A Berkshire Celebration

Berkshire Eagle
A Berkshire Celebration: Women in the Arts

Friday, March 06
Monthlong series has 60 events in over 30 venues

By Jeffrey Borak

GREAT BARRINGTON

That roar you may have been hearing lately is not simply the month of March charging in like a lion. It's also the celebratory roar of Berkshire County women performing, visual and literary artists, whose work is the focus Berkshire Festival of Women in the Arts. The monthlong series of more than 60 events takes place more than 30 venues throughout Berkshire County.

The festival of film, exhibits, music, theater, dance, talks and special events is a collaboration between the International Women's Day Conference at Bard College at Simon's Rock and The Women's Times.

It's been organized by Women's Times' founding publisher, Eugene Sills, and Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez, professor of generic studies and literature at Bard College at Simon's Rock and director for eight years of the annual International Women's Day Conference.

"I thought the theme of this year's conference would be women in the arts," Browdy de Hernandez said during a recent joint interview with Sills in the Women's Times third-floor offices above Great Barrington's Main Street.

"As names came up, we realized we had an embarrassment of riches. The Berkshires have so much to offer in terms of local artists. We felt we had a need to celebrate this in a big way."

There is precedent for focusing on the contributions of Berkshires women artists. A one-day visual arts show was held at Berkshire Botanical Gardens in 1974. In 1994, the then-nearly vacant England Brothers Building on Pittsfield's downtown North Street (now the head ofices of Legacy Banks) was the site of a three-day Celebrate Berkshire Women in the Arts.

For this festival, Browdy de Hernandez said, "we put out feelers.

"The response was big. It seemed like it would be a big thing, bigger than I thought I could take on (in addition to organizing the conference)."

So, she approached Sills.

"I was surprised at the positive response," Sills acknowledged.

"I was reluctant at first, but every time we tried to cut something, I wanted to do more."

The festival has two tentpole events — this weekend's conference in the Daniel Arts Center at Bard College at Simon's Rock, and the first Moxie Awards, a gala event next Friday evening at Shakespeare & Company's Founders' Theatre.

The conference, "The Power of Women in the Arts," begins tonight at 6:30 with a staged reading of Carol Gilligan's adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" and continues through the day Saturday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with morning and afternoon panels, a keynote address, a closing performance directed by Shakespeare & Company director-in-residence Irina Brook, and an invitational art and craft market featuring work by Berkshire women artists and artisans.

Saturday morning's keynote address will be delivered by Susan Fisher Sterling, executive director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. Her talk will be followed by a discussion, "Cultivating Women's Creative Expression: Challenges and Triumphs," with actress and fiber artist Karen Allen, journalist and author Veronica Chambers, and psychologist Carol Gilligan.

The afternoon panel, "Women's Art: Why It Matters and What It Achieves in the World," will feature poet, human rights activist and Wellesley College professor Marjorie Agosin; Amber Chand, founder of The Amber Chand Collection; visual artist Kristin Jones; and Martha Richards, founder of the Fund for Women Artists.

The Moxie Awards — designed, Sills said, to "raise the profile of women who have created something new in the last five years" — will honor Kelly Vickey, founder and director of Berkshire International Film Festival; Norman Rockwell Museum director Laurie Norton Moffatt and Hancock Shaker Village director Ellen Spear, founders of Berkshire Creative Economy Council; and Sara Katzoff, co-founder of Berkshire Fringe Festival.

"These are women who have changed the conversation about women in the arts in the Berkshires, who have moxie. What they've been doing," Sills said, "is about the economy, about really significant enterprises."

Among the festival's other highlights:

"Collaterally Damaged," a play written and performed by Laura Zam, daughter of a Holocaust survivor, followed by a talk by Great Barrington resident Paulina Dongala, who escaped the civil war in the Congo, Saturday night at 8:30 and Sunday afternoon at 3 at Triplex Cinema (Great Barrington).

Exhibits at Simon's Rock and Olga Dunn Dance Studio, in Great Barrington; MCLA Gallery 51 in North Adams; Stockbridge Town Hall; Storefront Artists, Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, Berkshire Museum and Ferrin Gallery, in Pittsfield; and Clark Art Institute in Williamstown.

Tina Packer's "Women of Will" at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Monday evening at 7:30.

A panel with artistic directors Julianne Boyd (Barrington Stage Company), Kate Maguire (Berkshire Theatre Festival), and Tina Packer (Shakespeare & Company), March 15 at 4:30 at Lenox Library.

"A Tribute to Mendelssohn," a choral concert with soloist Julianne Baird and Crescendo Berkshires, March 21 at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church in Great Barrington.

Kathy Mattea in concert at Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, March 22 at 7 p.m.

A talk by Judith Long Zaimont about Fanny Mendelssohn at Lenox Athenaeum, presented by Close Encounters With Music, March 15 at 2 p.m.

Another talk, "Have there really been no great women artists?", this one by Sarah Lees, associate curator of the Clark Art Institute, March 25 at 7 p.m. at the Clark.

It already is clear to Sills and Browdy de Hernandez that Berkshire Festival of Women in the Arts will become an annual event.

"This is just the beginning," Browdy de Hernandez said.

"One of my hopes for the festival," Sills said, "is that questions will get raised and discussed. As women, we don't all agree.

"This is really about women in the arts. It's not about women's issues.

"You can come and just see great art and celebrate it or you can view these events through whatever lens you want to view them."

To reach Jeffrey Borak: jborak@berkshireeagle.com; (413) 496-6212

If you go ...

Complete registration, program and schedule information about the Eighth Annual International Women's Day Conference: "The Power of Women" is available by telephone at (413) 528-7394; online at www.simons-rock.edu/iwd; or e-mail at iwd@simonsrock.edu. Complete information about the monthlong Berkshire Festival of Women in the Arts is available at www.thewomenstimes.com.