc. It’s an incredible tool and everyContinued on next page...

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 21

Gary Capozziello VIOLINIST

one I know is having a blast playing with its capabilities.

What is it like being a part of the Hartford Symphony? How demanding is the work when being a member of a symphony? What are your responsibilities?

Since 2016, I have been a rotating section violinist, but similar to that story when I was 9, I craved more of a challenge! After practicing intensely for hours every day this summer, I’m excited to announce that this summer I won a principal chair with the Hartford Symphony!

It was a grueling three-round blind audition process and when I won in the final round, I was taken back to see the judges behind two black curtains. I was so moved to be greeted with open arms by our music director, Carolyn Kuan, and our Concertmaster Lenny Sigal, along with other orchestra leaders on the audition panel. Over the years, I have said that Hartford Symphony is like going home. I have grown to see my colleagues at the HSO like my musical family, so being hugged by them afterward was deeply meaningful.

My responsibilities as a section leader will now include learning the music thoroughly before the first rehearsal and leading by example. Playing together with skill rests heavily on the players in the front knowing what they’re doing and having the ability to steer the energy in a nonverbal way.

Also, I might be asked to decide the bowings, (which means deciding the direction of the bow up or down - so that our bows are going in the same direction). All of this determines how good the sound is!

What is new with your skills as a violinist that you are presently working on?

When the legendary cellist Pablo Casals was asked why he continued to practice at age 90, he said, “Because I think I’m making progress.” I am very similar, and as my career changes, I will always want to progress because I consider myself to be a student of this craft. It will be a life-long quest, to progress, and seek deeper truths with this instrument. For example, I pushed and tested myself this summer, and broke through personal goals, in my preparation for the HSO audition. I pushed my level of consistency and demonstrated to myself how my violin playing can continue to grow at my age. I also embraced a new “violinism” for myself, and tested it. What I mean by that is I was trying new expressive ideas, and turned the orchestral excerpts that I had to prepare into pieces that I could play on their own if I had to.

When the attention is turned to soloists on the stage, what specific things are critical for the instrumentalists to know to do? How do they know when to play? Do you find that conduc-

tors have signals you must discover, or are they all universal?

It’s all about timing and intuition and listening, to both the soloists and the conductor. You have to listen with all your senses. Since the dawn of time, there has never been an easy answer as to who is the leader - the conductor or the soloist! For the orchestra, it’s about sensing the soloist while following the conductor.

I truly enjoy working with Carolyn Kuan, our wonderful conductor at the Hartford Symphony.

She has charisma and a sincere love for the music that keeps her conducting fresh. Her baton technique is stellar, and she thinks in images and stories, so her vivid imagination informs the music. She has so much enthusiasm, it’s contagious. And she deeply cares about her musicians.

Have you experienced seeing your former teachers in the audience of some of your performances? That must be flattering. Or, surprising? Depends on who it is, right?

It’s one thing for former teachers to watch, but another entirely different to join them on stage!

When I get to perform with my teachers, it is often some of the most rewarding playing I get to do. A frequent collaborator is one of my dearest teachers, Katie Lansdale. We not only get to perform together in chamber music settings, often at the Ode to Joy Festival every September in West

Elfers Hall, The Hotchkiss School Photograph: David Palmieri

22 • OCTOBER 2023

THE ARTFUL MIND

Tchaikovsky Concerto, Hartford Symphony, Carolyn Kuan, Music Director Photograph: Ruth Savronsky

Hartford, but we team up and teach together as well at the Promise Bach+ Workshops in Bridgewater, CT, which is a fantastic one week retreat for serious violinists where young artists can hone all aspects of their violin playing in an intensive yet supportive and creative setting.

What other art forms go with your energy flow and stimulate your senses?

Well, I’ve recently been exposed to a lot of theatre, especially Shakespeare. I love that he is the Mozart of the English language! I was moved to tears multiple times during a performance of Hamlet and watched Macbeth six times last summer. There’s so much palpable human emotion and drama, like in music.

And after a recent visit to the Clark, I’ve decided that I’d like to live in an impressionist painting.

So much color, culture, movement, and lush livelihood!

Do you do yoga or meditate? I am asking you because Caroline Kinsolving, the creative love in your life, is an actor and yoga therapist. How does your music and her work overlap?

We do yoga and meditate most mornings together - sometimes hilarious, sometimes sweet! Our common interests and curiosities are one of the many things that we appreciate about our relationship and I’m grateful for the perks of free yoga as

her fiancé! She’s a great teacher - and I’m unbiased! We also often discuss the similarities and differences of our performing arts. For example, audition processes are vastly different. Symphony auditions are blind, meaning they don’t see you or know who you are. For actors, it’s the opposite.

How she and I prepare for auditions and performances can be quite similar, and we can endlessly talk about that process. Most importantly, we inspire and support each other. I would not have had success in my audition this summer without her support.

It’s wonderful to be in a relationship with another performer, but not a musician. I think she feels the same. Our schedules are fluid and an understanding and support about our work and passion without conflicts of interest or competition. It’s a perfect balance.

Who has it been in your family that encouraged you to pursue music and recognize your talents?

My father was a guitarist, and always would joke that he knew three chords on the guitar and that he could play the blues! My mother was of Austrian-Jewish descent, and we always believed that my deep connection between the music by the master composers of the Baroque and to modern era stemmed from that connection. My parents never even finished high school, so the scope of

their exposure to what I did was slim to none. However, their appreciation for what I loved and their love for me drove them to support me in every decision, and even though resources were also highly limited, they did what they could to get me what I needed and to get me where I needed to be.

Where did you grow up? Did your surroundings have any influence on your musical development?

I grew up on the Bridgeport side of Fairfield, CT, which is to say the lower-income side of a very wealthy town. Before I was born, there was a fire that destroyed a building that my parents were living in, so they moved to Fairfield after that. This fire prompted a move to a neighborhood right on the cusp of Fairfield and Bridgeport, two very different towns. If I had grown up in Bridgeport, it would not have been likely that I would have been exposed to the quality of music education and teachers that I was exposed to. My mother was very smart in her decision to raise us in Fairfield, despite the economic hardship that she endured. I am very proud of being a product of a robust Fairfield public school program, and the teachers there were central to my development; Robert Genualdi, Dorothy Straub, Cheryl Lebreque, Deborah Graser, Claudia Tondi, and Yuval Waldman are the reason I am here today. Continued on next page...

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 23

Gary Capozziello

VIOLINIST

Elfers Hall, The Hotchkiss School

Nothing stood in your way, including the experience you had going through the pandemic.

What was that all about for you?

