June 2003

The months seem confused in the Berkshires this year; April, if memory serves, was warm and sunny (arguably the least cruel month we’ve seen in some time), while May brought a long series of showers. And now it’s June 2, and this morning it was cloudless but 45 degrees at my house. It feels almost like we’re receding, rather than advancing, through spring, and I can’t help but wonder what July will be like.

But meanwhile, June. Summer is a relatively slow season for Inkberry (we like to distinguish ourselves from other area arts organizations), and our reading series is on hiatus until August. (It’ll come back with a bang, though, when we partner with MASS MoCA to present Rick Moody on August 15!) We’re winding down our spring classes now — only one class left! I’ll be leading a discussion of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange at Inkberry this Thursday evening (June 5) at 7pm, and on Sunday at 1pm Images Cinema will show a private screening (open to registered students only) of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation, to be followed by a discussion led by Images Artistic Director Alexandra Kalmanofsky about the transition from book to movie. This pair of discussions (including the screening) costs $20, and room is still available, so get in touch with us now if you’d like to take part! We’re also soon to unveil our summer schedule; information about summer classes should appear on our website within the next week or so, and our summer calendar will be out sometime around June 20, so keep an eye out for that!

This Friday we’ll reprise the Artists’ and Writers’ Networking Party that we premiered in April, from 8 - 10pm at Inkberry. Co-hosted by Images Cinema and the Contemporary Artists Center, this event — held in conjunction with North Adams’s First Fridays and the CAC-curated Art Walk — will feature food, wine, conversation, and good company. We got a great turnout at April’s event, in spite of the miserable weather (okay, so not all of April was warm and sunny), and we hope to continue having these parties every other month, to provide a social center for the still-growing-but-as-yet-amorphous North Adams arts scene. So if you’re an artist or a writer, or if you’d like to hang out with artists and writers, come on down! Admission is free, but we request a donation of $3 per person to offset the cost of refreshments. Inkberry will also be featuring the artwork of Karen Arp-Sandel as part of this month’s Art Walk, which begins at 7pm. We hope to see everyone there!

May’s highlights included a delightful reading by poets Wyn Cooper and Lawrence Raab. (My favorite moments were Larry’s explication of his poem “Attack of the Crab People,” and getting to hear a song off Wyn’s new cd, “40 Words for Fear,” which features music written and performed by him, the novelist Madison Smartt Bell, and their band.) At the end of the month, Rachel and I led a panel discussion on “Artists and Audiences” at a conference sponsored by the Western Massachusetts Arts Alliance (which, like most things with “Western Massachusetts” in the name, primarily serves central Massachusetts; I now know how Washington and Oregon residents feel when they complain about Northwestern University being in Chicago). The theme of the conference was “Creativity Sparks Economy,” and its purpose was to bring together artists, arts presenters, and members of the business community, to explore the ways arts and business can benefit each other. Our discussion was well attended (and included North Adamsers Greg Scheckler and Laura Christensen among the panelists — thanks, guys!), and generated some good conversation about how to connect artists with those who view, enjoy, and spend money on art.

And, except for a book recommendation, that’s about enough for me. I recently finished Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, and adored it. I had previously read another book by Orlean, The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup (I think I even mentioned it in an Inkmail a while back), which is a collection of articles written for The New Yorker and other magazines. The Orchid Thief began its life as a New Yorker piece (about the attempted theft of some endangered orchids from a Florida swamp — and touching on the obsessive world of orchid collectors), but Orlean expanded it into a full-length book, in the process taking in the history of land scams and development in south Florida, relations between the state of Florida and the Seminole tribe (who were involved in, but didn’t mastermind, the theft), and the nature of obsession itself. Recently adapted into the fascinatingly bizarre film Adaptation (now out on video and DVD), The Orchid Thief is fascinating and bizarre in its own right: packed with information, cleverly observed, and an out-and-out page-turner about, of all things, flowers and the people who love them more than you would have thought possible.

Here’s hoping June warms up. Come see us at Inkberry sometime.

— Emily