Local Artist Barney Levitt Showcases his Playful Paintings
Local Artist Barney Levitt Showcases his Playful Paintings, Inspired by Dutch Masters and American Realist Painters, in the Tremont Street Window through October
United South End Artists (USEA)
The Artist Advocacy Group, United South End Artists (USEA), Will Install the Next Local/Focus Window to Feature their Artists and Highlight their September 21 - 22 South End Open Studios Event
"MORE THAN WORDS" Bookstore
"MORE THAN WORDS" Bookstore on East Berkeley Street Showcases its Social Mission in the June/July Local/Focus Window
The Local/Focus display in June and July featured the social-justice enterprise, More Than Words, a bookstore that sells second-hand titles at the same time that it offers job training and jobs to young adults who have been clients of various agencies of the child welfare system.
The East Berkeley Street store opened as a compliment to the original More Than Words bookstore in Waltham, MA, and at first only occupied the second floor of the former Medieval Manor building. But now it also has attractive street-level frontage while the upstairs used for the books’ warehouse space and training classes.
The July window display featured the range of items More Than Words sells, that is, lightly used books in every category, vinyl LPs, as well as local crafts and vintage furniture that MTW customers ask the enterprise to take from them for resale. The company will pick up anything they can sell, including gently used clothing and shoes, books, CD’s, DVD’s, and video games, VHS tapes, audio cassettes, or magazines/periodicals.
All donations are fully tax deductible and can be dropped of at either of their stores. For further information, click here.
The July/August installation in the Local/Focus window will feature Scenes of Boston painted by members of the Newton Watercolor Society. The juried exhibit will be featured in a 2020 calendar, available at info@newtonwatercolorsociety.org in August, the proceeds of which will benefit NWS. The artwork on display is for sale, as well. Ten percent of each item sold will go to to South End Library for its programs.
In late August/September, FOSEL will feature the United South End Artists (USEA) organization. USEA is the moving force behind the local September art fest, South End Open Studios, held this year on the weekend of September 21 and 22. For details, click here.
Imagined Landscapes by Local Artist Duncan Will
Imagined Landscapes by Local Artist Duncan Will on Display Inside the South End Library t
Duncan Will is a FOSEL board member and part of the FOSEL Local/Focus window installation team. Retired after a career in independent school administration, including 25 years at Phillips Academy in Andover, Will was inspired to take up painting by his mother and grandmother, who were artists. He paints in oil at his home studio in the South End and takes weekly classes at the Museum of Fine Arts, where he also volunteers on Sundays on the information desk.
Will loves the creative process of facing a blank canvas, having only a vague idea of what to do next, and going through the experience of how “the painting itself just takes over.” He composes sweeping images of landscapes, seascapes and clouds while refining his drawing skills for more detailed compositions. Several of his works are in private collections.
The art work is on display at the South End library through June. Prices range from $250 to $500 with 100 percent of sale proceeds to be donated to the SE library for programming sponsored by the library staff.
Artist Carol Schweigert
Artist Carol Schweigert, a Former Resident of the Piano Factory, Has Installed a Local/Focus Exhibit of her Recent Work in the Library's Tremont Street Window
Carol Schweigert is a Boston-based painter who explores terrain both inside and out. A former resident of the Piano Factory on Tremont Street, she now has a studio in Charlestown and paints “plein air” all over Boston, from the Arboretum to the Zakim Bridge.
“My passion is painting from direct observation in both oil and gouache, indoors and out, sometimes in the rain, occasionally in the ice. I like the vitality and physicality of plein air painting. It hints of extreme sport, with police encounters, slippery slopes, lightning storms, and chats with skinny-dippers,” she says.
Schweigert returned to oil painting from the world of child rearing. “The abstract expressionism of my earlier education seemed so last century,” she says. “So I leapt back even further taking a wooden French easel and heading out into the fresh air.” She is intrigued by visual contradictions, carrying a 19th-century art kit into the 21st century, wondering what it is that makes a piece “of the moment.”
