He tells us about his plans in the video, below, and I will have more of our interview in an article in the Enterprise on Friday.

In the video, Kuehn mentions Sandwich artist Mary Moquin, whose work is on display at the center through June 27.  Her exhibit, “Remembered Encounters,” is well worth a trip to the center. Her paintings are vivid, multi-layered depictions of simple buildings on Sandy Neck, trees and forests, and some figure paintings. The colors are intense and the images powerful.

And, Moquin is an artist in residence at the center for the month of May, which means she will be painting on site Monday through Friday from 10 AM to 3 PM. Visitors may drop by to watch her paint and talk about her work.

She will also be conducting workshops on materials and methods Wednesdays through June. Workshops run from 10 AM to 1 PM and are intended for intermediate to advanced painters. The fee is $50 per workshop, and reservations may be made by calling 508-428-0669.

“Bleacher Bums” is the next theatrical show at the center. It opens June 10 and runs through June 27, with shows at 8 PM on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and 4 PM on Sundays. Kuehn promises a very funny show about die-hard fans loyally cheering on the Chicago Cubs. There will be peanuts and popcorn and Cracker Jacks, which should appeal to both baseball and comedy lovers.

The concept behind the title, “The Village Green,” is that the Town Green is a meeting place of people and ideas, and it is our hope that the show will serve the same purpose. I say “our” hope because I am one of the producers. With the assistance of my husband Glenn, and with a tremendous amount of support and help from Alecia, I produced the arts & entertainment segment.

It sounded easy enough, when I first heard about the show. All I had to do was put together a 5-7 minute segment, and other people would put together other segments, and, ta-dah! there would be a show.

Compared with the half-hour children’s show I produced for about 2 years, over 10 years ago, it sounded easy as pie.  On The Village Green, I would only be responsible for 5-7 minutes, I would be part of a knowledgeable team, and nonlinear (digital) editing would make the whole editing process much easier than the tape-to-tape editing process I had used on the previous show .

Taping the interviews went well, but it was difficult to condense my 32 minutes down to 5-7. Digital editing wasn’t that easy either, even with Alecia doing most of the work, as she taught me the basics. I have  a whole new respect for film editors. As with editing writing for length and logical format, you sometimes have to toss out content you really like because it is too long or just doesn’t fit in. Unlike editing writing, though, you can’t create new video in the editing studio as easily as you can manipulate words.

It has been an enjoyable learning process though, and I hope that Falmouth residents will watch the show tonight (it will be repeated at other times and dates; check the FCTV web site for schedule details). And, I hope that others will take advantage of the wonderful resource we have in FCTV. A $30 annual membership gives you free access to training and use of equipment so that you, too, can produce segments for The Village Green, or envision and create your own television show.

Megan Hinton in front of her painting, “Barges Ashore.”

“The Evolution of Maritime Art,” now at the Cotuit Center for the Arts, offers a beautiful and historical collection of maritime paintings dating from 1852 to 2010. The exhibit is a collaboration between the Cahoon Museum of Art, the Cape Cod Museum of Art, and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, all of whom loaned paintings, and the CCftA.

Jamie Wolf, artistic director of the CCtfA, selected the paintings and arranged them in chronological order around the walls of the gallery, providing a journey through time and artistic style. The show begins with classic realistic representations of ships at sea and includes American impressionism, expressionism, cubism, modern, and contemporary looks at the sea and the ships that sail upon it. There are peaceful seaside scenes and nautical disasters, graceful sailboats and work ships that have seen better days, solitary boats in the sunset and clusters of rowboats and ships, boats in safe harbors and in rough seas. The variety is rich and imaginative, and the journey is educational as well as visually appealing.

The exhibit runs through April 24. The show was planned in coordination with the center’s production of “Treasure Island,” which runs through April 18, and it is a great accompaniment to the show–and well worth making a special trip to see.

Contemporary artist Megan Hinton is featured in the exhibit, and I talked to her at the opening reception for the show on April 3. A resident of Wellfleet, she was happy to be included in the show, along with many well-respected maritime artists, including Ross Moffett, a painter she has been inspired by. Megan calls herself an abstract representational painter, greatly influenced by painters of the mid-20th century, the 1940s to 1960s in the United States and Europe. She mentioned Nicolas De Stael (1914-1955), in particular, a Russian known for his abstract landscapes.

In this video, she talks about the exhibit. She is seated on the set of “Treasure Island.”

Hinton feels the role of a painter is to look at something and transform it into a unique image, something between abstract and reality. For this show, that means looking at and transforming structural aspects of the landscape. “Things that happen on the landscape are not necessarily pretty and precious,” she said. “What you see becomes an abstract sculpture on the landscape.”

“Barges Ashore,” her largest painting in the show (46 by 56 inches, oil on canvas), is of ships running aground, “an idea that is a little less cliche” than more common seascape views of Cape Cod, she said. She has sought to capture the tension in the scene and work with that, showing the influence of the tides, the boats, the shoreline, the human interaction with the water.

