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DownStreet Art Set for Thursday, Sept. 28
12:09PM / Wednesday, September 27, 2017
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DownStreet Art runs from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 28, in downtown North Adams.

DownStreet Art Thursday   September 28, 5-8pm

DownStreet Art is a program of
MCLA's Berkshire Cultural Resource Center

 

DownStreet Art

Thursday Events:

Featured Event:
Halloween Magic-Lantern Show 

Game On  | 66 Main Street 

Victorian Halloween Magic-Lantern Show!

Travel back in time with the family-friendly fun of America's only Victorian magic-lantern show. An authentic 1890s visual extravaganza projected on a full-sized screen - the kind of show that led to the movies! Spooktacular Halloween stories like Poe's The Raven, bizarre animated comedy and outrageous songs - all dramatized on screen by a live showman and singer/pianist. The audience participates in the fun, creating sound effects, and joining in chants and hilarious sing-alongs like The Worms Crawl In. ~~ For 18 years, The American Magic-Lantern Theater has delighted audiences from Lincoln Center to Singapore. "What a hoot!" says NEED. "You'll be enthralled," says The Family Adventure Guide to Connecticut. But National Public Radio says it best: "It's an incredible experience... Don't miss them. They're a living national treasure!" For adults and children 6+
 

Music
under the Mohawk Marquee

Programmed by BOOM – the Berkshire Organization for Original Music.

Chad Tarves

5 – 6:00 pm

Chad Tarves a Dalton, MA native is a new upcoming singer/songwriter. Currently working as a solo artist, Tarves plays acoustic guitar and sings heartfelt ballads. He has performed at many open mics across New England, and New York while hosting several of his own concerts. 

House Sparrow

6 – 7:00 pm

House Sparrow is a North Adams singer-songwriter, Francesca Shanks, whose primary instrument is baritone ukulele. Her band mate, Joe Adonis, plays keys, drums and sleigh bells. Shanks’ aim is to use songwriting to explore the gray areas integral to our humanity. Her songs are direct and conversational, circling around themes of nature, god, waiting, death and time: Birds swoop through words about love and divination, muddy water carries away lost innocence and the claws of a cat are ridden into the night sky.

8 Foot River 

7 – 8:00 pm

An alternative indie rock group, 8 Foot River mixes acoustic and electric instrumentation spanning an eclectic range of hard-hitting rock and sweetly melodic indie pop songs that make up the band's output. The richly textured instrumentation and complex compositions reveal the vulnerability, angst and emotion of the human experience. 8 Foot River is composed of songwriters Glenn Geiger (voice and guitars) and Steve Dietemann (bass), Al Bauman on drums, Steve Elling on guitar, and Ed Stein on piano and organ.

Performances + Activities
PRESS Pop-Up Sale 

 

5 - 8:00 pm | 49 Main Street
Featuring works from the PRESS Archive at a one-day only reduced prices $1 - $10. Not to be missed!


Imaginarium - Mural Unveiling  
6:00 pm

The evening will also feature the official unveiling celebration of North Adams’ newest mural, “Imaginarium.” The ribbon-cutting ceremony will feature the following speakers: Dick Alcombright, Mayor of North Adams, Dr. Jamie Birge, President MCLA, and Michelle Daly, Director Berkshire Cultural Resource Center.
"Imaginarium" was created in late August by artist Yu-Baba, the dynamic mural has visually added a delightful pizzazz on Center Street diagonally across from Awad’s work. “Imaginarium” depicts a young woman and a fox intertwined together among a lush cornucopia of colorful foliage.  Yu-Baba (Yulia Puhach), a native of Balarus, is a a Brooklyn based muralist whose expressive and colorful work can be found across Europe and throughout the United States.

Seth Brown - Freestyle Rap

6:30pm  | Center Street

Seth Brown creates freestyle rap performances at each DownStreet Art Thursday. These interactive raps will be created spontaneously and originally, based largely on suggestions from people inhabiting the public space of the performance at the time of said performances. This will help foment engagement on multiple levels, through rhyme, through freestyle, and through direct interaction.

It’s the news of the streets, your views over beats, // Philosophy that’s audibly imbued with some heat, // And dudes may compete to get sold in the stores, // But hip-hop has ideas as its soul and its core.”  

–Ham-STAR (Seth Brown) 


Marafanyi Meets the Mural

7 - 8:00 pm  |  Center Street

Center Street will be closed to traffic for “Marafanyi Meets the Mural” a performance by Marafanyi, a pioneering drum, dance and song group founded by international musicians and teaching artists, Lara Gonzalez and Yael Shacham, with Lisa Gonzalez-Howell. For a second year,  "The ladies of Marafanyi" have  been collaborating with inter-generational community members of all abilities to compose, choreograph and arrange a unique interpretation of Alla Awad’s “Justice” mural using music, dance and spoken word. Join them in front of the mural at 7:00 pm for a transporting performance.


 
 

Eco Loom Parklet Weaving Demo Makers’ Mill

5 - 8:00 pm

Maker' Mill will host a weaving demo in their eco-loom parklet on Main Street, across form the Mohawk Theatre. Bring some fabric or greenery to weave into one of our freestanding looms that make up the enclosure of the mini park. Materials will be available onsite as well. No experience necessary, just bring your enthusiasm to the participatory community project!

The Makers' Mill Eco-Loom parklet was created by local artists Kathline Carr and Jim Peters. The parklet invites anyone to drop in and weave a few welts into the parquet using a variety of available materials including paper, cloth and greenery.

This fun all-ages participatory art project requires no prior experience just a little curiosity and willingness to try something new. The parklet will continuously  transform throughout the summer as people weave into the earth loom structure.



