Exhibitions, events, awards – and a festival of poets in Salem. MCC Fellows/Finalists are a-bloom with news in May.
The Massachusetts Poetry Festival (May 2-4, 2014, Salem, MA) is a multi-faceted celebration of poetry in the Commonwealth and in the wider literary community. Among the many talented and renowned poets participating are MCC Fellows/Finalists Denise Bergman, Ben Berman, Jessica Bozek, Kathryn Burak, Steven Cramer, Ruth Foley, Danielle Legros Georges, Rebecca Kaiser Gibson, Holly Guran, Joy Ladin, Franny Lindsay, Anna Ross, J.D. Scrimgeour, Peter Jay Shippy, and Karen Skolfield.
Congratulations to all past MCC awardees whose books are nominated for 2014 Massachusetts Book Awards: in Fiction, Karen Shepard and in Poetry, Ben Berman, Amy Dryansky (winner), and Karen Skolfield.
Congratulations to Kelly Carmody and Julie Martini, who are among the ten young artists selected as finalists for the Feldman Fellowship from the Boston Arts & Business Council. Their work will be displayed at the The Walter Feldman Gallery at the Arts & Business Council in Fort Point (opening reception 5/9, 4-7 PM). (More news about Kelly Carmody below.)
Painting Intricacies at the NAVE Gallery in Somerville (thru 5/4) includes work by Caleb Neelon and Candice Smith Corby.
Stacey Alickman‘s solo show, my funny hat, will be at Kingston Gallery thru 6/1 (opening reception 5/2, 5-7:30 PM, closing reception 6/1, 3-5 PM).
Rick Ashley‘s photography is included in Fall Back, Spring Forward: Photography in New England, curated by Francie Weiss, as part of the Flash Forward Festival Boston in May. The exhibition is at the Photographic Resource Center (thru 5/17, opening reception 5/1, 6-9 PM).
David Binder‘s documentary film Calling My Children, about a Boston-area family devastated by AIDS, is screening at the Boston Public Library‘s Rabb Lecture Hall on May 7, 2014, 6-8 PM. Learn more.
Sarah Bliss‘s short film, Gown of Repentance, and her two-channel room-sized installation, What it is to Want It, premiered in April at the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival in Scotland. The Seattle True Independent Film Festival will screen her film Beautiful Strange Land (An Tír Álainn Aisteach) in early May, and photos from her Freezing Falling series are featured in Fotografia Transversa (thur 7/20) at the Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos museum in Porto Alegre, Brasil. She’s also part of the group exhibition Side Effects at Paper City Studios (5/9-6/6) in Holyoke.
Kelly Carmody was the third place winner in the International Portrait Competition, sponsored by the Portrait Society of America. Recently, Kelly completed a two-week landscape painting residency on Martha’s Vineyard, granted by the Turkey Land Cove Foundation.
Mary Jane Doherty‘s documentary film Secundaria will screen in San Francisco 5/14, 7 PM, presented by the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, in association with San Francisco Ballet and Ballet San Jose. The film recently screened at the International Film Festival in Cartagena, Colombia. Next month, it will screen at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (6/18).
Rebecca Doughty is exhibiting in a two-person show, Rarefied at the Simmons College Trustman Gallery (thru 5/30).
Georgie Friedman will present the talk Capturing Weather in Video and Installation, part of the Art Technology New England Salon Series, at the Cyber Arts Gallery (5/28, 7:30 PM).
Holly Guran has two poems displayed at Boston City Hall as part of a project by The Mayor’s Prose & Poetry Program focusing on the Boston Marathon bombing.
Robbie Heidinger has a solo exhibition, Ceramic Installation by Robbie Heidinger at the Williston Northampton School Grubb Gallery (thru 5/11, artist talk & demonstration 5/7, 1 PM).
Carrie Gustafson had work in the Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington D.C., in April.
Santiago Hernandez has a solo show, Utopia, at gallery@artblock in Boston’s South End (5/9-6/30, opening reception 5/9, 6-8 PM).
Lisa Kessler‘s photography was featured in Smithsonian Magazine.
Colleen Kiely has three drawings in the book 1,000 Dog Portraits: From the People Who Love Them.