Hinton works on several paintings at the same time because each one may take three or four months, as works on various layers. She works in high color, representing an abstract view of reality, preferring bright yellows against whites and blues, providing an emotional, expressive aspect to the work, intensifying the underlying tension.

She has recently started painting more large-scale works, now that she has a new studio in Wellfleet. “Scale envelopes the painter and the viewer,” she said. “If the painting is as big as we are, there is more interaction.”

Megan talks more about her painting, “Barges Ashore,” her use of color ,and what she is trying to achieve in her work.

It is hard to pick favorites from the show, so I am going to share some representative samples here (click on the painting to see a larger version):

"The Young Yachtsman," by Eliza Draper Gardiner, 1923, color linoleum block print, Provincetown Art Association and Museum.

"Marine Disaster" by Ross Moffett, 1939, oil on canvas, Provincetown Art Association and Museum

"Sails Through Trees," by Lena Gurr, 1950, print, Provincetown Art Association and Museum

"One Red Boat" by Christie Velesig, 2002, oil on masonite, Cahoon Museum of American Art

The exhibit is a collaboration among the Falmouth Historical Society, the Woods Hole Public Library (where a collection of the paintings are kept), and Highfield Hall.

Cipperly Good, curator at the historical society, provides more information about this exhibit and the society’s new Falmouth Goes Whaling exhibit at the Museums on the Green.

Additional information on Gifford and his art may be found at the Woods Hole Historical Museum site.

Paintings from the exhibition (click on the painting or caption to see a larger size):

Water Street, Woods Hole (Franklin Lewis Gifford)

Arts Alive, a three-day extravaganza of  local arts and entertainment activities begins Friday night with a Town Dance.

For more information on Arts Alive, and a schedule, click HERE.

For more information on the Farmers Market, pick up today’s paper. There is even a recipe for an omelet with spring herbs.

For more on the ArtMarket, see below:

Falmouth Cultural Council’s first ArtMarket is Thursday from 3 to 8 PM at Town Hall Square, on Main Street in Falmouth.

ArtMarket, which runs all summer on Thursday afternoons and evenings, features 30 local artists who create and sell paintings, greeting cards, ceramics, jewelry, fabrics, collage, glass and sculpture. Highlighted this week are galleries and showspaces and summer arts classes.

There is also information about what is going on around town: events, art shows, classes, performances, and festivals.

Musical entertainment this week, June 18, features, from 3 to 5:30 PM, the Duckham Duo, a clarinet and guitar duo playing swing era standards and jazz. From 5:30 to 8 PM, Manny and Linda Dias sing and play folk acoustic music on guitar and fiddle.

Sounds like fun to me!

But I think J&K already had a fair number of followers who watched just to see how Kate would put down Jon that week and how assertively Jon would roll his eyes. I was always amazed that she could sit and watch those episodes where she smugly criticized his inability to put a bathing suit on his daughters without the straps getting all mixed up, or not being leading the way through the airport for her, and not resolve to be a kinder gentler person.

In last night’s birthday party episode, she complained over and over again about having to plan and prepare for the fifth birthday party all by herself. Despite help from her two older daughters in putting together the goodies boxes (maybe she should have bought goodies bags), and from a staff of (at least) four at the party site, plus a hired magician and guys to install those inflatable bouncy jumper things.

Oh, well, I only have two children, so I have no idea what it is like to parent 8 so close in age, but I loved birthday party celebrations when the kids were little. Once I even sewed fabric goodie bags. And we, the kids and I, often made the pinatas, and got messier than Kate could imagine.

One of the other episodes I saw over the weekend had to do with Kate taking the kids to a children’s museum where they were instructed in creative ways to create abstract paintings. Kate picked a limited palette of paint colors, wanting the final products to “go together,” and to match the walls in the basement, where they would hang.

So much for self-expression. The colors were muted, gray, slate blue, golden yellow. The end results were lovely, but possibly not what the children would have chosen.

Perhaps the painting techniques (something involving aluminum foil, splatter painting, etc.) were not what the children might have chosen either, but at least they were experimenting in art. And, their paintings were mounted and will hang on the walls, not taped to the fridge, so I shouldn’t complain.

It was a nice change of pace from the constant trips to exotic locations, pedicures for the kids, and squabbling among the adults. And, should the marriage show end, Kate may be able to round the kids up again and produce Plus Eight Paintings to sell at exorbitant prices to people who want the paint colors to match their sofas.

I kept the set over the [many] years since, and several of the tubes are still functional. I took a couple of watercolor classes over the years, but most focusing on “expressing youself,” rather than the technical points of using watercolor. I developed my own little cartoony style, using pen & ink and watercolor.

