THE ARTFUL MIND THE SOURCE FOR PROMOTING THE ARTS IN THE BERKSHIRES SINCE 1994
BART ELSBACH
Photography by Edward Acker
SEPTEMBER 2018
“Eric’s Great Gardens”@FB Landscape design instaLLations ericsmith715@gmaiL.com 917. 892. 7548
ELEANOR LORD
THE ARTFUL MIND ARTZINE
SEPTEMBER 2018
Paint your pallette blue and grey...
OUR REMAINS OF THE DAY: POST PRIME / PAST PRIME CARL BERG AND JUDY BERG ... 8
MARK KELSO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY TASJA KEETMAN...
BRIAN LITSCHER ACTOR / SINGER MONICA BLISS ... 23
12
BART ELSBACH PHOTOGRAPHY BY EDWARD ACKER...27 JANA CHRISTY... 37
ELEANORLORD.COM
FRONT ST. GALLERY
THE VOICE OF JOYCE PASSION, INTENSITY AND ART! JOYCE SILVER...42
RICHARD BRITELL FALDONI PT 2. FICTION ...43
GRANDMA BECKY’S OLD WORLD RECIPES SIMPLE HORSERADISH SAUCE LAURA PIAN ...44
Contributing Writers and Monthly Columnists Richard Britell, Laura Pian, Joyce Silver, Carl and Judy Berg Photographers Edward Acker, Lee Everett, Jane Feldman Tasja Keetman, Sabine von Falken Publisher Harryet Puritzman
Copy Editor
Marguerite Bride
Editorial Proofreading Kris Galli Painting classes on Monday and Wednesday mornings 10-1pm at the studio in Housatonic and Thursday mornings 10am - 1pm out in the field. Also available for private critiques. Open to all. Please come paint with us!
gallery hours: open by chance and by appointment anytime 413. 274. 6607 (gallery) 413. 429. 7141 (cell) 413. 528. 9546 (home)
Front Street, Housatonic, MA
2 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
Advertising and Graphic Design Harryet Puritzman
artfulmind@yahoo.com 413 854 4400
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.
PPaar Par aara rad adissee City Cityy Ar A ts Festitival vvaal a W WILD annd WONDERFFUL! – Boston Globe
SA ATURD DAY, SUND AY & MOND MONDAY
O OBER 6, 7 & 8 OCTO
Crane · ceramics
Macsai · jewelr y
FURNITURE JEWELRY PAINT
Nnamdi Okonkwo · Friends
Blodgettt · photography
RT SCULPTURE LIGHTING MO ORE!
HAN NDMADE IN AMERICA Meet 250 of the nnation’s finest artists and makers from more than 20 states aat New England’s most exciting arts fest tival
PATTERN N PLA AY! Y! F FABUL ABULOUS FOOD D! Craft cocktails, an eye-popping sspecial exhibit, demonstrations and thee benefit silent aucttion
NORTHAM MPTON, MASSACHUSETTS T Indoors & Undeer T Tents ents at the Three County Fairgrou unds FRE EE P PARKING ARKING • 800.511.9725 Saturday & Sunday 10am-6pm; Monday 10aam-4pm • $14 adults, $12 seniors, $8 students, three-dday pass $16, under 12 free
GET YOUR KEY TO THE CITY!
paradisecityarts.com ecityarts.com s.com
Benefit Silent Auction
TYLER BLODGETT
Photography // Poet // Storyteller. Painfully shy, I began expressing myself through art at a very young age. First it was with words. Then it was with images. Now it has become a story. A story that has carried me to the Artful Mind Gallery. A story that is bringing me around the world. It is a story of love and beauty. And it belongs to you; those who have chosen to witness it. Artists do not create art for themselves. They give themselves to the art so that others may partake. My work is now on display at The Artful Mind Gallery, in Lenox. Tyler Blodgett - http://www.eyeofthepoet.com “The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.” Alberto Giacometti
ROSELLE CHARTOCK
I became a collage artist after 45 years of teaching, but I had always incorporated art in my elementary classroom, my high school history courses and in my education curriculum for future teachers, because art tells stories about who we are, where we’ve been and what we feel and believe in. And it can, quite frankly, in my opinion, save our souls. My inspiration continues to come from vintage images which I find in old magazines, postcards and photographs, as well as the work of collagists Hannah Hoch and Richard Hamilton, photographer Grete Stern and appropriation artist Richard Prince. Why collage? Because of the challenges it poses: how to express a mood, an emotion, a thing of beauty that - when it finally works - gives me pleasure and satisfies my itch to create. And I can keep doing it forever! See Roselle’s art at The Artful Mind Gallery, 22 Walker Street, Lenox. Roselle Chartock, 413 528-4199, roselle.chartock@gmail.com
THE ARTFUL MIND GALLERY
Artist and Songwriter JoAnne presents
Spies
Monday September 24 • 7pm
"Singing the Picture"
Photograph by Jane Feldman
Romare Bearden and jazz, Mondrian and boogie woogie, Grandma Moses and Shaker songs ~ Join singer songwriter and visual artist JoAnne Spies in this exploration of the connections between music and visual art. We will look for the elements of music found in the design of a painting and enjoy listening to music and looking at art in a new way. JoAnne will improvise music to her collages that are in the gallery.
THE ARTFUL MIND GALLERY 22 Walker St. LENOX, MA 413-854-4400 artgallenman@yahoo.com theartfulmindgallery.com
4 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
CAROLYN NEWBERGER
I came to art after a long career in clinical and developmental psychology at Harvard, dedicated to the wellbeing of children and families. Two years in the Peace Corps in Africa from 1967-1969, the diversity of my own extended family, the preciousness of the people I have served in my career, and a life in music (classical flute and jazz washboard) have all found their ways into my art. Watercolor painting, mixed media and collage, and a practice of drawing from life form the body of my work. I primarily draw in real time, often in darkened concert halls. There the challenge is to keep a receptive ear and a loose hand in order to capture both performer and sound, with their rhythm, flow, and intensity. These works illustrate essays and music and dance reviews, some written in collaboration with my husband, Eli Newberger, in The Berkshire Edge, a publication of news, arts and ideas in Western Massachusetts. My artwork has received numerous awards, including Watercolor Artist Magazine, the Danforth Museum of Art, the Cambridge Art Association, and the New England Watercolor Society, and has been widely exhibited in solo and group shows in Boston and beyond. A member of the New England Watercolor Society, I am represented by Galatea Fine Art in Boston, MA, The Artful Mind Gallery in Lenox, MA, and 510 Warren Street Gallery in Hudson, NY. Carolyn Newberger - (617) 877-5672, www.carolynnewberger.com
“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” Andy Warhol
HARVEST BASH
ARTISTS’ RECEPTION
FRIDAY OCTOBER 5. 2018
4 - 7pm
THE ARTFUL MIND GALLERY
Showcasing Works of Art by Berkshire Artists 22 Walker Street Lenox, Massachusetts Thursday through Monday 12 - 5
argallenman@yahoo.com
THEARTFULMINDGALLERY.COM
CALENDAR OF EVENTS BY DAY AND BY NIGHT
ART
info@edithwharton.org SculptureNow Exhibition thru Oct 31.
VAULT GALLERY 322 MAIN ST, GT. BARRINGTON, MA • 413-644-0221 Marilyn Kalish at work and process on view, beautiful gallery and wonderful collection of paintings
510 WARREN STREET GALLERY 510 WARREN STREET, HUDSON, NY 518-822-0510 510warrenstreetgallery@gmail.com / 510warrenstreetgallery.com September: Carolyn Newberger: Revelations Friday & Saturday, 12 - 6, Sunday 12 - 5 or by app
THEATRE
BARRINGTON STAGE COMPANY 122 NORTH ST, PITTSFIELD, MA • 413-236-8888 / info@barringtonstageco.org Darnell Abraham in "Wheels of a Dream" September 21, 2018, September 22, 2018|8:00 pm; The Glass Menagerie October 3, 2018 - October 21, 2018
DEB KOFFMAN’S ARTSPACE 137 FRONT ST, HOUSATONIC, MA • 413-274-1201 Sat: 10:30-12:45 class meets. No experience in drawing necessary, just a willingness to look deeply and watch your mind. This class is conducted in silence. Adult class. $10, please & call to register. First Tuesday of every month. DENISE B CHANDLER FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY & PHOTO ART 413-637-2344 or 413-281-8461 (leave message) *Lenox home studio & gallery appointments available. *Exhibiting and represented by Sohn Fine Art, Lenox, MA. DIANA FELBER GALLERY 6 HARRIS ST., WEST STOCKBRIDGE, MA 413-854-7002 dianafelbergallery.com Open 11-6pm, closed Tues.
FERRIN CONTEMPORARY 1315 MASS MOCA WAY, NORTH ADAMS, MA Cristina Córdova Del balcón, a solo exhibition of new work by Cristina Córdova, featuring large and small figural sculptures exploring the relationship between the human and geographic connections within her native Puerto Rican landscape. July 29- September 16, 2018 FRONT STREET GALLERY 129 FRONT ST, HOUSATONIC, MA • 413-274-6607 Kate Knapp oils and watercolors and classes open to all. LAUREN CLARK FINE ART 325 STOCKBRIDGE RD, GT. BARRINGTON MA 413-528-0432 Lauren@LaurenClarkFineArt.com www.LaurenClarkFineArt.com Fine Art and framing
L’ATELIER BERKSHIRES 597 MAIN STREET, GREAT BARRINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS www.atelierberks.com. • 510-469-5468 natalie.tyler@atelierberks.com Discover contemporary artists in a historic Great Barrington building. Oil paintings, metal & glass sculpture and custom furniture at L’Atelier Berkshires. Carter Wentworth & Robert Wilk Artist Reception: Thursday Sept. 13th 57pm. Summer Hours: Thursday- Sunday 11-5pm Tuesday 12-5pm. Monday & Wednesdays by appointment
LISA VOLLMER PHOTOGRAPHY NEW STUDIO + GALLERY 325 STOCKBRIDGE ROAD, GT. BARRINGTON • 413-429-6511 / www.lisavollmer.com The Studio specializes in portrait, event, editorial and commercial photography : by appointment. The Gallery represents Sabine Vollmer von Falken, Thatcher Hullerman Cook, Carolina Palermo Schulze and Tom Zetterstrom. (Open daily from 11-4pm closed on Wednesdays) 6 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
OCTOBER 19 - OCTOBER 28 | 7:30 - 9 PM SHAKESPEARE & COMPANY 70 KEMBLE ST., LENOX, MASSACHUSETTS SHAKESPEARE & COMPANY | (413) 637-1199 |HTTP://WWW.WAMTHEATRE.COM/ANN/ | LENOX
MASS MoCA 1040 MASSMOCA WAY, NORTH ADAMS, MA • 413-662-2111 LAURIE ANDERSON, THRU 2019; LOUISE BOURGEOIS, THRU 2019 MARGUERITE BRIDE HOME STUDIO AT 46 GLORY DRIVE PITTSFIELD, MA • 413- 841-1659 or 413-442-7718 MARGEBRIDE-PAINTINGS.COM FB: MARGUERITE BRIDE WATERCOLORS
NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM 9 GLENDALE RD, STOCKBRIDGE, MA • 413-298-4100 Keepers of the Flame: Parrish, Wyeth, Rockwell, and the Narrative Tradition. Thru October 28, 2018
SAINT FRANCIS GALLERY 1370 SOUTH ST, RTE. 102, SOUTH LEE, MA Ongoing exhibits
SCHANTZ GALLERIES 3 ELM ST, STOCKBRIDGE, MA • 413-298-3044 schantzgalleries.com DISTINCTIONS IN GLASS : Peter Bremers, Martin Janecký, and Harue Shimomoto Hours: Daily, 10:30 - 5
THE ARTFUL MIND GALLERY 22 WALKER ST, LENOX, MA • 413-854-4400 theartfulmindgallery.com / artgallenman@yahoo.com October 5: Harvest Bash/ Reception for Artists...fun, food, drink & music
THE CLARK 225 SOUTH ST, • 413-458-2303Williamstown, MA A City Transformed, photographs of Paris, 1850-1900, thru Sept 23, 2018 THE MOUNT HOME OF EDITH WHARTON 2 PLUNKETT ST, LENOX, MA • 413-551-5111
WEST STOCKBRIDGE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 1854 TOWN HALL Fresh Takes Play Reading Series: "Escaped Alone" September 16, 2018|3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
EvEnts
THE ARTFUL MIND GALLERY 22 WALKER ST LENOX MA • 413 854 4400 theartfulmindgallery.com artgallenman@yahoo.com Reception for Artists: Friday Oct 5 4 - 7pm. Showcasing Berkshire Fine Artists
24TH ANNUAL PARADISE CITY ARTS FESTIVAL October 6, 7 & 8, inside three buildings at the Three County Fairgrounds in Northampton, MA. One of America’s top-ranked shows of fine craft, painting and sculpture, Paradise City features 250 outstanding artists and makers, sensational cuisine, creative activities, demonstrations, a silent art auction to benefit PBS and an outdoor sculpture promenade. www.paradisecityarts.com or 800-511-9725.