After my first experience with COVID-19, while living in Harlem during the lockdowns in 2020, I moved back to Avon, CT for quiet and solitude and to reflect on my personal and professional life. While riding out the pandemic, I became concerned about not only my unemployment but everyone I knew as well. So I created my fundraiser for musicians who were struggling with economic hardship. This online recital series, on social media, kept me performing while helping other musicians at the same time. For seven weeks, I posted weekly performances until a final livestreamed solo violin recital from the art studio of visual artist Peter Morgan. The efforts raised $7000 which I donated to the Hartford Arts Council, and then after their corporate donations were included, the entire project raised over $20,000 that went out in $500 grants to individual musicians who applied. It was the most rewarding thing I ever did, and it shined a light on an otherwise very dark time for me. Since I have Crohn’s disease, when I caught the Delta strain of Covid for the second time in 2022, it was very serious. I was living alone and gasping for air during that time, and I couldn’t carry myself where I had to go to take care of things. I had a kind of spiritual awakening during this time, in deep solitude and 24 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

Photograph: David Palmieri

also quite sick from Crohn’s Disease. Between the two diseases, I was nearing the end of my rope, but I came out of it a different person, with a clearer vision of what is truly important in life and what is not.

So much has come out of the pandemic. The resurfacing of art, music, and all-around energy sources is quite reflective and engaging. What have you seen, and what are your feelings about the aftermath and generating of all the new creativity happening around you? What do you feel you learned after COVID-19?

I think musicians learned their worth during the pandemic - from being suddenly unemployed to resurfacing in the world - and an awakening was born with a new appreciation for what we contribute to society.

I also had a large realization when I was gasping for air, alone in my apartment for weeks, and unable to see anyone or be taken care of by anyone.

Since my parents died, I have been so focused on my career progress that I had a certain level of tunnel vision, that I now realize wasn’t necessarily balanced or healthy. When faced with my mortality, I realized that the point of life was not about achievement but about love.

You are presently on the faculty at the Hotchkiss School as a private violin teacher. What do

they allow you to teach to all those curious learners and analytical thinkers that other schools might not?

At Hotchkiss, my students love to be challenged, so you can push them in new directions and they welcome an attitude of exploration and innovation. Hotchkiss is one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country but also has one of the most respected music programs. Hotchkiss students are eager to learn things in new ways and not in a standardized or boring approach. I can get more inventive with my students, and they are open to it. They also love to serve the community and learn the value of music in it. Speaking of community, one of my other jobs at Hotchkiss is Concertmaster and Personnel Manager of the Hotchkiss Philharmonic. This is a hybrid orchestra of our most dedicated Hotchkiss students along with professionals from surrounding orchestras.

We perform four concerts every season, which are open to the public and the people of the Berkshires!

The students who achieve this level love this professional experience, sitting side-by-side with seasoned players and performing entire symphonies rather than portions of them as in youth orchestras. Our Music Director, Fabio Witkowski, is very forward-thinking and beloved in the international musical community. He fuses growth, tradition, and innovation, all at the same time

Salisbury, CT. Photograph: Caroline Kinsolving

making our orchestra one of the treasures of this area.

Gary, what takes you from one successful audition to the next? How do you find auditions, and what's involved?

Early on in my career, auditions were something I dreaded, but as I grew more experienced, I learned to try auditions that were more manageable. In my 30s, I became a little overzealous and tried a couple of things that were out of my league. Those disappointments taught me to do what I do with everything else: break it into smaller and easier steps. This philosophy, I think, is also what makes an effective teacher. I decided to do auditions that were more attainable, and I started winning. After gaining some confidence, things started to snowball from there, and I started getting better and better. Now, I coach people who want to win - and they do!

Have you had any travel experiences where you were in another country and learned some of their customs and traditions that potentially affected you as a musician?

I spent two summers touring China’s eastern seaboard, giving master classes and performing recitals in major cities. It was a fascinating time learning about a culture that was introduced to Western classical music later in its history. Since

Isaac Stern brought it back to China, after Mao, classical music has still been progressing there.

Thanks to the amazing leadership of Max (Zitao) Lu via the International American Classical Music Week, the facilitation of Chinese students wishing to study abroad in the US was hugely successful.

Students went on to study at top conservatories such as the Hartt School and the Cleveland Institute thanks to our tours there. This was highly rewarding work.

Your resume and all your accomplishments are outstanding! Which of everything is the most important and one you feel most honored to own? Winning any competition This summer, within the same month, was offered several notable teaching opportunities, won a principal chair, and got engaged, so that was pretty extraordinary!

Aside from the violin, what other talents do you possess?

Due to having chronic illness, I have become very knowledgeable in the realms of natural healing and natural medicine. Sometimes my fiancé teases me and calls me Dr. Gary because I’m always reading about or testing different natural remedies for daily ailments. I have a wonderful team of Naturopaths and traditional doctors that keep me healthy (since Crohn's is so serious), so they also

teach me and fulfill my curiosities in their field.

Since moving to the Berkshires and moving in with Caroline, I’m now an avid outdoorsman! I love hiking, surfing, paddle boarding, cross-country skiing, and tending our garden.

What's next, Gary? Tell us what you have planned, or hope to do with your musical life.

I am new to Salisbury and love that it is a small town both belonging to Litchfield County as well as the Berkshires. I am still learning about all of the incredible art and culture that is available to us and I’m looking forward to organizing chamber music concerts and holding performances at the farm where we live and in the surrounding areas.

Caroline and I are creating a program that blends music and literature and we look forward to bringing it to various venues. Another front-burner idea is to bring violin recitals to people’s homes through house concerts since there is such an appreciation for classical music in our area. I think people will welcome such an intimate approach and I’m excited to connect with the community in this way.

All in all, I look forward to a long life of creating music to inspire people and see my students thrive in their endeavors.

Thank you, Gary!

Www.garycapozziello.com THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 25

MOLLIE KELLOGG

Since 2009, Creative Sorceress Mollie Kellogg’s Incognito Witch Project has celebrated hidden magick through fine art, short film, dance, and music.

Kellogg’s Incognito Witch mixed-media artwork reveal her subject’s hidden psyche, too often suppressed in order to meet society’s expectations. Mortals become magickal beings draped/semi-draped in mysterious fabrics, adorned with jewels and leaves, often wearing messy makeup with a signature flash of color and sparkle under the eyes. These figures evoke a Mother Nature archetype of power, strength, attraction, empathy, and vulnerability.

Mollie views the current phase of her project’s development as an opportunity to see where her magickal beings will run off to play (or cause mischief) when given permission.

Mollie Kellogg artist@molliekellogg.com, www.MollieKellogg.com. See Mollie’s most current work on facebook: Artist.MollieKellogg, and instagram: IncognitoWitch.

