Art, Dance, Music Coming to Bard College at Simon's Rock
GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — The next couple months will bring art, dance and music to Bard College at Simon's Rock, as the Exhibitions Program, dance concerts and Faculty Recital Series get underway.Karen Skelton
The Exhibitions Program will open its 2010-2011 season at the Atrium Gallery with an exhibition by Great Barrington-based artist Karen Skelton. An artist’s reception and gallery talk will take place at the gallery on Friday, Sept. 3 from 5 to 7 p.m. The Atrium Gallery is located within the Alumni Library at Simon’s Rock. The gallery is open during regular library hours while the college is in session: weekdays 8:30 a.m. – midnight and weekends from 11 a.m. to midnight.
Skelton first picked up a camera when she arrived in New York City in 1976 to study at the School of Visual Arts and it became a life-long inspiration and creative outlet in her career as an artist, printmaker, and graphic designer. Skelton’s early work for the renowned and influential graphic designer Milton Glaser led her into successful creations of wall paper and fabric design for companies such as F. Schumacher. Breaking out on her own, Skelton founded Potluck Studios, a ceramic-based design company that climbed to international sales and acclaim. Currently Skelton is a partner in LookWrite, a graphic design and publications team based in Great Barrington.
For Skelton, photography can be an end in itself or a means to another image. She often uses the photos as raw material for creating another piece such as a collage, or works with the colors and adds layer, or creates a miniseries based on a theme. Skelton’s foundational belief in photography is that the act of taking a photograph has already transformed the subject entirely. The artist strives to move away from “designing” to a more personal and layered expression, with no need to exclude or choose.
The exhibition runs from Wednesday, Sept. 1 through Friday, Oct. 22. in the Atrium Gallery, Alumni Library.
Dance Concert: Light and Shade
Bard College at Simon's Rock will present a dance concert, "Light and Shade" on Friday, Sept.10 at 7:30 p.m. in the Leibowitz Studio Theater, Daniel Arts Center. Choreographer Hilary Easton's latest work will be performed by dancers Emily Pope-Blackman and Michael Ingle, with original music by Mike Rugnetta and costumes by Madeleine Walach. This evening-length duet is a "meditation on intimacy" which "creates a landscape where dancers and audience are asked to lean in towards each other: to examine closely, to navigate ways of experiencing."
Charles Thomas O’Neil : 'Standing on the Peel'
The Exhibitions Program will open its 2010-2011 season at the Liebowitz Art Gallery with an exhibition by Stockbridge-based artist Charles Thomas O’Neil. An artist’s reception and gallery talk will take place at the gallery on Friday, Sept. 10 from 5 to 7 p.m. The Liebowitz Art Gallery is located within the Liebowitz building at Simon’s Rock, across from the college’s central campus at the intersection of Hurlburt and Alford Roads. The Art Gallery is open Friday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. and by appointment.
O’Neil was born in New York City in 1966 and now lives and works in Stockbridge. He received his B.S. in Fine Art and Art History from Skidmore College in 1988. In the summer of 2009 O’Neil’s abstract paintings were showcased alongside the work of early Modernists from the collection of the Berkshire Museum in an exhibition called Color and Form: The Language of Abstract Art. In recent years O’Neil has held solo shows with Lemmons Contemporary Art in Tribeca and Linda Durham Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, N.M. The artist’s work can also be found in many public collections including the Portland Museum of Art, Asiel Corporation, Time-Warner, Inc. and Smith Barney, Inc.
"Standing on the Peel" includes new work on panel and copper. The curator of Color and Form, Helmut Wohl, wrote that O’Neil’s “manner of working is a fluid process, which he refers to as ‘push and pull’, in which shapes and colors emerge in playful combinations and interactions, the result of the possibilities that the space offers as well as those found by the artist as he works.” O’Neil states that his goal is for “the viewer to define what they are looking at - the forms are real enough to provocatively draw the viewer in but amorphous enough to keep one guessing.”
Faculty Recital Series: Baroque Chamber Music for Viola da Gamba featuring Anne Legêne, Bass and Treble Viols
The Faculty Recital Series will present a concert of Baroque Chamber Music for Viola da Gamba featuring Anne Legêne, bass and treble viols. The concert will take place on Saturday, Sept. 11 at 8 p.m. in the Kellogg Music Center and will feature music by Bassano, Lawes, Marais, Rameau, Buxtehude and Bach.
Guest artists include: Pamela Dellal, voice; Karen Burciaga, treble viol and baroque violin; Jane Hershey, Tobi Szüts, viola da gamba; and Larry Wallach and Mariken Palmboom, organ and harpsichord.
Legêne studied cello with Jean Decroos, principal cellist of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands, her native country. She performs a wide range of chamber music, with many of the region's fine musicians, and often with her husband, pianist and harpsichordist Larry Wallach. She is currently finishing a Graduate Performer's Diploma in Early Music at the Longy School in Cambridge, studying viola da gamba with Jane Hershey and baroque cello with Phoebe Carrai. She was a member of the baroque orchestra "Foundling" in Providence, R.I., and has played with ensembles "The Italian Connection" and "Les Inégales," the viol consort "Long and Away," The Harvard Choir and Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, and the Berkshire Bach Society. In the summer she teaches at the Early Music Week at World Fellowship Center near Conway, N.H.
Legêne teaches cello and conducts the chamber orchestra at the college. She teaches cello in her home studio, and for many years was a cello teacher and orchestra conductor at area Waldorf schools.
