Posted By Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 3:27 PM

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Rachel Jones

Baxter Doty surveys his nest collection.

This week, I found myself barreling from Burlington to Tunbridge, wondering if anyone's ever pleaded their way out of a speeding ticket on the merits of being an arts writer with a hot tip and a deadline. My particular tip was the kind with the sort of poetry that only small-town life affords: a Tunbridge native named Baxter Doty who collects hornets' nests. I needed to get to Doty before dark so I could get pictures of the nests in daylight. 

Tags: special collections , natural history , hornets , Image , Web Only

Posted By Ethan de Seife on Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 11:06 AM

Sundance Channel

Michael Murphy and Cynthia Nixon in "Tanner on Tanner"

Burlington resident Allan Nicholls may be best known to movie lovers for his role as team captain Johnny Upton in the 1977 hockey comedy Slap Shot. Canadiens fans apparently still feel the same: When Nicholls, a Montréal native, attended a game earlier this year, the Centre Belle camera operator found Nicholls in the crowd and broadcast his image on the mega-screens. The crowd roundly cheered.

Nicholls’ career in film is better defined, however, by his decades-long collaboration with Robert Altman. He worked with the renowned director in a variety of capacities on some two dozen films. That makes him uniquely qualified to introduce a screening of Altman's incisive 2004 political mockumentary series “Tanner on Tanner.”

On Friday, April 1, the event kicks off a new monthly series called Alt: Cinema at White River Junction’s Main Street Museum. Its mission is to use film as a catalyst for community discussion.

Tags: allan nicholls , robert altman , tanner on tanner , white river indie films , slap shot , Image , Web Only

Posted By Sadie Williams on Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 8:18 PM

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Matthew Thorsen

The Shelburne Craft School team paints at ArtsRiot

The Shelburne Craft School left its mark on Burlington over the past week with a new mural at ArtsRiot.

Executive director Sage Tucker-Ketcham says the project came about after Felix Wai, co-owner/co-founder  of ArtsRiot, saw one of her paintings on Instagram. "Love it," Wai commented on an image posted on March 7. "We're looking for new murals at ArtsRiot. Hit us up if you are into it!"

Tags: ArtsRiot , Shelburne Craft School , murals , Image , Web Only

Posted By Sadie Williams on Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 8:17 PM

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Annika Rundberg

Generator's birthday party

It's only fitting that a drone blew out the birthday candles for Burlington's Generator on its second birthday last Saturday. The young organization — which provides local makers with the tools and community to push their ideas to fruition — is a focal point of Burlington's creative tech environment. 

The "Tech and Tux"-themed party was well attended: By 6:20 p.m., Generator member/volunteer Brook Martenis had tallied 252 heads. One of the primary attractions of the night was the photo booth, equipped with props — think laser-cut wooden ties and glasses and sculpted cardboard masks — made by Generator members.

Tags: Generator , technology , maker space , makers , Athena Kafantaris , Brook Martenis , Rob Rock , Burlington , Image , Video , Web Only

Posted By Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 4:24 PM

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Courtesy of Fleming Museum

"LOVE," screenprint by Robert Indiana (multiplied by 6)

In conjunction with current show "Pop Art Prints," renowned art historian, author and New York University professor Thomas Crow spoke at the Fleming Museum of Art on Wednesday, March 23. His talk was titled "Painting, Print, Poster, Album Cover: Pop Reproductions and the Counter-Culture" and focused on two images that have become ubiquitous since their creation in the 1960s. An incarnation of one of these is included in the exhibition: Robert Indiana's "Love" print. 

The second image was "Viva Che," a poster that Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick completed in 1968, following the Argentine revolutionary's death in October 1967. Crow asserted that the image has "never been out of view since." Fitzpatrick adapted his iconic emblem, which Crow asserted as "indebted to Warhol," from the "Guerrillero Heroico" photo taken of Che by Alberto Korda in 1960.

Tags: University of Vermont Fleming Museum of Art , pop art , Thomas Crow , Image , Web Only

Posted By Ethan de Seife on Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 9:01 AM

General Film Corporation / Rolling Thunder Pictures

Hari Rhodes in the climactic scene of Detroit 9000

Detroit 9000, a policier with an uncommonly frank approach to American race relations, originally came out in 1973. Twenty-five years later, the film was rereleased by Rolling Thunder Pictures, Quentin Tarantino’s boutique distribution company that operated under the Miramax umbrella from 1995 to 1998. Established shortly after the success of Tarantino's epochal Pulp Fiction, Rolling Thunder gave this former video-store clerk his first “establishment” role as a taste maker.