SMALL TOWN SERIES:GAZEBO GREAT BARRINGTON ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 24”X30”

RUBY AVER STREET ZEN

My recent series, Small Town Series, is inspired by the happily haunting memories of the atmospheres, rather than maps or architecture of cities. So, although location specific, these are not literal depictions. The abstract memory of the mood evoked by each city is revealed.

I intend to stimulate not only a response to the color, texture, shape and movement play, but to serve as a reminder of possibilities of bold choices.

Growing up on the southside of Chicago in the 60s was a history of rich and troubled times. 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 exhibits the rich grit from my youth.

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

Scents by Skanda creates fragrances using only the rarest and finest ingredients.

We offer private olfactory consultations in order to find a fragrance that best suits you.

Perfumes Attars Incense Essential Oils and much more! f Reach us at (413) 717‐2498 Shop at scentsbyskanda.com and etsy.com/shop/scentsbyskanda 26 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

ELLEN KAIDEN PAINTER OF METAPHORS

CANYON RANCH I am pleased and proud to announce a sizable exhibition of my paintings now on view at Canyon Ranch in Lenox, MA. This year was the year to go all in as an artist and invest in myself. It is difficult to put yourself out there, but I have reaped the benefits.

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

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

My paintings are more than just pretty flowers.

They tell stories about the world, politics, and women.

To view, please contact the Wit Gallery in Lenox, MA. info@thewitgallery.com or call 413637-8808.

Ellen Kaiden@www.Ellenkaiden.com www.thewitgallery.com

“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

DISTANT LANDS, 16” X 20”

TYRINGHAM 2, 48" X 48"

SARAH HORNE SOIL PAINTINGS

At dawn, after waves of fog melt into blue air, the land ahead rises into view. Gently parting the curtain, the land - fields and pastures, begin to glow with dawn’s gentle entrance. The light is soft as the deep crimson as the barn slowly rises into view.

This exhibit is about the mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, and liquids - the alchemy that makes soil. I made these Soil Paintings because soil is elemental to the environment that keeps us alive: soil and its nutrients are fundamental to growth. It is the earth beneath our feet.

I feel that our souls, our beginnings, and our endings lie low in the soil.

This is the earth that I sink my hands into when I make a garden. This is the same mud I tromp through in high boots in rain and snow. Dark, light, dense and soft, the soil moves and changes, getting caught in an eddy, sliding into a river, trod on by horses, dogs and humans. The love of the earth comes to me in the quiet, as I walk the land, kick at the ground, taking time to really look.

These paintings are a representation of what I see when I look directly down at soil - soil in rain, soil in drought, soil on the best of days and on the worst. The paintings are multi-layered, complex and earthy.

I am lucky enough to know two extraordinarily beautiful working farms that serve as the inspiration for these Soil Paintings: Spring Hills Farm in Dalton, Pennsylvania, and Woven Roots Farm in Tyringham, Massachusetts. Both are organic farms, placing high importance on the health and beauty of soil.

While making these paintings my artistic references were inspired by other abstract landscape painters. Helen Frankenthaler’s vast atmospheric, color field paintings of water, sea and mountains, Joan Mitchell’s large-scale canvases alive with raw, gestural mark making, and Tim Hawkesworth’s energized oil paintings which search for primal meaning in our overdeveloped age.

My paintings are made with acrylic, acrylic ink, matte and gloss mediums on canvas. The framed paintings are made with acrylic, acrylic ink, matte medium and glue on paper.

Sarah Horne sarahhorne29@gmail.com.

ARTIST 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.

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

DON LONGO

I’ve been recently concentrating on new work that allows me to become more abstract in my interpretation of design. I am using acrylic enamelbased paints that have more fluidity than normal tube acrylics. These paints allow me to give a smooth solid color in either a static position on the canvas or an unfixed, moving position. I am still overlapping the colors into one composition as I have done in previous paintings. I believe that an artist must always progress and experiment with color, application, and technique. I want to stay fresh with my work and see what develops each time I paint.

Don Longowww.donlongoart.com Facebook: Don Longo Instagram: don_longo Email: dljoseph55@yahoo.com

It’s time to promote your

Music and Art

email: ARTFULMIND@YAHOO.COM See all our issues on issuu.com: THE ARTFUL MIND ARTZINE THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 27

Game Over Wood, metal rope enamel paint 46x22 12” 2023 Concave painting, latex primer, flashe paint, gel medium, copy on wood w/joint compound 12x12x15” 2016

GERALD WOLFE STILL-FULL-NESS SCULPTURES & PAINTINGS 2016-23 | TURNPARK ART SPACE WEST STOCKBRIDGE MA

By Jeanette Fintz There is no room for nonsense in Wolfe’s sculptures and paintings and in that they have a lot in common. Each piece is honed down to an economically compressed level of means. But there are clues to their origin story and lineage revealed if you pay attention. Wolfe works with serious materials that a builder would use; concrete, wood lath, fiber glass screening and housepaint, and a palette of grays, whites, startling touches of blues and burnished or chalky tans. You’d think the work would be intimidating and cold, but it’s not.

There is humor and humanness in the drawing decisions and paint handling, and in telltale physical details that are openings into what often first appears to be primarily, a closed - down surface.

For example, the very smallest wall sculptures in plaster and wood, appear clumpy and somewhat awkward constructions until you understand that these are composite forms that have rough planes of plaster sheathing uniting them, as though covered over in volcanic ash or sediments of earth matter. Two pieces entitled (Small) Object with

28 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

Photography Courtesy of Artist

Odd Opening (2018) have tiny rectangular spacesat the bottom revealing a possible through - line that would help the viewer imagine what might be a pathway into these shuttered volumes. So, the small dark rectangle indicates a line in space, a constructivist premise that is casually thrown our way. Wolfe is so comfortable with the language of constructivism’s formal principles that he uses them casually and playfully, so you don’t really notice.

The first word that came to mind as I viewed the work was “sediments”, a word that references time revealed through layers of matter. Reviewing his bio for this article, I discovered that he had been a history major prior to focusing on visual art, so this word intuitively made sense. Wolfe’s work is about time, motion, and loss of mobility or rather the acceptance of becoming a form that one might not have expected at the beginning of the process. Hence the humor and surprise factor that bring his work to life.

Three paintings on fiberglass screen all entitled Weave (2016) employ the only rhythmic, gestural application of paint in the show and the only inclusion of what might be called “air”, the space between marks, in the surface illusion. Less interesting or unique individually, they are part of the origin story of the pieces that come next.

These paintings, Convex Painting, Concave Painting (2016), and Cloud Painting (2017) compress and flatten the gestures and planes into a summary of the story — into an outline. It’s a great line and the ellipsis that created it is the reason. These juicy, intensely blue lines show Wolfe’s hand, a funny direct and archly simple, descriptive meander. They add delight and make these paintings some of the most engaging pieces in the show.

