Thursday November 10, 2016
6:30pm, presentations begin at 7pm
$5 suggested donation
At The Shea Theater in Turners Falls

This month’s ArtSalon will be at The Shea Theater in Turners Falls. The evening begins at 6:30pm with mingling and light refreshments, and presentations start at 7pm.
Food and drink will be provided by Ellie’s Oils

A brief Q&A period with the artists follows the presentations.

This program is supported in part by The Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts and Fierst, Kane and Bloomberg.

Presenting artists:
Mishael Coggeshall-Burr
Christopher Janke
Anja Schütz
Rodney Madison
Jen Simms
Richard Widmer
Mishael Coggeshall-Burr is an artist who integrates photography and oil painting to create novel and compelling images on canvas.  Taking blurred shots with a 35mm camera, the artist searches for peripheral scenes with cinematic color and tone and then translates them into abstract-realist paintings. Images from his international travels inform his work, as do scenes of local New England color. Mishael earned his Joint BA in Painting and Physics at Middlebury College and The Glasgow School of Art, and continued his studies at the Art Student’s League in New York. He has shown in Kazakhstan and the US and is currently looking for representation.  He lives and works in Montague, MA with his wife and four children.  www.coggeshallburr.com

Christopher Janke is a poet, artist, and entrepreneur. His work centers on the ways consciousness manifests within material, on notions of irrepeatability, and on the intersections of value systems. Through use of shadows from sunlight, his time-and-place-specific installations look at how words and concepts attach to the physical world. His handmade acrylic books have been in juried shows nationwide, and his poems have appeared in Harper’s, American Poetry Review, and dozens of other journals. His most recent book was released in August 2016 by H_NGM_N Books, a double-volume of poetry, called psalterium|blepharism. www.christopherjanke.com

Anja Schütz is a Franklin County-based artist whose current explorations involve the concepts of humanity and divinity. Raised in Germany and the U.S., she attended the Hallmark Institute of Photography in 1999, winning the Epson/Mamiya Print Design Award upon graduating. She also attended the Pratt Institute of Art for Web Design. She won Best Visual Artist in the Valley Advocate Readers’ Poll in 2010. www.anjaschutz.com

Rodney Madison is the son of 14 year-old Rita Marie Williamson and Reginald Byron Madison. Born on Chicago’s Southside, with the smell of turpentine, oil paint and gesso always filling their apartment, Mr. Madison grew up surrounded by art and artists, including world-renowned Gordon Parks and Fred Brown. Mr. Madison is the first person in his family to earn a college degree and has been teaching and coaching for over twenty-five years. Though creativity has always been a part of Mr. Madison’s life, he has only recently begun to focus his energy upon his painting practice. He is still learning every day that he paints. 

Jen Simms is a practicing artist living and working in Western Massachusetts. She teaches full-time in the Art Department at Greenfield Community College. Simms studied at the San Francisco Art Institute (Interdisciplinary Studies, BFA, 1997) and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Painting and Installation, MFA, 2004). She has exhibited her work throughout New England, including the DeCordova Museum, the Fitchburg Art Museum and the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center. Simms has received numerous grants, such as the Blanche E. Colman Award, Visual Arts Sea Grant and the Artists’ Resource Trust Grant. Recent residencies have included the Dune Shack Fellowship in Provincetown, Massachusetts and the Open Studio Residency at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine. http://jensimms.com/home.html

Richard Widmer (USA) is a documentary filmmaker and artist. His recent activity includes the newly formed Millers Falls Arts Bridge (MFAB), an emergent arts and education project that aims to renovate an abandoned church in the village of Millers Falls, MA, to co-create an international artists residency program and to support engagement between artists and the local community. Widmer’s films about the contemporary art community in China have screened at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), the National Museum of China, National Museum of Singapore, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. www.millersfallsartsbridge.org