The Fine Arts Center

The renowned Shakespeare & Company performs Hamlet, Shakespeare’s timeless tale of murder and revenge. The play vividly charts the course of real and feigned madness—from overwhelming grief to seething rage—and explores themes of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption. This production offers an eye-opening journey into the world of the troubled Prince of Denmark and includes some of the most memorable monologues ever written for the stage.

Wednesday, October 8
Concert Hall 7:30 pm
$40, $30, $15; Five College Students and Youth 17 and under $15

About Nuestras Abuelas/Our Grandmothers Project
TheNuestras Abuelas Project was launched in December 2007 in La Prensa of Western Massachusetts, a monthly bilingual newspaper that provides information and views on education, culture, health and politics. Each month La Prensa runs a full page with pictures and text of a grandmother from Latin America. In September-October 2008, the entire collection of photographs, creative text and personal objects will be presented together in exhibits at the Westfield and Holyoke Libraries.

Organizing Committee
Natalia Muñoz Project Director
Revan Schendler Project Advisor
Waleska Santiago Associate Curator, Exhibition Design
Noemí E. Valentín Exhibition Curator

Our Purpose
The Nuestras Abuelas exhibition is a celebration of the legacy of our grandmothers’ struggles, responsibility, work, and love through the eyes of their granddaughters. Focusing on the Latina and Puerto Rican women’s experience we also want to give a glimpse of the world and times in which they lived, which today serve to inspire and motivate us.

Committee Bios
Natalia Muñoz is founder and editor of La Prensa (The Press) of Western Massachusetts, www.LaPrensaMa.com, a monthly bilingual newspaper serving the diverse Latino communities in Western Massachusetts. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Muñoz has worked as a journalist for both Spanish- and English-language media for almost 25 years in the United States, Spain and Puerto Rico for different media outlets including The Associated Press, The New York Daily News, Ms. Magazine, Barcelona Metropolitan, and The San Juan Star and El Vocero, both in Puerto Rico, and most recently as a reporter and columnist for The Republican in Springfield, MA. She is also the founder of LinkLatinos.com, a news and press release distribution service on news, opinions and events in Latino communities nationwide.

Revan Schendler, Ph.D., has listened to many stories, as a teacher, writer, editor, oral historian, and amateur radio host. Her poetry and journalism have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, Salmagundi, and The Daily Hampshire Gazette. She produced Talking Portraits of Northampton, a series marking the 350th anniversary of Northampton (which won an AP regional prize for excellence in journalism); and with playwright John Hadden Women at War, based on interviews with women veterans of the global war on terror. Schendler is a research associate in the Department of History, Smith College.

Waleska Santiago was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. She is a consultant for the Exploration in Puerto Rican Culture program for the Massachusetts Culture Council and the Springfield School Department. She visited museums and galleries worldwide including Spain, England, Argentina, Mexico, Perú, and France. She has a BA in Art History from Mount Holyoke College. Her final research project was “Women Artists in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, and included listings of women artists from Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, born before 1900.

Noemí E. Valentín was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Hartford in 1990 in her 30s. Her focus has been working extensively with the Puerto Rican communities of Hartford, Boston and in the Western Massachusetts region organizing and participating in artistic and cultural events. In Hartford, she coordinated the photographic exhibition The Puerto Ricans of Hartford and consulted for the Wadworth’s Ateneum to organize the First Puerto Rican Day in 1994. She holds a Bachelors degree in History of Art from the University of Puerto Rico, and an Art Administrator Certificate from the Connecticut Commission of the Arts.

September 25 – October 25
Central Gallery
Free and open to the public

Internationally celebrated diva of Latin soul and dance music, India has earned the respect and admiration of music lovers worldwide earning her the title “The Princess of Salsa,” so named by the late legendary bandleader Tito Puente. Embracing her cultural heritage, this Puerto Rican chanteuse will take you on an energetic and powerful musical journey—from inspirational and rocking music to soulful jazz to deep and intimate ballads.

Saturday, September 20
Concert Hall 8:00 pm
$35, $25, $15; Five College students and youth 17 and under, $15

Artist’s Statement- Sean Greene

“My paintings are rooted in the study of color. Color intervals are calibrated to provoke the fleeting sensations of light animating a space. Forms are developed to support this intention. Bands of color become paths—traces of motion: brush and arm and body, and paths that lead the eye through a space and around a surface. These bands evoke written languages like Arabic or graffiti– illegible but loaded with expressions of balance or instability, variation of speed, entanglement, congestion or comfort, fluidity or angularity. In this way, the abstract calligraphy can be read and allows each painting to have its own complex and unfolding personality. In this realm of color, space and form, I am developing and exploring a language as well as a reality that is perhaps, a parallel to my own.”