Powerful wall sculptures in wood that divide white space into projecting and receding segments add to the backstory of surface compression later displayed in the paintings. They bristle with energy. All entitled Cumulus (2016) beautifully lit

Block with Odd Opening Plaster and wood 8.5x6.5”,2021

by Grigori Fateyev, the shadows on the walls appear to become part of the pieces and are credited in their painted incarnation as casual splotches of dazzling cobalt blue. The alchemy of artists is that they can make a solid into ether and a fleeting cloud into a wall. Both the Weave paintings and the Cumulus sculptures ultimately inform the Concave & Convex paintings with a muffled but alive energy revealed through the surface depressions and projections. It’s the mystery of suppression and compression that pull in the viewer to read the paintings more closely.

The newest pieces are free standing floor sculptures constructed in polished concrete, plaster, styrofoam and wood. With titles like Intersect,

RE-Stack (2023), and You Decide (2022), caste squares, rectangles, squashed circles, and crosses, layer and sometimes violently smash on top of one another. Shapes are stacked vertically, often symmetrically but not always. There are subtle asymmetries and curves that appear in many of the works, like the length of rope in Follow Thru (2022), enlivening the angular dominance. Wolfe is covering many perspectival bases in this show, now providing a tower that can be viewed from all sides, a monument of sorts, though ironically it isn’t fixed and can roam around on casters…so then, not really a monument, or one that is memorializing a state of ambivalence? Numbers and letters and are reminders of early synthetic cubist collage but Wolfe says their significance is only

the hierarchy ranking his favorites. Seen from a plan view or bird’s eye perspective, the edges of the free- standing sculpture can be understood as sources for his paintings’ squished, squirming, flattened picture planes. It is enjoyable to see him playing with so many points of view on his material, burying and steamrollering volumes and then teasingly providing in outline form, clues to his process .

Wolfe‘s shape metamorphosis frequently returns to the tension achieved by flip-flopping volume to flatness and the inverse. One smaller constructed painting Cloud Cover (2019) reduces the variables simply to two globular volumes modeled in spray paint, interfered with by three rec-

(Rt and Lf.) Cloud Painting 3 (2018) and 1 (2017) Japan Colors, latex primer on canvas and wood 24x24” (Center) Cumulous 4, Wood, latex primer, wood filler,14x15x9” 2016

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 29

GERALD WOLFE STILL-FULL-NESS

Re-Stacked, Concrete (wood base included) 21x16x9” 2023 You Decide, Wood, plaster, Styrofoam, sign paint and metal casters 34x14x10” 2022

Cloud Cover, Japan colors, spray paint on canvas and wood 12.5x17” 2019

30 • OCTOBER THE ARTFUL MIND

(Untitled) Spray painting 4, Japan colors, spray paint on canvas and wood 12x18” 2019

tangular black tabs and a white lengthwise rectangle all placed in such a way as to deny the illusion of roundness. Framed in warm natural wood, the image is flattened and pushed back behind the frame. It looks photographic but it’s painted, another visual contradiction.

Three slightly earlier paintings are real seducers, Untitled Spray Painting 2,3 & 4 (2019), and Wolfe approached these in a traditional manner.

By that I mean that they use color and contrasting paint handling to pursue spatial movement rather than depend more heavily upon materiality. They contrast deep and shallow spatial zones with a split screen structure achieved partially with collaged canvas. The more abstract zones are atmospherically developed in gray and black spray paint with illusionistic swaths of black spray floating adjacent to several sharp saturated blue or green, thin rectangles, that also contradict sensation of deep space. The companion sides are typically more map like and linear, with elements that could be sections of charts or radar monitors, smoothly and flatly painted. In these pieces from 2019 one can see Wolfe introducing his fascination with depth and flatness, illusion, and the fac-

tual nature of matter, all key instruments of his work in this show.

One odd-man-out- among this predominantly cool palette of colors is the freestanding wood sculpture Game Over (2023). About the size and height of a podium, assembled from lath dismembered from aged boxes, this piece has an intricate planar contour, incorporating half a gabled roof section, from the front view, and a flatter, more simply rectangular outline from the sides, displaying worn lath strips fitting neatly next to one another. Referencing its title, at the end of a length of thick rope is a croquette ball hanging down one side. A semi-circular area is incised or parqueted into the surface of the opposing side. The ball is a tool in the game; it’s made its impact on the façade of the of the “podium”. But it seems to be saying “is that all there is”? Perhaps this is a reference to pursuit of artistic doctrine, or dogma…the end of following through with that agenda. It’s a mystery, and a good one to close with.

Gerald Wolfe earned his BA in History from the University of Maryland, and a BFA from The School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. He has shown his work consistently in NYC beginning in

1979, when he began showing with OK Harris Gallery, including several solo shows there and at Kim Foster Gallery in Chelsea. He has also had solo exhibits at the Paterson Museum, Paterson, NJ and the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton.

He currently resides in Lower Manhattan, as well as maintaining a studio based in Columbia County, NY. Gerald Wolfe, Still-Full-Ness, Sculptures and Paintings 2016-2023 August 19 - October 31, 2023 TurnPark Art Space, 2 Moscow Rd West Stockbridge MA / Open Wednesday-Monday 10-5pm, Phone 413-232-0275 G Jeanette Fintz is an abstract painter, arts writer and sometime curator who resides in Hudson NY. She exhibits in the Hudson Valley & Berkshire region with Carrie Chen Gallery, Great Barrington MA, Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson NY & The Lockwood Gallery, Kingston NY.

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 31

LONNY JARRETT Fine Art Photography

BARNS AND BEAUTIFUL THINGS IN NATURE

Berkshirescenicphotography.com 413-298-4221 Lonny@berkshirescenicphotography.com

32 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

Marion H. Grant

The Sanderson Sisters 18” x 24” Acrylic stretched canvas

Sally Tiska Rice Studio 305 CLOCK TOWER ARTISTS 3rd Floor, 75 South Church Street, Pittsfield, MA www.mariongrantart.com grants3@earthlink.net insta: @marionh.grant

CLOCK TOWER: First Friday and Saturday, October 6 and 7 Art & Music Festival, October 20

BERKSHIRE ROLLING HILLS ART CLOCK TOWER Studio 302, 3rd floor 75 South Church St, Pittsfield, MA (413)-446-8469 www.sallytiskarice.com sallytiskarice@gmail.com

MARK MELLINGER Paintings - Collage - Constructions

Pond Life Acrylic on 4- 6” x 6” canvases

Clock Tower Artists 3rd Floor 75 South Church St Pittsfield MA 914. 260. 7413 instagram.com/mellinger3301 markmellinger680@gmail.com THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 33

THE VIRTUAL GALLERY EXPERIENCE October 2023 | THE ARTFUL MIND

Mary Ann Yarmosky Her heart was stolen by Maui on what was supposed to be a brief trip and she never left. Paradise is a formidable seductress.

