Downtown Pittsfield to apply for Official Cultural District Designation

The city of Pittsfield plans to be one of the first municipalities in the Commonwealth to apply for the newly authorized state Cultural District designation.

A cultural district, according to the Massachusetts Cultural Council, is a specific geographical area in a city or town that has a concentration of cultural facilities, activities, and assets. It is a walkable, compact area that is easily identifiable to visitors and residents and serves as a center of cultural, artistic and economic activity.  Passed by the Massachusetts legislature in 2010, the statute that created cultural districts has specific goals. They are to attract artists and cultural enterprises; encourage business and job development; establish the district as a tourist destination; preserve and reuse historic buildings; enhance property values; and foster local cultural development.

“Downtown Pittsfield, with Barrington Stage’s two theatres, the Colonial Theatre, the Berkshire Athenaeum, the Berkshire Museum, the Berkshire Music School, the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, Storefront Artist Project, NEW Stage Performing Arts Center, Bisque, Beads and Beyond, the Alchemy Initiative, the Beacon Cinema, three dance studios, the Artscape public art program, and over fifty working artist studios, is truly the cultural center of the Berkshires and perfectly positioned to meet the requirements of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ newly created Cultural Districts Initiative,” noted Pittsfield Cultural Development Director Megan Whilden.

She added, “3^rd.Thursdays, the Pittsfield Ethnic Fair, the Polish Family Picnic, the Pittsfield Art Show, the WordXWord Festival, the Festival of Gathering Roots, the Grecian Festival, the Pittsfield Fourth of July Parade, the Handmade Holiday Festival, the Halloween Parade and other events also add to the year round liveliness of downtown Pittsfield, along with the growing live music scene, with local and regional performers regularly featured at Brulee’s, Flavours Malaysian Restaurant, Mission Bar & Tapas, and Spice Dragon.”

A public meeting was held on Wednesday, June 22 and attended by over two dozen members of the community, including people from the education, business and cultural sectors. Meri Jenkins, the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s manager of the Cultural District Initiative, provided an overview of the requirements and process for applying and answered questions. Attendees were very supportive of the application and the Massachusetts Cultural Council has indicated that downtown Pittsfield has excellent prospects for being approved. Pittsfield is also eligible to establish Cultural Districts in other parts of the city in the future.

The proposed Downtown Pittsfield Cultural District’s borders would mirror those of the city’s existing Downtown Arts Overlay District, which was approved by the Pittsfield City Council in 2006, and later that year won a statewide Smart Growth Award. A copy of the map can be found online at www.culturalpittsfield.com and copies are available at the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts between 9qm and 5pm Monday through Friday.

The next step in the application process is a City Council resolution in support of applying for the Cultural District designation, which will go before the Pittsfield City Council at their July 12 City Council meeting. A public hearing will be also be held as part of the July 12 Pittsfield City Council meeting, scheduled for 7:30pm. Public comments and questions are also welcomed via email at mwhilden@Pittsfieldch.com, or phone at 413-499-9348. for more information on the Cultural Districts Initiative, please visit the website of the Massachusetts Cultural Council at www.massculturalcouncil.org.

Pittsfield Art Show Invitational Opening Reception

Sixteen Pittsfield artists working in fiber arts, ceramics, oil painting, photography, watercolor, and more will be featured in the new group show opening at the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts Friday, June 10th.

The retrospective anniversary Pittsfield Art Show Invitational features creative talents and collective works from 16 artists that have been part of the downtown Pittsfield Art Show during the past 7 years. This show... coincides with the many activities celebrating the 250th birthday of Pittsfield. The artists invited to display their works in this exhibit include: Morris Bennett (oils), Michael Boroniec (ceramic), Beverly Bourassa (watercolor), Marguerite Bride (watercolor), Jan Charbonneau (fiber arts), Lynette Cornwell (paper/cloth, purses), Crispina ffrench (fiber arts), Jeffrey Gardner (landscape photography), Leo Mazzeo (oils), Sean McCusker (oils), Anne Pasko (mixed media/watercolor), Barbara Patton (ceramics), Jeffrey Reynolds (photography), Michael Rousseau (oils), Allan Seppa (photography), and Scott Taylor (acrylic).

Morris Bennett earned his B.F.A. from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, and his M.F.A from the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati Ohio.