MUSIC
CLUB HELSINKI HUDSON 405 COLUMBIA ST., HUDSON, NY • 518-828-4800 heslinkihudson.com / info@helsinkihudson.com Miss Coco Peru: The Taming of the Tension October 7, 2018|8:00 pm
HUDSON HALL 327 WARREN ST, HUDSON, NY
Leaf Peeper Concert: Violinist Tim Fain September 15, 2018|7:00 pm - 9:30 pm
artfulmind@yahoo.com ISSUU.COM 413 854 4400
GHETTA HIRSCH
“When I paint I tune into the visual flow before me; reducing it to an arrangement of color waves in forms that evoke movement. As I concentrate I begin to internalize the painting process to where I am moving mentally within the space I am creating. Currently I am experimenting with larger canvases, a powerful visual and emotional experience for me as I feel that I react physically, mainly in a sensorial way, to the landscape I am creating." As a student, Ghetta Hirsch studied watercolor with an Italian master in France, continued to draw while raising a family, and picked up oil painting in later years. “I love painting with oils for the richness of the colors and the way the paint covers the canvas voluptuously. My work is inspired and nourished by my passion for the history of art and more precisely for how color, light and form are expressed in paintings." After growing up in Africa and France, Hirsch lived in England before moving to Washington, D.C., where she pursued a career as an educator. She settled in the Berkshires in 2008, shifting from a life focused on being school principal to making room for her long-neglected love of painting. In her paintings, Hirsch aims to translate to canvas the simple pleasures she observes - a fruit, a field of grass, or billowing clouds - in dynamic compositions and palpable textures. She sees a transition in her recent work from realism to a more interpretive expression of her subjects. Ms. Hirsch has exhibited at The Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester, VT, The Whitney Center for the Arts, Pittsfield, MA, White Birch Wellness Center, North Adams, MA., the Milne Public Library, Gallery 4, Williamstown, MA., Copper Trout Gallery, Cambridge, N.Y., The Artful Mind Gallery, Lenox, MA, and in various Decorators Show Houses in York, Maine and Lexington, MA. See more of Ghetta’s art at The Artful Mind Gallery located at 22 Walker St, Lenox, MA
WENDY RABINOWITZ
Shalom. I am a Judaic weaver/mixed-media artistcraftwoman who, for over thirty years, has been blessed to create one-of-a-kind weaving /mixed-media assemblages for beauty, ritual, celebrations and the soul. I draw on Torah, Psalms, and ancient Jewish mystical texts to inform my work, which is deeply rooted in Judaism, nature, and the sacred responses of the spirit. Themes include peace, healing, prayer, the sacred earth and ancient and contemporary women. Each piece combines ancient Jewish iconography with contemporary materials and design to help create pathways of spiritual connection and renewal. My Judaic artwork has been shown at The United Nations, the White House, the Woman's Museum in DC, and throughout the United States and Israel. It is included in synagogues, organizations, galleries, homes and individual collections. I joyfully work out of my Living Threads Judaica Studio in Pittsfield, MA. and locally my commissioned artwork "L'DOR V'DOR: From Generation to Generation" can be seen as a permanently installed work of art at Temple Anshe Amunim in Pittsfield, MA. See some of my work now on display at The Artful Mind Gallery in Lenox. Wendy A. Rabinowitz - 405 East New Lenox Road, Pittsfield, Mass., www.LivingThreadsJudaica1.com, 413-281-2399
NATALIA BYSTRIANYK
Natalia is best known for her colorful and intricate intuitive paintings. The medium of intuitive painting exercises creativity without concern for results, develops trust in intuition, expands a sense of freedom and possibility, and allows for a way to fearlessly explore through play and deep trust. Her work is based in acrylics mixed with various other mediums from colored pencil and ink to paper and spray paint. Please follow her on Facebook and Instagram to see her recent work. Also, The Artful Mind Gallery at 22 Walker St, Lenox, MA
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!” -Henry David Thoreau
THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 7
Our Remains of the Day:
Post Prime/Past Prime PHOTOGRAPHS BY CARL BERG WRITTEN BY JUDY BERG
This summer is definitely past its prime. The leaves have deepened to the green that begins to suggest brown. June’s peas, July’s green beans, have both yielded the floor to August’s corn and tomatoes. The chard just gets fuller and tougher while screaming to be picked and devoured before the collards, kale and mustards are big enough to compete for their place on the table. Of course, the intense heat that we are enduring this early August pushes everything past prime so fast that we can’t keep up with it. Past prime is a condition we gardeners experience with our vegetables throughout the growing season. Our favorites come and go, and we look forward to their appearance in next year’s garden, as we move on to the next to display its prime, an entirely normal cycle that has recurred year after year, for as long as people have been planting and harvesting food. What remains with me this August, like it or not, are thoughts of a post prime world. We are already living with so many posts: post-racial, that turns out not to be; post-apocalyptic, not yet; post-truth, hmmmm; post traumatic stress, not so post. A past prime garden doesn’t disturb me, since it merely means that a particular growing season is finished. A post prime garden conjures up disturbing thoughts about where the whole gardening project is headed in a world with more days of intense heat and more bursts of intense, drenching rain. Post means done, gone forever. The recent magazine section of Sunday’s NY Times suggests that the gig is up, that we missed our chance to preserve normal growing cycles on Earth. It suggests that hope, itself, is post prime. August 3 It’s time for the feast of the past prime bean. Just as we look forward to the first picking of skinny, lithe, deep green beans, we start salivating at the thought
8 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
of the bean past its prime, bigger, lumpier, more brittle, but full of flavor from the ham, onion, potato combo baked in a clay pot with a bouquet of summer savory laid ceremonially on top. What is it about these simple, basic flavors that conjure up an uncomplicated past. Of course, no past is ever uncomplicated, but there were certain things you could count on. I remember the dependable rhythm of a string of summer days that grew progressively warmer, while the sky’s intense blue grew milkier with the increasing humidity. Then, you could count on a bracing thunderstorm, followed by a rainy day or two, before the skies cleared, again revealing that intense blue. You could plant and harvest, and plan. Yes, there were occasional anomalies. Sometimes the weather came from the south or the east instead of the cleansing west. But, they were anomalies. In these days of intense heat, or rain, I begin to suspect that the weathermen hedge their bets with daily predictions of “warm and humid with the possibility of showers, or a severe thunderstorm.” The old familiar patterns don’t apply. We’re off our game. On a recent trip to Prince Edward Island, situated in northeastern Canada, expecting cool ocean breezes, we were stunned by the heat. We visited a high concept restaurant called Fireworks, where the chef and his crew cook everything over wood. One large section of wall is devoted to several different cooking hearths that grilled, roasted and baked the locally sourced meat, fish, and vegetables that the well-heeled crowd had come to enjoy. Prior to the meal, we were treated to a walk through the extensive gardens as we sipped aperitifs, then gathered by the flagpole where the chef proposed a toast to the bounty that we were about to savor. This restaurant is booked months in advance, and in this posh setting, the irony of the displayed reverence for food and cooking techniques used by the first pre-prime humans was inescapable. Since the island was under a heat advisory, the irony was soon dispelled by flat
out discomfort when the diners sat down to eat in the Fireworks dining room. I felt for the chef and staff, not just because they were suffering the heat more than we diners, but also because this valiant effort to wed open fire cooking to prime ingredients in a post prime world was proving untenable in a warming world.
August 11 Tonight, we have guests, two close friends here for a “family meal.” This is a new category, an alternative to “supper” or “dinner.” Family meal is code for: you will be eating what we would be eating if we had no guests. In other words, a few olives and a bit of cheese with drinks on the deck before dinner, then a simple meal with or without dessert. Since it’s August, the garden still rules. I pull summer squash, sweet peppers, and red onion out of the fridge and saute it into a vegetable hash sprinkled with basil. The sweet potatoes hiding behind the squash turned out to be post prime, so they were chucked into the compost. Since we were grilling very special pork chops, my heart was set on sweet potatoes, coated with cumin and sweet smoked Spanish paprika, then roasted in a high heat oven. A trip to the store for the potatoes turned up some local strawberries. So, our family meal became somewhat dinnerish with the addition of zabaglione for the berries. Compromise and innovation are the cook’s good friends. Come to think of it, compromise and innovation are also the policy maker’s good friends. To wit, I heard on this week’s “Living on Earth” (loe.org) radio show that concern about water shortages and air pollution are pushing the Indian government to invest more in solar and wind in their quest to bring electricity to villages that lack power. The report duly noted the profits to be made on this investment, with the long term goal being to phase out coal entirely. This report,
along with another recently heard, on state supported organic farming in southern India, had me thinking about India’s environmental leadership in relation to ours. By contrast, the Trump administration recently took steps to lower the emission standards for automobiles, in spite of the fact that the automakers have been busy retooling to meet the higher standards set by the Obama administration. Listening to a report on the political climate in Pennsylvania, a biker, motorcycle, that is, bemoaned the critics of Trump: “Why don’t they just leave him alone and let him do his thing?” The words “his thing” have been ringing in my ears ever since. What is “his thing?” And what about “our thing?” To me, “his thing” is code for whatever will alleviate White male grievance. Let our fear of difference, and change, continue to dominate policy making here in the United States of America. One more anecdote from loe.org, if you please. A former Pennsylvania coal miner, who had been laid off from the mines, took a job in a solar company, where he was earning the same wage. He said he took the job because it paid the same, and he liked the work, not because he believes in all of this climate change stuff. Have we reached the point where our identity politics have become so rigidified that a White working man loses face with his local affiliate if he dares to admit the validity of climate change? God, somebody, please save us from “his thing.” Hope is not, and never will be, post-prime. -Judy and Carl Berg
THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 9
KEITH EMERLING
Do something inspiring! The tools and utensil series urges just that. Leverage everyday objects in new ways. The metaphors are abundant. Kindness to one’s self greatly benefits others "Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness." ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca Life is hard enough. Here are some practical applications or “tools” to make it a little better. You can find these in almost any home, so put them to use. I have a B.A. in Fine Arts from University at Albany (State University of New York at Albany, SUNYA) and did undergraduate work at U.C. Santa Barbara, Cleveland State University and Berkshire Community College. I also took one year of non-degree graduate work in painting and photography at SUNYA. I continue to take classes and workshops For the past three and a half years I have been showing my work with the Richmond-West Stockbridge Artist Guild, the Housatonic Valley Art League and at Bagels Too Gallery, Good Purpose Gallery, Adams Community Bank in North Adams, The Kinderhook Group Gallery, Berkshire Humane Society Gallery, Shaker Mill Inn, the Stockbridge Library, Gallery 35 at Stone House Properties, the Welles Gallery, TD Bank in Great Barrington, The Spencertown Academy, Dottie’s Coffee Lounge, Becket Arts Center, JWS Art Store, The Lichtenstein Center, Berkshire Art Association Berkshire Regional Art Guild and the Guild of Berkshire Artists. The Artful Mind Gallery, 22 Walker St., Lenox, MA // kse@keithemerlingfineart.com www.keithemerlingfineart.com 413-442-2483
My Muse - moving skies over open waters, land formations, sunsets, sunrises, & natural beauty. My Vision - to transform the landscape into a soft, ephemeral painting. My Intent - to depict the fleeting, emotional moments of life through landscape painting. My Obsession - to work in series, with one piece shaping and informing another. My Hope - moving the viewer in unexpected ways. Finding my voice through painting in oil has been an unexpected journey. After trying my hand at many different media, I found that painting in oil, mostly on canvas, was the one sure way I could blend color into color until I got the results I was looking for. My artistic voice takes form in abstracted, sometimes brooding “scapes” that depict skies full of movement, reflected light and the moodiness of deep woods visions. There are times of quietude, times of frenzy, times of darkness, times of effusiveness. These “scapes” express how everything seems to stay the same, and yet, from minute to minute/ hour to hour, day to night, and so on, important and inexplicable life moments can happen. They are metaphors for the ephemeral, emotional moments that occur in real time. See Karen’s art at The Artful Mind Gallery in Lenox. Karen S. Jacobs, Studio at 311 North Street, #13, Pittsfield, MA, (617) 750-5003, www.karensjacobs.com
Linda Weisberg
INTERIOR DESIGN SERVICES www.lwinteriors.com 617. 633. 1224
10 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
KAREN S. JACOBS
JANET PUMPHREY
Janet Pumphrey began her photography career after college with a dark room in her closet. Her favorite subjects have always been people and street photography. She also enjoys travel photography, and she strives to capture a depth of feeling about a location through its cityscapes, landscapes, and people. She finds beauty in forgotten places and objects, in vintage venues, in modern architecture and architectural features, in both beautiful people and in the neglected and downtrodden people of the streets. While photography is an inherently representational medium, Pumphrey also moves beyond the inherent realism in traditional photography to see the world in a new and different way. She appreciates the ability to manipulate photographs through the artistic imagery available both in-camera and in post-processing, turning what was a realistic photograph into a creative, often abstract work of art. Pumphrey has studied with such esteemed photographers as Fran Forman (Photoshop), Valda Bailey (incamera multiple exposure), Sebastian Michaels (Photoshop), Hazel Meredith (textures and overlays), and Mollie Isaacs. In 2016, her photograph was acclaimed by the international Nikon publication, NPhoto, as Photographer of the Year. Her work as been said to be “inspirational,” “glorious,” “stunning,” “wonderful.” One critique of a wedding photograph noted, “The photographer has been very clever in framing the image... The smiles on the faces of the people involved feel so genuine, you can't help smiling in response: the photo conveys the real emotion people felt on the day.” Another critique of a vintage car photograph said, “There were quite a few photos of vintage cars, but I chose this one as it was different, and elegantly shows the classy vintage car. The angle gives great lighting and shows the shine of the beautifully polished dash.” Her photographs are currently and have been shown at the Artful Mind Gallery in Lenox, the Berkshire Museum, Sohn Fine Arts in Lenox, Gallery 35 in Great Barrington, the Welles Gallery in Lenox, and other venues in Berkshire County. Janet Pumphrey - 45 Walker Street, Lenox, Mass, (413) 637-2777, www.JanetPumphrey.com, JHPumphrey@gmail.com.
CLAUDIA D’ALESSANDRO
PHOTOGRAPHER
CARL BERG PHOTOGRAPHY
My artistic interests predate and have extended beyond my professional psychological activities. I have been a practicing Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist, now retired, for the past 35 years in New York City. I have taught at the City University of New York, New York University, Marymount Manhattan College and The New School for Social Research. My images have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in New York City, Spencertown, NY, Chatham, NY, Old Chatham, NY, Rye, NY, Hudson, NY, Albuquerque, NM, Scranton, PA, Wassaic, NY, Pittsfield, MA, and Sacramento, CA. Two abstract images can be found in ”Direct Art”, Vol.15, Fall/Winter 2008. I was the cover and featured visual artist in “Hanging Loose Press”, issue #91, 2007, ISSN:0440-2316 and was the featured artist cover story in “The Artful Mind”, November, 2008, MA. My photograph is the cover image for a book by Elizabeth Swados, “Waiting:Selected Non-Fiction” 2011, ISBN:978-1-934909-21-8. I am currently collaborating in a monthly column, “Our Remains of the Day”, in The Artful Mind, Carl Berg photography, Judy Berg, writer, November, 2017-present. My purpose is twofold. Through the digital representational and non-representational photographic image, I attempt to detail and illustrate the artful in the unnoticed, the depth and complexity in the ordinary and mundane. Also, by identifying and illustrating the tactile elements of expression in objects not ordinarily seen as communicative, I try to provoke the observer’s projections on these otherwise unexpressive screens. Additionally, through the visual diversity of the different images and their installation, I attempt to create a conversation amongst these individual elements, hopefully transforming the visual word into photographic phrases. All represented images are actual camera captures not computer constructions. Carl Berg - www.nonationimages.com.