He was in love with Raylene throughout middle school, but because of his speech impediment he called her Wayween. She thought he was silly and never spoke to him. A world of lost opportunity.

Contact: maryannyarmoskyart.com Instagram / Facebook 413-441-6963

34 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

Joao arrived in Provincetown as a Portuguese immigrant around 1840, when the whaling industry was booming, and settled into a tight knit, whaling and fishing community.

Lorraine Klagsbrun

to le

Variations on A Theme 1 and 2, Mixed media collage, 8”x 10”

is hA Beautiful Day, Paper Collage, 12” x 15”

Contact: lorraineklagsbrun.com Lklagsbrun@me.com 914-907-3113 THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 35

Mark Mellinger

Flight Path, Acrylic and mixed media, 20”x 20”

Near Sana'a - January 27th 632 AD, Acrylic on canvas, 40”x 30”

Bachrach Proof

Contact: markmellinger680@gmail.com instagram.com/mellinger3301 914-260-7413

36 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

Photo, Collage and acrylic on paper, 10”x 8”

(Sold)

EXPERIENCE

THE VIRTUAL GALLERY October 2023 | THE ARTFUL MIND

Ruby Aver

Small Town Series : Meeting in Lenox, Diptych, Acrylic on canvas, 20” x 40”

Contact: rdaver2@gmail.com Instagram: rdaver2.

Housatonic Studio open by appointment — 413-854-7007 If you are interested in showing your art in the Virtual Gallery Experience for November 2023, or interested in any of these art works, please inquire with an email to artfulmind@yahoo.com THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 37

“WHAT IS VITA TO A PERSONAL LIFE OF WELL BEING”

LINDA MASON

My art is an expression of my love for and interest in the people who populate my world.

Therefore, my paintings and installations aim to bring people and communities together to create thought-provoking results and, as in the case of portraiture, capture the beauty of the individual. I plunge into the painting or mixed media piece, and I am surprised by the path the art takes.

I often freestyle body paint people, photograph them, and use the photos as inspiration for my artwork, or incorporate them into the art. This method evolved from my background as a makeup artist in Europe and the US. As a makeup artist I was allowed a lot of freedom on photo shoots and developed a freestyle makeup method on the models that trained both my eyes and hands.

Linda Mason linda@lindamason.com, www.lindamason.com

PUSH THE TALK, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 24” X 24”

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 01201

“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

38 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

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.

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 Jarrett Community: Nourishingdestiny.com Books: Spiritpathpress.com Art: Berkshirescenicphotography.com Teaching: Lonnyjarrett.com

WINTER HOME,WATERCOLOR

MARGUERITE BRIDE

MILKWEED EXPLOSION. OIL ON PANEL, 2023

ANN GETSINGER

HOUSE PORTRAITS

I am now accepting house portrait commissions for the holiday season but time is running out, however Gift Certificates remain an option!

If you are considering gifting someone you love with a personalized painting for the holidays, the process is easier than you might imagine. Is this a surprise for someone? I love surprises and do it all the time! I can be very stealth at taking photos. Or are you nervous that the scene might not be exactly what the recipient wants? A gift certificate is perfect, then I will work directly with the recipient.

Here’s how it happens…if you are local to the Berkshires, I will visit the home, take many photos and do a few sketches on site. Drawing is the next phase and where your input is valuable… what to include, what to leave out or move, season, time of day, pets in or out? So many fun things to consider when creating and personalizing your treasure and future heirloom.

Then you view the drawing and decide if it is exactly what you were hoping for and give it your approval. Or not, and we work together until it is perfect. Once the drawing is approved, I paint.

Once the preparation phase is done, the painting process will take about a week….most of the time is spent in the preparation phase before the painting begins.

Be in touch and I will answer all your questions. Check out the “House Portrait” pages of my website….lots of information and details.

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

MARION H. GRANT

Marion H. Grant is a member of Clock Tower Artists and can be found most days working in her studio (no. 305) at Clock Tower Business Park, 75 South Church Street, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Her current work in mixed media on paper and canvas combines textural materials, hand-painted papers, acrylic paint, and fabric in abstract compositions that that explore colors, patterns, and shapes.

About the work, Grant says, “My recent pieces reflect my ongoing interest in the interplay of geometric shapes, color relationships, and embellishments such as texture and drawing. Viewed as a whole, the paintings have unity; viewed up close, every element stands on its own as a unique passage.”

Grant’s studio at the Clock Tower is open to the public the first Friday and Saturday of each month, April through December. Public hours on first Fridays are 5-8 and first Saturdays 11-4. Private visits to the studio can also be arranged by contacting the artist directly.

Marion H. Grant web: www.mariongrantart; insta: @marionh.grant; email: grants3@earthlink.net; 413-446-7979.

I go through life engaged and curious. I’m pulled toward witnessing light as it affects a thing in a place. At the easel, I may remember a mistenshrouded view or a bird in motion, its flight drawing a certain shape. Or I may hear something coming from within the painting itself — maybe waves lapping upon a shore or hoofbeats on a road. I’ve learned to be aware of these observed fascinations but mostly to stay out of their way and simply welcome them as they enter my work.

In my paintings, “I just want everything, that’s all I want.” I want integrity, history, mystery, irony, and my story. Especially in this alluring age of images in cyberspace, I want scale; I almost always paint life-size. I want surface energy and texture, and a physical relationship to the present animal-human body.

This work in “The Garden of Curiosity” primarily was created in the past few years as I was adjusting to and exploring what feels to me like a new world, one where natural history is suddenly seen in a much wider context. The human place, my place, in the trajectory of what’s seen as “nature” stands in raw contrast to online replications and interpretations. Love or hate, horror or heaven, both are fascinating, especially in the ways they meet.

“The Garden of Curiosity” art exhibition continues through Nov. 19 in the Leonhardt Galleries at the Berkshire Botanical Gardens, Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Ann Getsinger anngetsinger@gmail.com

Conversational Spanish Learn the fundamentals of conversational Spanish. All levels.

Via: Zoom, Skype, Whatsapp video call, & Facebook Messenger

Instructor: Esteban Valdés Author of the acclaimed book: Con Permisito Dijo Monchito (Amazon.com) References available • 15 dollars per hour.

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 39

PLAYING FOR TIME, WATERCOLOR, 22” X 30”

CAROLYN NEWBERGER Watercolor painting, mixed media, and a practice of drawing from life form the body of Carolyn Newberger’s work, with an emphasis on human connections and experience.

