The Blacksmith House Printmakers are a group of artists that have been working with Selma Bromberg in her printmaking classes. They do monotype, solar etchings, and other printing methods, yielding beautiful results that you really have to see. Their work will hang at 42 Brattle through the month of May.
Here Kate walks us through a solar etching of a tree that she’s worked on.
Join Kate and her classmates at the exhibit reception this Friday, from 5:30-7:30, at 42 Brattle, and take a look at the wonderful work they’ve been doing.
On Monday we’re hosting an incredibly important event that all should attend: group Scrabble! Join us at 3pm in the Spiegel Auditorium on Monday, May 5th, and show off your stuff. Bring in a board if you have one, too.
Craigie Street Bistrot is on its way out. From the Globe:
Chef Tony Maws et al. will be leaving their iconic digs outside Harvard Square and heading down Mass. Ave. to Central Square. Pending approval of the liquor license transfer, they’ll take over the La Groceria location on Main Street, renovating it and putting in a snazzy kitchen.
Tony Maws has turned the restaurant into something special, a true gem of a restaurant just down the way from CCAE. CCAE’s also connected to Craigie Street through Marjorie Maws, who took a restaurant business class here many years ago before opening Craigie Street.
If you’re feeling sad about it, you can cheer up with a free ice cream cone from Ben & Jerry’s stores. Tuesday, 4/29 is Free Cone Day!
I wore shorts to the Center today! After this latest long and cold winter, I thought I’d never wear shorts again. But here we are.
Yesterday CCAE took the day off for the holiday. On the other side of the river, twenty-five thousand people from across the globe converged in Hopkington to shut down traffic and run 26 miles into the city. Were you part of the commotion? I rode a train into the city from Cleveland Circle (where I spotted Lance Armstrong run through in yellow Live Strong regalia) that was filled to the gills with people.
The night before, I was ordering take out from a sub shop when a young man in front of me admitted he had a “long day” ahead of him. “We start drinking early in the morning, and it’s an all day thing.” He was very serious about this responsibility. I’m not sure if that’s a Patriot’s Day tradition or a marathon viewing thing.
We have a couple of special programs coming up next week to keep an eye out for. The first comes from our Twenty Something’s Lifeguide, single night classes for people in their twenties. Next Wednesday’s session on April 30th is called “Thirty Five Things to Do Before You Hit 35.” It’s imperative for people to sort through all the flotsam and options and jot down some goals. Your homework this week is to find yourself a young person and direct them to this class. It’s taught by Kendall Dudley, whose paintings you might’ve seen in our building this month.
[As I write this there is a great moment going on across the office in one of our classrooms, in Ann Sayre Wiseman’s mixed media workshop. They’ve got three tables overspread w/colorful magazines, paints, and papers, which they’re cutting apart and spackeling together again. The sun dips in through the windows, outlining them as they chat it up, and I can think of few better ways to spend a Tuesday morning. I might have to grab a seat at one of the tables for a better look.]
Next Wednesday is also the first day of our White People Challenging Racism workshop, which started up at the Center several years ago.
Our Dulcimer festival kicks off with May Fair in two weekends, from May 2nd to 4th. More on that soon.
First they came for the small businesses, and I said nothing. Then the banks rolled in, and I said nothing. And now, the meter fares have been raised to 25 cents per 15 minutes?
In the midst of Of Course! and looking ahead to future events, I’ve completely overlooked a very big event happening next Monday. Anyone with the slightest interest in poetry should come to our Armies of the Night reading on Monday at 8:00 p.m. The evening celebrates the works of Norman Mailer and Robert Lowell, with an all-star list of readers that include Frank Bidart (who studied with Lowell at Harvard), series organizer Gail Mazur, Jill McDonough, Robert Pinsky, David Rivard, Lloyd Schwartz, and others.
From our friends over at the A.R.T.—Cambridge residents get $10 dollars off their ticket for this Thursday’s performance of “Elections and Erections: A Chronicle of Fear & Fun.” You can check out more about the show at their website.
Our art instructor Doug Kornfeld hasn’t been able to teach his Spring term basic drawing class b/c he’s working on a new art commission that’s happening right in J.P. That hasn’t stopped his students from attending class and honing their skills in an open studio that meets at their regular time. They’ve affectionately named the class “Drawing Without Doug.”
Doug, being the shrewd mind he is, quickly branded the name and sent a logo for future “______ Without Doug” classes. Take a look:
UPDATE: Word is J.P. Lick’s is handing out free ice cream cones in honor of Opening Day at Fenway.
Walter Rhee returned to Hawaii last week, but the aroma of his delicious creations lives on. Walter actually cooked up a huge lunch for the staff before leaving, complete with a vegetarian curry, black bean noodles with fried pork, a seafood salad, and plenty of pickled veggies and kim chee.
I sat in on Walter’s Pan-Asian Cuisine when he was here and recorded some clips of him preparing sushi. The seafood of choice? Fresh lobster. Mm. Watch it below.
CCAE will be hosting a memorial service for Eliza McCormick Feld, a beloved writing instructor who passed peacefully from cancer from last year. The Globe wrote an obit for Mrs. Feld last year, which you can still read online.
While digging around the net for a picture of Mrs. Feld, I found a podcast on TruMix.com that featured an interview with her from her Cambridge home. She chats briefly about her writing career, old age, and death.
There was a clown that used to work here. A ‘proper’ one, as the brits say, as opposed to your regular office employee with a preference for practical jokes.
His name was Peter, and he was, as I remember, a great clown. It’s been a few years since he’s come through the Center, but in my early days he performed at some of our more family-style events. He’d come in full clown attire, making balloon animals and performing to the delight of young children and their parents.
He taught a juggling class before having a child of his own, and has since ceased teaching indefinitely.
We had an office re-jiggering recently and a box of old, unused juggling balls surfaced out of the mild chaos. They’re tangerine sized cubes filled with shredded nut shells, arranged in packs of three.
Now they’re propped on a box near the upstairs office entrance, ready to greet faculty members and visitors as they come in.
I grabbed a pack and tried my hand at juggling, with moderate success. I wonder if the coordination demands might keep ones mind sharp as the day goes along. Wouldn’t that be great, if instead of coffee in the morning, people juggled down the street?
Yesterday CCAE took the day off for the holiday. On the other side of the river, twenty-five thousand people from across the globe converged in Hopkington to shut down traffic and run 26 miles into the city. Were you part of the commotion? I rode a train into the city from Cleveland Circle (where I spotted Lance Armstrong run through in yellow Live Strong regalia) that was filled to the gills with people.