JENNIFER PAZIENZA
Handheld images arrive in nanoseconds. Super human art installations challenge market economies. Still, I maintain an old-fashioned affair with paint. Love and longing fuel my quest for meaning. Memory, beauty and desire shape literal and figurative landscapes. Within the liminal space between representation and abstraction, I paint from a colourist palette in oils to know, to understand, to celebrate. To dissolve dualities and ease tensions. A retired art education professor, I built a career theoretically and practically advocating for the personal, social and cultural necessity of art in general education. As a painter, I have and continue to make paintings that are tangible and emotive, paintings that invite and encourage contemplation in a chaotic world. Originally a Jersey girl from an Italian-American family in Bloomfield, the last 25 years has seen me painting from my studio on Keswick Ridge in New Brunswick, Canada where I live with my husband Gerry Clarke and our dog Mela. My exhibition record includes shows in Canada and the United States and my work is held in prominent Public and Corporate Collections in Canada, the US and Italy. See Jennifer’s paintings at The Artful Mind Gallery in Lenox. Jennifer Pazienza - Art Studio, 1-506-476-3230, jennpazienza@gmail.com
Portrait by Lee Everett When our world seems too filled with dismay and worry, Nature stands steadfast as a powerful ally, offering respite and inspiration when we choose to engage her. The natural world offers a not-so-distant mirror of our experiences reflected in sky, water and earth. Great drama, intricate patterns, hidden faces, abstract shapes and a spectrum of colors abound in shifting light. But sometimes, they last only for an instant. I strive to artfully capture such quixotic moments and transform them into paper, canvas and metal prints that can ornament and inspire our living spaces. It is one of my life's joyful pleasures to share these images with others. “A long time Berkshire County resident and photographer Claudia d'Alessandro makes her home in Great Barrington with her fiancé musician David Reed, and a cat who enjoys tangling her yarn” She firmly believes that it is best to: “Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.” -Henry David Thoreau, Walden Please visit me at my website, Claudia d'Alessandro, Photography at: www.dalessandrophotography.com., or on Facebook as Claudia d'Alessandro, Photography, You may also contact me at: cdalessandro26@gmail.com, or through my website at contact@dalessandrophotography.com
THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 11
MARK KELSO
Harryet Candee: Mark, music is your world! Please tell me about your relationship to it. Mark Kelso: Music may not be my religion, but it makes the one I have more tolerable! I engage in music because I have to… for soul survival. Music is the language in which my soul speaks more than in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or Sanskrit. I love chanting in all of those sacred languages, but honestly, it’s the chanting itself I love the most. And, of course, throughout my life, there has been piano. I am not a great singer, but I am a great lover of singing, especially when I can be part of a larger group. When I was little, I would just prance around the house chanting made-up words until it drove my siblings a bit bonkers. When I discovered as a teenager that there was a whole musical genre dedicated to the repetitive singing of simple phrases, it struck a chord, so to speak. I have sung and/or played in Gregorian and Sanskrit chant groups, church choirs, praise and worship bands, and with Jewish folk singers. I’ve also attended Sufi
12 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
Photography by Tasja Keetman Interviewed by H. Candee
zkirs and participated in the Dances of Universal Peace. I probably chant, sing, and play music more out of necessity than inspiration. But at some point, the inspiration takes over and lifts me out of my habitual thought-stream.
How did music enter your life, and how did you discover its meaning and importance to your life? Mark: My mom often remarked that when she was pregnant with me, she would feel my fingers playing against her insides. She figured I would be a pianist when I got a little more independent. My parents signed me up for piano lessons when I was eight, and though I had fooled around on the piano before that, the lessons began a practice that I follow in some form to this day. But to tell you the truth, I still don’t like to practice nearly as much as I love playing. Often, I would go into a trance state while playing piano. I would hear my mom calling me from very far away, it seemed, but she was easy to ignore because my inner world was just so compelling and blissful.
One of my favorite chord changes was from Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” and I would just play it over and over again, sometimes instrumentally and sometimes singing the same few lines over and over. From very early on in my life, playing music has been a way for me to center and to self-soothe, but also to connect with others and to touch into the divine reality. I studied classical piano until I was 18. At my high school senior recital, my first piano teacher came up to me and said, “I never thought you’d make it,” noting that I had primarily wanted to learn by ear and was always making stuff up rather than reading what was on the page. At that same recital, one of my friends, pianist and composer Joshua Rosenblum, noted, “You just made up the second movement of the Haydn piano sonata.” “Yeah,” I replied. “I forgot what Haydn wrote, so I just made up my own version.” I also studied with a jazz arranger who had worked with Glenn Miller, and he introduced me to the world
of chord theory, the blues, and jazz improv. I was a very sensitive kid who cried a lot, even in school, and I found in music a way to express my emotions in a relatively safe way. Also, I could make way more money playing piano than any of my friends could make slinging burgers at McDonalds! I also played in the Methodist church: on piano for Sunday school and on the pipe organ for worship services. I only had one year of formal pipe organ lessons, and to this day I sometimes still peek at my feet! My dad left when I was sixteen, and it became necessary for me to make money. I joined an AFL-CIO affiliated chapter of the Musician’s Union and started playing in an adult band. I earned $100 a night for those gigs; that was a lot of money for a teenager, especially in Appalachia in 1975! I got my first real taste of musical theatre accompanying a touring Christian musical called Lightshine. A couple of years later, I turned down a gig at the Kennedy Center warming up for Earth, Wind, and Fire for an opportunity to accompany Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell, which may have set me on my present course. We’ll talk about my musicals soon, I am sure! I attended Oberlin College and Conservatory where my life was changed forever by sitarist Roop Verma, whose approach to music as a spiritual practice touched me deeply. At that time I had decided to change my focus from physics, music technology, and composition to psychobiology and pre-med studies. Studying and playing with Roop, I began to understand how music could be both medicine and art. He was a protegé of both Ravi Shankar and Swami Kripalu for whom Kripalu Center is named. (I had met Swami Kripalu, who was an amazing composer, musician, and yogi when I was 19.) Ravi had given Roop some incense, which he passed on to me. I burned that incense at all of my early recording sessions out of respect for these inspiring musical giants. After a brief stint post-Oberlin as a professional musician, I moved to Kripalu, where I eventually became their first music director. I recorded many of my CDs of contemplative piano music while in that position, and for a time was on the EMI/Virgin record label Narada as one of their first pianists.
How has religion played a role in your composing? Mark: Religion, or at least our connection to something greater than ourselves, has always been the main inspiration behind the great works of art. Not that I am as prolific as Johann Sebastian Bach, but I, too, compose for church every Sunday in addition to producing music and teaching students. I compose preludes and postludes, sometimes completely original, and often as variations on existing hymn melodies. If you check out my CDs (at www.muddyangel.com) or their corresponding iTunes versions, you’ll notice that most of the titles have spiritual overtones. Even though religion and music often draw from the same source, I prefer music over dogma because it tends to be less separative. One can sing with people and join together much more powerfully than one often can by entering into religious dialog, which is where a lot of the arguments start! One of my great loves, in addition to the sacred music of the West, is kirtan, which is the chanting of the Divine names, primarily in Sanskrit. They say the Inuit and other arctic cultures have all these names for the different kinds of snow. In Sanskrit, there are many names for the different flavors of Divinity—not that there are many gods but that the One Divine Reality has many aspects.
In my heart, however, I have not strayed far from my Methodist upbringing in Ohio. I love the old hymns, revivals, and I love Jesus, even though he was never called that in his life. That is still the divine name I have grown up loving the most.
You’re a composer, and I have listened to your CD Cathedral more then 100 times and am still loving every note of it. It’s a real gift to the world. How did this music come about? Mark: Thank you, Harryet. That is very kind. After I left the EMI/Virgin/Narada label in the mid-80s, I contacted a recording engineer named Chris Brown who, at the time, was working with the Grammy-awardwinning saxophonist and world music artist, Paul Winter. I had spent some time at Paul’s farm in Connecticut playing music, and Chris had been impressed by my third album, A Candle for the Sun. He described it as “George Winston with brains.” He said he’d like to help produce the next album and that we should record it in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine right on the edge of Harlem. The Cathedral is the world’s largest gothic cathedral and has amazing acoustics over its 600-foot length. So I called the Cathedral and asked permission to record there which was seemingly granted, and we hired in the security guards and other things they requested. But about 6 months after I had already recorded there, I received an official letter denying my request! I guess whoever thought they were in charge of the decision was overridden by a higher authority. I was living at Kripalu at the time, and when I returned from the recording sessions in New York, one of my co-workers (who did not know where I had gone or what I was doing) told me of a dream she had had about me while I was gone. In the dream, I had gone into a huge church to play music and she was struck by the beauty of the music. About a year later, Cathedral had finally been released, and I was playing the music in the Kripalu dining room. My co-worker said, “What’s that music? That’s the music from the dream.” I do love Cathedral and have gotten a lot of great professional feedback— from actor Ben Kingsley, from pianists Dave Brubeck and George Winston, from composer Harold Arlen, and from a host of others.
I have begun listening to your musical, Luci, on CD. Can you describe what it is about to readers? What do you wish would come out of this creation you have so poured your heart into? Why Luci, Mark? Mark: Good questions! Ask me again in about 5 years and I may have completely different answers. As I entered the Gershwin Theater in 2014 to see Stephen Schwartz’s Broadway musical, Wicked, I got a text from an old friend who had been Harold Arlen’s caretaker in the final years of that composer’s life. (Harold, as you may know, among his many other accomplishments, wrote the music for The Wizard of Oz, upon which Wicked is based.) My friend had texted me a link to a wonderful piano rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow that he thought I might enjoy. As I walked into the theater, there was a life-sized statue of Harold Arlen! Walking out of the theater after the show, as I passed Harold’s statue, I muttered “Someone should do a musical like this for Lucifer,” who gets an even worse rap than the Wicked Witch of the West got in the The Wizard of Oz.A month later, Luci was conceived, and as I did my literary and Biblical research, I discovered that, indeed, due to a mistranslation from the Latin Vulgate Bible, Lucifer has been
associated in many people’s minds with Satan, the adversary. Milton’s Paradise Lost, has also done a lot to reinforce this idea. Given our current political climate, wherein entire nations and peoples have been demonized, including the U.S.A (the Great Satan), I feel the time has come to take on demonization and polarization as embodied in the popular notion of Lucifer as a fallen angel. As I strung together songs from the last forty years, a story started to unfold about a beautiful angel, acknowledged as God’s favorite, who out of a desire to prove herself as special, falls from heaven to what becomes, in her descent, what we now call hell. In the process of writing, I ran across entire websites dedicated to the belief that not only could Lucifer never be forgiven, but that all important angels are male! Since humans seem to be the ones assigning genders to the heavenly creatures who, presumably, possess no gender, I wanted to play with the idea of angels who have been transgendered as a reflection of the current cultural milieu. I mean, if angels get their gender assignments from humans, and humans are starting to question their own deeply held concepts in this regard, then that should confer a certain gender fluidity upon the heavenly host. However, as I developed the musical and played with this idea that heaven is constrained by concepts held on the earthly plane, I realized that the musical Luci was becoming burdened by lengthy discourses on pronoun use, gender swaps, and even theology. And Luci is much more about what happens to us when we separate off from the source of love and whether forgiveness is available. Eventually, the whole gender thread was ported into the musical Mikey that deals directly with Archangel Mikha’el having undergone a gender reassignment from her earlier days as Michel, a much more feminine angel. (By the way, if you gaze upon the statuary of Michel/Michael in Europe you might well come to the same conclusion that she/he started off as way more feminine than we now envision her/him.) Mikey struggles to come to terms with how it feels to be constrained by human concepts of gender. In this trilogy, even the angels are confused by the gender pronouns. The third strand of an idea to be pulled out into its own musical is about God attempting to establish a direct relationship with people rather than founding yet another religion. So God (I Am) incarnates as this Jewish guy, Yeshua (Yes-You-Ahh) in first century Palestine. At a time when many take religion seriously, I felt it was a good opportunity to laugh at ourselves for thinking we can truly understand Divinity. I think that for humans to discuss God and angels as if we truly understand is akin to ants in an anthill debating whether there are such things as humans, “and what is that thunderous noise above our world anyway?” So I Am/Yes-You-Ahh looks at how heaven wants to wake up the human world so that heaven itself can operate with a bit more fluidity, instead of being so heavily constrained by human belief systems. There’s an interesting story of how Luci came to be divided into the trilogy now known as The Arc of Angels. The original musical was about 2 1/4 hours long with almost 50 musical selections. I sent it to my friend Joshua Rosenblum, who now teaches musical theatre at Yale (after 10 years as Miss Saigon’s music director), and he gave Luci a good listen. “The musical, while brilliant, is artistically, philosophically, and theologically too dense for most theater-goers,” Josh wrote in an email a couple of years ago. Continued on next page...
THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 13
Mark Kelso
That very same week, an elderly gentlemen, who I thought might be a potential investor, came to the studio after requesting a meeting with me about Luci. (He had attended one of the early previews of the musical and had enthusiastically enjoyed it.) Upon arriving at the studio, however, he very quickly confided, “I’m not quite sure how to tell you this, but my spirit guides won’t let me sleep until I give you the following message.” When I inquired about his “spirit guides” he referred to one of them as “kind of like a feminine form of Archangel Michael,” which obviously got my attention, given the gender issues with which I was grappling in the musical. “They want you to know that while your musical will be groundbreaking for the planet, you are writing four musicals, not one.” Since I was already working on another musical at the time, I asked him if he thought this could be a trilogy. “Well, the angels are telling me that your musical in its present form is artistically, philosophically, and theologically too dense for most people.” And that began my process of unraveling what was originally Luci into the three separate strands.
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Photograph by Tasja Keetman
Like most art, this project has had a life of its own, and, I believe, comes with the support to get itself into the world in whatever form it deems appropriate. I have had great opportunities to present it to folks like Stephen Schwartz (Pippin, Prince of Egypt, Godspell, Wicked) and his friend Jack Thomas (Piece of My Heart, Tuck Everlasting). Also, my friend and colleague, Karen Allen (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Animal House, plus her own directorial debut, A Tree, A Rock, a Cloud, for which I provided music) listened all the way through and gave really helpful dramaturgical advice. With the help of Joyce Peirce, Chelsea LeSage, Maizy Broderick Scarpa, Marisa Massery, Ben Buissink, and other Berkshire-grown talent, I have been able to construct a beautiful 2-CD set of the musical which is also available for free online. There is still so much work to be done on it, though, including scoring and arranging the whole thing. You have over 20 albums of your own work out there in the world. Are any of them directly connected to the musical you are in the midst of creat-
ing, or just finished? Mark: First of all, I don’t know if the musicals will ever actually be finished! As they say, musicals are written, and rewritten, and rewritten, and… There is actually material dating back to when I was sixteen that has found its way into the trilogy. There are many songs written over the past forty years that I I never recorded because they were odd and had little context, but when placed into the musicals, they shine with meaning. Luci also contains a couple of modified songs from my albums Grief and Grace and Human Heart. In some regards, it is the songs like Dark Angel, I Am and All I Ever Wanted that gave rise to the musical in the first place. And these are not the only musicals I have worked on. For a number of years, while my kids attended Mountain Road School in New Lebanon, I helped write, in collaboration with the students, the songs for the musicals we performed. I loved working with the gifted playwrights Cindy Parrish and Sarah Katzoff, as well as director Meg Agnew, and those successes may have given me the confidence to pursue these somewhat more grand visions!
What instruments do you work with and enjoy playing? Mark: Lately, I have been drawn to the portability (and fun!) of small string instruments like guitaleles, ukuleles, mandolins, and banjos, but I am not that great on any of them. My favorite instrument of late is a steelstring Tacoma Papoose, which is a small guitar tuned up a fourth from the standard EADGBE of the regular guitar. And I have a couple of tambouras in the studio which are wonderful drone instruments from India often used to accompany sitar ragas or chanting. I also love to play percussion instruments like udu pot, djembe, dumbek, and Gaston, a large wooden frog guiro who “croaks” when you stroke his back with a stick. Piano, however, as my first love, will always be my true love as well. It is the doorway to all of the other keyboard instruments I play: harmonium, pipe organ, harpsichord, electronic organ, pump organ, accordion, and assorted electronic keyboards.