After a year of travel and study in Italy with his wife, the artist Anne Roland, he taught art in the secondary level of the Pittsfield (Ma.) Public Schools. Since his retirement he has been teaching two courses for the evening school of the Pittsfield Public schools and offers two workshops at the Canyon Ranch Spa in Lenox Massachusetts.

Michael Boroniec, resides and creates sculptural work in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His work is a journalistic approach, a photograph or chronograph of time, primarily focusing on materials and the direct relationship to the viewer, location, and society. Michael's primary work is sculptural, though he has also found success and audiences for his work in other media including painting, printmaking, and experimental/time-based art. His work chronicles the times, often taking ready-made objects and transforming them into iconographic representations of our culture. He explains ‘art’ is an alternate way of communication.  

Since leaving the Boston area and moving to the Berkshires in 1995, Marguerite Bride has been able to focus her time and energy upon pursuing her childhood dream…to become a painter.

Her formal art training began in 1992 with a course of study at the Worcester Art Museum, accompanied by private art lessons … and hours of practice. After moving to Lenox in 1995, she attended the Interlaken School of Art, and enrolled in the Visual Arts program at Berkshire Community College. 

Jan Charbonneau is a fashion artist and a native to the Berkshires.  For years she worked mainly in the field of formal dress wear for women.  Through the use of men's recycled  neckties, she has  discovered the excitement of creating the connections of a textured past with the impressions of a promising present.

Continuous inspiration for new designs comes from her treasured customers. Jan has been especially privileged to serve many clients by making custom items from the personal  tie collections of departed loved ones. 

 

Lynette Cornwell is a collage artist who came to the idea of book purses via "altered books." Her altered books have included biographical story-telling using a collection of memorabilia and personal ephemera, as well as ironic re-takes or artistic expansion on the original book's contents. She also make book boxes, blank journals from book covers, specialty cards, and small books in a variety of formats. A small artistic support group that Lynette belonged to here in the Berkshires spent one of their project-days together making purses from a set of old Charles Dickens books. That idea brewed and stewed in her head for quite awhile, when she came across a set of children's classics her Dad had given her 50 years ago. Finding they had insignificant monetary value, she made them into book purses. They were popularly received, so she built a larger inventory. They have been a hit everywhere she takes them, and people love them as great gifts as well as for their own use.

 
Crispina ffrench, sweater, and used clothing alchemist since 1987, currently lives in a renovated Roman Catholic rectory with her studio next door in the church in Pittsfield, MA. She divides her time between her children, recycling business and developing the property, she and her husband, purchased in 2006. The goal is a community of creative endeavors including organic urban farming, utilizing sustainable building practices like rainwater catchment and alternative energy sources, and hotel/hostel music venue. This development is happening in collaboration with several like-minded reconstructionists of different sorts. 

Jeffrey Gardner has traveled around this country his whole life, seeking the less known paths, the “blue highways” as they are sometimes called. He has always been drawn back to New England and Berkshire County in particular. Jeff has found great comfort in these familiar hills, from the Connecticut border through Stockbridge and Richmond and on up to Williamstown. The landscape and most importantly, it's old barns in various states of disrepair has caught his eye more than anything else.
 
Jeff started photographing these barns in different settings and formats when he first moved back here from California in the early 1990s. He began his craft of framing his barn photographs with the very same wood they were made of.

Though Leo Mazzeo often works with other media, he is primarily an oil painter. Leo use bold, heavily-pigmented color with gestural brushwork, and sometimes knife-work, on surfaces usually under-painted, often with red or black. He uses only a very small selection of colors, preferring to find my way to the colors he seeks through mixing on his pallet, as well as on the surface, since he also prefers to work wet on wet, whenever possible. Leo often works quickly to help convey an initial feeling of directness and immediacy, both in subject matter and presence. For him, a sense of the moment is vital and he wish the viewer to harvest feelings of empathy and longing, positive or negative, for a similar situation or experience.

 

When Sean McCusker first started painting he was spending most of his spare time at night walking through the lit streets of Amherst. The contrast of the bright yellow of the street lamps against the cold blue tones of night was comforting as it meant the stresses of the day were over. Since then his work has reflected a feeling of the cool loneliness of the night, contrasted by the warmth and security of artificial illumination. 
With any work, the viewer decides the meaning. So, only as a starting point, let me offer mine. Most of his paintings center around a single figure set against a vast empty space. The scenes often depict the longing for something better, that is often just over the horizon. The light illuminating the darkness is always just out of reach, but has a stronger presence in the dark. The figures struggle to reach the light, as they yearn for better things. So Sean consistently plays with a sense of darkness, desire, and hope.