She received a BFA from Syracuse University, and has shown her paintings locally in a number of locations, including the Danforth Museum’s Off the Wallexhibit; the Hunnewell Visitor Center at Arnold Arboretum; and the St. Botolph Club. She takes continuing education classes at Mass College of Art, where she enjoys participating in a vibrant arts community.
A price list of her work is available inside the library, ranging from $250 to $1,200. The artist will donate ten percent of any art work sold from the Tremont Street window to the South End library staff for programming and supplies.
Zeitgeist Stage Company
Local/Focus is Showcasing the Zeitgeist Stage Company, Closing its Doors in May after Eighteen Years of Presenting Contemporary Award-winning Plays in the South End's Boston Center for the Arts
FAREWELL TO ZEITGEIST STAGE COMPANY:
The award-winning South End-based fringe theatre group has operated for eighteen years out of the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) on Tremont Street, where it is a Resident Theater Company. Frequently, Zeitgeist Stage was nominated for Elliot Norton and Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) awards, and over the years won many of them. Due to lagging ticket sales and lack of adequate funding and grant support, Zeitgeist will close its doors for good in May.
The theatre’s focus has been on social and political issues that play out in our culture today, and included last year’s Vicuna, a devastating satire of the Trump phenomenon. This year’s final production is the world premiere of Trigger Warning, a play by Jacques Lamarre about a mass shooting, presented from the point of view of the gunman’s family. It runs from April 12 to May 4 at the BCA.
Zeitgeist’s artistic director, David Miller, has lived around the corner from the South End library for many years. He is proud to have supported the South End community with free tickets to the Boston Public Schools, the AIDS Action Committee, Hostels International, and the Boston Living Center. Every Wednesday, tickets are “pay-what-you-can” with a $10 minimum.
Director David Miller’s farewell words to the South End community are: “We wish you well as we say goodbye – or in a Zeitgeist frame of mind, Auf Wiedersehen. Please continue to support small and fringe theater companies in Boston; there are many deserving companies worthy of your attendance. And we look forward to seeing you in their audiences in the future!”
South End Authors' Book Festival
Local/Focus Window Showcases the Many Local Writers Participating in the Fourth South End Authors' Book Festival, Held Thursday, April 4 in Tent City's Harry Dow Room
A selection of the many titles by South End authors participating in the Fourth Annual South End Authors’ Book Festival in Tent City on display in the South End library window
Here is how it began, in the words of South End author Alison Barnet:
“1n early 2015, Mel King said to Alison Barnet—both had new books coming out—“We should have a South End book festival.” It sounded good to Alison so she began compiling lists of authors who lived in the South End, or used to, or wrote about the South End. A committee was formed: Anne Smart, Russ Lopez, Charley Caizzi, Paul Wright and a USES staff member. South End Historical Society director, Lauren Prescott joined us later.
The First South End Authors’ Book Festival was held in the Harriet Tubman House in 2015
The First South End Author’s Book Festival was held at the Harriet Tubman House on November 16, 2015. Sitting at long tables with their books for sale were: Blackfoot Warrior, Gary Bratsos, Charley Caizzi, Thom Donovan, Philip Gambone, Jean Gibran, Ralph Kee, Mel King, Steven Kinzer (made an appearance), Bill Kuhn, Aaron Lecklider, Russ Lopez, Bonita McIlvaine, Ife Oshun, Mari Passananti, Florence Potter, Lynne Potts, Matt Regan, Hope Shannon, Sylvie Tissot (represented by Tony Piccolo), Gabriel Valjan, Bessel Vander Kolk, Lydia Walshin with her Little Free Library, and Paul Wright.
South End’s former State Representative, community organizer and author, Mel King, featured in the flat-screen video with the title of his iconic work, Chain of Change: Struggles for Black Community Development, surrounded by books authored by many of his writer colleagues.
