Westport in Brief!
EverythingWestport.com
Sunday, May 8, 2016
photos/EverythingWestport.com except as
noted
Sign
up Now for "Mosaics for Mom" Art Workshop for Kids at Westport Art
Group.
Portrait Painting Workshop
at Westport Art Group.
Author B.A. Shapiro to appear in latest
Partners Writers Series with Dawn Tripp.
Master Thieves author to appear at Partners on Thursday, June 2nd.
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Local farmer speaks about the importance and benefits of
farms in Westport. EverythingWestport.com Friday,
May 6, 2016 Last Tuesday, the town of Westport voted for Article 38 which empowers
town officials with the guidance and structural by-law framework they need to
make sound decisions and to support innovation and growth in our dynamic
farming community. To further help people understand the significance of the passage of
Article 38, Bob Russell of Westport Rivers Vineyard and Winery offered his
thoughts regarding the importance and benefits to local farms: The
Importance and Benefits of Farms in Westport, Massachusetts By Bob Russell 1.
Farmland and farms are a more stable tax base*. Farms return more tax
dollars to Westport than the dollar value of services (school, police, and
fire) needed by them. * According to former Westport
Tax Assessor George Medeiros * According to, and documented
by, the American Farmland Trust in Washington, D.C. 2.
Farms are a dynamic economic
engine. All wealth originates from farming, fishing, forestry andr mining. These are the primary industries of the
world. As a primary industry, farms create new dollars to the local economy.
This new dollar is circulated seven times through the economy until it is
taxed down to zero. 3.
Farms can be considered to be
manufacturing plants without walls and ceilings. 4.
Farms provide open space, places
to visit, and recreational opportunities such as hay rides and winter
sledding. 5.
Farms provide local foods
which are fresher and healthier. 6.
Farms are local,
they do not require transportation fuel for shipping distances making them
more environmental friendly. 7.
Farms pollute less than
houses. Farmers are required to annually to apply for permits for the
pesticides, herbicides and insecticides they use. They are inspected by
Massachusetts's officials for how well they are complying with the laws. Houses,
on the other hand, use chemicals on the lawns, gardens, household cleaners,
paints and laundry detergents - all without regulation of usage and disposal. 8.
Houses can be noisier than farms.
As an example, a 100 acre farm could possibly be developed for 40 houses.
Each house is capable of emitting sounds from lawn mowers, leaf blowers,
outdoor radios, children playing, and parties. The undeveloped 100 acre farm
has tractors and other equipment noises, but their sum total noise less than
the 40 houses. 9.
Farms keep the population of
a town lower thereby reducing the number of cars on the roadways. Fewer
people mean fewer automobiles. Fewer automobiles mean less dripping of oils
on the roadways. One of the major sources of stream and river pollution is
surface water run-off of the oils that drip from automobiles. Sign
up Now for "Mosaics for Mom" Art Workshop for Kids at Westport Art
Group. EverythingWestport.com Friday,
May 6, 2016 Westport
Art Group is happy to offer two one-day workshops for elementary school aged
kids. Each workshop is only $30, open to the public, and led by
artist/teacher Brittany Wood, who also leads summer camps at the group. "Mosaics
for Mom" will be held Saturday, May 7th from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm at the
Westport Art Group building at 1740 Main Road, Westport. Kids will discuss designs, colors, techniques, and transform a drawing into a
colorful collage of tiles. Students will not only create a unique work of art
but also create a gift for mom for Mother's Day. "Creative
Monsters" workshop will run on Saturday, June 4th from 9:30 am to 12:30
pm, also at the Westport Art Group building on Main Road. Students will use their
imaginations to dream up their own creatures, monsters, animals or
characters. After practicing different painting techniques and color-mixing
possibilities, the students will paint a portrait of their interesting,
individualized creature within its environment. Registration
is required. Please email info@westportartgroup.com for
further information. To explore summer camp options, please visit www.WestportArtGroup.com. Portrait
Painting Workshop at Westport Art Group. EverythingWestport.com Sunday, May
8, 2016
The first day will be spent drawing, concentrating on the planes of the
head. Students will see how simplifying and eliminating detail can actually
give you a more realistic and dimensional drawing. The class will then spend
time working from a live model. Before class ends, there will be a discussion
on using a limited group of paint colors for use on day two of the workshop. The second day the class will be painting, working from live model(s).