What are some of the more exotic venues in which you have performed? Mark: A lot of the larger venues, like Madison Square Garden, or with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra were not solo gigs but ones in which I played a more supporting role. With the DSO, besides playing piano, one of my roles was to play accordion on a little klezmer tune David Grover was performing about latkes, just because the first chair violinist refused to improvise! One interesting solo tour, in Jamaica, had a warmup act, a reggae band called Prince Tebah and the Sons of Thunder. They were lovely guys with a great groove and a huge spliff they offered me before the show, which I politely declined. Once, after playing a bit in Italy, I did an impromptu concert for a captive crowd in the waiting area at the Rome airport.
You have a music studio and help to bring other artists’ work down to earth. How do you find people and how do they find you? Do they have to have some kind of fit to make it work? Mark: For years after I left Kripalu in the early 90s, many of my clients were the teachers and residents, since I had done music production there. And many of those folks, like Todd Norian, John de Kadt, Jennifer Reis, Megha Buttenheim, Rudy Peirce, and Bhavani Lorraine Nelson, have done multiple albums with me. Often, other artists will hear those recordings and really like the depth of sound we have been able to capture. So the recordings themselves send folks my way. Many times now, I’ve had the experience of listening to some really great music and feeling almost jealous of some producer’s ability to get such a great soundscape, only to realize a few moments later that I had recorded it! Some of my clients, like Michael Fabrizio, whose first country album I helped produce over 20 years ago now, were former students. Others just find out about Muddy Angel through Google, or Thumbtack, or word of mouth. Normally, both the artist and I will know in an initial meeting if it is a good fit or not. It has been the rare project that hasn’t worked out, once we get started on it. In these days of file transfers between studios something might start at Muddy Angel and end up being ported to a few different studios before it is completed. Or the other way around. Most of the time that has worked out really well, to have other great ears and expertise weigh in on a project. What do you see as your primary role with your
clients? Mark: More than once, I have been listed as a “midwife” in the liner notes of an album. That says to me that someone already has something within themselves to which they are giving birth, and my role is to help them through both the difficult and blissful passages until the baby emerges. And then I completely let go. With my students, that is a more long-term relationship, but still one in which my intention is to bring forth what is wanting to emerge from this particular individual rather than to impose my own agenda upon their process. I have had students (Michael, Ian Evans, Geo Carter, and Maya Solovey to name a few) who burst with musicality but never learned to play Bach or even read music all that well. Each has a really distinctive style that may not even include playing piano that much anymore. Interestingly, those of my students who have gone on to careers in music were not the classical players and readers as much as those who could play by ear. I have one protegé right now, though, who possesses almost my exact skill set. Phoebe Carry, who is now a high school senior, reads classical music, plays by ear, improvises, and composes. She wowed the crowd when she sat in with me recently at Gateways Inn in Lenox. When I was working on Karen Allen’s movie soundtrack, I put up the opening scene on the screen for Phoebe to try her own version. I liked her ideas more than what I had already composed for the film. In the end, Karen’s artistic vision prevailed but I was so proud of Phoebe’s efforts! Ultimately, though, I just want to communicate how much fun music is. When I was teaching music at Mountain Road School, I was asked to give a presentation to parents on my teaching methodology. “Music is fun,” I said, as I stood up to address the parents. “And the more fun it is, the more we do it, and the more we do it, the better we get at it. And the better we get at it, the more fun it is.” Then I sat down. Where have you lived other then the Berkshires? What did you do there? Mark: Born in the hills of West Virginia (almost heaven), having moved across the river to Ohio (next to almost Heaven), and then to the woods of Pennsylvania, I have never lived too far from the Appalachians for any length of time. But I have pretty much always done the same thing: hiking in the hills, doing music both sacred and profane, playing with technology, meditating, and cooking (and eating!) yummy food.
Tell us your most treasured music memory. Mark: I have been on stage or screen since I was very young, but one really formative experience came when I was playing with my friend John Sands, who still works as a world-class drummer for folks like Aimee Mann and Lisa Marie Presley. We were the co-directors of our junior class talent show and had arranged a piece of music I had written. I was wearing tails and white gloves with glitter fingernail polish. I remember coming on to the stage, removing my gloves, waving my nails under the spotlights, and getting a standing ovation with John before we even played a note! As I begin a trill on the concert grand, a surge of energy entered my body and exited out my fingers filling the auditorium with sound and then moving through the audience back into my body until a visceral electrical circuit was created between the music and the folks filling that 2000-seat hall. I still hold that performance as my virgin experience of the thrill of circulating music within the relationship of musician and audience.
Is it difficult in today’s world to make it in the music industry? What do you have to be trained in these days to at least get a good start? Mark: I think “making it” is an interesting phrase. Sometimes I feel very successful simply because I have been able (barely sometimes) to support my kids into adulthood doing the Berkshire music shuffle: many of us piece together a living between teaching, performing, album sales, touring, recording, and producing other artists. The loss of album sales, which has not been economically replaced by Spotify, Pandora, and iTunes royalties, has definitely cut into many of our abilities to make it as performers. However, the democratization of music, and the fact that one need not be on a major label anymore to get distribution, has opened up a lot of opportunities for less well-known producers, studios, and instructors as they support musical hopefuls. What I hope to impart to the younger generation of musicians is: 1) Love it, because at the end of the day all you get is the love you have for your art. And what you love you will do more of, and what you do more of, you will get better at. I’d say, “Play, play, play even more than you practice, practice, practice!” 2) Be as flexible as possible: read, play by ear, improvise, and polish your business skills or get help from someone who has them. 3) Be someone who has something to say, rather than prioritizing technical proficiency over self-expression. This means exposing yourself to a wide spectrum of emotion and information, not just in the musical and technical fields. If someone loves playing music, even when they are not “making a living,” they have “made it” in my book.
How do you describe today’s popular music? Mark: I don’t think pop music has changed a great deal since The Beatles, which says to me that those guys (along with George Martin) broke such fresh ground that we are all still planting seeds and reaping the harvest from that soil. Last spring, my friend Jeremy Yudkin approached me about putting together a loose consortium of some of the great musicians in the Berkshires to perform the entire Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album on the 50th anniversary of the album’s release in 1967. That music, reinterpreted through 21st century ears, hands, and voices, was still alive with energy as we played to the SRO crowd at the Lenox Town Hall. I listen a lot to Leonard Cohen and to the albums of my friends and clients like Renee Harvitt, John de Kadt, Linda Worster, and Sherrie Howard. Then I go traipsing down memory lane, listening to early Jackson Browne, Elton John, and the Beatles. Plus, of course, I always have my students turning me on to the latest hits that they want to learn on piano, ukulele, guitar, or some other instrument. And sometimes I will go back a bit further in time and put on some rendition of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor, or some of his keyboard works recorded by Glenn Gould. And the other day, I put on a 78 record of Debussy on my crank Victrola in the studio. Nothing digital about it!
Yes! The sounds of the past can go way back! You do have training in classical music, correct? Mark: I have years of training in classical music but not a great aptitude! I consider myself a jack of all, master of none, kind of player, although I have been told I am Continued on next page...
THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 15
a dang good improviser. Once, as a teenager I had discovered a Hammond B3 organ in a local music store and was wailing away on some blues when one of the few black men in our white-bread Ohio town stuck his head in the door. “Damn!” he exclaimed, “You play some mean blues.” I flushed with pride from this unsolicited compliment until he stuck his head back in the store with a bright smile for a qualification. “For a honky.” I have studied locally with Hilda Banks Shapiro, whose main comment to me was, “Mark, you are so good at what you do, why would you want to study with me?” My reply was that I wanted just a portion of her ability to bring sheet music to life. She is such a bright spirit and indeed, my time with her helped move me, into the possibility of “real music” springing off a page written 300 years ago by a now-deceased composer. I think the most important thing is that we love what we are doing and communicate that to others. The particular style or era we draw from pales in comparison to the energy with which we play. So a great jazz player or great baroque harpsichordist equally rock, in my book.
What inspires you to make music, and can you do so even when you are in a negative mood? How does that all work for you? Mark: Actually a negative mood may be just the ticket into the depth of the soul from which the music springs. Almost any intense feeling can move us into the depths and allow that flow of inspiration as long as we don’t resist it. All energy contains the oscillation of negative and positive or it wouldn’t be energy. I have also come to trust the power of being desolate and depressed. I recall years ago lying in my hotel room in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, feeling full of self-doubt and missing my newborn son while I was out on the road. (This is in the days before cell phones.) Out of the blue, I received a call from Michael Jackson’s Heal the World Foundation inviting me to be the musician for the week with Michael at his Neverland Valley Ranch out in California. That ended up being one of the most memorable weeks of my musical life. 16 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
Mark Kelso
Photograph by Tasja Keetman
So now, when desolation, depression, and chaos come to visit, I do my best to welcome them in and ask how they can wreck my current limited sense of self in order that something greater may emerge. In terms of what inspires me, being touched by a great musical performance, or even a recording always helps. The Cathedral inspired the pieces I composed there. Reading a story in the Bible (the one where Peter is walking on water himself and then takes his eyes off of Jesus and falls through the waves) touched me so deeply that the entire For God Alone album pretty much emerged from that one inspiration. Or often, as was the case for Human Heart and Grief and Grace and The Only Real Thing, it is the death of someone close to me.
How did you come up with the name Muddy Angel Music? Mark: I had just started on the Human Heart CD shortly after my mom passed away and I wanted it to be a benefit for the homeless. I asked a number of well-known artists to whom I was connected to sing my songs in this compilation, including Michael Jackson, Arlo Guthrie, Taylor Dayne, and Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads. It was suggested to me that my chances of striking deals with their record companies would be easier if I had my own corporation. But I needed a name other than my own. At the time, my son Topaz was a year old, and I had started working more and more with kids in addition to recording world music. (The record label I had been on had focused on spiritual and world music.) So I was looking for a name that encompassed all of these dimensions without sounding too religious. My other idea was “Ear-Reverent Music” but Muddy Angel Music & Arts, whose acronym is MAMA seemed too perfect in all regards and was also a tribute to my mom. Have you ever met any of your idols face to face? Is their someone you really wish you could have met? Mark: I would have loved to have met Leonard Cohen before he died. John Lennon, too, although I DID get to sit on his couch in the Dakota and use his Manny’s Music discount card to buy equipment when I was the
music director at Kripalu. And I got to play piano with and give a lesson of sorts to his son Sean when he was a kid. And working with Michael Jackson gave me a greater appreciation for his quirky genius than I had had before, but I was never a huge fan. He and I were almost exactly the same age, even emotionally, I think! Tell me, what is the present challenge that you are most involved with mastering? Mark: I don’t think I will ever master this current stage but when I listen to my music, even though it is passionate in places, it is still a bit too “safe.” Because authentic music mirrors our soul expression, I can hear places in my music where I am afraid to cry out from the depths of anger or rage. Like many who have experienced the violence of rage first hand, I am hesitant to touch into its pure energy and to express it. So instead it shows up in the people close to me or in other people’s art, not my own. My current musicals (and there are five in different stages of development) demand that my larger-than-life characters be at home in their rage, their passion, as well as their love. My music tends toward the more pleasant emotions of peace, love, and joy, which comprise only half of the human experience. So I would like to move from passive-aggression and premature transcendence toward clear assertiveness and humble integrity. Any and all prayers welcome!
To whom do you listen when it’s just you in your quiet space? Mark: My intention is to listen to the voice of truth, wherever it comes from. I often will chant or sing an invocation and then listen in the stillness. Sometimes I actually listen to my own music from years ago, because even though I have been somewhat limited in my self-expression around the darker emotions, my recorded music still carries such power and presence for me. It’s a reminder from my past self and from the Divine to remember who I am and what I am doing here.
Mark, what is a normal day like for you? What do you do? Mark: It is always my intention to start the day with prayer and meditation and for over forty years I pretty much did that. Right now, my life is topsy-turvy, but still I try to “don’t just do something…sit there!” Singing often helps me settle down so I can see just how crazy my mind is. It gives me a lot of compassion for the folks who have to deal with me. Next, I eat a yummy breakfast, Then I head to the studio where I might be producing an album for a client, followed by teaching a few composition or piano students. I do my best to start each work session with a prayer and am sorely reminded by reality if I forget! Sometimes the prayer is simple, like “Help!” or “Thank you.” I try to get out for a walk or hike but often save that for the end of day if I am on a roll. At some point in the day it is essential for me to be close to the earth from whence my body emerged. My human mother is long gone, but Mother Earth holds and nourishes this earthly body as surely as my mom once nursed me. Lunch is normally something light and simple at the studio and I often take that time to catch up on texts or emails that have accrued over the course of the time that my phone was in airplane mode. And a few times a month, of course, I need to dig into the financials of the business, the invoices, bank deposits, bills, etc. I have this amazing admin assistant, Deb Carter, who is a wonderfully creative artist and singer, and she comes in every other week to keep me a little caught up in this regard. Having the studio ready for her (or my taxes for my accountant!) is a true act of self-discipline for me. It is so much more compelling to work on music than finances. And then there is studio and instrument maintenance and repair. And I may have a rehearsal for an upcoming concert or church service, or, if time allows, another rewrite or re-record on Luci. If I have no social or family obligations (which are a lot less now that my sons are grown), I often find myself working well into the evening on less pressing matters: a new song, a recording for a friend, maybe singing with someone who has stopped by the studio. It’s so easy for me to lose track of time in there! Then I head to wherever I am laying my head that night for a late dinner or snack and then off to bed to start again the next day. Also, a lot of people ask me to pray for them during the course of the day. Yesterday, for example, I received three prayer requests in a row. I love being reminded of how helpless and fragile we are, and to turn our concerns on a daily basis over to Someone or Something that can do a hell (or a heaven?) of a lot more for folks than I ever could. I am always amazed at how our prayers actually make a difference in peoples’ lives and not just by the placebo effect since sometimes the folks (or animals) being prayed for don’t even know till later that they were being held in prayer.
Do you think of musical sounds as having color? Mark: I think less in specific colors than in shades of brightness and hue. For example, a piece on my CD For God Alone, written in the Lydian mode (a major scale with the fourth note raised a half step) is very bright, or uplifting, and then it will go into something in the Aeolian mode (the natural minor scale) that is much more dark, or somber. Having said that, there are definitely times when a passage or musical texture will come across as more green (soothing and natural), or red (passionate and
Mark Kelso
Photograph by Tasja Keetman
fiery), or purple (high vibration and spiritual.) And when I compose for film, the color on the screen affects the tone color of the music for sure.
What is the most interesting fact about yourself? Mark: I probably haven’t discovered it yet. And many “facts” turn out later to be myths. For example, I was told, and grew up believing, that I was 1/16 Cherokee from my mom’s side. I knew my dad was a Mayflower descendant and that some of his forebears were Revolutionary generals or other officers. My mom had jet black hair that she sometimes wore in braids and had all of this silver and turquoise jewelry. But when I did the whole ancestry thing, I found that I am of more than 99% European descent. I am glad I did not try to get one of those Native American affirmative action perks!
