arts

Photo submitted by Chad Hilchey.

The first of three sessions to spread kindness throughout Batavia was on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. where participants painted rocks, which will be placed throughout Batavia.

Participants pay $5 to cover the cost of paint and supplies, and bring a rock. Two more sessions -- July 27 and Aug. 17, from 6:30 until 7:30 p.m. -- will be held at Art Ah La Carte in Batavia at 39 Jackson St.

Kim Argenta, owner of Art Ah La Carte, started the project after her friend, Kelly Carlie, told her about a project she runs in Le Roy, called “Le Roy Rocks.” Both are part of the nationwide “The Kindness Rocks Project.”

Because of the rain, the Batavia Concert Band's regular Wednesday evening show at Centennial Park has been moved inside to the auditorium at Batavia High School.

Downbeat is 7 p.m.

Gregory Hallock began the transition as the new executive director of the Genesee-Orleans Regional Arts Council five weeks ago, after former Executive Director Jennifer Gray resigned.

Hallock grew up in Delevan and went to Genesee Community College. He graduated with a Theater degree and from there, went to Brockport to get his bachelor’s degree in Acting, with a minor in Dance. He received his graduate degree from the University at Buffalo and started working for GO ART! a year and a half ago as the assistant director.

As the executive director, Hallock’s schedule changes from day to day. He works on events, finances and the Decentralization Grant Program.  

“I’m getting paid to be involved with the arts,” Hallock said. “It’s the most incredible thing in the world. Most people, arts is a luxury. It’s something that they can only hope they can get somewhere. I get to do it as my job.”

Since 1962, GO ART! has been dedicated to developing the cultural life in Genesee and Orleans counties by facilitating the creation, presentation and experience of art, heritage and traditions.

GO ART! is in the midst of hiring a new assistant director to take over the grants program. Hallock said he hopes the new director will start Aug. 1.

Gray resigned from the position for personal reasons, but still volunteers, Hallock said.

“She is still completely passionate about us,” Hallock said. “She is still dedicated to us.”

Hallock said his immediate goal is to increase the membership to 600 members by June 2018 and he also wants to increase awareness of GO ART!

“I’ve been trying to attend every event possible,” Hallock said. “Once I am done with the transition [into the new position] I am going to start going to board meetings all over the place.”

Picnic in the Park, at 11 a.m. on July 4, is one of Hallock’s big projects. He is in charge of the event at Centennial Park, and said he is excited for this year’s theme, “Summer of Love.”

Hallock said he is more than willing to meet with anybody or talk to anybody about GO ART!, and arts and culture in general. He wants to get more people into the building, known as Seymour Place, located at 201 E. Main St. in Batavia, to see the artwork.

“This building is our biggest expense,” Hallock said, of the historic brick property downtown. “It’s an amazing building and I want to utilize it to its fullest potential. I want to get people in this building and have art hanging on every wall.”

Hallock said working under Gray was extremely beneficial for his transition to the new position.  

“Working with her has been amazing,” Hallock said. “I’ve made the connections I didn’t previously have. I got to see how things worked here before I got to dive in.”

Anyone can visit GO ART! from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays, 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Saturdays and every second Sunday from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m.

“We may not be the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, but we have some pretty amazing stuff here,” Hallock said.

The Batavia Ramble and Arts Fest is tomorrow in Downtown Batavia.

In the case of rain, performances will take place inside Center Street Smoke House.

Here's the lineups for both stages:

• 11 – 11:15 a.m. -- **Opening Ceremony**
• 11:15 – 11:45 a.m. --  Steve Kruppner
• 11:50 a.m. – 12:20 p.m. -- Kruppner Brothers
• 12:25 – 12:55 p.m. -- Mark Grover
• 1  – 1:30 p.m.  -- Ryan Consiglio
• 1:35 – 2:05 p.m. -- Dave Holnbeck
• 2:10 – 2:40 p.m. -- Kevin Moyles
• 2:45 – 3:15 p.m. -- Paul Almeter
• 3:20 – 3:50 p.m. -- Jim Luttrell
• 3:50 – 4:05 p.m.  --  * * * Memorial * * *
• 4:05 – 4:35 p.m. -- Red Creek
• 4:40 – 5:10 p.m.  -- Mitty & The followers
• 5:15 – 5:45 p.m. -- Rock Soulgers
• 5:50 – 6:20 p.m.  -- Bad Luck
• 6:25 – 6:55 p.m.  -- Audibull
• 7 – 7:30 p.m. -- Rhythm Collision
• 7:35 – 8:05 p.m.  -- Eagle Creek
• 8:10 – 8:40 p.m. -- Nichols Brothers Band
• 8:45 – 9:15 p.m. -- Open Jam

The Batavia Concert Band opened its 2017 season Wednesday evening in Centennial Park with John Bailey conducting.

