Abe Pieciak and Brandon Newton opened the Chilmark Gallery last weekend with a reception on Friday night. The artists said they hope to inspire not just artists to tap into their creativity.
Featherstone Center for the Arts hosted a reception on Sunday for its new show My One and Only, which opened the season with a group show of 90 artists.
Up the stairs, on the second floor of Ruth Kirchmeier’s house, is her art studio. It is cluttered with little tins full of colored pencils and cups holding different carving tools. There are posters and maps rolled up in the corner. Her woodcuts, which she has been doing for 50 years, are stored on shelves along the wall. Several desk lamps are scattered about, adding to the natural light that pours in from the skylight above. The room feels light and airy in July, but it’s easy to imagine how cozy it must be in the winter.
There is no end to Lois Mailou Jones’ creative resources.
The name itself is poetry. A youthful, energetic 72, Lois Jones is the veteran of a long and fruitful career in the arts. Being black and a woman, her accomplishment is especially significant.
As early as age 14, composer Harry T. Burleigh had advised Lois that if she wished to establish a serious career, she would have to go abroad in order to get full exposer and avoid the disadvantage of being black in the United States.
Life Magazine photographer Gordon Parks gave a talk at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs on Wednesday night. For the Vineyard it was a first. The 79-year-old black artist not only in photography but in the fields of prose, poetry, movies and music stood before an audience of 150 people and said that he is creatively stronger than ever.
At every opportunity, the audience applauded. Included in a program of slides were not only photographs that are known around the world but images from his latest efforts, which will be published soon in a book.
The Carnegie, Edgartown’s former public library on North Water street, has opened a short-term gallery show with new works by well-known Island artists including Allen Whiting, Jeanne Staples and Margot Datz.
In a cloud of smoke and shower of blue sparks, Island sculptor Jay Lagemann blasts the stainless steel braids of his newest humanoid creation with a blowtorch registering over 3,000 degrees.
On any given afternoon, one of three sounds can be heard coming from Mitzi Pratt’s Aquinnah bookbinding studio: the dull squeak of a 19th century press, sheers clipping through paper, or the piercing bang of a weighty backing hammer.
Shelly Davis bought her loom, a four harness Nilus Leclerc, in 1975. It weighs more than she does, and it arrived in pieces with a guidebook called “Weaving: A Fantastic Hobby.”