Maybe it’s interesting that, from an early age, I have seen people’s thought forms almost as streams of color and have had what we now call auditory hallucinations, which I assumed, growing up, were just the angels singing. Sometimes, I would respond to people’s thoughts that they were thinking, assuming that they had spoken them to me. I also have had my share of outof-body experiences and been able to collect information non-locally that turned out to be accurate. And my sense of where I stop and where others start is somewhat different from other people’s. But recently I found out that these are all symptoms of a lesion to the temporal lobe, which I also possess. The neurosurgeon I met with at Mass General said that, given that I have had many of these symptoms my Continued on next page... THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 17
turn than a formal investment for folks needing those kind of deductions. I have been so touched by those who have been able to help in that way. Prayers, connections to producers, donors, and investors, all of these things help! What in life do you find most pleasing, aside from music related things? Mark: I love a good meal, a good laugh, a good hike, and a good poop! But my favorite activity is meditating and praying.
Listening to your music brings hope and a journey filled with beauty. You’re very positive. Are you always such a positive message giver? Mark: I don’t want to write or sing anything I wouldn’t want humming through my own subconscious, but I prefer to think of the messages as offerings of my own foibles and insights rather than anything particularly positive. I am glad it comes across that way though!
Mark Kelso
Photograph by Tasja Keetman
whole life, removing the tiny abnormality might likely remove what makes me who I am. I try not to make that an excuse for why I am the way I am, but it is tempting!
What is an important thing for people to know about you right now? Mark: That I could really use help right now in the form of investment in Luci and the other musicals. I find that to be a hard ask because the ROI for musicals
18 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
is comparable to buying a huge lottery ticket. I have a royalty-sharing model in place but have not yet formalized it as even that costs money that I don’t currently have. The folks who invested in Hamilton or Book of Mormon, however, are still laughing all the way to the bank. But many musicals are like boats, holes in the water into which one pours money. I also belong to an umbrella arts organization called The Field that allows folks to make tax-deductible donations to support the work. That might be a better re-
Where can we hear you play locally? Mark: The easiest (and cheapest!) place is always the Richmond Congregational Church on almost any Sunday morning that I’m not on the road. I have been the music director there for over 20 years and love playing there on my own Steinway (plus a harpsichord and a pipe organ) in the sanctuary. Every couple of months, Sherrie Howard and I lead kirtan at the Kripalu Center. Our next kirtan is at Berkcircque in Great Barrington on September 14, at 7:30 PM. For folks who want to venture out of the Berkshires to hear us, we will be playing the Lovelight Festival in Reisterstown, MD, on Sept 21-24, and at Sacred Roots Healing Center in Easthampton, MA on October 12 at 7:30 PM. I also play from time to time at the Gateways Inn in Lenox. I’m often joined by friends or students of mine who like to sit in for a song or two, or more. When owners Eiran and Michelle Gazit started the piano lounge, they were already familiar with my music because they owned some of my CDs from when they lived in Israel. I also do try to keep a list of my out-of-town gigs on my website at www.muddyangel.com. And one can follow links from there to iTunes, CDbaby, and YouTube. There is also a site dedicated to Luci, called www.iloveluci.com with links to download the work in progress or to watch a YouTube of the first reading in New York City starring Chelsea LeSage as Luci. Most of my out-of-town appearances of late have been Luci-related or have been kirtans with Sherrie Howard. She keeps her website a bit better up-to-date, however, so check out www.sherriehoward.com for where we will be next. Thank you for all of your great questions! Thank you, Mark!
MARGUERITE BRIDE CUSTOM WATERCOLORS
Marguerite Bride will be participating in Pittsfield’s First Friday Artswalk during the month of October. Her exhibit entitled “Your Castle in Watercolor” will be on display October 5-30 at Steven Valenti’s, 157 North Street in Pittsfield. There will be a reception open to the public from 5-8 pm on Friday, October 5 when she will explain the process of commissioning a painting, display many samples of her work and provide takeaway information. Do you have special occasions in your future? Holidays? Anniversary? Wedding? Graduation? Retirement? Selling a home and downsizing? A custom painting of a home or other special location is always a treasured gift. And now is a great time to commission a house portrait or favorite memory you would like captured in a watercolor. Paintings make a cherished and personal gift for weddings, retirement, new home, old home, anniversaries…..any occasion is special. Is this a gift and you are not sure how to make it happen? An attractive personalized gift certificate is a great solution, then the artist will work directly with the recipient….and that is always fun too. Original paintings, fine art reproductions and note cards of Berkshire images and beyond are available locally at The Artful Mind Gallery (Lenox), the Red Lion Inn Gift Shop (Stockbridge), Lenox Print & Mercantile (Lenox), Good Purpose Gallery (Lee), and also directly from the artist. Seasonal scenes are always on display in the public areas of the Berkshire Plaza in Pittsfield, and Jazz Visions (series of 22 paintings) is on display at 51 Park Tavern and Restaurant in Lee through the fall. Marguerite Bride – Home Studio at 46 Glory Drive, Pittsfield, Massachusetts by appointment only. Call 413-841-1659 or 413-442-7718; margebride-paintings.com; margebride@aol.com; Facebook: Marguerite Bride Watercolors.
LESLEE CARSEWELL
MICHAEL KING
Michael King retired from the US Army in 2015 after 21 years of active federal service at the rank of Sergeant Major. As an enlisted member of the Military Police Corps, he deployed to Iraq twice as both a Platoon Sergeant and a First Sergeant. Michael is a graduate of the University of Texas at El Paso with a Master of Arts in Leadership Studies. He is currently in pursuit of a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Active in his community, Michael is a member of his local Veterans of Foreign Wars and volunteers with other veterans’ organizations. He lives with his family in Lenox Dale, Massachusetts. During his decades of service, Michael found solace in creating art. Towards the end of his career, he started creating art with leather. While he continues to create with leather, Michael does not tie himself down to one medium to work with. Michael addresses themes of mental health, drugs, and addiction in his work. See his work on display at The Artful Mind Gallery, 22 Walker Street, Lenox. Michael King - 573-855-2464, 1311art.com, Instagram @1311art, Facebook: 1311 Art.
Embracing visual arts at a very tender age, then educated along the very same lines, no pun intended, I went on to practice professionally, as a graphic designer and photographer, and then evolved into/or back, to being a photographer and painter. My artwork, be it photography, or painting, embraces a very simple notion: how best to break up space and make use of open and filled areas to create interest, intrigue, lyricism, elegance and ambiguity. Breaking up space has a direct correlation for me to classical music. Lately, Debussy’s solo piano works have me transfixed. I use photography (digital), gouache, watercolor and various sorts of pencils. Each serve as a quick and gratifying means of getting my thoughts out, allowing my initial intrigue to kick right in and, hopefully solidify. Subject matter finds me... it either speaks to me or catches my eye. I then have to harness my curiosity to work with it. My goal is to create visually gratifying spaces within the context of the page and the subject matter. Leslee Carsewell’s work can be seen at The Artful Mind Gallery in Lenox. Leslee Carsewell - Lcarswell@roadrunner.com.
caroLYn neWBerger Forest Revelations
Dance is of all things the most concentrated expression of happiness and everyone needs to find happiness, to search for an ideal escape. -Violette Verdy
september 2018
510 Warren street gallery, hudson, new York the artful mind gallery, Lenox, ma 510 Warren street gallery, hudson, nY galatea Fine art, Boston, ma
www.carolynnewberger.com cnewberger@me.com
THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 19
Mary Carol Rudin
Sealed with a Kiss 18 x 18 acrylic on board
THE ARTFUL MIND GALLERY 22 Walker Street, LENOX, Massachusetts 413. 854. 4400 artgallenman@yahoo.com theartfulmindgallery.com Thursday through Monday 12 - 5 and by appointment
marycarolrudin@earthlink.net
mcrudin.com
JOANNE SPIES
GAIL GELBURD
Our body is the five elements of Water, Earth, Wind, Air and Fire. They are surrounding us and yet all are within each of us. If they are balanced we can find peace and harmony. But when they are destroyed, ignored, polluted they scream out and rebel with hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides and Tsunamis. They are out of balance, as we are, physically, mentally, and psychologically when our earth is at risk. We must be in tune with the outer and inner elements of our nature. Neither can survive without the other. My art explores the power of nature and its relationship to our inner being. It is the embodiment of the five elements with the human form and energy. It begins with photographs of the outer nature taken from all over the world and then enhanced with fire and water through wax. In Black and White, the images are about the power and simplicity of a waterfall or a tree. These forms are there to remind the viewer of our interconnectedness to water, earth, wind, air and fire; and that each element is its own and is our deity. Artist, Author and Curator, Gail Gelburd prefers to defy categorization; her art is photography, sculpture and encaustic painting. Her work has been shown in Brooklyn, Connecticut, New Jersey and Massachusetts, in galleries and public art spaces, as commissions, one person exhibitions and in group shows. It has also been shown in Goa India!. She is in collections in NYC, California, Connecticut and Massachusetts, as well as India and Australia. She has been featured in INK magazine and written about in the Hartford Courant and Goa Times. Gelburd has also curated exhibitions for the Whitney museum, Brooklyn Museum, Williams College and LA County Museum. She is a Professor at Eastern Connecticut State University. The Artful Mind Gallery, 22 Walker St, Lenox, MA Web site: www.gailgelburd.com Email: gelburd4g@gmail.com
I love drawing with a calligraphy pen or brush and India ink for its immediacy. A line shares its own wisdom and reveals new perspectives on relationships. For the past few years I’ve focused on two character drawings. The dot that ‘goes for a walk’ like Klee says, has an infinite possibility of stories to tell in its journey as a line. I also work in collage and love the way colors and textures can be used to integrate what is complex into a simple form. See Joanne’s art at The Artful Mind Gallery in Lenox. Joanne Spies - spiesarts@gmail.com
THERESA TERRY
I have always had a love of creating art. I explored different mediums such as clay, gauche, pastels, acrylics, collage, pencil and watercolor. After retiring from my career in education, I returned to art and watercolor specifically. I have learned watercolor techniques from a variety of artists including Vera Thyberg, Stephanie Anderson, and Irena Roman. I hope you enjoy my paintings as much as I enjoyed creating them. The Artful Mind Gallery, 22 Walker St, Lenox, MA / 413 854 4400 theartfulmindgallery.com
THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 21
MATT BIALER
Matt Bialer has been painting watercolor landscapes since 1999. He saw a watercolor class being taught in Mendocino, California the summer before and that was when he was bitten by the bug. Bialer was already an accomplished black and white street photographer with photos in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of the City of New York and the New York Public Library. When he was in the Berkshires, however, he didn’t want to photograph people. So, he decided to take a watercolor landscape class. He liked the fact that the medium can be unpredictable and full of surprises just like the changing seasons. He likes to take a bold approach to color and works in a loose style. A monograph of his work entitled SHADOWBROOK was published by Editions du Zaporogue in 2013. Bialer’s paintings are in many private collections around the world and his work was featured in several “Best of” landscape and watercolor books. He has also published 15 volumes of poetry with various publishers. mattbialer.com
MARGARET BUCHTE
Drawing and painting, (in oils, watercolors, acrylics or pastels), with passion for over 25 years and always striving to capture the essence and beauty of a scene under dramatic light, has always been Margaret's great joy in life. Margaret Buchte from Great Barrington, MA, is a self-taught Professional Fine Artist and Art Instructor. As a former Art Instructor at Renaissance Arts and Wellness Center, (until the Center closed), Great Barrington, she continues to teach drawing and painting at Noble Horizons, in Salisbury, CT; Lee Healthcare Rehab in Lee, MA and in private student's homes. Was represented by Lenox Fine Art Gallery, Church Street until the Gallery closed, and has been presently represented by Berkshire Art Gallery, Great Barrington and also Lenox Local Art Gallery in Lenox. Margaret’s artwork has been accepted in Juried Shows and she exhibits her artwork in Solo Shows. Many of her paintings are in private collections in the Berkshires and beyond. The Artful Mind Gallery, 22 Walker St, Lenox, MA. 413 854 4400 / theartfulmindgallery.com
SEAN McCUSKER
date: Sunday, September 23rd @ 1:00 title: Incidental Narrative description: Freeing interpretation from the intent of the artist. sean mccusker’s artwork illustrates dramatic storytelling through mysterious surreal landscapes. drama is constructed from intense contrasts and vibrant colors, filling each composition with an overwhelming feeling of significance. however, there is no defined narrative. each painting feels like a story, and a captivating one, but there is no preconceived narrative. instead, the story is constructed by the audience and on an individual basis. Find out how such collaboration, between artist and audience, can open the door to amazing creativity on both sides of the painting process. What does open interpretation mean to art? how will it change your art viewing experience?
THE ARTFUL MIND GALLERY
22 WALKER LENOX MA theartfulmindgallery.com artgallenman@yahoo.com 413-854-4400
22 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
MARY CAROL RUDIN
As a painter I love to take on the challenge of subjects and mediums. My website, http://www.mcrudin.com/ shows the variety of themes and interpretations I have explored to date. My journey continues as I try new combinations of material and interpretations both representational and abstract. Sometimes a metaphor, a symbol, a phrase, or a quip provokes an image that I decide to want to express. I also like to create titles that I hope lead the viewer closer to what I had in mind when I was painting. Travel also provides me with inspiration. I find the experience of colors, light, and culture endlessly interesting. Images and imagination are at work and thoughts of interpreting them in art run through my head. Recognizing that I will not recall all that I saw, I take many photographs that I can use as references when I return to my easel. Some of my work can be displayed in any direction desired. I describe these works as “No Right Side Up” and to overcome the idea that a signature dictates the direction the painting should be hung, I only sign on the back. I layout my ideas on paper and make studies in color before I commit to a final work. This allows me to work out the details and arrive at what feels like a successful composition. Often what seemed like a good idea has to be reworked and the final painting is quite different than the initial concept. In Los Angeles I studied drawing and watercolor and pastel at Brentwood Art Center and UCLA Extension. I also studied with landscape painter John Strong, and abstract painter Ilana Bloch. In New York City I have studied at the Art Students League and Chelsea Classical Studios. My work has been sold through St. Francis Gallery in South Lee, Massachusetts and 510 Warren Street Gallery in Hudson, New York. Please visit me at www.mcrudin.com http://www.facebook.com/marycarol.rudin mcrudin123@gmail.com
“The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.” Auguste Rodin
BRIAN LITSCHER ACTOR / SINGER INTERVIEW BY MONICA BLISS
Where were you born and raised? Tell us about your parents. I was born in Schenectady New York but raised in Pittsfield. My father was an electrical engineer at the General Electric plant there where he met my mother who also worked there. When I was very young my father was transferred to the Pittsfield ordinance facility and our family moved here. I attended Pittsfield public schools and graduated from Pittsfield High where I skied, ran track, played soccer, and tried to get into the best college I could. Tell us about your career as lawyer. I was accepted early decision to Dartmouth College where I double majored in Government and English so a career in law seemed a natural fit. I then attended and graduated from George Washington Law School in Washington D.C. Currently I practice family and child protection law almost exclusively. I feel it's a way of trying to help people who have been less fortunate than myself.
