Art in April "Tell Me a Story"

Wow--April sure did keep us busy in all the best ways! We were invited to collaborate with the Arts Collaborative of Wakefield for their April Art Exhibit and Sale at the Albion Cultural Exchange and we committed fully to the collaboration!

The theme of the exhibit and sale was "Tell Me a Story" and so we participated in three ways with an added bonus Writers and Illustrators Meet & Greet to boot! 

1. An exhibit pairing 13 written pieces with 13 pieces of art.

2. Local Author Table featuring authors living all around us.

3. 3 Family Friendly Storytime Art Hours featuring 6 local authors.

Writers who participated in the Artist/Writer collaborative exhibit were: Marilyn Lamkin, Cate Daniels, Susan Jepson, Sally Chetwynd, Eddie Brophy, Jennifer Revill, Kerri Leonard, Linda Malcolm, Sara Desmond, Eileen Worthley, PJ Carmichael, Janie Smith, & Alice Getty. You can see an example of their work on our North of Boston Writers Network blog with more to follow: Shoes by Alice Getty with art by Andrea Willey | North of Boston Writers Network (nbwn.blogspot.com)

And, since watercolors and kids don't always mix well, we coordinated and sponsored a new initiative: Family Friendly Storytime Art Hours at the Albion Cultural Exchange during the Arts Collaborative of Wakefield's April "Tell Me a Story" Art exhibit.

The Room to Write set aside three hours (with two authors per hour) during the month of April when the crowds were gone, the art was up, and kids had an opportunity to listen to stories written by local authors while parents and caregivers enjoyed the art exhibit, but let's be honest . . . the parents enjoyed the story time, too. It was a wonderfully creative space to hear a locally sourced story told within and kids and parents viewed the art before and after story time at their own pace!

The Room to Write raffled off a copy of each story time book as a door prize. Special thanks to the local authors who participated in our first-ever story time art hours: Christine Ricci-McNamee reading Logan and the Missing Crown Jewels, Karin Gertsch reading Flora Has an Adventure, Andrew Hacket reading Ollie, the Acorn, and the Mighty

Idea, Tina Hart reading The Hart of the Home, Joy Wieder reading The Passover Mouse, and Ralph Tufo reading True Friends Indeed and he played his concertina. What a wonderful way to connect young children and their caregivers with early literacy and art exposure!

We started our quarterly Writers and Illustrators Meet & Greet with a scoop of ice cream at Cravings on Main Street (our treat:) and then headed across the street to the Albion Cultural Exchange to view the art on display with Joy Schilling, of the Arts Collaborative of Wakefield, who gave an art tour at 7:00pm! Adult writers and artists of all genres and levels were invited to join us for a fun and casual meetup. 

On the final night of the art reception we tried to gather as many writers and artists as possible to meet each other, but also to celebrate all the ways a person can be creative! And collaborate! Twenty books from the Local Authors Table sponsored by The Room to Write were raffled off to lucky attendees, so everybody went home happy and some went home with a book in their hand to enjoy. One of my daughters was a lucky winner and she enjoyed her book, written by Regina Mouradian, so much that she finished it the next day and is eager to read her other books! 

That's just part of how we spell S-U-C-C-E-S-S! Connect writers, but also connecting writers with readers, artists with writers and creative minds with people who perhaps don't yet know just how creative their minds are until they gather with other people who want to practice and celebrate art, writing and all that makes us happy to be human. We love to collaborate!