Thirty-five years old, Sean Greene lives and works in Florence Massachusetts. He earned an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2004, where he was awarded a three-year teaching associate ship and a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan in 1996.

Greene has received grants from the Northampton and Somerville arts councils. He has had two solo shows at the A.P. E. Gallery in Northampton (Color as Light, 2004, New Paintings, 2006), as well as a solo show at Wunderarts in Amherst in the spring of 2008. He also exhibits regularly in group shows around the Northeast, including New Art 2007 at MPG Contemporary in Boston, New York/New England/New Talent at Hampden Gallery.

His work is in private collections across the United States and in the United Kingdom, and has recently been purchased by the Neiman Marcus Corporation.

September 14 – October 19
Hampden Gallery Studio Gallery
Free and open to the public

Artist’s Statement- Petula Bloomfield

“Shadowy, faceless, androgynous forms emerge from densely layered
surfaces upon which the kinetic energy of emotions is superimposed.
Questioning the concept of identity, I explore the relationship between
physical and emotional identity. In these paintings, I destabilize
individual likeness in favor of presence. The presence of the undefined
figure may stimulate a psychological interplay between the inner and
outer environments.

The paintings can be adversarial, violent and vulnerable at the same
time. The technique of using multiple overlaying layers of paint
attempts to reveal both the transparent and opaque nature of the
physical, emotional and spiritual experience of being human.”

Petula Bloomfield has been an exhibiting artist in galleries and museums
since 1990. She was accepted into the PhD in Visual Arts program at the
Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in 2007, and has a
Master of Science in Art from the University of Massachusetts Amherst
and a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts from Clark University, Worcester.
She has taught art classes and designed and presented workshops in
schools and her studio since 1996. She has been an art instructor at the
Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School since 2003 and has
completed two residencies at the Vermont Studio Center. She is
represented by Gallery Anthony Curtis in Boston. Petula’s work was
commissioned as a permanent installation for the entrance lobby in the
new Sunderland Public Library, Sunderland, MA.

September 14 – October 19
Hampden Gallery Main Space
Free abd open to the public

Artist’s Statement- Stephen Foley

Born in 1972, I was raised in Central New York State. I studied sculpture at Syracuse
University and graduated with a Bachelor’s of Fine Art degree in ceramics. I live in the small
town of Sunderland, Massachusetts, where I have my studio. My work is shown both
regionally and internationally.

My current body of work is diverse in experimentation and the weaving of traditional and
alternative techniques. In addition to traditional firings and surface treatments, I have
incorporated the use of epoxy clays and alternative coatings such as phosphorescent and
florescent pigments, graphite, and acrylics in my work. These materials provide me with the
ability to achieve a higher level of technical innovation without compromising the oneness,
fluidity and elegance in each sculpture.

September 14 – October 19
Hampden Gallery Incubator Project Space
Free and open to the public

In Our Bodies: Expressions of Body and Self features the results of a workshop organized by Stacey Mimnaugh to provide students an opportunity to express their thoughts about body image.

Stacey Mimnaugh, of the Women’s Health Project, in collaboration with the Student Union Craft Center spearheaded the event. Mimnaugh, who is also curating the exhibition, says the work features life-size silhouettes drawn or painted on paper and also includes photographic documentation of the workshop by Oliver Scott Snure, a student photographer for The Daily Collegian.

The Women’s Health project, a student organization, organizes educational events about women’s health issues, and is part of the Health Education Department at University Health Services. The workshop was made possible by a grant from the UMass ARTS Council.

Stacey Mimnaugh is an
MPH Candidate
Community Health Education
UMass Amherst
School of Public Health

September 9 – 23
Central Gallery
Free and open to the public

One of the pillars of Jazz in July’s cirriculum is each week’s final concert featuring participants who attend from around the world. Parents, family members, alumni, and other friends of Jazz in July return each summer to groove to the musicianship of our latest graduating class and tomorrow’s top jazz talent.

July 18, 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Bowker Auditorium
Free Admission

Sheila Jordan and Her Trio (Sheila Jordan, vocals; Ray Gallon, piano; Genevieve Rose, bass; Mark Holovnia, drums; with vocalist Catherine Jensen-Hole and Jeff Holmes, trumpet), The Billy Taylor Trio (Billy Taylor, piano; Chip Jackson, bass; Winard Harper, drums; with John Blake, violin).
Artist bios are available online at www.jazzinjuly.com

July 17, 7:30 PM – 10:00 PM
Bowker Auditorium
$20 General Public (a $5 discount is available if you purchase tickets to both shows at the same time), $10 Students and Seniors Tickets are available in advance from the FAC Box Office, 545-2511 or 1-800-999-UMAS, and at the door.