The season continues with outdoor concerts at the park every Wednesday at 7 p.m. through Aug. 9.

Dave Burke finished the mural on the back of the Byron-Bergen Public Library, dedicating it to Eileen Almquist, better known as "Tally."

Almquist was the director of the Byron-Bergen Public Library before she retired in 1993 and she was also the town historian for 21 years.

The Bergen Town Board approved the mural and gave Burke the idea of depicting a train, because it is a part of Bergen. 

Nancy Bailey, the manager of the Byron-Bergen Public Library, said when she walked in the building every morning the parking lot was boring. She originally just wanted flowers painted on the wall, but said she is really excited about the final product. 

Press release:

GO ART! presents an exhibit by Stacy Kirby “A Nice View “-- A Collection of En Plein Aire Paintings and Illustrations.”

After a couple decades of drawing, first in crayon then in pencil, Stacey Kirby picked up a paint brush, pursuing an education in illustration at Montserrat College of Art. After graduating she applied her illustration skills to mural painting, creating large scale art works for private homes, businesses, and public spaces.

Her passion is forming concept and idea into impactful paintings, whether the theme is historic, or of the natural world.

Kirby, a native of Albion, has been contributing murals to the Orleans and Monroe counties for a number of years.

"As a muralist, it's my goal to create artwork that is accessible to everyone, to encourage appreciation for art and the deeply rooted communities that we're a part of," Kirby said. "Public murals are a great opportunity to expose numbers of people to the arts, while sharing something important about that community with the world.”

In her free time she enjoys painting "en plein aire." She is working with “Traveling Towpath Troubadours" -- a music performance group whose summer concerts are part of the Bicentennial Celebration of the Erie Canal in Orleans County -- on a commemorative painting capturing the idea behind their 2017 endeavor.

"A Nice View" opens July 11 and runs through Sept. 10 at GO ART!, located inside historic Seymour Plac,e 201 E. Main St., Batavia.

Gallery hours: Thursday and Friday 11 a.m. - 7 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. - 4 p.m., and on the second Sunday of the month, 11 a.m. - 2 p.m.

There will be a closing reception, with light fare, on Sept. 7 from 6 to 8 p.m.,  featuring “Traveling Towpath Troubadours” as entertainment and the unveiling of the commemorative painting.

To kick off the third annual Battle of the Bands at the Smokin' Eagle BBQ and Brew in Le Roy last night, the owners and management presented a check for $2,600 to the Golisano Children's Hospital in honor the White Family.

The money was raised during last year's Battle of the Bands.

Trisha White, holding the check, credits Golisano's with saving the life of her daughter, Jamie, left, who was born at 25 1/2 weeks and weighed just one pound, seven ounces. Now 12 and doing well in middle school, she's holding a picture of herself at birth with her father's wedding band around her ankle.

"That's how tiny she was," Trisha said.

The Battle of the Bands runs all summer and into October with performances every Wednesday night at the Eagle. Last night, Invictra kicked off the series.

The Batavia High School Drama Club is staging a showcase concert featuring songs from the musical "Les Miserables" at 7 p.m., Thursday, at John Kennedy School on Vine Street. Free-will donations will be accepted at the door.

Edith Bouvier Beale once famously said, "It could have been me instead of Jackie Kennedy in the White House."

It's not that Beale was ever courted by Jack Kennedy, but she was engaged to Joe Kennedy Jr., the young man his father groomed to eventually become president before he was killed in World War II.

We meet a young and potentially betrothed Joe  Jr. in G'rey Gardens, The Musical," being staged this weekend and next by Batavia Players at the Harvest 56 Theater.

