Images That Celebrate Women Over 40
It’s something many women notice and discuss among themselves: when you reach a certain age, you are often made to feel invisible, as if the world expects you to accept a preconceived set of limitations and self-engineer a slow fade.
It was this kind of diminishment — and its effect on older women’s psyches — that Eastham photographer Sandra Costello hoped to address by making portraits of 40 Massachusetts women and gathering their reflections in a book. The photographs from that project, titled “Brave: 40 Women Over 40,” are currently on view at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod (307 Old Main St., South Yarmouth).
“Some of these women have never had their photograph professionally taken,” Costello says. “I think that they loved the idea of being part of a group of women who were doing things in life a little bit differently.”
The series includes women like Suzanne Dyer Wise of Dennis, who at age 80 has become an accomplished athlete and was photographed grinning while pointing at a row of medals she’s won. When asked what she can do now that her younger self couldn’t, she replies matter-of-factly: “Participate in triathlons.”
Fifty-one-year-old Jeni Wheeler, photographed in the nude save for an artfully draped black velvet cloth and a pair of stilettos, describes herself as “joyful, confident, and determined.” She survived an eating disorder, a suicide attempt, and multiple miscarriages and surgeries before founding the Family Table Collaborative, a nonprofit addressing food and nutritional insecurity faced by Cape families. It’s an achievement that came after she discarded advice from people who questioned her abilities.
“I believe we’re born with two ears and one mouth for a reason,” she told Costello. “Listening is critical, but so is knowing your center. If I had listened to all the noise, the Family Table Collaborative would not exist today.”
“What I have found is that often women don’t think their story matters,” says Costello. “I feel there’s always something that women can contribute, no matter where they are in their lives.”
While most of the subjects are from Cape Cod, a few are from western Massachusetts, where Costello lived until three years ago. Among them is Roxann Callender, 65, of Holyoke, a recently retired computer programmer who wanted to participate in the project to encourage younger women to pursue careers in fields traditionally dominated by men.
“During the last decade of my career, there were a few situations when I was confronted with negative people who tried to diminish my abilities,” she recalls. “However, I persevered and stood up for my value because I am confident and have realized lots of success along my career journey.”
There will be a closing reception for the show on Saturday, Nov. 16, from 5 to 7 p.m. Admission to the exhibition and reception is free. See cultural-center.org for more information. —Katy Abel
A Concert That Brings Fantasy to Life
The French composer Hector Berlioz first saw the Irish actress Harriet Smithson in a production of Hamlet in Paris in 1827. She played Ophelia. He fell in love.
Harriet became his idée fixe — an obsession that spurred what might be Berlioz’s most famous composition. “Symphonie Fantastique” was composed in five movements for a vast orchestra including four harps, an expansive percussion section, and full wind, brass, and string sections. The autobiographical piece, woven through with a repeated motif to represent Harriet, tells the story of an artist who is driven to despair by his unrequited love, poisons himself with opium, and descends into madness.
On Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 16 and 17, the Cape Symphony Orchestra, led by guest conductor Alyssa Wang, will perform Berlioz’s work in a concert titled “Fantastique” at the Barnstable Performing Arts Center (744 West Main St., Hyannis).
The program will open with a piece called “Turbulent Flames” by Jessica Myer, a contemporary violist and composer. Next, Croatian pianist Martina Filjak will make her Cape Symphony debut with Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16., the only concerto he ever completed. Grieg was 25 at the piece’s 1869 premiere, and the concerto is distinctively youthful: attractive on the surface, with virtuosic scalar runs and explosive chords by the pianist, and an energetic orchestra. But the bold and dramatic piece doesn’t lack depth.
Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” is last on the program. The piece premiered in Paris in 1830 to mixed reviews. In a crushing blow to Berlioz, Harriet did not attend the premiere. Berlioz arranged for a second performance in 1832 and sent Harriet tickets for opening night. The two were married in 1833, and although they ultimately separated, they are buried together in Montmartre Cemetery in Paris.
Tickets are $32 to $75, with student discounts. See capesymphony.org for information. —Dorothea Samaha
A Play About a Real-Life Love Story
When Truro playwright Racine Oxtoby read Lara Prescott’s 2019 historical novel The Secrets We Kept, she was fascinated by a real-life character. The book tells the story of secretaries who became spies for the CIA during the Cold War and were tasked with smuggling Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR. But Oxtoby wanted to know more about Pasternak’s real-life lover Olga Ivinskaya, who inspired Doctor Zhivago’s heroine, Lara.