Anne Pasko's work crosses a broad range from serene to wild - from monochromatic paper collage to vivid and highly textured mixed media paintings with found objects and acrylics. Her pieces may encompass the symbolism of women's spiriituality or my love of the earth and our natural environment or the loric and magic of a place like Monhegan Island, Maine.

Anne enjoys working and experimenting with textures and new techniques. It is the uncertainty and search for new techniques and exciting combinations of color that keeps her burning with passion to "do art".  She is frequently asked how she comes up with some of the images and pairings of materials - the answer is always that these are not from a clear, conscious place but rather something that bubbles up out of the subconscious - a re-membering of an ancient symbol, or an image seen or felt in a dream.

Barbara Patton (ceramics)

Michael Rousseau's current body of work is an exploration of the somber and dramatic effects of chiaroscuro using techniques gleaned from his study of Caravaggio, including: pigment choices, subject matter, composition and application.

He paints contemporary subjects using a combination of modern and traditional oil painting techniques. He derives his subject matter from the people, places, things and ideas that are around and surrounds him as an American artist living in the 21st Century.

Allan Seppa started being serious about photography in the late 1960's, when he bought his first 35mm SLR film camera and signed up for the comprehensive correspondence course offered by the former Famous Photographers School of Westport, Connecticut.  He completed the course and enjoyed practicing his newly-learned skills for the next few years.

Soon after moving to the Berkshires in Massachusetts, he joined the venerable Berkshire Museum Camera Club. During the many years that he was a member of the Club, he won many awards for my color slides in competitions within the Club and ones sponsored by the New England Camera Club Council (NECCC). He attended many of the annual NECCC conferences, gaining addition knowledge and inspiration from their numerous and varied lecture programs.

 

Scott Taylor can’t remember a time in my life that he wasn’t drawing or painting and over the years it has become a great source of relaxation for him. Though mostly self-taught, he has had the privilege of being around some wonderful artists whose guidance and encouragement has helped him to grow not only as an artist, but as a person.


Scott loves old barns and other unique buildings (lighthouses, cottages and the like). Endeavoring to depict the emotion and history contained in their structure is one of his favorite challenges, from intriguing entryways to weathered windows and rusted rooflines. Solitary pathways and fields with rhythms created by rock walls, streams and trees are a constant draw for my imagination as well. But attempting to find a stylistic thread that connects his work, Scott has to say is not necessarily the line or subject matter, but rather the varied use of color in the pieces that he creates.

 

Pittsfield Art Show Invitational kicks off with an opening reception at the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts on Friday, June 10th from 5 to 7pm. This event is free and open to the public. Come meet the artists and enjoy their new work. The exhibition will run through Saturday, July 16th and the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts is open Wednesday-Saturday from 12pm-5pm. For more information about the event, call 413-499-9348 or email mmoyborgen@pittsfieldch.com.

The Art show has taken this year off due to construction projects immediately affecting the downtown site. The Art Show will return to the renewed downtown site in July 2012 and promises to be as exciting and successful as it has been in the past.

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Pittsfield Art Show Invitational
Friday, June 10th – Saturday, July 16th
Opening Reception: Friday, June 10th 5pm-7pm
Gallery hours: Wed-Sat 12 noon-5pm
The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public.
The Lichtenstein Center for the Arts
28 Renne Ave, Pittsfield, MA 01201
413-499-9348
mmoyborgen@pittsfieldch.com

Free “How to Write a Press Release” workshop offered in June

Local journalist Lesley Ann Beck will lead a free seminar in crafting effective materials for communicating with the media

“How to Write a Press Release,” a workshop led by local journalist Lesley Ann Beck, will be given at 6 p.m. on Thursday evening, June 2. A well-written press release is essential for any business, organization, or individual wishing to generate publicity, whether in print or online. Fortunately, crafting an effective press release is achievable simply by following some basic, time-tested rules.

“How to Write a Press Release” is a workshop led by local journalist Lesley Ann Beck, held at the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts at 28 Renne Avenue in downtown Pittsfield. The event is open to the public, free of charge, and will last 90 minutes and include time for questions. Megan Whilden, Pittsfield's  Director of Cultural Development, will be the moderator.