Society and history might have forgotten the Beales except that two, young, aspiring documentary filmmakers Albert and David Maysles happened across Edith Bouvier Beale, known as "Little Edie," and her mother, "Big Edie," living alone, mostly confined to a single room, of their once-majestic East Hampton mansion in 1975. 

The Maysles brothers secured permission to show up at the mansion, known as Grey Gardens, and film whatever they saw. In an age before reality TV, the Beale women were unselfconscious and uninhibited in letting their lives be documented, with all of their odd, besotted and eccentric peculiarities. 

The documentary was critically acclaimed in 1976 but faded into near oblivion, except as a cult favorite, until resurrected in the age of Netflix and 500-channel cable boxes. That led to a feature film, starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore, and finally a hit Broadway musical.

The Batavia Players are presenting one of the first off-Broadway performances.

"Grey Gardens has been a unique kind of cult following, you know -- Americana story, for quite a few years," said Pat Burk, who is producing and directing the show. "I know that that's a lot of adjectives to describe it, but I don't know how else to describe it.

"The reason why Batavian Players wanted to do it was because we have always looked for sort of new and original things that can be done in the community that normally would not be done by another theater company," Burk added. "It just seemed like the right fit and I knew I had the perfect cast and I was kind of like stalking them for a little while to make sure that I had the right cast for the show."

We spoke with Burk during a taping of the WBTA radio show "Genesee Life," which is normally hosted by Lucine Kauffman. Kauffman is an avid fan of Grey Gardens, and really, a kind of subject-area expert on the documentary. Since she couldn't interview herself, The Batavian stepped as guest host (you can hear the full broadcast on WBTA's website).

"It was really just by accident (that I found the documentary)," Kauffman said. "I was browsing through Netflix -- this had to have been at least five years ago -- and I love documentaries, so I was looking to the documentary section and came across 'Grey Gardens.' I thought 'oh this sounds interesting' and watched it and just fell in love with the movie and the characters."

Like many Grey Gardens fans, Kauffman has delved deeper into the background and history of the Bouviers and the Beales and the lives of Edith and Edie, so when she heard Batavia Players was going to stage the musical, she certainly wanted to audition for the part, and in fact Burk already had her in mind to play Edith in the second act.

"She was a Bohemian and she was an artist -- she wanted to sing," Kauffman said. "She did sing in at parties. She did give some concerts, smaller concerts.

"We take for granted," Kauffman added, "that the Kennedys were a very prominent Catholic family and that it was the WASPS, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, were the ones who were dominating the social scene. And Phalen (Beale, husband of Edith and an uncle to Jackie), and I think Major Bouvier, to an extent, wanted to fit in with that WASP culture, and so Phalen was very conservative socially. He did not want his wife out singing in public and giving concerts. He thought she should act like a reserved society matron. She fought against that.

"When they bought Grey Gardens -- when they first married they lived in Manhattan -- when they bought Grey Gardens out on Long Island he basically just let her give recitals in the home for some of her friends. I think it broke her heart because I think she really thought she could have been a star."

The star of the documentary is, perhaps, Little Edie, the once-gorgeous, former '40s-era debutante who may have been engaged to Joe Kennedy Jr., who turned down a proposal from J. Paul Getty, and probably dated Howard Hughes. By the 1970s, in a dilapidated mansion, she seems a little touched.

"She went out with the creme de la creme of the most eligible bachelors," Kauffman said. "She was a debutante. She was absolutely gorgeous. She did some modeling."

The musical's two acts are set in better times and decaying times, first when the Beales still had some money, were still young and living the life of high society, and then in the second act Edith and Edie are living with a motley bunch of cats and scavaging raccoons. The first act is largely fictional, providing a backdrop to how the family was torn apart, and the second act cuts closer to the Beales' life as revealed by Maysles brothers.

One of the fascinating turns of the documentary is the creative ways Edie wears clothes, turning mundane garments into fashion statements, always wearing a turban or head scarf of some sort, adorned with a favorite brooch.

That came about, it seems, Kauffman said, because the Beales had no money left, or not much of it. Major Bouvier had cut his daughter Edith from the will, and once Edith and Phalen divorced, Phalen didn't pay alimony, he just left her the mansion and a small stipend. 

