PELHAM, NY — Pelham Art Center will be a vibrant part of ArtsFest 2017, a two-town art weekend adventure on October 7 and 8 in New Rochelle and Pelham. Both Saturday and Sunday 12-4 pm will be packed with art-related activities at Pelham Art Center (PAC) and Wolf Lanes Park, so plan to spend the afternoon. Ride the trolley to various events and exhibitions in Pelham and New Rochelle.
Program:
Saturday Schedule
Wolfs Lane Park:
Opening of new sculptural works Touch Stones by Beatrice Wolert 12:00-1:30 pm
Demonstration by Beatrice Wolert 1:30-2:15 pm
Pelham Art Center:
Performance and Workshop: Folk Arts Storytelling by Tom Lee, 2:30-3:30 pm
Sunday Schedule
Pelham Art Center:
Performance: Soprano singer Andrew Chukwuka Egbuchiem 12:00 – 1:00 pm
Performance: “Best of 650” Live reading series 2:00 – 3:00 pm
Both Days:
Pelham Art Center Gallery exhibition: The Children’s Hour
Sculpture in the PAC Courtyard and Wolfs Lane Park
About the Performers:
Tom Lee
Professional Storyteller, Saturday 2:30-3:30 pm at PAC
Tom Lee is a professional storyteller with thirty years’ experience performing traditional stories, folktales, and myths for adults and for children. His repertoire offers myths and stories from cultures around the world; some are centuries old, some originated thousands of years ago.
Tom began researching traditional stories while living in Scotland. His first performances were late-night retellings of Grimm’s fairy tales in a tiny theater at the back of a London pub called, appropriately, “The Man in the Moon.” This program was presented at the Edinburgh Festival and, subsequently, on BBC-TV. “When I encounter a traditional story that intrigues me, I research its origins, going back in time through various manuscripts, often in other languages, and getting as close as I can to the origin or source of a story. After this process of research and discovery, I craft my own retelling of the story in a version that I hope is both true to the original and relevant to audiences of today.”
Tom has brought storytelling programs to thousands of students in grades K-12. Since moving to Connecticut in 2000, he has been a roster artist with Arts For Learning, the Connecticut chapter of Young Audiences, and also with Connecticut HOT Schools.
Tom is the artistic director of artsVOYAGE at Spencertown Academy in Spencertown, NY, a unique arts-in-education program that uses performing and visual arts to enhance learning across the curriculum.
Tom performs for adults in theaters and at festivals throughout the country. Evocative, engaging folktales invite adults to reflect on their own response to ancient narratives. As a frequent guest artist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he brings together his passion for research, art, and story, continually connecting with new audiences of all ages. In addition, Tom is a performing arts partner with the Yale Center for British Art and the Metropolitan Opera Education Conference.
Andrew Chukwuka Egbuchiem
Sunday 12-1:00 pm at PAC.
Andrew will perform operatic works with piano and cello, Nigerian art music, Negro Spirituals and more. A family friendly performance; all ages welcome.
Andrew sees music performance as way to reach out to another soul through sound, in a way words alone can never express. Music is his true love. When he performs, he uses his emotions; love, dreams, fears and life to reveal the music.
Andrew uses the magic of song to create a connection between the music and the listener on both an intellectual and emotional level. By focusing on the context of the text, the musical idea and making the performances as organic as possible he endeavors to create a theatrical journey where the audience can see the great drama in the music that is being performed.
Andrew Chukwuka Egbuchiem made his debut as a countertenor soloist in the performance of G.F. Handel’s Judas Maccabeus in Nigeria in 1999 and studies music at Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education. He was Artist in Residence at Singers of United Lands Project, 2013-14 and toured the U.S., Kenya, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Poland and Latvia. For its 2015/2016 choral season Andrew performed with the Schola Cantorum as an Alto soloist in Handel’s Messiah. He sang the role Sorceress in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in the Summer Vocal Arts Program at the Brooklyn Music School in August 2016. The same year he was also a Finalist at the Oratorio category of the Lyra International Vocal Competition in New York. In January 2017, he performed roles from Opera scenes by Handel, Mozart and Offenbach in the Brooklyn Music School’s Winter Program Scherzo. During the summer he performed in Cavalli’s Ercole Amante at the Baroque Opera Workshop, Queens and Baroque Music Soloist Program at the Amherst Baroque Music Festival in Cavalli’s Erismena. Andrew played the role of “Sylphie” in the production of Gluck’s Echo et Narcisse by the Brooklyn Music School in Summer Vocal Arts Program for Emerging Opera Singers in August 2017.
The Best of 650, Featured Writers: Stories of a Pastor, a Disaster, and Mrs. Brooke Astor
Sunday 2-3:00 pm at PAC. There will be a live Facebook feed during the performance.
“650” is the maximum word count for featured stories: two pages that can be read aloud in five minutes. Ten accomplished Westchester County writers who’ve appeared in previous 650 events in New York City and elsewhere will be featured in this “Best of 650” show, performing their essays on themes ranging from Love and Marriage and What We Wore to The First Time and Tales of New York. The show will conclude with a wine and cheese reception.
