While offering instruction in the various taiji forms I teach, I often refer to a forest stream and urge my students to become it, ever-flowing, to find and then move at the pace of their breath, ever-flowing, just as the stream finds its pace.  The stream does not move from one place to the next; there is no line of demarcation between places.  The stream simply flows.  

With minimal marketing and fanfare the Cape Ann Museum launches its 2024 season with the special exhibition In the Round: 20th Century Cape Ann Sculpture which opens April 6 from 3 to 5 pm. It focuses on major sculptors who lived and worked on Cape Ann. In July there will be a survey of women artists. The museum has pulled back to business as usual following last summer's blockbuster Edward Hopper and Jo Nivison exhibition in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Joseph McNamara is a New York-based, realist painter whose work—often large-scale—is centered on paintings of the industrial landscape and his relationship to it.  His paintings are painstakingly detailed and can take months and even years, to complete.  McNamara uses photographs as aids, however, the paintings are not “photo-realistic”:  each painting strays away from a strict accounting of the subject matter and takes on a life of its own.

Dead Outlaw is Audible’s latest production at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York.  The band is central on stage from start to finish. We enter the world of a rocking hoe-down celebrating life after death.

Get ready to embark on a whimsical journey through the world of cartoons and illustrations as Bernay Fine Art presents ARToons. This vibrant exhibition promises to enchant both the young and the young at heart.

Williamstown Theatre Festival is pleased to announce Beth Hyland as the recipient of the 2024 L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award for her play SYLVIA SYLVIA SYLVIA. Hyland will receive the $10,000 award and the accompanying $10,000 Jay Harris Commission to write a new play.

In 2017, the world's bee population has plummeted, putting the food supply at risk. Two research assistants at University of California Santa Cruz have produced research that identifies the source of the die off, but then one last data collection undermines the previous results even though their paper is about to be published. The play confronts the dilemmas that researchers deal with.

Thinking Cap Theatre in Ft. Lauderdale presents an updated "The Taming of the Shrew" at Broward Center for the Performing Arts. The production takes place in a modern-day office building. The reading of a play that is a response to Shakespeare's piece is also scheduled.

Overcoming odds, Liz Rico has become a highly successful basketball agent. She now must represent a first-round draft pick who lacks college experience and maturity. Further, he has a police record that the media could pick up on. In this dramedy, she must determine how to handle the conflicts of managing the relationship with the client and the broader community.

The Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida is one of the most unique, and curious collections in America. It is sited on a manicured, tropical, 66-acre campus that conflates nature, leisure, warmth and depth in Old Master paintings, Ancient Mediterranean art, Asian art, 19th and  20th century art, prints, drawings and photography, as well as extensive circus related memorabilia. There are period rooms with collections of decorative arts. Through expansion it is now the 20th largest American museum.

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Not long after that, John Quincy Adams Ward (1830-1910) created the bronze sculpture “The Freedman.” It depicts a semi-nude seated figure in the act of his removing shackles. Resembling the iconic Roman “Boxer,” the work was arguably the first bronze sculpture to depict an African American.

One exercise I suggest to my students is a “slow by slow” day each week:  walk just a little slower than you usually walk; speak just a little slower than you usually speak; eat just a little slower than you usually eat.  Not slow motion, and not so anyone else would notice, but slower than usual. 

Doubt, John Patrick Shanley’s justly celebrated play, is running at the Roundabout Theatre in New York directed by Scott Ellis. 

I admit to still being perplexed. It kept reminding me of the Shakespeare lines from MacBeth, which begin “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,/Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time;” and ends with “It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, /Signifying nothing.”

It is easy to see why this play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2021. The play is about family, friends and dreams. It is about the challenges we all face in navigating the potential pitfalls in families and the difficulties of new romantic relationships.

On Friday, April 19, the Clark Art Institute offers free activities as part of its April School Vacation Week programming. At 10 am, the Clark hosts Earth Walk with Dogs, offering three walks through its trails, ranging in difficulty. From 11 am–1 pm, the Clark presents a pop-up display of dogs and nature-themed works on paper in the Manton Study Center for Works on Paper, located in the Manton Research Center.

Once a year I get to celebrate my half Irish heritage with a vengeance. That means corned beef and cabbage and raucous singalong at the Freight Yard Pub in North Adams.

Starting with an open jam session and ending with a jazz brunch at Dottie’s, the events include the popular Jazz Crawl, a swing dance, the jazz prodigy concert introducing two (!) young musicians to Berkshires audiences, and headline concerts featuring Brandon Goldberg and Marcus Roberts. The box office is open, and you can find a link at the end of this newsletter.

In response to provocation, Black private-school-student Omari has crossed a line with his White teacher. The boy's mother, Nya, who is a teacher, is conflicted, as she values the rules that serve to protect society, but she understands that her son is a good boy with a future now in peril. Dominique Morisseau's riveting play explores numerous issues of race and relationships, and African-American Shakespeare's production does the play justice.

The National Youth Orchestra-USA Alumni performed works by George Gershwin and Dmitri Shostakovich at Carnegie Hall. Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducted. Daniil Trifonov performed Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F with flair, flash and deep feeling.

Of course my painting is not in the realm of the noxious monsters of Lovecraft but the eventual push of the visual event off the surface seems to speak to a similar aggressive desire to reach out and engage the viewer. It also begins to abandon the pleasant color field that had dominated my work from the beginning of the millennium. 

Gee, a Chinese immigrant living in San Francisco, wishes to visit China but needs documentation that will ensure his return. To obtain that, he must undergo interrogation at the notorious Angel Island detention center. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, immigration officials are loathe to facilitate entry and re-entry into the U.S. by Asians, who are crafty in developing strategies to overcome the resistance.

The American Composers Orchestra joined Carnegie Hall’s musical exploration of the Weimar Republic.  Central to the evening’s presentation were two pieces:  One, ‘Pirate Jenny’ from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera.  The other ‘Clans’ from Lowok Shoppola of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma.

The paintings of Mother explore the diverse aspects of Motherhood, from the Divine Feminine to the Kitchen Witch.

It was energizing to meet the 31-year-old artist, Dara Haskins, who was born in Baltimore and now lives in Philadelphia. We found it impossible to resist her charm and enthusiasm. She was eager to sell me a small painting but I fended off stating that I was there as a critic. Her intent is to raise enough money to return to Cuba where she recently resided for a month.