"So imagine you have this house, this big mansion, and you have no money for upkeep or maintenance. You don't have money to go out and buy new clothing or new furniture," Kauffman said. "You see the decay. Everything is pretty much exactly the way it was but decayed, and as far as the clothing choices, I think she (Little Edie) just made do with what she had. You know she might have had this old brown skirt from the '40s and she just turned it upside down and pinned a brooch to it. She wanted to create a new fashion out of what she had."

The first performance is Friday at 7:30 p.m. There are also shows Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., then again the following weekend with shows on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for seniors and students.

The cast is: 

• Edith Bouvier Beale (Act 1 Prologue/Act 2) -- Lucine Kauffman
• Edith Bouvier Beale (Act 1) /Edie Beale (Act 2) -- Jennifer Neroni-Trupo
• “Young” Edie Beale (Act1) -- Kristin Gelia
• George Gould Strong-- Dylan Tomas Kastel
• Jackie Bouvier -- Kathryn Fitzpatrick
• Lee Bouvier -- Leigh Le Fevre
• Brooks Jr/Sr. -- Gregory Munroe
• Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr. -- Colin Fleming
• Major Bouvier -- James Barcomb
• Jerry -- Jonah Bower
• Norman Vincent Peale -- Jim Bauer

Musicians: Cindy Baldwin, Bob Chaplin, Tristan Korzelius, Pamela Wentworth, Kathy White, Melzie Case.

The Le Roy Junior/Senior High School hosted its annual fine arts festival on Wednesday, showcasing students' artwork inside and holding a musical performance outside.

Senior Kearyn Sczudlo displayed her art and said each piece took her anywhere from one week to four months to complete. She will study Art at Alfred University this fall. 

Jenny Wood hosted the Batavia Society of Artists today at her home on West Main Street Road, Batavia, for a "sketch out," a chance for artists to paint and draw the landscape of her yard, which is well known locally for the annual bloom of forget-me-nots.

GO ART! opened two shows at Seymore Place last night -- the member's show, with the theme, "Summer of Love," in honor of the 50th anniversary of the hippies' heyday --summer of 1967, and "The Dream of America."

"The Dream of America: Separation & Sacrifice in the Lives of North Country Latino Immigrants," is a display of the photography and writing of Lisa Catalfamo Flores. It originally was on display at the Crandall Public Library in Glens Falls. GO ART! is its first stop on a statewide tour. The show will be on display through July 7.

David Burke is the winner of the 2017 Spring Art Show hosted by the Batavia Society of Artists at the Richmond Memorial Library. Burke received his award at the show's opening last night.

Richard Ellingham received second place and Kevin Feary received third place.

Rachel Beck, a Genesee Community College student and resident of Attica, received the Carr-Mumford scholarship.

Members of the Genesee Symphony Orchestra visited Oakfield-Alabama Elementary School yesterday to meet with students from each grade to talk with them about classical music and the instruments they use. Above, Bob Knipe talks about his French horn. 

Muris Director / Conductor S. Shade Zajac

Amy Martin and Joe Kusmierczak star in the Batavia Player's production of "The Last Five Years," a musical written and composed by Jason Robert Brown and produced and directed by Kathy White, with performances this weekend at the Harvester 56 Theater.

Show times are 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m., Sunday.

The Elba Central School Drama Club performs a Broadway musical review they've dubbed "Spotlight" at 7 p.m. Saturday, May 13, in the school's auditorium.

Drama Club members past and present were invited to audition for the show, performing show tunes of their choosing so long as they numbers hadn't been part of a past or an upcoming show.

After the performance, audience members will be invited to participate in a mega game of musical chairs in the gym.

The Genesee Symphony Orchestra performs in Elba Central School at 4 p.m., Sunday, in its final concert of the season.

The program is called "Escaping Gravity: A Journey Through the Stars," and features "And God Created Great Whales," by Hovhaness, "Music from Apollo 13," arranged by John Moss and featuring the String Workshop, "Suite from Close Encounters of the Third Kind," by John Williams, and "The Planets," by Holst.

Musical Director S. Shade Zajac conducts.

Tickets are $15 for adults, $7 for students, $10 for seniors and families are $35. Tickets can be purchased online at GeneseeSymphony.com.

Photos are from Monday's rehearsal.

A new show opened at the Genesee Community College Roz Steiner Art Gallery yesterday featuring the work of students. The show, called Vision, runs through May 21.