The Home Nature Museum

MCLA Design Lab, 49 Main St.

MCLA’s Design Lab will feature “The Home Nature Museum: North Adams.” Designed by Pennie Taylor, a museum educator since 2007, this small museum pop-up full of natural history resources, is an interpretive commentary on knowledge creation and collecting. The project encourages and reflects on an urban naturalist’s artistic exploration of the city of North Adams. This exciting and informative installation will be activated and expanded by community participation. 

Additional Hours: September 29 + 30 


Bring your bike! Sponsored by Bike North Berkshire


fancybike

5 – 6:15pm
Bike decorating table will be back with the helpful bike mechanics offering free tune ups at DownStreet Art until about 6:15 pm.

6:30pm
The biggest (and last) ride of the season! The Downtown Bike Around meets and leaves form the St. Anthony's parking lot at 6:30 pm and rides down Main Street and rides throughout downtown several times along the ride.
 

 

Openings

Freedom From Fear/Yellow Bowl Project
Gallery 51


image: Setsuko Winchester, Gila River

5-8:00pm  | 51 Main Street

MCLA Gallery 51 will host an opening reception for its new show “Freedom From Fear/Yellow Bowl Project” by artist Setsuko Winchester. The exhibit documents the artist’s journey to ten World War II Japanese internment camps where she created installations of traditional yellow tea bowls. According to Winchester, “My project may throw light on a discomfiting part of American history. I hope not to condemn or blame, but to help gauge where we are in this ever-evolving experiment we call ‘America.’ “

Also on View
 
Angle, Pitch | Outside
 
 
5 - 8:00 pm | 10 Ashland Street

On view thru October 30th at Outside gallery, Angle, Pitch, a group exhibition - curated by Amie Cunat -  of recent work by Victoria Haven, Graham McDougal, and Piotr Chizinski. The show focuses on three distinct approaches on how the artists present the intangible through their work. Meticulously crafted, they also offer a sense of the contemplative within their respective processes. 


On the Campus of MASS MoCA,Building 13

1315 MASS MoCA Way

Robin Best | Ferrin Contemporary

5 - 6:00 pm

Ferrin Contemporary focus this month is on work by Robin Best. Robin Best lives in Jingdezhen, China and shows her work through Ferrin Contemporary in North Adams, Massachusetts. The current work on view is a continuation of her series inspired by illustrations by international naturalist explorers. Best has researched the imagery of Plisse Aldrovandi, a 16th century Italian naturalist and regarded by many (including the Comte de Buffon and Carl Linnaeus) as the father of the science of natural history and was instrumental in the establishment of the Bologna Botanical Gardens.

Ferrin Contemporary represents leading international contemporary artists whose primary medium is clay. Based in North Adams on the MASS MoCA campus, Ferrin Contemporary offers selected works for sale by represented artists, masterworks from private collections and curated exhibitions.

Thomas Jackson | Cynthia-Reeves

5 - 6:00 pm
"Emergent Behavior," an exhibition of prints and site-based installation by San Francisco based artist Thomas Jackson will be on view at CYNTHIA-REEVES from August 26th - October 7th. The artist will be working on site August 22 - 25.

The hovering installations featured in Thomas Jackson's ongoing series of photographs are inspired by self-organizing, 'emergent" systems in nature such as termite mounds, swarming locusts, schooling fish and flocking birds. The images attempt to tap the mixture of fear and fascination that those phenomena tend to evoke, while creating an uneasy interplay between the natural and the manufactured, as well as the real and the imaginary. At the same time, each image is an experiment in juxtaposition. By constructing the installations from the unexpected materials and placing them where they seem least to belong, the artist aims to tweak the margins of our visual vocabulary, and to invite fresh interpretations of everyday things. 

CYNTHIA-REEVES has initiated a new program emphasizing art-making and an open dialog between the artist and viewers, inviting artists to work on site and engage visitors in their artistic process. 



Mary Sipp Green | Artist Book Foundation

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5 - 6:00 pm

On view at The Artist Book Foundation's Loius and Susan Meisel Gallery, the work of landscape artist Mary Sipp-Green featuring recent giclee prints and giclee prints with pastels. The  

The Artist Book Foundation publishes, shares, and preserves artist books offering the richest visual presentations and most informed narratives of artists’ lives and work.
Based in the bucolic Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, American painter Mary Sipp Green has a superlative ability to engage the viewer in the emotive atmosphere of her landscapes and seascapes. She achieves an ethereal, nuanced quality in her paintings that imparts a refined, inimitable serenity.


DSA in non-traditional spaces:

Sarah Sutro

Composite Landscapes in studio

on view at Mountain One Bank  during bank hours

Sarah is a North Adams painter who has focused recently on ink drawings and watermedia. She is an internationally known painter and writer whose work has been exhibited in the US and abroad. She has been a recipient and finalist for many grants and fellowships.
 


Bloom Town: Misa Chapell & Kathline Carr

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on view at Adams Community Bank during bank hours

A play on the phase Boom Town, an exhibition about hope, growth, beauty, and a reference to the physical and metaphysical blooming of North Adams.

May we also suggest:

Explore offerings from local organizations including, Common Folk Artist Collective, MASS Creative, SerenTtea, and MASS MoCA.
 

COMMON FOLK 

5 - 8:00 pm | Main Street

Common Folk  Artist Collective is a team of artists that is working to revitalize the creative economy of North Adams, MA by exploring ways to address community needs.

Common Folk goal is to provide artists of all mediums the resources, knowledge, education, tools, support, and space to grow within their art. Members believe art is not just a form of entertainment, but can also be a catalyst for change.

 

SERENITEA

5 - 8:00 pm | Main Street

SereniTea will be serving drinks and pastries on Main St.

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