DownStreet Art: June 30

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DownStreet Art Thursday   June 30, 5-8pm

DownStreet Art is a program of
MCLA's Berkshire Cultural Resource Center
 

DownStreet Art Thursday Events: 

Holden Street Night Market: 5-8PM 
 

Shop a variety of local makers at the debut of DownStreet Art’s monthly nightmarket including:

Mountain Girl Farm, FishScale Creations, A Thread of Tranquility, Jamie Williams, Naomi Chapter #17, Spiral Glass, Highland Ledge Farm, rags to stitches, Janea Brachfeld and more!

Marafanyi Meets the Mural – Join Marafanyi to learn about our new project – “Marafanyi Meets the Mural” – and sign up to collaborate and create a music & movement expression of this great art work over the course of the summer

DownStreet Voices – contribute your story as we live stream the impressions of participants. 

Jason Velázquez, editor of Greylock Glass, describes the project as an artistic experiment that makes him a little nervous. “Anything that pushes the boundaries of public expression out significantly should make one nervous. That’s how you know you’re on to something.”

Visit local organizations including - 
MASS MoCA, MCLA Admissions and Hoosic River Revival

The Crossing Guard Parade Brigade 
roaming Main Street
5:30-7:30PM 

Join Crossing Guard Parade Brigade as they turn an everyday experience into a memorable and playful mini-journey. Main Street will temporarily be taken over by accordions, megaphones, and fun!
Bad Drama Theatre Club
under the Mohawk Marquee
5:30-6:15PM & 6:45-7:30PM 

Bad Drama Theatre Club will perform their original production of “The Curse of the Old Coot on Coca-Cola Ridge” under the Mohawk marquee.

This will be the first installment in a series of interconnected 15-minute plays that will be performed over the course of DownStreet Art Thursdays. The goal of the Club is to highlight the urban legends that are encompassed in North Adams history, and to provide opportunities for local community members to be involved with theatre productions about their town.

Berkshire Bank Stage

5:00PM  Kickoff remarks from Mayor Alcombright & BCRC's Jen Crowell
5:15PM  Levitt Amp North Adams lineup reveal!

Music
5:30 - 6:15PM - Triple Toe 
6:20 - 7:05PM - Heart of Gold
7:15 - 8:00PM - Izzy Heltai & Secret Creature

 
 

Creative Business Incubator Grand Openings!

 
The Creative Incubator spaces are a new DownStreet Art initiative aimed to give artist entrepreneurs, a place to grow their creative businesses in a supported and inviting way. With the help of DownStreet Art, Creative Incubator spaces have been implemented in four formerly empty storefronts in downtown North Adams. Spaces range from working studios to gallery and performance venues.  
Outside - 10 Ashland St

Directed by Mandy Johnson and James Jarzyniecki

Dedicated to solo exhibitions by emerging artists, Outside includs a small shop of art and design publications.

Current Exhibition:

Moon Nets, Alphabet Letters

Amie Cunat

June 25 – July 18, 2016

Amie Cunat is a Japanese-American raised in the rural city, McHenry, IL. Her paintings and installations, characterized by biomorphic forms and comedic hues, investigate parallels between abstraction and the perceptive. She moved to New York to attend Fordham University where she earned a Dual BA in Visual Arts and Art History. Cunat holds an MFA from Cornell University and a Post-Baccalaureate Degree in Painting and Drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her recent exhibitions include Clue, Cue at Foley Gallery (NY), Blood and Sand at Mountain (NY), Oysters with Lemon at Ventana 244 (NY), Octopi Koen at The Cooper Union (NY), and Marks at AIRY Gallery (Kofu, Japan). Cunat was recently awarded a solo exhibition and fellowship for the Sunroom Project Space at Wave Hill (NY). She lives and works in New York, NY.

Thin Walls Studio & Gallery-  87 Main St

Joshua Ostraff, a visiting art instructor at MCLA, will use Thin Walls Studio & Gallery, to focus on two projects.

The first, “Tuesday,” will examine shared experiences through paintings that look at the parallels, differences and simultaneous nature of what’s occurring in the North Adams community within a specific day and time. Ostraff’s second, yet-to-be-titled program will center on an experience he had as a teenager living in the South Pacific Islands of Tonga.