The instructor will do a short demonstration both days at the beginning of
class. Either oil or acrylic paint is recommended, although watercolor is
also acceptable if one is comfortable with that medium. Artist/instructor Kathy Weber often paint portraits using only four
colors, and held a demonstration last month at WAG to illustrate her The workshop will be held at the Westport Art Group building at 1740
Main Road in Westport, and the cost of the 2-day workshop is $100 for current
WAG members and $135 for non-members, which includes membership for one year.
To sign up, please visit www.westportartgroup.com. Author B.A. Shapiro to
appear in latest Partners Writers Series with Dawn Tripp. EverythingWestport.com Sunday,
May 8, 2016 Please
join Partners Village Store and Kitchen for a captivating discussion between
Dawn Tripp and B. A. Shapiro about Shapiro's dazzling latest novel, The
Muralist as a part of Partners Village Store’s Writers Series.
B.A.
Shapiro brilliantly captured the world of art theft and forgery in her
critically-acclaimed New York Times bestselling novel, The Art
Forger, and Shapiro's The Muralist is an equally captivating
story about the birth of Abstract Expressionism set against the backdrop of
the Depression and the eve of World War II.
And,
some seventy years later, not her great-niece, Danielle Abrams, who while
working at Christie's auction house uncovers enigmatic paintings hidden
behind recently found works by those now famous Abstract Expressionist
artists. Do they hold answers to the questions surrounding her missing aunt? Entwining
the lives of both historical and fictional characters, and moving between the
past and the present, The Muralist plunges readers into the
divisiveness of prewar politics and the largely forgotten plight of European
refugees refused entrance to the United States. It captures both the inner
workings of today's New York art scene and the beginnings of the vibrant and
quintessentially American school of Abstract Expressionism. B.A.
Shapiro is a master at telling a gripping story while exploring provocative
themes. In Alizée and Danielle she has created two
unforgettable women, artists both, who compel us to ask, what happens when
luminous talent collides with inexorable historical forces? Does great art
have the power to change the world? And to what lengths should a person go to
thwart evil? Please
join them on May 11th at 6:00 p.m. to meet Ms. Shapiro as they discuss The
Muralist, described as "a
tantalizing mystery, as well as an involving meditation on the meaning of art
over time” - Scott Turow, Author of Identical.
Books
will be available for signing after the talk. To reserve your spot please
contact Partners Village Store at 508.636.2572. Master
Thieves author to appear at
Partners on Thursday, June 2nd. EverythingWestport.com Sunday,
May 8,, 2016 Please
join Partners Village Store and Kitchen on Thursday, June 2nd at 6:30 p.m.
for no-holds-barred glimpse into the 1990 Isabella Master
Thieves is the
story of the biggest art theft in history. In the early morning hours on
March 18, 1990, two men disguised as Boston Police officers tricked their way
into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, tied up the two night watchmen and
stole 13 works of art valued at an estimated half billion dollars. Among the
works stolen were three works by Rembrandt and a Vermeer masterpiece. In Master
Thieves, Kurkjian reveals how the two criminal gangs battling for control
of the Boston under-world knew of the museum’s poor security and that one had
a motive to pull off the theft - to fashion an exchange that would result in
the release of its leader from federal prison. The Isabella Stewart Gardner
Museum Heist is a case defined by superlatives - the largest art theft in
history, carrying the world’s largest reward offer and has resided longer on
the FBI’s list of biggest unsolved art crimes than any other save one. About Stephen Kurkjian A
Boston native, Stephen Kurkjian spent nearly 40 years as an editor and
reporter for The Boston Globe before retiring in 2007. During his
career, he shared in three Pulitzer Prizes and won more than 20 regional and
national reporting awards.
Returning
to Boston in the early 1990s, he completed numerous
investigative projects from The Globe newsroom including the clergy abuse
scandal inside the Boston Archdiocese; the devastating fire at a Rhode Island
nightclub that took the lives of 100 people and the recovery of a Cezanne
still life that was stolen from a Berkshires home in 1978 and later auctioned
for $29 million. His
2005 article of the theft of 13 pieces of artwork from the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum is regarded as the most complete account of the still-unsolved
crime. In his retirement, he is working on a book on the theft. Also, he has
worked as a senior investigative fellow for the Initiative for Investigative
Reporting at Northeastern University, and as an adjunct professor at Boston
College’s College for Advancing Studies.
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