On a sunny Thursdsay afternoon, my first summer intern comes with me to see a new show of paintings and drawings at Mass. College of Liberal Arts. The artist has worked on them for the last year, in residence here. He’s talked with us about teaching and making art in a pandemic, and coming from Ghana to Detroit to North Adams, about traveling and finding home.
Conrad Egyir has gathered a community in this room – the creative and generous community Erica Wall has been gathering in North Adams for three years, even in a pandemic.
And they light the room for me, because he is painting people I know. He knows them as friends, artists he shared meals and playlists with, students in his classes — and I know Erica from afternoons in the gallery.
Joshua Ross, the artist here in this painting in brilliant yellow like the sun at noon, talked with me early last fall. He showed me drawings he was working on in his studio here and talked about myths and portals, visibility and invisibility, dreams and tangible people in contact.
People ask me why I write, and why I write this way, listening to people and sharing their stories. When I’m here in a room full of people who have given me time to listen, I know. When Mythili Prakash dances myths in bharatanatyam on a mountain in Becket, and Dormeshia celebrates a century of tap and jazz in laughing rhythm, and I remember their voices… and when the hayfields at Field Farm are rustling in the wind and a blue heron is fishing in the pond.
This weekend …
Strawberries are ripe at Mountain View Farm in Lanesborough, above, and new art exhibits are opening below — Amy Yoes’ bright cloth at Mass MoCA and Conrad Egyir’s paintings and charcoal drawings in Travalogue, celebrating his friends and students and fellow artists, including photographer and filmmaker Joshua Ross—and Rose B. Simpson’s sculpture, Counterculture, out in the meadow at Field Farm. …
Events coming up …
Find more art and performance, outdoors and food in the BTW events calendar.
