Dating from the Sixteenth Century, pastels enthrall with their vibrant colors and beautiful textures. Talented artist Jane Penfield guides us through an amazing five hour hands-on workshop on landscapes with pastels. Jane begins with a wet underpainting, and then develops the imagery with layers of pastel.
The workshop is on Saturday, March 16, 2024 from 10am to 3pm. It will have a maximum of 10 students to ensure one-on-one time with Jane. This workshop helps you develop your own image – you bring the source image you wish to work on, and Jane will guide you through the techniques. Each student works on their own image during the course of this day. The source image must be wholly your own (not an Internet-sourced image).
This workshop requires that you bring your own supplies including soft pastels (NOT oil pastels), pastel paper, easel, and a drawing board. A full recommended supply list can be found here:
The Whitin Mill is not near any fast food restaurants. It’s recommended you bring in any snacks, lunch, and drinks you wish to have during the class time.
Cost: $65 each for the full class, if we have 10 students. We currently have 6 students. Please share the news!
Limited spaces are available – contact us to reserve your space!
Location: Singh Theater / Whitin Mill 60 Douglas Road Whitinsville MA
The space is fully handicapped / disability accessible.
About Jane Penfield:
Jane Penfield is a Signature Member of the Pastel Society of America and of the Connecticut Pastel Society. To learn more about Jane, and to see a range of samples of her style, visit:
Congratulations to the winners of our 2024 “Anything Goes” Community Photography Show! This show was wholly open with the theme – any topic at all could be shown, as long as it was done with photography. We had both digital and film photography represented.
The judge for this show was Stephen DiRado.
First Place: Sarah Lemansky “Mother May I”
The judge felt an incredible, overwhelming sense of peering into a very private moment of an individual. It was a wonderfully sensitive and well-seen photograph. The execution was beautiful, everything from the face and eyes and pose, the juxtaposition of the household blanket in a natural field setting. It drew you in to wonder what was going on.
The judge enjoyed that this was refreshing, whimsical, playful, and with a skilled eye it elevated up out of what could have been cliché. Its well-done composition can work well at all sizes and in all formats.
From Francesca: “I have loved photography since I was a little girl. I’m very amateur and my photos are taken with just my iPhone. I love being able to organically catch little moments while being out in nature. Because of some health issues my memory has significantly faded so each photo on my roll is precious. This photo was taken in Fall of 2022 after my nieces excitedly took me on a hunt to show me the “treasure” they discovered in the woods behind their house. The car sat for decades so it was quite something to see the vines and branches grow around and make their way up into the car. I would love to get back to the site again to take more photos and capture this as a series!”
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Third Place: Gene St. Pierre “Taliesin #1”
Taliesin is a Frank Lloyd Wright home. The judge felt the image was composed very well, intriguing, it draws you in to examine it in further detail to figure out what it is. The beauty of this image is the love of pure design – a deliberate construction of color and shape.
From Gene: “Most of my abstract photographic work is an examination of shape, colors and textures. I often work with a wide angle lens as I observe the bigger picture and then move in closer to extract a smaller part of what I find to be more interesting on a macro level.”
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Honorable Mention: Lisa Shea with Bob See “Gone”
The judge was drawn to the strong emotion felt from this image. He liked the composition, the diagonal line in the snow, the contrast between the white snow and dark figure. The viewer’s eye moves through the image in clear ways, with the car adding scale and a sense of place. He appreciated the sense that we were watching a very private moment from a respectful distance.
From Lisa: “My father has been struggling with worsening tremors and balance issues for over a decade. On December 25th, Christmas Day, 2023, he chose to end the struggles by driving his car into a tree. My photo was created on January 9th, 2024 with help from Bob See, my partner. While we own more technical cameras, we shot this with my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra because I wanted to craft the feeling that it was an intimate moment. I wanted the vehicles there, the lines that resembled tire tracks but were clearly hand-made, and how I was collapsed in the wake. I wanted the deep black dress against all of the white.”
The judge enjoyed the atmosphere of the image. He liked how the image drew the viewer to move their eye through the scene, creating shapes with the branches. Very nicely composed.