Mariko Kusumoto, who generally works in metal, was inspired by the Tsumami Zaiku tradition of origami-like fabric flowers. A solo show of work from this new series, Mariko Kusumoto: Translucent Explorations, is at Mobilia Gallery (thru 6/30, opening reception 5/17, 3-5 PM).
Holly Lynton has a solo exhibition, Holly Lynton: Pioneer Valley at the Miller Yezerski Gallery (5/23-7/1, opening reception 6/6).
Congratulations to Brendan Mathews, who has received a Fulbright US Scholar Teaching & Reaching Award to spend the fall teaching creative writing at University College Cork (Ireland). He’ll also work on his novel, which is partially set in 1930s Ireland. In other good news, his short story This Is Not a Love Song has been selected by editor Heidi Pitlor and guest editor Jennifer Egan for Best American Short Stories 2014, which comes out in October. The story originally appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review.
Congratulations to Matthew Mazzotta, whose public art project Open House won a Architizer A+ Award (Jury Award for Architecture + Urban Transformation). Open House will be honored along with other winners at the Architizer A+ Awards Gala at Highline Stages in New York City (5/15). In other news, Matthew recently spoke at the Public Space? Lost and Found symposium at the MIT Media Lab and at a book release party in Rijeka, Croatia for a publication that includes Matthew’s Pier Shear public art project. Upcoming, he’ll present the talk “The Architecture of Social Space” at the Open Engagement conference at the Queens Museum (5/18, 1 pm), and he’ll speak on several panels at the Americans For the Arts Convention in Nashville, TN (6/13-6/14).
Caitlin McCarthy‘s screenplay Wonder Drug is a finalist in the 2014 Beverly Hills Film Festival competition. The TV pilot she co-wrote, Pass/Fail is a semi-finalist in the inaugural Tracking Board Launch Pad Pilot Competition.
Nathalie Miebach is in two group exhibitions: locally, in Crossover at Cyber Arts Gallery in Boston (5/3-6/15, reception 5/3 6-8 PM) and Lifeloggers: Chronicling the Everyday at Elmhurst Museum of Art in Illinois (5/11-8/17). She’ll also be participating in the SoWA Art Walk and Open Studios at 450 Harrison Ave in Boston, 5/4, 12-5 PM.
Kenji Nakayama has a solo show of paintings, Etudes, at Fourth Wall Project (thru 5/18). He also has work in the group show dialect at Calico Brooklyn Gallery (5/9-6/6). Kenji was recently profiled in the April/May American Craft Magazine.
Dave Ortega recently unveiled new zine (and zine collaborations with Raul Gonzalez III and Elaine Bay) at the Brooklyn Zine Fest. Also, his zine Abuela Y Los Dead Mexicans made Time Out New York’s top 30 zines to look out for.
Monica Raymond‘s poem In Progress and a slide show of her photos of the Hmong hiphop festival are both in the last issue of Verse Wisconsin.
Jo Sandman has a solo show at Gallery Kayafas (thru 5/22)
Peter Snoad‘s award-winning drama Guided Tour will have its New England premiere at Hibernian Hall (5/16-6/1), the multicultural performing arts center in Roxbury where he’s currently Visiting Playwright. Winner of the Stanley Drama Award and the Arthur W. Stone New Play Award, Guided Tour is the second of four plays by Peter being staged by Hibernian Hall. Next up will be Identity Crisis in November followed by The Draft in January.
Tracy Heather Strain and Randall MacLowry have launched a Kickstarter campaign to support their Lorraine Hansberry Documentary Project, running through 6/20.
Naoe Suzuki is among the artists in Visible Soul at the newly named VanDernoot Gallery of the Lesley University College of Art and Design (5/15-6/14, opening reception 5/15, 6-8 PM). The exhibit highlights the feline-inspired work of established and mid-career artists.
Stephen Tourlentes was recently profiled in the UK’s Daily Mail Online.
Read past Fellows Notes. If you’re a past fellow/finalist with news, let us know.
Image: Poet Danielle Legros Georges reading at the American Antiquarian Society, photo by Philip McAlary. Danielle will read as part of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, 5/3, 4 PM.
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