Three Days of Virtual Love
A three-day-long virtual arts festival, “Home Is Where the Art Is,” is a benefit for the Cape Cod Arts Relief Fund, hosted by the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod. The fund provides one-time financial assistance of up to $500 to Cape artists in need.
“The festival evolved from seeing a lot of artists doing live-stream concerts to raise money for other sectors,” says Julie Wake, AFCC executive director. “We thought, how come they’re not doing it for themselves — for the arts?”
So far, the fund has provided relief to 35 artists, but the foundation is hoping to raise $100,000 through the festival to help even more.
The festival, which runs from Thursday, April 30, through Saturday, May 2, is a multimedia experience, involving visual artists, dancers, and musicians of all genres. Headliners include G. Love, Amy Jo Johnson, Will Dailey, and Tianna Esperanza.
“We wanted to represent the different regions of the Cape as well as different mediums,” Wake says.
G. Love (a.k.a. Garrett Dutton), front man for G. Love and Special Sauce, is a blues-rock veteran who now lives full-time in Orleans. He tells the Independent that the festival is unique because it’s “artists and musicians raising money for artists and musicians.” He himself faced a “huge loss” when all of his tours were canceled because of the Covid-19 pandemic, coming right after he released a new album, The Juice.
“Everybody is laid off, so anybody that can help anybody along the way, and lift others up, is what the community needs right now,” G. Love says.
Visit the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod’s Facebook page for information on when and how to tune in. G. Love is performing on Friday, May 1, at 7 p.m. He also live-streams regularly from his own Facebook page. —Saskia Maxwell Keller
In Search of the Proust Reading Group? It’s Gone Virtual.
For the past year, the Proust Reading Group has met on the second Tuesday of the month at the Wellfleet Public Library to dissect and discuss Marcel Proust’s mammoth multivolume masterwork, In Search of Lost Time (from the French, À la recherche du temps perdu). Choosing Terence Kilmartin’s translation, the group has so far covered a lot of ground: about 1,000 pages out of a total of 4,000. During the crisis, members have been meeting virtually via Google Hangouts, and they’re looking for new recruits. These new members will form a subgroup, which will read the magnum opus from the beginning.
Why take on such a gigantic literary project now? Most people, other than essential workers, have a lot of time on their hands. And, says group leader Lew Schwartz, the novel is especially relevant today.
“As a naïve reading,” Schwartz says, “it’s a memoir of growing up during an important period in French culture, leading up to and including World War I. But on a deeper level, it asks questions such as how do we make use of our past — not simply to recall it, but what do we do with it?”
As a group, reading In Search of Lost Time usually takes between four and five years, Schwartz says, but it may end up being less with people holed up at home. Some of the group’s activities work well over Google Hangouts, such as examining the art and listening to the music referenced in the novel. Other activities, however, such as sampling madeleines and tisane tea, require creative solutions.
“I’m looking into it,” Schwartz says. “The boulangerie here in Wellfleet does really good ones.”
With madeleines or without, this reading group is a meaningful way to socialize over a shared experience. If you’re interested, email [email protected]. —Saskia Maxwell Keller
Castle Hill Class Goes Virtual to Raise Funds
A class at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill taught by Laura Shabott, “Creating a Body of Work to Show Through Figurative Expression,” started out on March 11 with the promise of six three-hour sessions with a model and a gallery show to cap it off. But the epidemic’s stay-at-home directive forced a change of plans.
Shabott switched to weekly assignments and Zoom critiques. And the promised show, “Alone Together in Art,” has now gone virtual at castlehill.org, with paintings, drawings, and collages by Andrea Chapin, Anne Webb-Johnson, Christine Niles, Janet Hymowitz, Lynn Mogell, and Mary Fox available for purchase. Fifty percent (or more) of the proceeds will help sustain Castle Hill during tough times.
Encounter ‘400 Years of Eastham’ in Homegrown Art
“Picture Perfect: 400 Years of Eastham,” an exhibit hosted by the Eastham Painters Guild, was supposed to open at the Eastham Public Library on Friday, May 1. Due to the Covid-19 crisis and with the library now closed, the show has been moved online, with works on view (as of May 1) at easthampaintersguild.com.
The members of the Eastham Painters Guild had been preparing for this exhibit, which was one of the events commemorating Eastham 400, during the off season. The guild is also celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2020.
The 12 member artists participating in “Picture Perfect” are John Dillon, Ron Edson, Margaret Furness, Rebecca Gmucs, Karen Kollar, Elaine Lobay, Pat Nickerson, Meg Schmidt, Willow Shire, Jody Shyllberg, Mary Anne Tessier, and Robin Wessman. Most are Eastham residents.
The work they have contributed highlights aspects of Eastham’s history, from the first encounter between Native Americans and Pilgrims in 1620 to the present day. Each painting is accompanied by a short description of the historical event it portrays.