Ivinskaya was arrested in 1949 and imprisoned by the Soviets for four years in an attempt to pressure Pasternak not to criticize the government in his book. After researching Ivinskaya’s life and the story behind getting Pasternak’s novel published, Oxtoby decided to focus on illuminating Ivinskaya’s perspective in her play Lara: A Love Story.
“I liked the idea that, in the midst of this love affair between two real people, this classic piece of literature is born,” she says. “The author had to go through so much just to get it read by people, including that his mistress was imprisoned and lost her baby.”
The play will premiere as a staged reading at Truro Public Library on Saturday, Nov. 16 at 2 p.m. It is Oxtoby’s first production since joining the Truro Playwright Collective earlier this year.
Oxtoby, who is the Wellfleet Public Library’s outreach coordinator and a longtime DJ on WOMR, has acted on local stages. She began writing plays as a student at Provincetown High School and returned to the craft in recent years while taking part in the Provincetown Theater’s writing group. The theater held a 2023 staged reading of Oxtoby’s Fun Times in Babylon, a play about actor Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s manslaughter trials in the 1920s.
“I find real life interesting, and bringing real people to the public consciousness,” she says. “I’ve never been able to completely make up a story from beginning to end. There has to be some truthful element to it.”
The reading on Nov. 16 is free. See trurolibrary.org for more information. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Taking the ‘Scenic Route’ Through Life
Writers Christine Ernst and Candy Hammond got to know each other when Hammond, host of Arts Week on WOMR, interviewed Ernst about her long-running show, Fat Ass Cancer Bitch. They bonded after discovering similarities in their lives and struggles.
Both left college to get married. Both are mothers. Both have dealt with life’s “detours,” including divorces, unfulfilling jobs, Ernst’s breast cancer diagnosis, and Hammond’s child’s substance addiction. While both have loved writing since childhood, each worried they could never be considered writers without traditional college degrees and jobs.
But both found eventual success through unorthodox channels. For years, Ernst, who is also director of learning at Cultural Center of Cape Cod, has performed her real-life stories around Cape Cod. She recently created a weekly podcast and runs a “writing gym” class. Hammond is a freelance writer who had her Orleans-inspired novel Christmas at Cranberry Harbor published in October by Barnstable’s Sea Crow Press.
Ernst and Hammond will lead a talk titled “We Took the Scenic Route So You Don’t Have To” at Wellfleet Preservation Hall on Saturday, Nov. 16. Each will tell her story and invite others to tell theirs.
“It’s hard in a society that values degrees, wealth, and bylines to keep your chin up and still feel like you’re doing valid, valuable work that not only fulfills you but might speak to others,” says Ernst. “A lot of people feel their stories aren’t worth telling, and Candy and I are proof that’s absolutely not true.”
Hammond notes that creative work is often solitary. “I hope hearing from us will open conversations — to know ‘It’s not just me, and I can make this happen,’ ” she says.
Tickets are $25. See wellfleetpreservationhall.org for information. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Remembering Thomas Antonelli
Paintings by the late Thomas Antonelli (1952-2019) are currently on view at Truro Public Library in an exhibition curated by Larkin Gallery director Stephen Briscoe.
The show is a selection of Antonelli’s paintings that were left in his studio when he died. “I had three hundred paintings in there,” says Antonelli’s husband, Gerald Giardelli, who, with Briscoe, chose the ones to show at the library. More from the collection are on view at the Larkin Gallery in Provincetown and Harwich Port.
In the late 1970s, Antonelli and Giardelli owned Celebration, a T-shirt shop across from Spiritus Pizza on Commercial Street in Provincetown. (One of their employees was the late film star Divine.) Eventually the couple opened the Antonelli/Giardelli Gallery in the East End.
The gallery, which they ran for 40 years, showcased Antonelli’s paintings, pottery, and collection of tramp art. Antonelli worked the gallery and painted in the studio above.
Antonelli painted with acrylics on canvas in a flat style with minimal layering. While most of the work in the Truro show is a mix of still lifes and floral studies, Giardelli says that Antonelli was known for his beach paintings. “He spent a lot of time at Herring Cove,” says Giardelli. “He loved the beach, and that was his spirit.”
Antonelli’s paintings invite the viewer directly into a landscape. In Orange Clouds, the pink border of a tree seems to make it glow in the dunes. Through simple shapes, the painter captured the hazy glow of objects backlit by a red sun. In Overlook, the shape of a dune resembles the profile of an upturned, listening face. His flat technique has the effect of obscuring assumptions about an object’s meaning.
The show is on view until Nov. 30. See trurolibrary.org for information. —Pat Kearns