By the Third Annual Book Festival we had moved to the Harry Dow room at Tent City. Among authors who now joined us were: Stephanie Schorow, Sue Miller, Karilyn Crockett, and Lorraine Elena Roses. Fred Dow (son of Harry) was an impromptu speaker, giving us the idea of inviting Fred back and having other speakers as well at our Fourth Book Festival in 2018.”
Titles by current participating authors are on display in the library window and are part of the digital presentation on the flat screen.
Boston Center for Adult Education
The Boston Center for Adult Education Is This Month's Local/Focus Subject in the Tremont Street Window, With a 30 Percent Discount Offered for New Registrations by South End Library Friends
When the Boston Center for Adult Education (BCAE) was established in 1933, our founder, Dorothy Hewitt, envisioned a place where people would meet to learn, discuss, and create for the sheer pleasure of it. More than 85 years later, the BCAE remains committed to enriching lives and creating community in a dynamic facility located at the heart of Boston. If you sign up before May 5 for first time registrations at the BCAE, you will receive a 30 percent discount. All you have to do is enter the code SELIBRARY at the checkout.
More than 10,000 students are served each year through 1,200+ exciting classes offered across a wide range of disciplines, including technology, languages, creative writing, arts, crafts, photography and food & wine. In addition, the BCAE regularly presents exhibits, lectures, and special events that draw new audiences and ensure our organization’s enduring relevance. The BCAE is proud of its successful track-record in providing opportunities for personal growth and professional development that are affordable and accessible so that everyone has the opportunity to expand their mind and explore their passion.
TOP TEN REASONS TO VISIT THE BCAE TODAY
1. fun and affordable classes in art, crafts, photography, food & wine, computers, writing, languages, and more
2. smart and engaging instructors
3. a dynamic facility right in the neighborhood
4. unique experiences to share with friends
5. creative date night activities
6. thought-provoking lectures
7. eye-opening exhibits
8. hands-on opportunities to create
9. new possibilities for recharging a career
10. an enthusiastic community of learners
BOSTON CENTER FOR ADULT EDUCATION
WWW.BCAE.ORG/ 122 ARLINGTON STREET, BOSTON / 617.267.4430
Crime and Fiction In or Around Boston
The January Local/Focus Installation of Crime Fiction in the Tremont Street Window Features Mystery, Thriller and Suspense Novels by Local Writers or Tales Set In or Around Boston
FOSEL advisory board member, Nick Altschuller, has compiled a selection of mysteries, suspense novels and thrillers to get you through the dark season and into the light of spring. The stories either take place in or around Boston or are written by people from the area. Here’s Nick’s take on it:
The mystery genre is impossible to pin down to just the usual suspects. Even the protagonists are slippery. Detectives can be a Holmesian men of society, dressed in tweed and smelling of fine tobacco. Or they can be the exemplars of noir: hardboiled, hard-drinking and reeking of unfiltered cigarettes. Spies can come besuited at a baccarat table or bespectacled behind a desk. Heroes don’t even have to be good; they can be decidedly “anti.”
Even narrowing the scope to Boston doesn’t limit the genre’s breadth. The writers themselves come from all walks, as former prosecutors (Margaret Mclean, Raffi Yessayan), medical examiners (Patricia Cornwell) and cops or criminals (or in the case of David Marinick, people who were both). Their stories can be suspenseful and brutal, or cozy, focusing on housework, crochet or cats (Barbara Neely).
The novels of Robert Parker and Tess Gerritsen have spawned television shows. The works of Dennis Lehane, Chuck Hogan and George Higgins are the basis of movies. Exhilarating tales can come in fiction (The Art Forger) and non-fiction (The Gardner Heist), even when taking place in the same peaceful setting, like the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
The genre has something for every reader. (You could say it has us all figure out.) With so much variety, the thrill lies in narrowing down which types of mysteries are for you.