Butterfly Effect- 85 Main St
 

Christina King, Cheryl Wildermuth, and Julianne Jock

“Butterfly Effect” is a collaboration between three Elementary teachers who hope to show their paintings as artistic responses to visitors and neighbors alike that come in contact with the gallery space. It is through this project that they strive to become more deeply immersed in the beauty of the butterfly effect, both witnessed and experience though the various roles these artists have had in this truly amazing community.

Common Folk- 33 Main St
Together we, inspire creativity, strengthen our artistry, and encourage each other to positively contribute to our community.

Join common folk as they open the doors to their new gallery and venue space at 33 Main Street in North Adams! 

Featuring:
5pm-7pm - On View: Brick & Mortar, Flesh & Blood
8pm - Cactus Attack (Tickets required - see ticket link above)
9pm - Common Jam

Opening Exhibition: Brick & Mortar, Flesh & Blood
"Building the components of creative identity"

Featuring art from Troy Segala, Misa Chappell, Nate Massari, Katherine Haig, Gregg Eastman, Gwendolyn Bird, Samwise Fox, Jessica Sweeney, Ann K, Christopher Hantman and more
 
 

DownStreet Art Exhibitions in non-traditional Spaces

Dawn Nelson, 365 Sweet Nothings 
exPRESS, MountainOne, Adams Community Bank, Holiday Inn 

4-5 PM
Early reception at Mountain One Bank
5-8 PM
Reception at exPRESS Gallery

Dawn Nelson's 365 Sweet Nothings gives us a snapshot of the impulses and emotions of an artist in the first year after her retirement from a 30 year old career as a middle school art teacher. Nelson has always aimed to create work which represents where she currently is in life at that specific point in time; therefore 365 Sweet Nothings is representative of Nelson's first year as a full time artist, the first 365 days of her transition into having ample time for sweet nothing. 

Previously exhibited at Eclipse Mill Gallery in March and April, 2015, Nelson's hope is for 365 Sweet Nothings to travel to different galleries, shifting in shape with every new location. For this exhibition with DownStreet Art, Nelson's work is installed across four venues. 
exPRESS (49 Main St), Holiday Inn (40 Main St), MountainOne Bank (93 Main St), and Adams Community Bank (31 Eagle St). 
This multi-location exhibition invites the viewer to travel through the exhibition both metaphorically and literally, experiencing how the work in flows in every venue.
Paul Chojnowski, Infrastructure Series 
Bright Ideas Brewing, 111 MASS MoCA Way

Stop in, grab a beer and meet the Artist.

The newly opened Bright Ideas Brewing on the MASS MoCA campus will be host to Paul Chojnowski's Infrastructure Series for the entirety of the DownStreet Art season.

Berkshire artist Paul Chojnowski creates drawings in a non-traditional way. He "draws" by scorching, sanding, and torching large pieces of plywood to create realistic works of art. Also on display are newer works in the series, which are smaller and created by manipulating water colored paper instead of wood, then suspending that paper from custom made mahogany boxes which are illuminated from behind by LED lights creating an image suggestive of stained glass. 
 
 

In the Galleries:

Waiting: A Camera Phone Exhibition
MCLA Gallery 51

51 Main Street
For more information

Tag your photos #WaitingG51 and join the exhibition.  As participants take images and use the hashtag #WaitingG51, a live, rolling digital feed will be displayed in the window of MCLA Gallery 51. This initiative is another opportunity to engage the community members of Berkshire County, and capture additional moments of waiting.

MCLA Gallery 51 also will host a community sewing bee from 5 to 8 p.m. Participants will be asked to write down “intentions” or things and events they are waiting for, on quilt squares.

The quilt squares will be sewn together to make a series of 84 hand-sewn quilts. Once completed, the quilts will be displayed outdoors for an all-night performance slated for 2017. This event will be filled with dance, storytelling and stargazing with Williams College Artists-in-Residence Emily Johnson/Catalyst Dance.