An avid and award-winning artist in her youth, Carolyn returned to art after an academic career in psychology at Harvard Medical School. Her work has received many awards, including from the Danforth Museum of Art, the Cambridge Art Association, Watercolor Magazine, and the New England Watercolor Society, of which she is a signature member.

Many of Carolyn’s performance drawings and plein air paintings accompany reviews and essays she writes, often in collaboration with her husband, Eli, for “The Berkshire Edge,” a publication of news, arts and ideas in Western Massachusetts.

Carolyn Newberger— 617-877-5672; cnewberger@me.com www.carolynnewberger.com

WAKING UP TO A NEW DAY, FROM BREAKAWAY SERIES 36" X 48" MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS

ERIKA LARSKAYA

Confinement and Breakaway examine the mental state of struggle to make sense of our environment, both physical and psychological. I incorporate childlike drawing to represent nonconformity; the unadulterated state before we get confined by rules, commitment, insecurities, and other “add-ons.”

“I distress and repair parts of the painting, as we do within ourselves. The drawings of floor plans and elevations, which I use as a starting point, create a sense of enclosure, which I expand by continuing the lines outward, breaking the structural pattern. This alters the sense of confinement, breaking away from the [rigid, static] norm”.

Erika Larskaya https://www.erikalarskaya.art

ENCOUNTER, PAPER COLLAGE, 8” X 10’

LORRAINE KLAGSBRUN Collage allows me the exhilarating freedom to experiment with technique, composition, color, pattern, and shape. Family photos have inspired many of my collages, but recently I have been exploring female relationships, inspired by the spiritual and ancestral power of African masks.

In my woodblock prints, I combine carving, drawing, and imagining into a printmaking process that recalls scenes from nature as well as my family history, and allows me to reconfigure them into my own language.

“When making art, I always feel like an explorer, always after something that that does not yet exist” Lorraine Klagsbrun has widely exhibited in Massachusetts and New York City.

Lorraine Klagsbrun 914-907-3113, lorraineklagsbrun.com Lklagsbrun@me.com

The Fine Art of Printing Fine Art. · Giclée and Photo Printing · Digital Reproduction of Paintings · Photo Restoration and Repair

“The prints have amazing clarity and are absolutely beautiful reproductions of the original works.

Clients are amazed with the quality.”

– Virginia Bradley

Playa Santa 22 — Virginia Bradley

Drop-off & Pick-up Available in Great Barrington, MA and Millerton, NY Studio located in Mount Washington, MA l berkshiredigital.com l 413 · 644· 9663 40 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

EGO TRIPPING: AN EXPLORATION IN SELF- PORTRAITS STEPHAN MARC KLEIN October 6—October 29, 2023 510 WARREN STREET GALLERY Artist’s reception 2-5 PM, Saturday, October 14, 2023 510 Warren Street, Hudson, NY Fridays and Saturdays 12-6 PM Sundays 12-5 PM

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 41

MARY DAVIDSON

Stamped Flower Arrangement #14

Stamped Flower Arrangement #14 will be on view at the Spencertown Juried Regional Show for the month of October www.davidsondesigncompany.net Studio appointments, please call 413-528-6945 Keith and Mary original artwork for sale Studio/gallery, South Egremont, MA

Ellen Kaiden www.Ellenkaiden.com EllenKaiden@gmail.com 941-685-9900 Artist Accepts Commissions Spring Fever, Watercolor, 40” x 50”

Think Pink, Vote Pink, Watercolor, 40” x 50”

Ellen Kaiden is now exhibiting her work at Canyon Ranch in Lenox, MA For more information and to view, please contact the Wit Gallery, Lenox, MA, 413-637-8808 / info@TheWitGallery.com 42 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

Linda Mason Portrait Artist

“Censored” Painting, acrylic on canvas, 60”x72” “All Washed Up” Mixed media, acrylic, paper, objects & resin on wood, 12”x18” “The Blue Boy” Acrylic, paper & resin on wood, 12”x18”

To Commission a Portrait Email: theartofbeauty@aol.com 413. 645. 3493 www.lindamason.com THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 43

KATE KNAPP, STILL LIFE

FRONT ST. GALLERY

QUARKS, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 48” X 36”

MARK MELLINGER

Practicing art for 60 years and psychoanalysis for 40, Dr. Mark Mellinger’s careers concern what can be spoken of and what transcends language.

In painting, collage and constructions of wood and iron he is drawn to the physicality of materials.

Avoiding predictability of style, Mellinger explores the possibilities of matter and media. Our lives and our world are transient. We must seek meaning in truth, creativity and connectedness.

Mark V. Mellinger, Ph.D.914-260-7413, 71 S Church St, Pittsfield MA, instagram.com/mellinger3301

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.

Classes at Front Street are for those wishing to learn, those who want to be involved in the pure enjoyment of art, and those with some experience.

Front Street, Housatonic, MA. Gallery open by appointment or chance anytime. 413-528-9546 at home or 413-429-7141 (cell) www.kateknappartist.com

SERIOUS HOT OR ICED CHOCOLATE GOURMET GELATO AND TREATS HAND CRAFTED IN THE BERKSHIRES OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK

Escape into Chocolate

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.

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, and her work was on the front and back covers.

Deborah H. Carter Clock Tower Artists, 75 S. Church St., Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Studio 315, 3rd floor.

Instagram: @deborah_h_carter, Debhcarter@yah oo.com, 413-441-3220.

Ogden Gigli Photography, Model: @brookemonzter; represented by The WIT Gallery.

™

55 PITTSFIELD/LENOX ROAD ROUTE 7, LENOX MA 413-637-9820

chocolatesprings.com 44 • OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

DEBORAH H. CARTER

ARTFULMIND@YAHOO.COM

Deanna Musgrave | October | ASTROLOGY FOR CREATORS

Astrology for Creators October 2023 “You are a Seed” (Western Tropical Astrology. Time Zone EST/EDT)

Deanna Musgrave As I write this on August 28th-30th, 2023, I predict that there would have been an event in September that will be the set up for the more chaotic events of the October 2023 eclipse season. It would have likely been something to do with the pandemic fears as the Full Moon in Virgo on September 14th, 2023 will be connected with healthcare and nurses.

Living in Canada, I can already feel something building around a fear of a new covid variant. My intuitive feeling on the matter is that there will be a spike in fear that starts mid-September but, the world might not fully react to it until October 2023. For some reason, my instinct is saying that the focus on covid and lockdown fears won’t last long as, there will be another crisis that will capture the public’s focus.