Tags: film , movie , what i'm watching , detroit 9000 , quentin tarantino , policier , Image , Video , Web Only

Posted By Sadie Williams on Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 9:10 AM

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Courtesy of Apostrophe NYC

Base 12 artists outside the Whitney

Last Friday, two Vermont artists made it into the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City — for 40 minutes. But they didn't take the traditional route to get there.

Charlie Hudson and Max Hodgson are members of Base 12, a dozen artists organized by pop-up operators Apostrophe NYC that exhibit work in unconventional locations.  Previously, Apostrophe has staged guerrilla shows in the NYC subway. Last summer, the group made an appearance at Burlington's South End Art Hop, emptying a truck container and turning it into a gallery for the night. 

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Apostrophe NYC

Max Hodgson's submission to the Apostrophe NYC guerrilla show at the Whitney Museum of American Art

Last week's stunt at the Whitney was the first of its kind. The artists showed up on Friday evening with suction-cup wall hangers and small works specifically created for the museum. Then they hung their paintings from the window of a stairwell.

Tags: South End Art Hop , Max Hodgson , Charlie Hudson , Whitney Museum of American Art , Apostrophe NYC , Base 12 , Image , Video , Web Only

Posted By Ethan de Seife on Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 8:11 AM

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Wildgaze Films

Archival footage from What Our Fathers Did

A college film professor of mine once remarked that if Nazis had never existed, Hollywood would have had to invent them. He was an eccentric guy and his lectures were pretty obtuse, but I understood his point: Nazis are so evil that they have filled the all-important Bad Guy role in countless films.

And it’s not just Hollywood that loves to hate Nazis. Films of the Holocaust subgenre have an excellent track record with critics and prize givers. Just this past year, the Hungarian film Son of Saul, an intense drama set in a concentration camp, won the Oscar and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, as well as the Grand Prix at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and other awards.

This particular cinematic well is a deep one, as evidenced by the upcoming Middlebury screening of What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy. The new documentary will play for a single screening at the Town Hall Theater on Sunday, April 3, 7 p.m., as part of the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival Winter Screening series.

Tags: film , movie , what our fathers did , documentary , holocaust , middlebury new filmmakers festival , middlebury , town hall theater , Image , Web Only

Posted By Sadie Williams on Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 2:33 PM

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Courtesy of BCA

From the film Sign Painters

 Signs are everywhere, so ubiquitous that we rarely give most of them a second glance. But on Wednesday night, nearly 100 people gathered at Burlington City Hall's Contois Auditorium to do just that. 

The occasion: a screening of the 2013 documentary Sign Painters, directed by Faythe Levine and Sam Macon. The event was part of the Architecture + Design Film Series, co-hosted by Burlington City Arts and the University of Vermont's Department of Art and Art History. The partners present a monthly film regarding art, design or architecture. 

Lynda Reeves McIntyre, an art professor at UVM and organizer of A + D, opened the night with a warm welcome, encouraging attendees to greet those seated around them. She suggested that the event was an opportunity to encourage community building, and that "the people who show up are usually pretty interesting." 

Tags: Burlington City Arts , Architecture + Design Film Series , Burlington City Hall , UVM , art , Image , Video , Web Only

Posted By Kymelya Sari on Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 2:18 PM

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Kymelya Sari

Jensen Beach

You might not expect to write jokes at a writers' workshop. But that's exactly what author Jensen Beach encouraged participants to do on Tuesday evening during an interactive video workshop organized by the nonprofit Young Writers Project.

Participants in Burlington gathered at the Fletcher Free Library, while others attended the talk via interactive live stream at Rutland Free Library, Montpelier's Kellogg-Hubbard Library and St. Johnsbury Athenaeum.

The YWP was started in 2006 with a two-year founding grant from the Vermont Business Roundtable. It aims to build a "population of respectful teen writing and digital media community to reflect the cultural diversity of the world so youths can learn from each others' differences," said YWP founder and director Geoffrey Gevalt. YWP's website has 2,100 users, mostly from Vermont but also from countries including Austria, France, South Africa and Sri Lanka. Every day, the website publishes about 100 stories written by youths.

Tags: Young Writers Project , Jensen Beach , Geoffrey Gevalt , Fletcher Free Library , Image , Web Only