Exposed: Heads, Busts, and Nudes
Group show of ceramic figural sculpture by masters from 1970–present
Ferrin Contemporary, 1315 MASS MoCA Way  
For more information
 

Tour the exhibit with Leslie Ferrin, gallery director and curator of the exhibition at 7:00 PM

This group of noted American and British sculptors explores themes that range from social realism to otherworldly surrealism to abstraction of form. The overview illustrates how early practitioners in California’s Bay Area during in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Robert Arneson, Viola Frey, and Stephen De Staebler, continue to inspire artists today. Known for their use of clay in combination with painted glaze surfaces, these artists challenge presumptions and their work defies easy categorization as sculpture, decorative arts, or studio craft.

 

Jaehyo Lee
Cynthia-Reeves
1315 MASS MoCA Way 
For more information

Working with wood and metal, Jaehyo Lee produces immaculately formed, intricate sculptures that reveal a mastery of his materials and a winking, sophisticated wit.

Jaehyo Lee has been rethinking and re-envisioning use of quotidian materials for several decades. Rather than dismantling each sculptural component and creating a hybrid aesthetic, Lee’s works emphasize his materials’ essential nature. The trajectory of his remarkable impact. In his current solo exhibition, Walking With Nature, at the Seognam Art Center in South Korea, he has been able to exercise the full scope of his vision, with massive works of suspended stone, works of scale rendered in feather-light leaves, and more. 

Berkshire Art Museum
Opening their 2016 exhibition Season

159 E. Main St.
BERKSHIRE ARTISTS OF THE CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS CENTER 1990-1999
For more information

This exhibition showcases the work of nine artists who had a close association with the Contemporary Artists Center and to the Berkshires –exhibition on Three Floors

Dale Bradley, Christopher Gillooly, Brandon Graving, Robert Henriquez,   Henry Klein, Barbara May, Robert Schechter, Maria Siskind, David Zaig.

COLORS  – Sarah Sutro

ART AND ARCHITECTURE: Keith Bona, Peter Dukek, Howard Itzkowitz, William Sweet

 

Not to be missed...

 
The Chalet
MASS MoCA
5:30PM 
For more information
 

starting at 5:30 PM The Chalet at MASS MoCA with music by GRNDMS

Raise a glass at The Chalet, artist Dean Baldwin’s riverside beer garden. Enjoy balmy Berkshire nights with lively music, captivating conversation, and deliciously refreshing brews.

 

After Party!

 

Cactus Attack
Commonfolk (33 Main St)

Running hard since 2008, Cactus Attack has taken New England by force and has spread their music around the country with ambitious tours and sheer perseverance. Marked by their high energy shows and dedication to their fans, here is a band that is sure to make you want to Van Damme the bathroom doors at the club and do a buck twenty down the highway after you leave. Ryan Jackson (Rhythm guitarist and vocalist) and Taylor Brennan (Lead guitarist and vocalist) both share a raw writing style that tells the stories of the abandoned and the broken in a way that we can all relate to. Backed up by Derek Pearson (Banjo and vocalist), Mike Walker (Upright bass), and Chris Hickman (Drummer), the music takes shape and guides us to where words fail and raw emotion begins.

Tickets are limited. Get ’em while you can!

Common Jam
Bring your instruments and jam with friends after the show!


Tags: DownStreet Art,   

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Macksey Updates on Eagle Street Demo and Myriad City Projects

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff

The back of Moderne Studio in late January. The mayor said the city had begun planning for its removal if the owner could not address the problems. 
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Moderne Studio building is coming down brick by brick on Eagle Street on the city's dime. 
 
Concerns over the failing structure's proximity to its neighbor — just a few feet — means the demolition underway is taking far longer than usual. It's also been delayed somewhat because of recent high winds and weather. 
 
The city had been making plans for the demolition a month ago because of the deterioration of the building, Mayor Jennifer Macksey told the City Council on Tuesday. The project was accelerated after the back of the 150-year-old structure collapsed on March 5
 
Initial estimates for demolition had been $190,000 to $210,000 and included asbestos removal. Those concerns have since been set aside after testing and the mayor believes that the demolition will be lower because it is not a hazardous site.
 
"We also had a lot of contractors who came to look at it for us to not want to touch it because of the proximity to the next building," she said. "Unfortunately time ran out on that property and we did have the building failure. 
 
"And it's an unfortunate situation. I think most of us who have lived here our whole lives and had our pictures taken there and remember being in the window so, you know, we were really hoping the building could be safe."
 
Macksey said the city had tried working with the owner, who could not find a contractor to demolish the building, "so we found one for him."
 
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