Days before the first eclipse of October 2023, Pluto will go direct in Capricorn on October 10th and it will progress onward to move into Aquarius in January 20th of 2024. During the past few months since Pluto went retrograde into Capricorn, you may have had a revisiting and looking back at the transformational themes it brought up for you since 2008. With Pluto going direct after this retrograde, you will likely have processed the last piece of the puzzle for this transformation of where Capricorn is in your chart and this will change based on what house it rules. Now that you have that information, the next months until January 20th 2024 you will be given opportunities to act on this new awareness and put a final closure to your Pluto in Capricorn lessons.

My gut instinct is that it will be the next set of eclipses in 2024 that will be of more significance for the United States given that Aries Solar Eclipse of April 8th will be visible across the country. It is part of eclipse lore that where the eclipse is visible is where an event will occur within 6 months. So, April 2024 – October 2024 might see significant conflict in the United States. That said, I feel like the fall 2023 eclipse season is a set up for what is going to transpire in that significant April 8th eclipse so, it is important to pay attention. The New Moon Solar Eclipse in Libra occurs on Oc-

tober 14th, 2023 and this sign is associated with peacemaking, justice, harmony and balance. Given that this eclipse is on the South Node, we will likely see something creating disharmony in the world. My initial thought for the US was that it had to do with leadership of the political parties however, their National Conventions don’t occur until the summer of 2024. What is possible is that there is something that is going to happen around this eclipse that has an impact on who could be a leader. This feeling brought my focus to Donald Trump who is scheduled for a Civil Fraud Suit in New York on October 2nd, 2023. While other charges he is facing are far more damning, I will be curious to witness if how long this lawsuit lasts in court and if there is something significant that comes out around the 14th that will impact Trump’s ability to run for Republican leadership. If this doesn’t come to pass, a South Node Eclipse in Libra could simply be more disharmony within the people, which could be escalating around this time (perhaps ignited by these court proceedings). The other aspect I worry about with this eclipse is a further loss of harmony on a global level. With our North Node and South Node axis being on Aries and Libra until 2025, we have more likelihood for conflict to ignite.

The Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Taurus will be on October 28th, 2023. This will be our final Eclipse in Taurus for some time. It will likely be putting a final chapter and wrapping up some elements of the Taurus North Node and Scorpio South Node season’s theme that started back on January 18th, 2022. I have written many times that since then that the Taurus themes of affordable housing, the cost of food, issues around the arts and natural disasters became a focus. I’m hoping that after we process this eclipse event (which can take up to 6 months) we may experience some positive development in these areas. There will still be both positive innovation and shocking events in these departments until Uranus moves out of Taurus in April 2026. This event on and around the 28th will likely be notable as on the same day as the Full moon Lunar Eclipse both Mercury and Mars in Scorpio will be in opposition to Jupiter in Taurus.

Mercury is communications and technology while Mars is passion, conflict, or the way we “go to battle.” In opposition to Jupiter in Taurus, there may be tension around a big Taurus issue. An example might be a miscommunication in technology impacting nature or it could be a protest of people communicating how they are fed up with the impossible cost of living and economic disparity within the classes.

While I often focus on the aspects of food, homes, and environment with Taurus, it also rules art and money. For creatives, this October might be significant to watch for shifts in the art market, some form of attack on art or simply frustration around art coming to a head. It is within this North Node with Uranus in Taurus transits (and oftentimes when Mars was also activated) that painting protests over the environment by throwing substances at art occurred. The most recent example of this was a climate protestor throwing paint at “Northern River” by Group of Seven’s Tom Thompson at the National Gallery of Canada in sequence with

Uranus going retrograde. This interpretation of the planets makes sense as Uranus can be the rebellious protestor with a humanitarian cause seeking to bring attention to the environment (Taurus) through violence (Mars) against art (Taurus).

While I am cautioning art galleries to increase their security the week before and after the October 28th Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Taurus, my gut feels that this may also be about secrets being revealed having to do with art and money. In August 2023, Wessie Du Toit wrote “Is the Art Market Heading for a Crash?” in Unheard. As I read through the article, I couldn’t help but think of this upcoming October 28th Eclipse. In this article, Du Toit wrote about how the NFT Bored Ape craze had buyers losing 90% of their investment signaling a general unease with NFT art. He pointed out that this past June, the flagship modern and contemporary auction at Christie’s took 66% less than previous years. He goes on to point out that the pandemic made the wealthy richer and the poorer more destitute but, that lower levels of wealthy have ceased art purchases. The widening gap between wealth and poverty has created an ultra-rich minority who determines what is valuable in the art market but, this small group can only buy so much. Du Toit also wondered if the money laundering through artwork crackdown by governments has also been taking incentives away from collecting. The Mercury/Mars in Scorpio opposition to Jupiter in Taurus happening in sequence with that eclipse, could spell an uncovering of secrets (such as a serious money laundering scheme in the art market) that impacts the abundance (Jupiter) of the arts (Taurus). This opposition also has me concerned about some sort of anger around art such as another protester attacking it. On a more mundane level, you might see anger ignite within a local art gallery over money or other random reasons. Another example of how this could play out is an institutional purchase of an expensive piece of art somehow creating upset. There is also still the ongoing frustration with the boundaries of where AI Art can source from. For most reading this column, I have concerns about the sustainability of city art markets and galleries. It feels that the financial loss created by the lockdown measures may be coming to another head this fall and we will see the real impact of it on businesses.

While this all sounds dire, I want to offer some advice as an artist who has been kicked to the curb more than once and had to have multiple “phoenix rising out of the ashes” rebirths: It was in the worst of times, such as when I didn’t have gallery representation, was treated unfairly or felt unsupported by the artworld, that I often found the true reason for my passion to create art. In these difficult periods we could be like seeds experiencing dark times because we need to be deep in the soil before blossoming.

Deanna Musgrave is an artist, energy worker, channel, and hypnotherapist.

Your thoughts and feedback are always welcome...www.deannamusgrave.com www.artisthehealer.com THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 45

46 •OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

Richard Britell | Fiction | The Prodigal Dog Chapter 1

The Prodigal Dog CHAPTER 1 Four years after the theatricals that were such a great success for Sarah and the queen's dog Rex, a disaster struck the queen's realm, and created a crisis for her reign, which heretofore had been both peaceful and prosperous. It was not a matter of famine or plague, it was not a revolution, or any war with a neighboring state. The disaster was Rex ran away from home.

Just why a disobedient dog should be the cause of the near downfall of the queen's empire might seem strange, but her reaction, which at first was subdued, became more and more extreme as the days passed. At first, like before, the town people went about clicking their tongues, which was the sound Rex would respond to, and also the army did a thorough search of the countryside, but with no success. At the end of the month it was decided that Rex might have even crossed the border into a neighboring kingdom, and the queen's request to be allowed to send troops across the border was met with skepticism, and then outright hostility.

