Murals and wood-fired ceramics, Japanese Shiburi tie-dyed cloth, graphic novels and living walls — the county is filling up this week with events and shows and painters out in the open, in ArtWeek Berkshires.
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Gloria Calderon Saenz carves current and color
A palm tree leans outward by a pool where the water ripples in concentric circles, as though a fish has just jumped and gone under … Gloria Calderon Saenz has come to the Berkshires to find space and time for her art, paintings and drawings, and most of all, woodcuts and woodblock prints.
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L’Shanah tovah — happy new year
Rosh Hashanah begins this evening at dusk, and friends of mine will welcome these days with honey and apples and family. I’m thinking of you all warmly tonight.
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Wild Soul River brings healing into Williamstown
On the corner of Cole Ave and Hall Street in Williamstown, the old general store is now a gathering space and an ‘abolitionist herbal shop.’
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Women (artists) about town …
I walked through WCMA on Monday afternoon, with the work of women artists around me, and wondered where else have I seen work by women in the Berkshires this summer … And I’m finding the answer more challenging than I expected.
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Kameelah Janan Rasheed weaves a room of all possible stories
I’m standing in a round room at the top of the Williams College Museum of Art and seeing it transformed through Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s eyes.
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She can turn a library into a labyrinth (Sept 1 newsletter)
WCMA has reopened, after more than a year closed in the pandemic, and I am transfixed by Amalia Mesa-Bains’ Library of Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz.
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How to meet a mountain in the rain (August 25 newsletter)
You can see 90 miles from here on a clear day. We can see about 30 feet across the meadow. Up here on the summit of Mount Greylock at the end of a storm, we’re islanded in cloud.
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Alien/Nation brings the 1960s into the future
In the dark on an early spring morning, students walked into a college building. They wanted places to live and eat and study where they could feel safe. … They wanted to be heard. And they were willing to risk their lives.
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Hostile Terrain 94 and West Coast artists reflect on immigrants’ lives
After nearly two years of work and a pandemic in the way, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts’ Gallery 51 has finally opened a show that starkly illustrates the violence and peril that exist around the US-Mexico border.
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