We all know Montclair is an artsy place, brimming with writers, painters and musicians. This weekend, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Montclair celebrates Arts Weekend with a two-day “Muse in Montclair” festival of talks, workshops and a big Saturday night bash.
Friday night kicks off the event with an event called “Invoke the Muse,” featuring fiction writer Alice Elliot Dark, jazz artist Oliver Lake and sculptor Tom Nussbaum. (Nussbaum’s 2008 sculpture “Listen” pictured at left).
On Saturday, there’s a series of five-hour workshops (all $60) to kickstart your creativity. These include three different writing workshops, a class on jazz improvisation, plus classes in beading and encaustic painting.
And on Saturday night, the church is honoring five Montclairions for their role in local arts: MEWS founder Pam Satran, Watchung Booksellers owner Margot Sage-El, Montclair Arts Council executive director Jim Peskin and Melissa Walker and Janet Lemansky of Jazz House Kids.
Congrats to all the honorees and thanks to the Unitarians for being such an inspiration.
I’m no art critic… But, that’s kinda creepy lookin’.
Mike, everybody’s a critic… But I think it’s cool.
I would also say creepy but perhaps less so when viewed in person.
Everyone should be an art critic (there’d probably be fewer Picassos in museums) and that sculpture reminds me of all those monumental heads of Lenin, Marx and Stalin that were junked with the fall of Communism. (Budapest’s got an entire parkful.)
But I like the Soviet-era heads much better. Nussbaum’s sculpture looks like a prop for a sequence cut out of a long-ago Woody Allen movie, from back when he was reliably funny.
And the local Unitarians “are such an inspiration?” As best I understand the syncretism of the Unies, I kind of think even they might be insulted by such faint praise.
Oh, yes please, cathar…regale us with your understanding of Unitarian Universalists.
Every time I go away from this site in disgust after reading something this one writes, I swear that I’ll never come back.
Cathar. Almost always negative, always self-satisfied, and always condescending.