How did you get into performing? Did you study performance? I have been singing since I was very young, first in my church's youth choir. Early on I noticed I had a knack for hearing harmonies and chord structures. Various lessons in piano, trumpet, and french horn helped teach me to read music. Also helpful was constant listening to the Beach Boys, the Association, early Beatles and later, the Eagles and Queen. I also believe I inherited my father's musical talent who had a beautiful tenor voice and could play guitar and ukelele. I didn't start performing in earnest until my freshman year in college when I was lucky enough to be selected as a member of the Dartmouth Aires, the college's elite male a cappella group. While perform-
ing with the Aires and the Glee Club I traveled all over the northeast and also up and down the east coast and through the midwest as far away as Miami and Chicago. To this day I can't remember how I got all my school work done. I was a frequent soloist and directed the Aires my senior year. I also found time in law school to perform and solo with the George Washington chamber choir. Over a lifetime of singing I have performed in countless revues and benefits including multiple versions of the Dalton Rotary Follies, Romance Soul and Rock and Roll, Broadway to the Berkshires, and also with Barrington Stage, Berkshire Theatre Group, Taconic Stage and the Town Players at such venues as the Barrington main stage, the Colonial, the Stockbridge Playhouse, the Mac-Hayden, and Boland Theater. I also sang in the chorus of Brahm's Requiem at Carnegie Hall and have been a member of the Berkshire Concert Choir for some time. I never really studied performance but learned on the fly from a universe of extremely talented people I have been blessed to be associated with. What does law mean to you as compared to performance. I don't really compare my law practice with performing as I try to keep my two lives separate....
What show are you currently in? Tell us all about the show, your character, the venue - from your perspective. Tell us about your performance in THE FABULOUS LIPITONES I was cast as Howard in THE FABULOUS LIPITONES. The play is directed by Monica Bliss and produced at the Whitney Center for the Arts in Pittsfield. My character is a little bit of a milktoast, unable to be decisive about anything. It is a funny, sometimes
bittersweet musical that deals with themes of cultural and social differences and ultimately, acceptance.I enjoy the performance space at the Whit which lends itself to a very intimate experience for the audience.
Tell us about your family and home life and what is it you love about living in the Berkshires? I have a sister who lives in town and a brother who lives an hour away. They and their families are very supportive of me. My son and his wife live a couple hours from me and I am always pleased when they can make a show. My 15 year old dog is very understanding and no longer howls when I practice. I love the Berkshires. I was raised here, enjoy the four seasons, the scenery and the artistic opportunities which seem to multiply every year. What is your super power? I guess my superpower would be "Older guy who can still sing high."
What was your most unique performance experience? When I was in D.C. myself and some friends gave Leonard Bernstein a surprise a cappella concert in his apartment when he was in town conducting the National Symphony. We sang for him a beautiful multipart arrangement of "Somewhere." I will always remember the look of delight and wonder on his face. It was very cool. Monica Bliss: Director of Performing Arts, Whitney Center for the Arts monica@thewhit.org | www.thewhit.org | 42 Wendell Avenue Pittsfield MA
THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 23
ROBERT WILK SCULPTURE
Having moved a few years ago from his 20 year retirement in Venice, Italy, to Sarasota, Florida, Robert Wilk decided to re-invent himself, as he's done several times in his life. Having painted, designed and sculpted since his early youth, Robert found it a good time to focus on sculpture professionally. Robert considers his main medium to truly be COLOR. No matter the material - wood, aluminum or steel - the art emerges from the COLOR. Wilk finds power in his minimalist approach and often provides a lively tension as well, through a feeling of movement or precariousness in the forms themselves. Robert also enjoys repurposing objects, like chairs, children's colorful socks, stove pipes, for example, or logs in the forest, transformed in various shades of mauve. Robert Wilk's work is on view at The Artful Mind Gallery, 22 Walker St, Lenox MA. Robert Wilk robertvenice@gmail.com
24 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
SCOTT TAYLOR
Twenty-five years ago, I picked up a brush and started throwing paint, today I can’t stop. When people ask me why, I always tell them that at some point in my journey painting became as important as breathing to me. If you’re an artist you know what I mean. Whether I’m chasing my next best painting or just trying to find my way out of a “happy mistake” the thrill of creation become infectious and hours just pass by. My studio is a place where I can literally paint myself happy which has become necessary with today’s daily political onslaught. Once in awhile I get pissed and my mood and palette start to find a different voice and in the end isn’t that what it’s all about … finding a voice that can cut through all the noise. I hope when a viewer looks at my paintings they can find my voice and by doing that, find their own. Simply put... I love to paint. See Scott’s work at The Artful Mind Gallery, 22 Walker Street, Lenox.Scott Taylor - Scotttaylorpaintings@nycap.rr.com
KATE COULEHAN
My fascination with the natural world and the history of past generations comes from a childhood in the quiet woods of the Berkshires, and as an adult, the haunted landscapes of Faulkner's Mississippi. The thought of history repeating itself or being remembered has led me to an intensive curiosity to paint portraits of people from our past, often unknown but relatable. My love of animals and their simple perfect connection with the natural world is just as alluring to me, and wonderful to paint. After studying for many years with Master Realist Artist and Art Historian Nellie Fink of Southern Berkshire County in Massachusetts, I lived in Taylor Mississippi and found a love for oil painting using found materials as canvases. With a base in classical art studies, my paintings are experiments deviating from the precise into the visceral. The Artful Mind Gallery, 22 Walker St, Lenox, MA
collins | editions
Opening in 2005, as Berkshire Digital, we did fine art printing mainly for artists represented by The Iris Gallery of Fine Art in Great Barrington before opening our doors to the public. We do color calibrated printing on archival papers. These archival prints, also known to many people as Giclée prints, can be made in different sizes from 5x7 to 42” x 80”. Photographers & artists also use us to create limited editions of their images. In addition to the printing services, collins | editions also offers accurate digital photo-reproduction of paintings and illustrations for use in books, magazines, brochures, cards and websites. See a complete overview of services offered, along with pricing at www.collinseditions.com The owner, Fred Collins, has been a commercial and fine art photographer for over 30 years having had studios in Boston and Stamford. He offers over 25 years of experience with Photoshop™ enabling retouching, restoration and enhancement to prints and digital files. The studio is located in Mt Washington but dropoff and PU is available through Frames On Wheels, located at 84 Railroad Street in Great Barrington, MA (413) 528-0997. collins | editions studio - (413) 644-9663 w w w. C o l l i n s E d i t i o n s . c o m , fred@collinseditions.com
FRONT ST. GALLERY
Pastels, oils, acrylics and watercolors…abstract and representational…..landscapes, still lifes and portraits….a unique variety of painting technique 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 10-1:30pm 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 welcome. Private critiques available. Classes at Front Street are for those wishing to learn, those who just want to be involved in the pure enjoyment of art, and/or those who have some experience under their belt. Perfect if you are seeking fresh insight into watercolors, and other mediums. A teacher for many years, Kate Knapp has a keen sense of each student’s artistic needs to take a step beyond. Perfect setting for setting up still lifes; lighting and space are excellent. Peek in to see! Front Street Gallery – Front Street, Housatonic, MA. Gallery open by appointment or chance anytime. 413-528-9546 at home or 413-429-7141 (cell).
JOAN GLUCK
Born in Philadelphia. Classes at the Graphic Sketch Club, university of Pennsylvania (BA) , Tyler Art School. Moved to Miami in 1972 Classes in art at Miami-Dade College, Fairchild Gardens, and Art center of Miami Beach. Summers in the berkshires since 2009 with many classes and workshops at IS 183. Paintings in collections across the US Exhibited in shows in Philadelphia and Miami. Presently showing her paintings at The Artful Mind Gallery, 22 Walker St. Lenox, MA
“What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.” Eugene Delacroix
Photography by Jane Feldman www.janefeldman.com janefeldmanphoto@gmail.com THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 25
BART, HAZEL AND ASHER ELSBACH
PHOTOGRAPH BY EDWARD ACKER
BART ELSBACH
BART ELSBACH SPRINGS LAST LIGHT 2018 14 X 18”OIL
INTERVIEW BY H
Tell me, how did it feel being a landscape artist in the River Art Project exhibition at the historic Stockbridge Train Station? Bart Elsbach: I appreciate Jim asking me to be a part of the show and I think the project is a great idea. It makes good sense for artists who explore the natural world to support efforts to raise awareness about environmental issues.
Can you explain the purpose for this great exhibition, in it’s second season that featured landscape artists of the Berkshires? Bart: Artists were asked to create work focusing on our local rivers to help display the beauty and complexity of these amazing ecosystems in our backyard. A portion of all sales go to support local river initiatives and there are events during the show’s run related to the work of these river advocacy organizations. Jim and Kim Schantz of Schantz Galleries, the
CANDEE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY EDWARD ACKER
presenters of this show picked you out of so many artists. How did this all unravel and begin for you? Bart: Jim and I have known each other for many years and I was very happy to get his call describing his idea for a show and asking about my interest. How do you see your art fitting in with the project’s efforts? Bart: I have been primarily a landscape painter and centered in the Berkshires for many years. I am often “drawn” to the Housatonic River which is near my house and studio. I see the landscape as offering endless symbolism and opportunity for exploring connections between nature’s patterns and aspects of my life and thoughts. So, perhaps Jim had something like that in mind when he gave me a jangle. Did you create a new body of work for this particular art exhibit or did they already exist? Bart: Yes, the work is new or newly finished. Some-
times my work follows a pretty straight path start to finish and sometimes it meanders over time and incarnations, but all the work was done for this show.
What have you learned from this opportunity to show your art alongside other Berkshire landscape artists? Bart: It is always instructive and enlightening to be in the company of other creative people and their creations, particularly when they are as talented as this group is. Can you tell us in detail what discoveries you might have made about your work in comparison to the other artist’s work at the River Project? Bart: Michael Filmus’ work reminds me how essential it is to let our unique vision run, unbound by conformity. When his work tilts to abstraction it transcends. The freedom with which Jim Schantz achieves a very specific sense of place with apparContinued on next page... THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 27
BART ELSBACH HOUSATONIC WINTER 2018 12 X 8” OIL 28 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
BART ELSBACH LIGHT LIGHT 2018 18 X 24” OIL
ently general marks, makes me think differently about my use of detail. I feel a kinship with Gabrielle’s harkening to traditional references and techniques. Her work inspires me to keep connecting to the history that is our foundation. Harriette Joffe’s work inspires me to keep pressing into the forms and patterns within and underneath the recognizable aspects of the landscape; the more archival layers which lie within. The interplay between surface and what lies beneath, in many areas of life and art, is compelling to me and comes out in my drawings and paintings as archival or primitive markings that meld into the forms of trees and fields and hills. I like seeing how her work delves fully into those abstract forms and lets the referent become subservient. As a fellow printmaking major and admirer of Dutch masters, I feel a kinship with Scott Prior and only wish that my technical skill warranted a suggestion of rela-
tion. Showing alongside Scott tells me in detail how much I have to discover about technical skill. What part of nature is your most favorite and why? Bart: I like toads and also Katydids. Toads are earnest and katydids are outside my window making a nice sound as I write this on a summer night. And the river is nice too because it is strong and patient and silent unless you listen carefully. You’re doing so much these days. Tell us what’s new in your life, be it personal or work-related. Bart: I’m afraid we might have to shift to book format for that one but much that is new is the same old thing: taking on too many things and not finding enough time for any of them. The OK Harris gallery in NYC where I showed has closed, so I am gearing up for finding a new
representative. My home is an endlessly demanding work in progress. My family is endlessly evolving in beautiful and interesting ways. I am continually trying to find a context for the garbled theater of the absurd, which is the astounding display of national and global news that we are inundated with. What are some of your ideas and plans for the Barrington Fair Grounds that you now are very involved in? Bart: My wife and I have founded a non-profit organization. The board, which is made up of a generous and talented group of local business people and creative minds, is running the site. We have a website (GBFG.ORG) with information about our efforts, which are all volunteer, and geared toward protecting the site from aggressive commercial deContinued on next page...
THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 29
BART, HAZEL AND ASHER ELSBACH AT BARRINGTON FAIR GROUNDS, GREAT BARRINGTON, MA PHOTOGRAPH BY EDWARD ACKER
velopment which might jeopardize its environmental and historical significance and providing beneficial opportunities for the community to gather and learn.
How are you getting your children, Hazel, Pearl and Asher actively involved in your life’s work? Bart: My children are actively involved in figuring out their paths and I try to be there cheering, prodding and chasing alongside them. My daughter Hazel has just graduated from art school as a printmaking major and her work is beautifully delicate, whimsical and intimate. Her quiet intensity and courage is inspiring to see. I think I have kept my awe and pride in check enough to avoid them becoming an embarrassment to either of us (until now). My daughter Pearl is probably the most beautiful thing anyone has ever seen and, in that way takes after her older sister. She is a talented writer with laser sharp insights and a flowing style, a gifted photographer with a quick eye and she has an endearing sense of humor. I don’t envy her task of choosing 30 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
how to dedicate her talents but that’s about all that escapes admiration. My son Asher is all that keeps my daughters in check by tamping their claims to being beyond compare. He is a talented athlete, a remarkable scholar and has a razor wit. He has the ability to leave any place, and anyone, brighter and happier for having shared his company and he will start 8th grade soon. My wife, Janet, is the fountain from which all of this splendor flows, and when I wonder how I can be blessed with such good fortune I need look no further. You must be a very good teacher, what do you want them to appreciate most in their growing years? Bart: How valuable their capacities are, and the chance to develop them is, while they remain open and full of vitality. How connected everything is to everything else and that deeper truths lie beneath black and white in layered nuance. That motivations matter often more than what is said or done and that
the process is paramount. I want them to appreciate the crazy good fortune we share here at this place in this time and that with that there comes the need for humility, resistance to entitlement or over sensitivity and a recognition of great opportunity.
How might they be following in your footsteps, or going in a different direction? Bart: Time will tell but there is no doubt they will find their own way in their own way. I hope they can take whatever positive I offer and build on it. Hazel has already taken an artistic path but she certainly does so on her terms. We all are tied to our beginnings as we stretch toward the future. Did you grow up in the Berkshires? Bart: I grew up in both the Berkshires and Manhattan and moved here full time as an adult.
What was one of your greatest achievements so far? Bart: Certainly all else pales against my children,
BART ELSBACH WINTER RECEDING 2017 10 X 20” OIL ON LINEN
which is, of course, less of an achievement than good fortune to be associated with, and a central part of, their upbringing. Looking back, though, my role as a father is most meaningful to me. What was your childhood days like? Bart: Much longer than days seem to be now. I was happiest in school as a middle-schooler and went to good schools through to graduate school. I was very involved in sports and loved being outside every chance I could be either playing sports or in Sheffield in the woods or the nearby swimming hole. My brother and I were a year apart so we played and fought together a lot and we had a lot of unsupervised time to explore and get into trouble. When did you first decide you loved making art? Bart: Early on, but I didn’t think of it as a possibility for a career until much later.
