A barn is his castle
“Farmers’ Castles,” an exhibit of paintings by Robert Strong Woodward, will be on view Thursday through Oct. 30 at the Memorial Hall Museum, 8 Memorial St., Deerfield.
The exhibit features the painting “Farmer’s Castle,” a dynamic canvas of the Warfield barn in Charlemont recently donated to the museum by John Warfield Glaze and Shirley J. Glaze, and five privately owned and rarely seen paintings of Buckland, Colrain and Charlemont barns.
Using perspective to literally heighten the barn on the canvas and in the viewer’s mind, Woodward (1885-1957) succeeded in dignifying this rural structure to a position of honor.
Born in Northampton, Woodward turned to painting as a profession after a gunshot wound paralyzed him from the waist down. He found refuge in his grandparents’ Buckland farm, and in 1910, he briefly studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Museum hours are Tuesdays through Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission costs $6; $3 for youths and students (6-21). For information, call 774-3768, ext. 80, or visit www.deerfield-ma.org.
At one with nature
“The Sky and Earth,” a group show by artists Janet Walerstein Winston, Rochelle Shicoff, Julia Rivera and Larry Rankin, will be on view Thursday through Oct. 28 at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 300 Westgate Center Drive, Hadley.
There will be an artists’ reception Sept. 8 from 4 to 6 p.m.
For this exhibit, the four artists have expressed a relationship to nature in their own chosen art form, printmaking, painting, mixed media and photography.
Gallery hours are Mondays through Fridays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Songwriter and fiddle virtuoso Eric Lee will be the guest performer Saturday at the Song & Story Swap at the Nacul Center, 592 Main St. in Amherst.
Lee began studying classical violin and traditional Irish fiddle at the age of 9 and was soon performing and recording with local artists.
After moving to western Massachusetts, he continued playing live and in studios, branching into psychedelic rock and bluegrass, playing in pit orchestras of musicals and writing his own compositions.
At 18, he attended the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival where the newly formed group The Stangelings, fronted by musical luminaries Pete and Maura Kennedy spotted Lee and his fiddle and invited him to join them on an informal campground performance. By Saturday night, two days into his first music festival, Lee was playing on the main stage as the band’s newest member.
He now plays regularly with the New England-based bluegrass band The Gather Rounders.
Song & Story Swap is open to all ages. Come and sing, lead everyone in singing or request a song or story. Or just listen. A donation of $5 to $10 is requested for the guest performer.
“Soft Focus,” an exhibit of recent photography by Jim Gambaro, will be on view Thursday through Sept. 30 in the North Gallery at Cooley Dickinson Hospital, 30 Locust St. in Northampton.
There will be an artist’s reception Sept. 8 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.
Humorist and performing artist Seth Lepore opens the third season of the once-a-month “Seth Show” Tuesday at 7 p.m. at The West End at the Eastworks building, 116 Pleasant St, Suite 160, in Easthampton.
Lepore is trying out a new pay-what-you-decide pricing model this year, to encourage new audience members to give the show a try, he says.
The plan comes from the ARC Theatre in the United Kingdom, and asks audience members to pay after they’ve seen a show.
“I’m always looking to challenge myself and my audience and this method removes a lot of the obstacles to risk-taking from the participant side,” Lepore said.
That concept will be interrupted briefly, on Oct. 4 and Nov. 1, when Lepore performs American monologist, author and actor Mike Daisey’s new show, “TRUMP CARD,” about the Republican party’s presidential nominee.
“[TRUMP CARD”] is about how we build our individual realities and how an artful lie illuminates what we believe to be the truth more than any actual accounting of objective reality” (The Guardian).
“The Seth Show” will be presented on the first Tuesday of the month, through May.
For information about the season, to RSVP for the opening show (recommended) or to purchase tickets for “TRUMP CARD”, visit sethums.com and click on “The Seth Show.”
Summer art
“The Joys of Summer,” a collaborative exhibit of work by members of the Easthampton Art Guild, is on view through Sept. 29 at the Easthampton City Hall, 50 Payson Avenue.
The exhibit presents a variety of summer scenes created using watercolor, oil, acrylic, pastel and mixed media.
The participating artists are Elizabeth Chase, Terry Faivre, Eleonor Herman, Debra Hughes, Nancy Nickerson, Lois Parent, Nancy Perry, Joanne O’Leary, Marjorie Tauer and Betty Schaffer.
For information, visit arts@easthampton.org.
Musical blend
“East Meets West,” performances by Carl Clements, bansuri flute; Naren Budhaker, tabla; Akal Dev Sharonne, western flute; and Mark Fraser, cello, will be presented Saturday at 7:30 p.m. by the Pioneer Valley Players at the Prakasa Yoga Studio, 152 Ball Road in Goshen.
On the program: ragas in the Hindustani tradition, a tabla solo and a unique rendition of a French Baroque composition by Michel Blavet.
Clements has played saxophone for more than 40 years, and has studied North Indian classical music on the bansuri (North Indian bamboo flute) since 1988. He has performed extensively in a wide range of styles at jazz festivals and concerts in Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, India, the United Arab Emirates and the United States
Budhakar has accompanied vocalists, instrumentalists and dancers in India, and has contributed his tabla to varied music genres, including rock, Irish Celtic and jazz, performing with Bobby McFerrin and recording with Alicia Keys.
Dev Sharonne, artistic director of the Pioneer Valley Chamber Players, has appeared as a soloist with the Boston Pops, with Clarion Concerts and with other orchestras in New York and Massachusetts. Among the places she performed are a 9th-century village in the south of France, and the Nazi Holocaust memorial in Dachau, Germany.
Fraser is a founding member of the Adaskin String Trio, formed in Montreal in 1994. He holds degrees from McGill University in Montreal and the Hartt School in Hartford, Connecticut. He recently became executive director and co-artistic director of Mohawk Trail Concerts, based in western Massachusetts.
Admission costs $15. Call 548-9645 to reserve (recommended).