Honorable Mention: Linda Bonaccorsi “Checking You Out”
The judge was immediately drawn to this image. It was more than a photo of a generic bird – it was like a portrait done of this specific bird showcasing this bird’s unique personality. It draws you in to think about the bird and its associated symbolism. In addition the exposure and details of the image are great.
From Linda: “I am self-taught through experimentation. I don’t use a tripod, even with my newer 500mm lens. I’m pretty basic with my settings, keeping a faster speed as a starting point for birds, insects…other settings work around that. I think the thing to do is to learn what your camera does well and work with what you have. I take a lot of pictures. Because of my astigmatism and the fact that I don’t wear my glasses when I shoot, everything is slightly blurry so I’m never 100% sure of clarity until I pull things up on my pictures. For me, one of the biggest rules in birds and other animals is to have their eye/s in focus. Every rule, of course, has its exceptions. There are some exceptional bird photographers out there with more sophisticated equipment and techniques than me.”
Are you interested in photography? Be sure to mark your calendar for this amazing discussion with talented award-winning photographer Stephen DiRado!
Stephen DiRado Lecture: Revisiting Bell Pond 1983 and New Works
A PowerPoint presentation, DiRado will be showing examples from his upcoming book, Bell Pond, Davis Publications 2024. During the summer of 1983, DiRado made documents using a large format camera and black and white film to capture a Worcester inner city community at leisure in and around a city park and pond. He recorded a time in Worcester’s history of a mix of young and old, immigrants and native families merging together to find relief from the hottest summer on record. The results of his efforts produced the most in-depth photo essay of any community archived to date in central New England.
DiRado will also show recent unpublished photographs from his series In the Present Day: an emerging body of work that perceptually investigates our state of mind living in an endemic world.
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Our January 2024 monthly meeting will be held on Sunday, January 14th from 12 noon to 1:30pm. NOTE THE DIFFERENT DAY AND TIME – usually our monthly meetings are on the third Tuesday. We are holding this on a Sunday to work with Stephen’s schedule.
Location: BVAA Open Sky Uxbridge Community Gallery 5 South Main Street Uxbridge, MA 01569
This meeting and session is free and open to the public. No experience is necessary. The fun of our workshops is that we all learn new things we’ve never done before.
All are welcome – this workshop is open to members and non-members. Feel free to bring along a friend! We’d love to see you there to learn some new things and explore your creativity!
Ask with any questions!
More about Stephen DiRado:
A professor in the Studio Art Program at Clark University, Stephen DiRado has over four decades experience in the field of documentary photography and filmmaking. He is a recipient of a 2012 Simon Guggenheim; 2019 Bob and Diane Fund and five other major fellowships. DiRado’s photographs internationally can be found in many public and private collections including MFA, Boston, MA. He has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Vice Magazine, National Geographic; internationally, Geo Wissen Magazine, Daily Mail, and Royal Photographic Society Journal.
DiRado’s book With Dad, published by Davis Publications in 2019, illustrates a loving and changing relationship between father and son as Stephen’s father succumbs to Alzheimer’s. With Dad 2021, a documentary film by director/producer Soren Sorensen is a narrative history by DiRado about the project With Dad. The film has won numerous awards across the U.S.
This January he will be featured in the New Yorker magazine, interviewed by Margaret Talbot about his 1980s Mall Series photographs. Davis Publishing in late January will be releasing DiRado’s newest book titled, Bell Pond; photographs from a Worcester community 1983.
Stephen DiRado lives and works out of a triple decker in Worcester, MA. Year round he documents communities, couples and individuals at work and at leisure.
This Uxbridge gallery is supported in part by BVAA member dues, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and by ValleyCAST. The space use is kindly donated to us by ValleyCast, the community outreach department of Open Sky Community Services. Open Sky uses this space for special-needs client activities during daytime weekdays. They allow the BVAA use of the space – and its gallery walls – on evenings and weekends. We actively support their inclusive mission. All are welcome to all of our events and activities!