What is most important to you right now in your life? Bart: Still my family and I expect that will remain
top of the list, but I feel all aspects of my life are connected and I don’t usually think of them as hierarchical. Perhaps that’s one reason I get into trouble with time management.
What was your favorite age, and why? Bart: My answer to that was always “4”. I think that was because I felt that until after that point I was still very innocent and purely happy. I now might answer that there have been several favorite points, each connected and distinct which I would love to relive. Choosing to be an artist is a great commitment. How did this come about for you? Do you also have other jobs unrelated to art making? Bart: I worked at several other jobs prior to committing to art as a career. Once I settled on the idea of work not just being a means to a paycheck, though, I was ready to make that commitment. I was taking night classes at The Art Students League on 57th St. and at New York University in their printmaking program and late one night in a conference room overlooking Governor’s Island and the Statue
of Liberty, I had a sort of epiphany and applied for a Masters of Arts Degree program the next day.
What matters most to you now that may not have when you were younger? Bart: Being able to touch my toes. Also, I think that sorting through a lot of superficial nonsense to find what has lasting significance feels like it matters more and more.
I like that answer, Bart. If you were to show your art anywhere on this planet, where would you choose to show it first? Why? Bart: On this planet I like the idea of showing to indigenous people who have no western art history frame of reference. I would love to see their response. Elsewhere in the solar system, I would like to show on Saturn because I feel it is such a beautiful work of art itself, so it would be art inside art, which is neat. Also, my work feels like it would have more weight there. Continued on next page... THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 31
BART ELSBACH PRICKLY AUTUMN 2018 12 X 8” OIL ON BOARD
Continued on next page... What does it mean to you to be a Berkshire resident? Bart: It certainly means that I am fortunate. Originally it also meant leaving a lot of features of NYC behind and enjoying a more rural, less gentrified place that wasn’t primarily focused on increasing the tax base, but that has changed over the years, and this Berkshires is different from the one I knew 40 years ago.
If you were to go back in time, when and where would that be? Why? Bart: Perhaps last week because I have misplaced my wallet again. Although, there are so many fascinating times and places I would love to experience. Holland in the 17th Century when the art world was rising to astounding new levels; Rome before it became bloated and cynical and I have always loved the idea of being on Manhattan island before the invasion. It must have been magical as a pristine granite outcropping between two tidal river mouths.
How do you think art directly effects the world situation? Bart: Unfortunately, in our culture, art seems to be primarily a luxury commodity, a museum marketing tool or a curiosity. Except for outlying people or 32 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
groups, art is not a way of living or an integral part of navigating the world and finding our place in it. I imagine if one researched how art directly affects the world, the criteria would be such things as: how much revenue does the art industry generate per year, how many people are employed in the industry and which corporations have the biggest stake and most control over the industry. The “world situation” is primarily defined by environmental degradation now, I think. But the “human situation”, which we feel is equivalent to “the world situation”, is defined by cultural, philosophical and economic approaches. Increasingly that has been defined by materialism and the expansion of corporatism. Traveling through Europe shows great “progress” toward homogeneity. Countries are less and less culturally distinct. Places that still hold distinctions, such as Morocco, are shifting toward using those distinctions as marketing tools for tourism and pushing toward economic and cultural parity with dominant economic players. Art, as an essential aspect of defining oneself and affecting the world, seems more aligned with societies that were less removed from the essential, that hadn’t transcended subsistence and were connected to the essence of surviving, nature and humility. Such societies cannot be major players in today’s game.
So, I don’t think art plays a big role in influencing that situation. I think it is primarily a respite for those fortunate enough to be able to be immersed in it and an economic, status or entertainment opportunity for those who buy or enjoy looking at it. I don’t think the millions of refugees in the world, or the central players creating the refugee crises, or people figuring out how to make the system work for them, have much room for art as a powerful catalyst or as an essential element in the world. Although, I heard that one of the Bushes paints a boss kitty cat and a mean still life.
Where is it you spend most of your time and are able to go into deep thought? Bart: Wandering aimlessly while appearing to be very busy. It is a talent I’ve been working on for several years now and if I get it honed, I am going to offer classes. I also like to veer into the woods whenever possible. I find the forest very conducive to deep thought. Out of all the best of Berkshire culture, what do you enjoy the most? Bart: Definitely the Artful Mind Magazine and the Artful Mind gallery is a close second with The River Project coming in Show.
BART ELSBACH
TELEPHONE POLE SALISBURY ROAD
What do you see yourself doing five years from now? Aside from painting! Bart: Sleeping or trying to get my jump shot back; it’s a toss up, if you’ll pardon the pun. I was interested in crossing the Long Island Sound in a canoe but I did that and it wasn’t too big a deal. I also might finally get to making the master bath that we are supposed to have.
What do you think makes art sell in todays market? Bart: Location, Location, Location? Actually, as a gallery owner, I should turn that one around to you. But my sense is that selling is selling whatever word comes thereafter. I remember going to galleries in NYC and watching them work with wealthy buyers and it was an eye opening experience. Many people with means don’t
necessarily have a profound framework from which to judge artwork. They are open to being told what they should like by the experts. It makes for good sport for people like Jeff Koons and his marketers.
All art belongs in a good home. ….What influences have been in your life that has led you to become a Berkshire artist? Bart: The major influences in my life have been my parents, my family, appreciating nature and wanting to be near it rather than in an urban setting, and my dog Bonzo: in no particular order. What mediums do you work in mostly? Bart: I often start exploring a subject with ink drawings and then small oil paintings and sometimes they progress to larger oil paintings. I like using ink to draw with because it allows me to get deep dark
areas that enhances the contrast I can create. My first love was drawing and that remains where I generally feel most comfortable.
Why do you choose landscape painting as your genre? Bart: At the Art Students League I started painting from models and enjoyed working with portraiture and the human form. Over time, the symbolism of nature, it’s endless configurations, and its marvelous complexity just felt more compelling to me. I like spending an afternoon in the company of the river or watching light play on a meadow with a distant treeline. Thank you, Bart!
THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 33
NATALIE TYLER
With nature as her inspiration, Natalie Tyler’s sculptures investigate the cycle of life and highlight the importance of our natural living world. She is a unique artist who casts all of her own work, and is involved with every step of the creative process. She transforms wax sculptures into bronze or crystal. The Artful Mind Gallery, 22 Walker St, Lenox, MA 413 854-4400 theartfulmindgallery.com
34 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
24TH ANNUAL PARADISE CITY ARTS FESTIVAL OCTOBER 6, 7 & 8
Northampton's Paradise City Arts Festival is New England’s cultural, creative, culinary and leaf-peeping destination on Columbus Day Weekend. The Paradise City Arts Festival in Northampton, Massachusetts is an extraordinary event for such a small city, drawing attendees from all over the north-
east and beyond. This expansive showcase for the arts features three large, carpeted Exhibition Buildings, plus cuisine by Northampton's best chefs under the 12,000 square-foot Festival Dining Tent, craft demonstrations and workshops, the themed exhibit “Pattern Play!”, an array of large-scale outdoor sculpture and garden pieces and a silent auction to benefit WGBY, Public Television for Western New England. Most importantly, it’s all about the 250 artists. Each one has a story to tell, a skill to share and a passion for their work that is inspiring and infectious. Under the Festival Dining Tent, as music wafts through the air, enjoy international foods prepared by some the region’s favorite chefs: Spoleto, India House, Sierra Grille, Pizzeria Paradiso, Amber Waves, Local Burger, The Great Wall, Mama Iguana’s and Bart’s Homemade Ice Cream. Meet your friends for a signature craft cocktail, glass of wine or local beer. Paradise City Arts Festival, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, October 6, 7 & 8, at Northampton’s 3 County Fairgrounds, on Old Ferry Road off Rt. 9. From the Mass Pike, take exit 4 to I-91 North to Exit 19. For show information, advance tickets and discount admission coupons, visit www.paradisecityarts.com or call 800-511-9725.
L’ATELIER BERKSHIRES GALLERY ROBERT WILK, CUBES
PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURES
Carter Wentworth is an artist residing in Marblehead, MA who creates paintings on paper, series of visual markings that gather on the surface. Inspired by the joy of gardening, selecting, planting and growing, Wentworth’s paintings depict nature’s changing transitions.
Robert Wilk originally from Housatonic, MA is an established sculptor. Robert Wilk lives and works in Sarasota, Florida, where he recently moved after 20 years in Venice, Italy. He previously spent over 25 years in Tokyo and Hong Kong as an International Marketing Executive. His stated essential medium is Color and works in various materials, mostly steel and aluminum. Robert is devoted to a minimalist style, which he finds most powerful. Many of his recent works seem to defy laws of gravity. Artist Reception for Carter Wentworth and Robert Wilk. Thursday September 13th 5-7pm. Bring into your world, unique and timeless artworks at L’Atelier Berkshire Gallery, while supporting the arts. Artists from the Berkshires and beyond exhibiting this September. Incredible car paintings by renowned artist Shan Fannin. Ella Delyanis’s landscapes capture the beauty of the outdoors and bring nature inside. Sculptures by Italian artist Eva Cocco and Berkshire artists Natalie Tyler. New abstract paintings by Kiki Dufault and more. L'ATELIER BERKSHIRES GALLERY 597 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA 01230. For more information contact: Natalie Tyler: 510-469-5468 or email at natalie.tyler@atelierberks.com; www.atelierberks.com
THE UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY ART MUSEUM
FALL 2018 EXHIBITIONS AND PUBLIC
PROGRAMS SCHEDULE Younger Than Today: Photographs of Children (and sometimes their mothers) by Andy Warhol on view through September 15, 2018. Features over 50 Polaroids and photographs taken between 1974 and 1985 related to childhood, sibling relationships, and the influence of the maternal. Younger Than Today is part of Warhol x 5, a collaborative project curated from the shared holdings of University at Albany Art Collections; The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College; the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY Purchase; the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz; and the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College. 1400 Washington Ave, Albany, NY, 518-442-4035
THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 35
Jana Christy Imogene and Protector, (2017 36 inches, torsos only.)
JANA CHRISTY Interview by H. Candee
Harryet: Does Alistair the Crow scare you?! You must be amazed that you were able to bring him to life! I am! Tell me all about him! Jana Christy: I love crows. Alistair is my biggest one yet and he just makes me extremely happy. My figures can seem scary to some folks, I get it. Maybe they come from a dark place in my brain, but I find comfort from them. Our house is filled with these creatures and I feel very protected.
Tell me why Princess has such seering eyes! Jana: I wish I knew. My figures all seem to know more than I do. I think she has some serious plans, but I think they’re probably good ones.
I’m guessing you are inspired by another time period; one that has mystery and dark humor. How far off am I on that observation?
Jana: I guess I am inspired subconsciously. I love things that are old and weathered. I love beat-up furniture and crackly walls. And I really love rocks. I used to hunt for fossils when I was little - finding trilobites and brachiopods that were hundreds of millions of years of old was a special kind of magic. I usually add elements to my figures from another time, things that have had another life - either antique paper or fabric or found objects it makes them even more special. The joy of creating these being is a playful and fun activity, but the end result shows you have brought to life many lives from the past. Who is your favorite, and why? Jana: My current favorite is Ava - she’s the giant bird lady who’s currently hanging in the Triplex. She looks exactly like I initially pictured her - that doesn’t
always happen. She has so much texture- I used tissue paper for her final paper layer, and lots of old fabric with rough stitched buttons and other ephemera and she has branches from my lilac tree for hands. She’s also the biggest piece I’ve ever made- she’s about 8 feet tall. I have absolutely no idea where she will hang in my house when she comes home, but I’m looking forward to seeing her again.
What is the meaning behind your work as an illustrator, sculptor and mixed media artist, and did it all start for you as a child? Jana: I don’t really know the meaning behind my work. I just have a compulsion to create. It keeps me sane, especially with the current state of the world. I protest and work on radical books so that little ones might feel empowered… and then I retreat and make Continued on next page...
THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 37
Jana Christy . Little Crow Girl. (2016, 8 inches) My first crow. She has a long ponytail made from rope and rough stitched clothing.
Jana Christy Sisters (2018, 26 inches) Jana Christy Esme (2017, 8 inches) Another nature girl, made from bits and pieces of my garden.
creatures that have been lurking in my brain. The need to create definitely started in childhood. I remember never, ever having enough paper. I remember just craving paper.
How does your childhood play a part in your present day imagination and need to inventively tell stories through art? Jana: It plays a really big part, although it was not something that I was really aware of when I started. I was shy and scared and a bit lonely as a kid. I made up stories to comfort myself and that’s been a continuous thread through my life - little characters with lives of their own have always filled my brain. In re-
cent years, as I started working three-dimensionally, lots of memories have come back of sitting in my closet, playing with dolls and creating surroundings for them. I also remember trying to essentially make the figures that I’m making now, but not knowing how. I distinctly remember trying to make a rabbitperson using pipe-cleaners, balls of cotton and Elmers glue - an epic fail - but I remember how weirdly empowering it felt. I also remember trying to turn my stuffed animals into marionettes. I had this serious desire to bring the things in my head to life but absolutely no idea how to achieve it. What formal art training do you have, and how
was it most beneficial to you now? Jana: I didn’t go to college, so other than classes in high school, I’m self-taught. I wanted to be an artist since I was very young, but didn’t have the means to go about it professionally in any sort of traditional way. In my late teens and early twenties, I was a nanny and spent hours and hours reading beautifully illustrated books to the children that I cared for. I had loved painting, but never felt I had a story to tell, the thought of illustrating someone else’s words exactly matched what I wanted to do, so it really clicked. I spent the next bunch of years drawing and drawing and drawing and teaching myself how to illustrate Continued on next page... THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 39
Jana Christy
Bear and Nature. (2016, Approximately 12 inches)
Some of my earliest dolls, Nature is finished with roots and dried flowers, etc from my garden. I can get you close up shots of either of these, if you’d like to see any of the details.
books. Slowly, I built myself a career as a children’s book illustrator.
As far as your career goes, what can you say was your favorite job and why? Jana: I’d have to say that my favorite overall is the most personal one- “A Rule Is To Break: A Child’s Guide to Anarchy.” My husband/ creative partner, John Seven, wrote it and it’s really about our journey as parents. Learning to let go of a lot of preconceived ideas of what we thought parenting was supposed to be- respecting the innate ability of kids and letting them teach us. The protagonist is a kind and feisty badass - I love her.
What is the funniest creature or character you have created that comes to mind? Jana: I don’t really think of any of the figures that I make as funny - they all just seem wise, and I can’t really think of any characters that I’ve illustrated that are funny… hmmm…. the characters in the book, Happy Punks 123, aren’t necessarily funny- but there are very fun and a bit goofy and are some of my favorites. They spend their days going into record shops, thrift stores, helping people out, playing gigs 40 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
I think it’s the happiest book I’ve ever worked on.
