News and Notes from MCC Artist Fellows
We compile a monthly list of presentations, honors, publications, and events featuring past and present MCC Artist Fellows & Finalists. As you’ll see, the news is good – not just about these award-winning artists, but also about the breadth and vitality of contemporary arts throughout the Commonwealth, and beyond.
Natural Acts, an invitational exhibition, features eight past MCC fellows exploring the subject of the natural world, in paint. The Boston Convention & Exhibition Center commissioned 6′ x 6′ paintings by Michael David, Sandy Litchfield, Judy Riola, Sarah Slavick, Catherine McCarthy, Laurel Sparks, Yu-wen Wu, and Thad Beal. The paintings will be open for public viewing on July 31st and August 28th from 5-9 PM.
Kim Adrian (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’08) recently won The Editors’ Prize at /nor magazine (The New Ohio Review) for an excerpt from her memoir-in-progress. Also, Kim’s piece “A PICKLE OF A NOVEL: On Clarice Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H.” appeared in Tin House issue #35.
Art by Cynthia Consentino (Crafts Fellow ’07) is featured in Western Massachusetts: Craft in the Mountains, an article in the June/July 2008 issue of American Crafts Magazine.
Ranjanaa Devi (Traditional Arts Finalist ’08) and the Nataraj Dancers perform at the Jacob’s Pillow Community Day on July 20, 2008, exploring the day’s theme – Telling Their Stories – through Devi’s blend of traditional and innovative choreography. On August 16, Nataraj Dancers joins Somapa Thai Dance Company and Angkor Dance to perform the Ramayana for Lowells Southeast Asian Water Festival.
Patrick Donnelly (Poetry Fellow ’08) takes part in a poetry reading to benefit Frost Place, a museum and education center at Robert Frost’s former homestead. The event, which takes place July 19, 2 PM, in the Pruyne Lecture Hall on Amherst College campus, features Patrick, Ellen Dudley, Daniel Hall, Henry Lyman, Cleopatra Mathis, Martha Rhodes, Elle Dore Watson, and Jim Schley, reading their own work, plus favorite Frost poems. $5 admission. Reception to follow.
Xujun Eberlein’s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’08) new short story collection Apologies Forthcoming was recently released from Livingston Press. The stories, centered around China’s Cultural Revolution and its aftermath, won the third annual Tartt Fiction Award. Bravo!
Michal Goldman’s (Film & Video Fellow ’07) documentary At Home in Utopia has been screening at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and continues this month, as part of the Boston Jewish Film Festival Encores Series. Filmmakers Michal Goldman and Ellen Brodsky will be joined by Jeff Crosby, President, IUE-CWA Local 201, for a screening Thursday, July 3, 6:30 PM. The film also shows Sunday, July 6, 2:15 PM. And don’t miss the film’s broadcast on WBGH/channel 44 on Sunday, July 27 at 10:00 PM.
Nona Hershey (Drawing/Printmaking/Artist Books Fellow ’04) is in a group show called “Artifice and Light” at the Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown, running July 11-July 23.
Noy Holland (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’08) is teaching and will read at the Writer’s Edge, a three-day workshop for innovative fiction in Portland, Oregon. The conference takes place on the Portland State University campus July 25-27. The reading in on the 25th.
Congratulations to Monica Raymond (Poetry Finalist ’08, Playwriting/New Theater Works Finalist ’07), who received the 2008 PeaceWriting Award from the Omni Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology, and the Peace and Justice Studies Association. The award encourages “writing that opposes violence and war and supports international nonviolent, activist peacemaking and peacemakers.” The award was in honor of Monica’s play The Owl Girl (read an excerpt), which has also been a finalist in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival competition and the MCC Playwriting/New Theater Works category, and won Portland Stage’s Clauder Competition Gold Medal for 2006.
Salvatore Scibona’s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’06) new novel The End is getting terrific ink, including this adjective-tastic review from Esquire Magazine. Salvatore will read from the novel in three upcoming Massachusetts events: Harvard Book Store in Cambridge on Tuesday, July 1, 7 PM; Newtonville Books (with Darin Strauss) on Sunday, July 13, 2 PM; and Jabberwocky Bookshop in Newburyport on Friday, July 18, 7 PM.
Peter Jay Shippy (Poetry ’02, Playwriting/New Theater Works ’07) joins fiction writers Amy L. Clark and Geoffrey Forsyth in an event highlighting Bostons own Rose Metal Press. Peter reads from his book-length poem How To Build the Ghost in Your Attic on Saturday, July 19, 7 PM, at Brookline Booksmith.
Rachel Perry Welty (Drawing/Printmaking/Artist Books Fellow ’04) is part of the group show “(dis)concert,” an exhibition of “sound objects” curated by Carole Ann Klonarides. It shows at Steve Turner Contemporary in L.A., July 12-August 16.
Past Fellows Notes
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
Mar. 2008
Feb. 2008
Jan. 2008
Dec. 2007
Nov. 2007
Oct. 2007
Are you a past fellow or finalist with an event, honor, or other bit of news you’d like to share? Tell us about it.