The workshop will cover style, organization, format, and structure, including tips on writing strong headlines and good leads. Making important decisions on content and timing will also be covered, as will attachments, photographs, design elements, and length.

The workshop will be useful for anyone who needs to generate publicity in the media, whether a small business owner, leader of a local nonprofit organization, an independent artist or performer, or even the representative for a religious institution or community action effort.

The workshop leader, Lesley Ann Beck, now the editor of BerkshireArtsAlmanac.com, has more than twenty-five years of experience as a journalist, most recently as managing editor of Berkshire Living magazine and editor of BBQ: Berkshire Business Quarterly. Before joining Berkshire Living, she was the editor of the Berkshires Week section in the Berkshire Eagle for nine years.  Moderator Megan Whilden was the editor of Artful Mind magazine, a columnist for the Berkshire Eagle and a freelance writer for the Boston Globe and other publications before becoming the City of Pittsfield's first Director of Cultural Development in 2005.

Examples of successful press releases will be available, and a handout covering the seminar topics and much more will be shared.

Please email mmoyborgen@pittsfieldch.com or call 413.499.9348 to reserve a space; seating is limited.

We Are Pittsfield! Share your story

There are thousands of stories in a community two hundred and fifty years old, and the City of Pittsfield aims to collect as many as possible this year through an oral history project called We Are Pittsfield. The We Are Pittsfield project is designed to capture & retell Pittsfield’s past and present for future generations, told by those who live in, visit, and love the city. We Are Pittsfield will create an archive of stories and memories about Pittsfield on a dedicated website, located at www.WeArePittsfield.com, as well as being stored at the Berkshire Athenaeum’s Local History Room.

 

"I can't think of a better way to celebrate our city than through the shared memories of our community members,” says Pittsfield Mayor James Ruberto.  “The stories we collect through We Are Pittsfield will provide future generations with an extraordinary window into the beloved people and places of Pittsfield."

The We Are Pittsfield oral history project is funded through a grant from the Pittsfield Cultural Council, and is part of the Pittsfield Panorama project, using arts and culture to celebrate Pittsfield 250^th anniversary in 2011. The city of Pittsfield’s Office of Cultural Development is providing staff support.

Andy Kelly and Sue Kelly are co-chairs and co-founders of We Are Pittsfield. "We were inspired by other communities that have organized oral history projects and felt that this was the perfect time to do it in Pittsfield, as we celebrate our 250th anniversary,” says Andy Kelly. “As a Pittsfield native, I know there are so many great stories out there, and we want to share them!" Sue Kelly adds, "It's important to us that all voice be heard, including youth, immigrants, and elders, in order to provide the fullest and most accurate portrait of our city."

Pittsfield residents and neighbors can share their stories and memories about Pittsfield either in written form or by nominating themselves or someone else to be interviewed on camera. You can submit a written account of your Pittsfield memory, short or long, on the We Are Pittsfield website. With your permission, the story will be posted on the website, and can also remain anonymous. In addition, you can, via the website, phone, or by letter, nominate yourself or someone you know to be interviewed on camera.

We Are Pittsfield is looking for a wide range of stories: from personal accounts of historical events to familial tales passed from one generation to the next; from stories of struggles and victories to fun recollections of memorable days and nights in Pittsfield. Storytellers do not have to live in Pittsfield, but the story must involve the city. The videos will range from short, one- to two-minute clips, to lengthier, more researched stories about Pittsfield’s past.

Inviting YOU to submit your stories to We Are Pittsfield! from We Are Pittsfield on Vimeo.

Project Manager and AmeriCorps VISTA Jennibeth Gomez will provide much of the technical production work, from filming to editing, with help from volunteers and Pittsfield Community Television. The oral history videos will be shown on PCTV, available for viewing on the WeArePitsfield.com website, and will be archived at the Berkshire Athenaeum. 

Volunteers to help with the video recording and interviewing of Pittsfield residents are welcomed and encouraged. A free video production class for prospective We Are Pittsfield volunteers will be held Monday, June 6 at 5pm at Pittsfield Community Television studios, located at 4 Federico Drive in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Space is limited, reserve yours by contacting Jennibeth Gomez at jgomez@pittsfieldch.com or 413.499.9348.

For more information please contact:

Jennibeth Gomez, We Are Pittsfield Project Manager

413.499.9348; jgomez@pittsfieldch.com