Ann Casapini is a singer, yoga practitioner, and writer whose work has been published in The Sun, the Westchester Review, and the online literary publication Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine. She studies writing with Steven Lewis at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Tuckahoe, NY.
Larry Garland works mainly in the nonfiction genre, but also writes fiction and poetry. Garland grew up on outside Nashville, Tennessee, and writes frequently about the south and southern culture. He’s been a columnist for two daily newspapers, and his work is published in The New York Times and elsewhere. Larry holds a MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY, and is currently at work on a memoir and additional prose projects.
Karen Dukess has been a tour guide in the former Soviet Union, a newspaper reporter at the St. Petersburg Times in FL, and the founding features editor of The Moscow Times in Russia. She has written book reviews for USAToday and blogged at theblunderyears.com and the Huffington Post. Her narrative non-fiction has appeared in Intima and her short story, Fancy Hat, appeared in the 2017 issue of the Westchester Review. She is a speechwriter at UN Development Programme and is a member of the Terzo Piano writer’s group. She lives in Pelham, NY.
David Masello moved to New York thirty years ago from Evanston, IL and made his living as a writer and editor ever since. He began as a nonfiction book editor at Simon and Schuster and then held senior editorial positions at many magazines, including Travel & Leisure, Art and Antiques, and Town and Country. Currently he is executive editor of Milieu. David is a widely published essayist and poet, with pieces in the New York Times, Salon, Best American Essays and other literary and art magazines. His plays have been produced and performed by theaters like Manhattan Repertory Theatre and Jewish Women’s Theatre of Los Angeles. He is the author of two books about art and architecture.
The Reverend Cari Pattison serves as Associate Minister at The Reformed Church of Bronxville, NY. In addition, she is a Jazzercise, yoga, barre, and Pilates instructor, inspiring people in body and spirit. Originally from Kansas City, KA, she studied English and Art at Kalamazoo College, MI and earned her Masters of Divinity at Princeton Theological Seminary, NJ. She previously served a variety of churches and hospitals in Kansas, Kenya, and New Jersey. Cari has blogged for The Huffington Post, illustrated the children’s book ABC: Sing With Me, and is a 2015 recipient of the Kathryn Gurfein Fellowship at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College.
Angela Deracas Taylor: Born and raised in 1960’s Greenwich Village and graduated at Hofstra University. For twenty years she traveled extensively in the US, Hawaii and the Caribbean, pursuing a career in catering and luxury event planning. After 9/11, she settled down in New Rochelle with her family and now works as the executive aide and community relations advisor to the mayor. Angela’s short story “Crazy Joe” was published in the 2011 edition of the Westchester Review. She recently launched a blog and shares her stories of overcoming adversity to live the suburban life she dreamed of as a child. She’s currently working on a food memoir inspired by her life growing up in a family restaurant business.
Julie Trelstad is the former Director of Digital Rights at Writers House where she worked on all things digital, self-publishing and marketing. Julie studied architecture at Columbia University, architectural criticism at Parsons School of Design, and teaches digital marketing in The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. Previously an acquisitions editor for non-fiction books, specializing in architecture, design, and construction for Taunton Press, John Wiley & Sons, and Reader’s Digest and more. Julie founded the Plain White Press, an independent publishing company which she sold to Fox Chapel Publishing in 2010. She was the editor of the original Not So Big House book by Sarah Susanka, and now lives in a Not-So-Big House designed by Ms. Susanka’s firm.
John Gredler, poet and memoirist, has been writing prodigiously in notebooks and journals for most of his adult life. He honed his craft at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, Bella Villa Writers, 125, and the Terzo Piano Workshops. Published in Fictionique, Narratively, Dan’s Papers, Westchester Review, and Talking Writing, John’s essay, “Glistening Scar,” won top prize in the Talking Writing Nature Writing contest, and he was awarded the 2014 Gurfein Fellowship from The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. John lives and writes in Tuckahoe, NY.
Anna Geraldine Paret is English; a current resident of Larchmont, she has lived in America for over twenty years. She is married to a Puerto Rican and has two daughters in college. Anna first came to New York as an investment banker transferred from London. She was a docent at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve at Stanford University, and is presently a naturalist at Sheldrake Environmental Center in Larchmont. Anna’s work has appeared in Orbis #173, Inscape, where she received the Editors Choice award for the poem, What is the Grass? and Ghost Town Literary Magazine. She is a 2016 Scott Meyer Award short story finalist.
Edward McCann is a writer whose features and essays have been published in national magazines and literary journals (Better Homes & Gardens, Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, The Sun and more). An award-winning television writer/producer and longtime contributing editor at Country Living, Ed is founder and editor of 650, and a member of New York City based Artists Without Walls and Irish American Writers & Artists. He’s written the text for partner Richard Kollath’s design books, and he’s recently completed a memoir about the search for his missing nephew. His essay, “Pregnant Again,” was selected for the anthology, Listen To Your Mother, published by Penguin Books in April, 2015. He lives and writes in Hudson River Valley, NY.