As far as work ethics go, what rules do you set up for yourself to follow so you are producing the amount of work that satisfies you? Jana: When I have an illustration project, I work all day and a few hours in the evening and usually at least a half day on the weekend, more if it has a crazy deadline. I went a few years of putting in 80 hour weeks because I’d taken on too many jobs, and the work really suffered, as well as my emotional state. I took them because I was flattered to be asked by publishers I’d always dreamed of working with, and also because I was afraid to give up any possible opportunity. I’ve since started saying "No” to a lot of projects. Between that, and our kids -who were homeschooledhaving graduated, I’ve had more time… and these beings have started coming into my brain again and I’ve been working on figuring out how to best get them out. And as far as being most fortunate to have art in your daily life, who do you attribute it to the most, and why? Jana: This is a tricky question. I can really only at-
tribute this to my own hard work, willingness to live very, very simply and the support of my husband and sons - John, Harry & Hugo. What would you say is your most favorite emotion? And why? Jana: Happiness! Because…. Happiness!
What mysteries in life intrigue you the most? Jana: Well, I don’t think of it as a mystery per se, but I’m fascinated with how bodies decay after death and how entire ecosystems can thrive after one death. There are small islands of life in the Klondike called Nunataks- mountaintops surrounded by huge ice fields- lost birds often crashland and the decaying body drops spores and seeds they've picked up on its flight or that they've eaten. Dense, nutrient-rich moss and flowers spring up under and around the body then larvae and the body itself feeds pika, small rodents who, anywhere else in the world are vegetarian. The world is f****ing fascinating!
The Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away…. What comes to your mind for these words and how would you consider interpreting your
Jana Christy Princess (2018, 8 inches)
ideas if you can do it anyway you desire, no borders, no boundaries? Jana: I’m currently working in a teeny tiny space, so first I’m imagining being able to work in a great big studio with lots of light. And I have perfect vision so that I don’t have to keep taking my glasses on and off between working on teeny things and huge things. Also, I had an unlimited amount of supplies. I would start working on some really big figures that could withstand the elements and live outside, probably a giant wire rabbit. I would also have all the time and equipment needed to work on some stop-motion animation with John (he’s brilliant with a camera) and have endless time to build teeny tiny sets. I would tell all the stories that came to my head and never have to worry about anything else.
Where was the most interesting abandoned place you have found? What was it like? Jana: Oh! This is so hard! Each has been amazing for different reasons. The scariest was the abandoned
subway in Rochester, NY - it was dark dark dark. There were people living in the tunnels and would occasionally peek out of holes in the walls or floor. The most fun was the amusement park - we explored Mountain Park in Holyoke in 1999 - our sons were young and it was magic and we came home with some really cool giant rusty coils from one of the rides. Plus some old ruins in Iceland and Wales which were spectacular but mostly because of the setting. Can we see any of your art in local galleries in the Berkshires? Jana: I haven’t pursued getting my work into galleries yet. I’ve been fortunate to be asked to hang them in Images Cinema and the Triplex in Great Barrington. I’ve been thinking about galleries lately and may start making some inquiries. So far, I’ve really enjoyed having them hang in places where people are just not expecting to run into them.
Finally, if you had three wishes to make, what would they be? Jana: 1.That it is always cloudy, never above 60 degrees and we had free universal healthcare. 2.That I could have bagels for every meal and that my dog would never die. 3.That I could spend all of my time making dolls and figure out how to bring them to life and that we lived in a much, much kinder world and that Trump wasn’t our president Thank you Jana!
www.janachristy.com
THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 41
THE VOICE OF JOYCE JOYCE SILVER
Passion, Intensity and Art!
A self-portrait with piercing hollowed eyes
Giacometti, The Figure
I’ve watched many documentaries on the lives of artists and the one thing they all have in common is their intensity and obsession with achieving their sense of perfection in their work. The early artists like Turner or Church, members of the Royal Academy of Art, would hang their almost finished paintings for viewing in the gallery at the last minute and use any instruments or substances on hand to finish their masterpiece. In one instance, Turner used wax to enhance his sky! No ingredients were left unconsidered. Rodin's obsession with Balzac cost him his commission. Unconcerned, he labored on the piece until he was satisfied with the finished product. These artists, obsessed by their work, forget their patrons and all else, whether they’re commissioned or not, to paint or sculpt. They are driven by an internal “drive” that forces them to create and mold an image or canvass into their perception of perfection. For Picasso, this was a rapid prowess. He was prolific, producing five canvasses a day. For Giacometti, the process of working with a face could take months of daily manipulation of the clay until he was almost satisfied with the outcome. For him, a face was all about the eyes. They had to reflect the soul of the person he sculpted. (Note: in sculptures by Giacometti some appear to be superimposed on a street scene in Manhattan; on exhibition at the Guggenheim) Though not an artist, when I purchase figure art, I, too, look at the eyes. The intensity or the emotion
42 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
A NY street scene with an eerily placed Giacometti figure, almost alien, looking down.
elicited draws me back to view each painting or photograph I collect. I’m convinced there is an acquisitive gene that collectors possess. We collect at an early age and the passion to possess a piece of art, I'm sure, haunts us almost as much as it did its creator! (Note: photograph of The African Woman taken by Howard Buffett; note her piercing defiant eyes).
The Guggenheim museum on a busy weekend
Joyce would love to hear from you... info@Wordpress / TheVoiceOfJoyce.wp.me
Giacometti’s brother who was his model for many of his sculptures. During the War, Giacometti stayed away from his Paris studio and continued to sculpt, though in miniatures. His brother, guarded the Paris studio and apartments. Though Jewish, The Vichy Government, recognized the right to exist of many artists. They also collected some of there work , though forbidden by the Third Reich!
Faldoni Part 2
Faldoni imagined that he could learn how to paint a face by watching the master painter paint a face, and simply making a mental note of the steps involved. How many steps could it take? Perhaps there were eight or nine steps all together, and he would watch the master do several faces, note down the steps, and then he would be able to do a face himself. This is an odd idea that Faldoni had, although many people share the notion. Who would ever imagine that you could learn to play the violin by watching a violinist play? Could you learn to speak Chinese by watching Chinese people talking? No, you cannot learn a complicated art by watching it being done. There is only one thing you can learn by watching, and that is how to watch things. And even that is not certain. The master was well aware that his students thought they could learn to paint faces by watching him paint a face, and the notion was irritating to him, because he though it belittled his art. He expressed his disdain for the idea with this little lecture. The master said to his students, “If you would learn to paint, here is what you must do. Follow these two rules, and you will surely succeed. The first rule is: take a paintbrush, stick in some colors, and then apply different colors all over the surface of your little painting. That is the first step. The second step is, repeat the first step over and over for twenty years, and the sooner you begin the better.” Only Faldoni understood what the master painter said, as all the others thought it was just a jest. He returned to his cell that evening and had another look at the face he had painted. If he was going to paint the entire back wall of his cell as a fresco painting he had to do one of two things. He had to scrape out the face he painted and start over, or he had to compose a drawing that would incorporate the face into a large composition. He was unable to do either of these things. He could not conceive of a picture for the entire wall, much less one that would utilize the face he had completed. To kill some time until he learned more about the process he decided to simply paint another face right next to the one he had already painted. He took his
trowel and trimmed the edges of his first attempt, and made his edges as straight as he could and then he plastered another rectangle. The first rectangle measured 8 by 10 inches, and the new patch of plaster was the same size and just to the right of it. That evening he painted his second face and it was just as bad as the first. Like the first face, it looked straight out at him symmetrically, with the nose in the middle. There were black lines outlining the eyes and the lips, and the nose was a mess because it was a shape having no lines on it to act as a guide. The nose has those two little circles called the nostrils, and he tried to paint then into his portrait but when he did his painting looked like a portrait of a pig, so he had to wash it out and do that part over. When he did it over he could not get his colors to blend quite right, so when he was finished the second face looked like a person whose face had been in an accident. The master at that time was painting a series of faces into the almost finished mural. Faldoni was especially fortunate because of this as it afforded him many opportunities to see how certain impossible problems of drawing a simple face might be dealt with. The mural was one of those crowd scenes so popular in the Renaissance in which groups of people throng together in order to see some religious event taking place, the skinning alive of some saint for example. The crowd provides the painter with ample opportunities to show off his skills. Here you might see some Grandmother on the way to the market, unaware of the drama going on, she drags a young boy by the arm who strains backward to look over his shoulder and get a glimpse of what is happening. His sister of about the same age is self-absorbed in carefully examining a bird she has by a string in her hand. Right behind this group are some angry young men brandishing their weapons, their faces distorted with rage, are shouting something at someone, and beyond them some indifferent spectators are wondering what the commotion is all about. Each portrait is an opportunity to reward some rich donor who has given to the church and so the Grandmother might be the wife of an important cloth merchant, and the boy and the girl are the grandchildren. The master worries that the merchant will not be happy with the grandchildren’s portraits, because grandparents never are. The master will leave the hair of the children slightly unfinished so that if the old man finds any fault with the features he will paint some hair over that part to conceal his supposed mistake. He will make his corrections in tempera over the fresco since he knows that it will not adhere permanently, and years later will fall away and reveal his original intention. The next day as Faldoni was grinding up pigments at his little worktable, he tried to watch the master working on the faces as much as possible with a mind to answer a question. “How,” he wanted to know, “does the master succeed in painting those noses into his faces, since the nose has no lines around it at all, and the nostrils make the face look like a pig.” He arrived early in the morning and the first thing he did was examine the portraits already finished, and they were no help to him, because the finished faces looked, at least to him, just like faces in real life, so the mystery of how it was done was in no way explained. In the morning the master painted three heads in a row. All of the heads were painted in profile, each looking to the right. The master masons had
plastered a patch just the size for those three faces, and meanwhile all the surrounding area had been painted over a week ago. Faldoni’s question about the noses went unanswered, but he made a profound discovery. A nose of a profile head has a line running all the way along it from top to bottom, and so it is very easy to paint, as opposed to those noses seen head on. This was a mysterious and confusing concept to Faldoni. “Why,” he asked himself, “does a shape which has no lines or edges, produce a line when looked at from the side, where does that line come from, how did it get there.” This sounds stupid I know, and I suspect that you think I am trying to make fun of Faldoni’s simplicity, and encouraging you to laugh at him for his naivety. But that is not true, because sometimes the most simpleminded questions just have no good answer, and this line on the edge of the nose is that kind of a question. Just consider, for example, a cube and sphere. A cube has twelve very specific lines that make it up, that's obvious. But now I ask you, “How many lines make up the sphere?” This question has no satisfactory answer, because when you look at a sphere it offers you a line around its edge that we call a circle. But where on that sphere is that circle. It is everywhere, and nowhere. This problem bothers nobody except the poor soul who sets about doing drawings of things composed of curves that blend into each other; every second the person’s mind is attempting to find some lines on surfaces that are constantly changing and shifting. This was the exact problem confusing Faldoni, and the profile portrait seemed to him to offer an easy way out. As he stood there at his work station, lost in thought about how to draw the shape of a nose which has no lines, his concentration on the question caused him to begin examining his nose with his fingers, searching in vain for the specific place where the profile stands out in clear relief, like looking for the cutting edge for a paper doll. He could not find the line, and as luck would have it, he had just finished grinding up a quantity of lamp black pigment, a color very similar to what you see coating the insides of an oil lantern. As a consequence Faldoni’s nose became jet-black. He realized what he had done to his face because of the questioning look directed at him by the master and all the apprentices. His reaction to their stares was simply to rap the top of his head three times with his knuckles, clean his nose with a rag, and return to work with renewed energy and hopeful conviction. That evening Faldoni painted his first profile portrait head. He began his painting with excitement and high hopes, because it seemed to him that now he had a key and a solution concerning how to paint a face. Continued next month Excerpted from the Blog, "No Cure For The Medieval Mind" —Richard Britell Y
THE ARTFUL MIND SEPTEMBER 2018 • 43
Grandma Becky’s Old World Recipes
Written and shared with a loving spoonful by Laura Pian
Grandma Becky’s Simple Horseradish Sauce
this time of year always brings me back to summers before. it was 1988, i was seven months pregnant with my first child, still working full time in mid town manhattan. i was a commuter, arriving and departing daily from the deep tunnels of grand central station. Like most of the nation that summer, new York city experienced a 6-week heat wave, with temperatures soaring well into the 90 degree range. it was hotter and more uncomfortable than any summer i can remember before. my husband and i planned our vacation right at the end of august. Just before leaving for our long awaited get-away to puerto rico, i came down with an awful head cold. Feeling concerned about flying while congested and unsure the safety of taking cold medication, i called my doctor asking for his advice. his response to me was “just before stepping foot on the plane, take a tablespoon full of horseradish, that’ll clear you right up for the entire week!” i made the decision to roll the dice and fly without doing so in the hopes that my ears would not painfully clog up on me for the rest of the week. horseradish?! For me, horseradish was meant for rosh hashanah, for gefilte fish, not to be swallowed by the spoonful on my way to vacation. Just the the thought of it makes me queasy. grandma Becky used to prepare her own horseradish every year to serve on our holiday table. horseradish was a natural part of our many traditional food customs which defined our Jewish heritage. grandma would take a fresh horseradish root and scrape this ugly root vegetable by hand on her grater. the room would suddenly fill with such a pungent odor. grandma’s eyes would water, but that didn’t stop her. she always had a fan running in the room while grating. i’ve since then learned that when horseradish is ground, it produces a strong chemical compound called isolthiocyanates. horseradish is from the basic root family of vegetables which also includes healthy kale, broccoli rabe, turnips, and daikon radish to name a few. it is believed to have potential antioxidant qualities, as well as being helpful with Uti’s and weight loss. grandma Becky would prepare her recipe for “chrain” (russian for horseradish) while the horseradish tears ran down her face. this act of love alone amazed me! i enjoyed hearing her stories about when she was a little girl and how she’d join her mother and sisters into the russian fields to collect these root vegetables for free. they would be certain to use every part of the plant, even the green leaves which they would pickle into their cucumbers. since that time, i’ve made some amazing horseradish sauce which i found to be a necessity of a perfect Bloody mary. i also add it as a hot bite for cocktail sauce. my favorite place for horseradish is right into mashed potatoes. With rosh hashanah here, you can be sure it will be on our table, helping us to welcome in a sweet new year. grandma Becky’s simple horseradish sauce INGREDIENTS: ~ 1 cup horseradish root (peeled and grated) ~ 3/4 cup white vinegar ~ 1/2 tsp salt ~ 2 tsp sugar (optional, to taste) ~ 1/2 cup mayonnaise (optional, if you prefer it creamier)
peel the horseradish root and grate finely, either by hand or in the food processor. Be sure the room is well ventilated, as once you grate it, the odor is quite overwhelming. Quickly add the vinegar, as this will cut the odoriferous reaction immediately. store in glass jar and keep refrigerated
Wishing you all a Shana Tovah (happy new year) and as always, esn gesunt!
44 • SEPTEMBER 2018 THE ARTFUL MIND
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