Many refer to America as a nation of immigrants. It is after all a country shaped by generations of people who have come here from somewhere else. Some have come seeking opportunity. Some have come seeking freedom. Some to study. Some to escape. Some against their will. It is an ever expanding diaspora phenomenon as […]
When we think about the concept of critical mass, we think about the amount of a substance needed to start a chain reaction. Those are the nuclear physics that ArtsWestchester was pondering when we started planning the ARTSEE festival. How can we start a chain reaction? What we were envisioning was an explosion of people […]
Frank Sinatra struck a chord when he sang “I did it my way.” Artist/designer Denise Proctor heard the call. It defined her life. She poured her artistic spirit and her soul into her vision for a school for little fashionistas – the Westchester Fashion Institute. From her perch on the 6th floor of ArtsWestchester’s building, she […]
Walk into Kiyoshi Otsuka’s studio (if you can get past the door) and you’ll be reminded of Jackson Pollack. The paint splattered floor is dripped with layers of spattered hues, all of which are colors of paintings past and present. Stacks of work line the walls and fill the overhead shelves making it somewhat of […]
The weather outside was frightful as I struggled my way back to Westchester last Monday evening. As my plane prepared to land, LaGuardia Airport closed its runway. Fortunately, Newark Airport welcomed us just before their runway closed. As we circled the airports and landed to cheers, we heard the media warn that “this blizzard will […]
There aren’t too many Besses. There’s Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth the First. There’s Forest Bess. But he’s really a Forest, not a Bess. There’s Bessie Smith, the most popular blues singer of the twenties and thirties, known as Empress of the Blues. There is also The Bessie Award given each year for innovative achievement in […]
What’s in a life? Last weekend, friends and relatives gathered at separate memorial services to honor and celebrate two artists whose lives resonated widely, but ended too soon. Artists have a way of building our engagement by presenting us with ideas and new ways to think about things. Their messages live on through their work […]
There aren’t too many dates I remember so well as November 22. Like most of my contemporaries, I can picture where I was standing and what I was doing on that date in 1963 as though it were yesterday. It came back to me vividly once again at a performance of “The Assassins” at the […]
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