Virtual Art Talk Series with Janet Mandel: Four Fabulous Women Artists

 

Four Fabulous Women Artists You Probably Never Heard Of
Virtual Art Talk Series with Janet Mandel 

Join us on Zoom for a series of art talks by Janet Mandel. Janet Mandel taught in New Jersey’s public schools for 32 years, where she taught English, art history, World Languages and Cultures. Now retired, Janet presents illustrated talks on a variety of art history topics at adult schools, libraries, museums, senior centers, community centers, and similar venues.

6 pm Wednesday January 18th: Suzanne Valadon
Suzanne Valadon was the illegitimate daughter of a sewing maid whose formal education ended at age eleven. She worked as a circus acrobat and artists’ model and gleaned what she could about painting by watching and listening to the men who put her image on canvas. Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas were her most important artistic influences. Under their tutelage she began to paint and created powerful, unconventional images, principally of women. Although mostly unknown today, she is regarded by scholars as an important chronicler of women’s experiences. Her paintings remain fresh and modern, cementing her legacy as a significant figure in the history of art.

6 pm Tuesday February 7th: Florine Stettheimer
One of New York’s most unconventional painters, Florine Stettheimer was a keen and opinionated observer of the people and rapidly changing world around her. Her famous salon, attended by New York’s avant-garde during the 1920s through the early ’40s, was legendary. She prophetically chose to portray subjects considered controversial even today, such as race, sexual orientation, gender, and religion. Come and hear about the unique life of this German-Jewish artist and see some of her most celebrated works. It is time to recognize Florine Stettheimer as one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, whose work remains as modern and relevant today as it was a century ago.

6 pm Wednesday March 22nd: Augusta Savage
Augusta Savage overcame poverty, racism, and gender discrimination to become a luminary of the Harlem Renaissance. Her sculptures celebrated African American culture, and her work as an arts educator and political activist catalyzed social change. This talk will explore Savage’s lasting legacy by examining her remarkable life and affecting works, as well as those of the younger artists she inspired.

6 pm Wednesday April 19th: Ruth Asawa
American sculptor, educator, and arts activist Ruth Asawa is known for her extensive body of work including paintings, printmaking, public commissions, and especially her wire sculptures that challenge conventional notions of material and form.  A firm believer in the radical potential of arts education, she also devoted herself to expanding access to art-focused educational programs by co-founding the Alvarado Arts Workshop in 1968 and the first public arts high school in San Francisco in 1982. Come and hear about this pioneering and inspirational artist.

This series is brought to you by the Chilmark and Vineyard Haven libraries.  Please contact vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org for the Zoom link.

A Century of American Short Stories with Philip Weinstein Continues in January

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Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present a six-part seminar discussing short story collections from six American writers. Programs will be held online via Zoom on six Wednesday evenings from 6pm - 7:30pm, beginning November 16th. Prior to the first class, registered participants will receive a welcome email with Zoom access information. 

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To go from Ernest Hemingway to Elizabeth Strout is not quite 100 years, but it is certainly enough time for us to come to grips with how brilliantly American writers have deployed the shorter form.  We begin with two "masters"--Hemingway (In Our Time, 1925) and Faulkner (a selection of his finest stories, written in the 1930s).  Everyone who comes after them is affected, one way or another, by the power of their work. But, while Raymond Carver's reputation is founded on his Hemingway-like tautness, you would never confuse his Cathedral (1981) with anything by Hemingway. 

Thereafter we shall read Louise Erdrich's 1st great collection of stories, Love Medicine (1984).  Our final pair of writers--Edward P. Jones (All Aunt Hagar's Children, 2006) and Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge, 2008)--take us into our current century; their careers, like Erdrich's, are still underway.

These readings are neither unduly lengthy nor unduly difficult.  You will get in easily enough; my aim is to help you get in as deeply as possible.  To that end, we will devote a separate session to each writer, so that you might come away with a finer sense of each one's typical syntax, lexicon, concerns, obsessions... I want you to turn them into your familiars--voices whose timbre and resonance will stay with you long after this course. 

We will be alert, as well, to the larger "story of America" that they are each engaged in telling.  Inevitably, such stories touch on dramas of race and gender and class--of black and white and red, of violence abroad and at home--that give America's past century its unpacifiable power to disturb.

Upcoming dates and reading assignments:

Wednesday January 11th: Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine

Wednesday January 25th: Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar's Children

Wednesday February 8th:  Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

Previous sessions on Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time, Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner, and Raymond Carver's Cathedral can be viewed online: https://vimeo.com/showcase/10017344

Philip M. Weinstein is Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College. His numerous publications include Faulkner’s Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns (1992), What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison (1996), and Becoming Faulkner (2009). His newest book is a collection of essays entitled Soul-Error, published in May 2022. Professor Weinstein has been offering literary seminars in cooperation with the Vineyard Haven Public Library since 2012, and is the Honorary Co-Chair of the Capital Campaign for Vineyard Haven Library's expansion and renovation project.

Register for the series

Art in the Stacks: Adriana Eftimie & Elizabeth R. Whelan "Found Again"

 

Found Again: Paintings by Elizabeth Whelan & Adriana Eftimie
On display on the lower level during regular library hours, through mid January

Recovering from a world pandemic pushes us to look for a new perspective on the old familiar ways, places, and events we might have taken for granted. Island events like the Agricultural Fair bring us together as a community. Familiar places like our cherished lighthouses attract tourists from around the world. A great golfing experience is shared with friends, surrounded by beautiful Vineyard landscapes. For a time, all these were inaccessible. Now we can cherish and appreciate them again. Adriana Eftimie and Elizabeth R. Whelan capture a few of these moments and places in paint, as a reminder to take some time, take a closer look, and reconnect with what was lost and found again.

This is artist Adriana Eftimie’s debut show. She has been studying painting for several years, and in 2021 officially launched her art career by displaying work and acccepting commissions. In ‘Found Again’, she shares a number of her works painted in her Vineyard Haven studio over the course of 2022. Elizabeth Whelan, has been using her time at the easel during 2022 to work on commissions and also broaden her painting skills to incorporate a wider variety of painting approaches and more drawing into her work.

Their art show at the Vineyard Haven Public Library ‘Art in the Stacks’ encompasses two different takes on familiar scenes from around Martha’s Vineyard. Eftimie’s work explores the detail and nuance of broad Vineyard landscape by using rich color to bring out atmospheric views. Her stunning details beautifully capture the Vineyard light, with two of the works rendering familiar views of the waterfront from interesting vantage points.

In contrast Elizabeth Whelan’s work takes on an oft-overlooked feature of the annual Agricultural Fair, the comments left by the hard-working fair judges on the Ag Hall entries. These comments are Elizabeth’s favorite feature of the fair each year, as the judges praise, cajole, and comment on the entries and entrants. in her paintings, names and entries have been changed to protect the innocent, and instead, personages of Ancient Rome are listed as the exhibitors. 

The works are available for sale by contacting the artists directly, email: Adriana Eftimie and Elizabeth R. Whelan