The relationship with this neighboring state had, for a long time been amicable, but their king had been for many months reclining on his deathbed, and which of his many sons, and one daughter, was going to succeed him created a situation of uncertainty, which the disappearance of Rex exacerbated.

But before we can consider the diplomatic aspects of the situation, we need to address the question.

What would induce little Rex to run away in the first place? To understand how it came about we have to first consider some aspects of well known dog psychology. Every dog, no matter how tame, well behaved, and beloved by its master always retains a longing for the wild life. In this regard, Rex was no different than you or I. Everyone wants to run away, all the time, from morning till night, and it is just a question of the intensity. Some people, when overcome by anxiety and dread of the coming hour, will take themselves off to the corner store and spend ten minutes shopping for a candy bar. Is the desire to hop a train, or board a greyhound bus, regardless of its destination, to be assuaged by eating a Hershey Bar? Yes, and you know yourself that this is true.

This dormant desire in a dog can be aroused by subtle little things like a mouse that appears in the corner of a room and disappears a moment later under a bureau. The dog, watching the pathetic thing, which might be starving, just a mouse destined to spend his last days trying to get out of a barrel he accidentally fell into, nevertheless has the

power, by the display of its obvious freedom, to ignite the longing to be free. This effect is slight and might only manifest itself in odd disturbing dreams. But then there are the sounds in the night, like a wolf crying its wounded heart out to the moon and stars, which tears away at the soul of the dog just like the windshield wipers in the middle of the night, keeping time to Bonnie Rait’s “Angel From Montgomery.”

It was not any mouse that caused Rex to want to run away from home, and neither was it a wolf in the woods at night howling at the moon. It was just a dog and a rooster that had run away from a circus.The dog belonged to a drunken clown named Raymond.

The clown Raymond stands in front of his audience in the circus ring. He points his toy gun at the sky and shoots. With his eye he observes a bird descend from the sky. He sends his obedient dog to retrieve the dead bird. The dog returns to his master with a rooster in his jaws. The rooster is limp, and hanging down from the jaws of the dog in that pathetic, spastic way birds have when they are dying.

Now, first of all, roosters do not fly, and so, the rooster in the skit was playing the part of a dead bird. To be convincing in his role, it was necessary to hang as limp as possible, and sometimes, for effect, to shudder a little, as if in imitation of the death throes of roosters. Roosters are very good at playing dead, the spectacle created by a dying rooster is so emblematic, so idiosyncratic, so theatrically dramatic, that it has been commemorated in important historic documents, and works of art and in fiction. It is the spectacle of the rooster running around after death, after his head has been cut off, that I am here referring to. This spectacle is unfortunately, the only real visual image that we poor human beings have of the terrifying idea of a life after death; what other image is there? So it is not surprising that we come across the image in ancient philosophical writing, consider for example, the last words of Socrates, “I owe a cock to Asclepius.”

Why did the dear old man conjure up the cock in his dying words? Obviously because his mind was struggling to find a simple way to believe in a life after death, and his brain gave him only that painful and ironic image. Isn't it true that when Christ was to be crucified, he just happens to blurt out, “Before the cock crows three times, one of you will betray me.” So, he too was looking in the files of his mental images for something that might convince him that death is transitory, and not an absolute, and he too, like Socrates, must have been entertaining the same visual image.

“But,” you say, “it was simply his way of indicating the early morning,” but then I ask you, why not mention birds chirping, or the golden rays of the sun? After all, doesn’t Homer give us his image of the new day with the wonderful words, “The rosy fingered dawn.” Now let us transpose Homer’s words to the biblical scene, just before Christ is to be crucified, we will now have him say, “Before the rosy fingered dawn arrives, one of you will betray me.” That phrasing would destroy the mood of the scene completely, because it lacks angst, it lacks terror, it lacks the ominous shroud of dread which only the word “cock” delivers to the narrative.

Even in great fiction we come across the rooster

image as a harbinger of death, and so in “Crime and Punishment,” we find the old drunk Marmaladov, when he is run over and killed by a carriage, has in his pocket a gingerbread cock. So, you see, the rooster in our story was typecast for the role of the dead bird, and added to that he was also a master at his craft.

The dog's name was Otis. His name had been shortened from Odysseus some years ago, but the fact that he had been given that name at birth was no coincidence as you will eventually see.

The little play that Otis and the rooster performed was very simple. Otis drops the dead rooster at the feet of his master but then unexpectedly, the rooster springs to life, and not only is he alive but he is furiously angry. He violently attacks the clown’s feet and legs. It is an important detail that the clown is wearing very short striped trousers folded up at the cuffs exposing his extremely white skinny legs.

Not content with attacking the clown, the rooster turns his rage upon the dog, jumping on his head, and pecking his skull with frantic determination.

Then the clown runs after the rooster with a boat oar, what the boat oar is doing on the ground is anyone's guess and might have something to do with the Odyssey, but it is so huge and cumbersome that he stands no chance of landing a blow.

All three of them end the skit running around in circles till they are exhausted, and finally all three stop suddenly, and sit down on a checkered blanket and enjoy a picnic lunch on the grass.

The skit of the resurrected rooster was a tremendous success, and that is an understatement. It did not matter one whit how many times a person might see that rooster suddenly jump up alive and torment his murderers, it never failed to arouse something powerful in the heart. It was the presentation in its simplest form of anger in the defiance of death, but in comic garb. It might often happen that some old man down on his luck, and weighed down with care, might just for a moment recall the defiant actions of that rooster, and so smile to himself and think that “Things are not that bad afterall.”

But the success of the skit was of no particular help to the drunken clown. He would have very much liked to get a well deserved raise, for the pleasure his dog and his rooster provided the audience, but, the circus manager, would not consent.

And so he did a disastrous thing, a thing immoral in the extreme, but like so many immoral acts, in his mind he presented it to himself as a logical, inevitable, and essentially good thing. What he did was sneak off into the woods at night with his trusting dog, and his obedient rooster, in search of a dog fighting, and cock fighting ring, where he had been a spectator in the past. What he had in mind at these bloody spectacles was not entirely clear in his mind, but money was his object, if only it could be procured without the death of either of his trusting pets.

What happened that night, when Otis almost lost his life, and was saved by the rooster at the last instant, we shall see in the next chapter.

RICHARD BRITELL, OCTOBER 2023

THE ARTFUL MIND OCTOBER 2023 • 47

48 •OCTOBER 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND

EDWARD ACKER PHOTOGRAPHER

Time Flies • Get Pictures EdwardAckerPhotographer.com 413-446-8348

Deborah H Carter Upcycled Wearable Art @deborah_h_carter www.eric.korenman.photography Model: @shondaevette Flowers by Barbara Arpante Represented by the WIT Gallery Clock Tower Artists, Pittsfield MA