Bluebirds are flocking on North Street. Phoenixes are lighting down on the corner and in the park. Migration season is coming … but this is more than I was expecting. We have magic in the hills this week.
As a giant puppet walks through North Adams and Ashfield on a journey across the country, the Let It Shine artists are finishing their murals across Pittsfield before the party on Saturday.
Several of them are painting today, in the heat of a late summer afternoon. I’ve been waiting for weeks to see their work, and in a way these early stages are just as fascinating. A new world is taking shape near city hall in turquoise and deep green and lemon yellow, and a giant rooster is emerging from abstract color near St. Joseph’s.
Riverside Park will have two new paintings too, by Jasmine Sade and Pops Peterson, and so I’ve come looking for them on the corner of Dewey Street, and I’ve found the sitting park by the water, with benches and bright color. People are taking care of this quiet, green place by the water.
The most vast and beautiful eastern cottonwood tree I’ve ever seen is growing here across the way, and crickets are singing in the meadow near BB’s Hot Spot — chef and owner Ronny Brizan is running the restaurant at Hancock Shaker Village right now in the heat of the summer.
And at the top of the street another mural catches my eye — a boy is blowing a dandelion clock and making a wish for a greener future. He’s standing in the hills, and around him three men are gardening, filling baskets with summer harvest. I’ll second that wish too.
These lights of ours
The ‘Let It Shine’ project welcomes new murals to Pittsfield and celebrates art across the city this weekend …
Bluebirds flock around a man and a dog on a sunny yellow background in Qwynto's mural on the side of Carr Hardware on North Street in Pittsfield
A boy blows a dandelion clock, letting the seeds fly in a wish for a greener future, in a mural near Riverside Park in Pittsfield signed by @hopenmagic.art
Pittsfield artists have painted murals in Dunham Park including a vividly colorful celebration that reads 'We are Pittsfield,' overlaid by the chain-link fence around the tennis court.
Events coming up …
Find more art and performance, outdoors and food in the BTW events calendar.