I am now taking a watercolor class with Kate Furler at the Falmouth Artists Guild. This is completely different from other classes I have taken, in that Kate talks about the many technical aspects of watercolor, not only choosing paint, paper, and brushes, but also laying down light, dark, and medium colors, preventing and allowing color mixing, creating shadow, mixing colors, and using water and brushes effectively. She give us very specific exercises, which she does at the same time, to better illustrate her points.

It’s the most informative art class I have taken in a long time.

The students are all experienced watercolorists, all wanting to learn more. Some, like me, only find time to paint when they are in class, and others paint more often. Unlike other classes I have been in, where students are reluctant to show their work, thinking it is just dreadful, the students are happy to share their work and comment on the works of others.

I am halfway through the six-week course now, though I had to miss the second class. I will report later on my progress, and I will not say, “or lack thereof,” because this is a very positive class!

Some of Cape Cod’s best entertainment is free.

June 7 is international Drawing Day, so pick up a pencil and draw! There is a website to coordinate the Internet aspect of this event at DrawingDay. According to the site, Drawing Day is “a worldwide drawing event encouraging everyone to drop everything and draw for the sake of art.” The goal is to “create 1 million drawings online this day and boost online art communities.” The site provides links to online drawing communities and instructions for how to get your art online.

Whether you draw on the back of an envelope, online, or with traditional drawing media, it’s a great idea to express your creativity with a drawing, today, or any day.

I selected a small bug and set to work drawing it. It was a totally engrossing and enjoyable task. The hours passed quickly and I barely made my flight home. Subsequently, I took an afternoon nature drawing workshop in Duxbury (where I was living at the time), but I have not really found time since then, to set aside a few hours for nature drawing and to recapture that magic of the first session at the Smithsonian.

Recently, though, I attended a class in Nature Drawing in Woods Hole, taught by professional biological illustrator Julie Child. There, the magic is all around. People who have never had any formal art instruction, people who have been told they couldn’t draw, people who believed they couldn’t draw, are drawing, accurately and expressively, and they are doing it with confidence and ease. Students genuinely enjoy the time spent drawing; there is no tension or fear of creating a bad drawing (as one sometimes sees in art classes).

Left to right, students of Julie Child’s class include: Dorothy Aspinwall, Fran Weiffenbach, Sally Casper (in back, by window), Frank Child, and, in front, Julie Child.

My story about the art class appears in Friday’s Enterprise. Here I want to include a few photographs that didn’t fit in the newspaper.

This bumblebee was drawn close to actual size by Helen Wilson, using colored pencils. The small size made the drawing more challenging. Helen has taken Julie’s class for several years and showed me her portfolio. It was inspiring to see her drawings of varied natural specimens, as well as teacup with an intricate pattern in blue. To portray the blue pattern accurately, she had to use many different shades of blue and very carefully outline the patterns.

Ann Newbury was working on a pen and ink drawing of a hawk, and I am sorry that this photo does not do it justice. She was using various colors of ink, and shading in each feather with lines, going over each feather five to seven time to produce the effect she wanted. She was not finished with it when I took this photo; there are more feathers to detail, and she will add a background, some rocks for the hawk to perch on.

Frank Child, Julie’s husband, has recently joined the class, and he produced this colorful beetle. He worked hard on the blending of the colors to get the realistic look of the beetle, including the reflection of light on its back.

Nancy Stafford was drawn to the io moth, a relative of the luna moth, once plentiful on the Cape, and now rare. She was using many different shades of yellow and brown to capture the essence of this colorful moth.

Sally Casper used a magnifying glass to see the detail in the multi-hued scallop shell she was drawing. She admitted she didn’t keep her pencils in order by color, as did some of the other artists, but she always knew which color to use the the way to apply the colors. “You would think,” she said, “that you should put down lighter colors first, then go over them with darker colors, but ofter the better method is just the opposite, to put down the darker colors first and go over them with the lighter colors.”

Fran Weiffenbach was working on a watermelon wedge, made more difficult by the fact that she had to replace her watermelon “model” every week, as it lost its freshness. If you look closely, you will see her drawing has black seeds, though her current watermelon piece has white seeds. Nevertheless, she has captured its watermelon essence.

These detailed iridescent shells are the work of Dorothy Aspinwall. Like most of the other students, she used colored pencils to achieve a painterly effect. After finishing these shells, she began a complicated drawing of another iridescent shell, a chambered nautilus.

Joan Kanwisher has been drawing for years, and her skill is evident. She has been working on a series of drawings of bird’s nest. This one contains three eggs and is set in a flowery tree.

Here is a close-up, showing the intricate detail of her work:

The nature drawings of 22 students of Julie Child will be on display from June 7 to October 11 at the Woods Hole Historical Museum in Woods Hole. The public is invited to an opening reception on Saturday, June 7, from 4 to 6 PM and to a gallery talk on Saturday, July 12, from 4 to 6 PM. In addition to viewing (and being inspired by) the artwork, visitors may buy notecards featuring images from the exhibit.