Smith College displays banners by Amanda WilliamsNORTHAMPTON — Two black-and-white banners by artist Amanda Williams have been unfurled on the Elm Street and campus-facing facades of the Smith College Museum of Art. The banners represent the first part of Williams’ “An Imposing Number of Times,” a series of site-specific campus installations commissioned by the museum. Further installations are scheduled for the fall and next spring.
The banners’ design and composition were inspired by student-made Black Lives Matter banners displayed on several residential houses on campus. First created by Smith students in 2017 and redone each fall, the house banners prompted Williams to reflect on language and self-determination at Smith College, a place where campus traditions and the house system play a large role in student life.
Williams built the abstract composition of her banners emphasizing the texture, materiality and painterly qualities of the house banners. In one of her banners, Williams layers six words over details of three faded house banners. It reads: “live / matterful / black / lives / allies / matter.”
Williams’ commission is an outgrowth of her 2019 campus residency, when she inaugurated the Smith museum’s artist-in-eesidence program. Williams has exhibited widely, including at the Museum of Modern Art, the Venice Architecture Biennale, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
“An Imposing Number of Times” explores and intends to provoke conversation about such questions as: How do public declarations conflict with what occurs inside the buildings on which they appear? For whom do traditions create belonging? How is the idea — versus the reality — of Blackness valued at Smith? What happens when a tradition arrives before a place is fully ready to receive it?
Online film festival to screen state-made moviesGREENFIELD — The LAVA Center will host the Open Screen Film Festival starting Sunday and running through July 25. The event is an online showcase of Massachusetts filmmaking talent, from students to professionals and everyone in between.
This festival will function like an open mic, in that there was no competitive selection process — all appropriate films that were submitted will be screened. The festival will screen short films by local filmmakers Daryl Beck, Elizabeth “Buffy” Cautela, Matt Demko, Rocco Desgres, Ian Hamilton, Theo Janke, JuPong Lin, Brandon Macey, Robert Markey, Wally Marzano-Lesnevich, Gloria Matlock, Jean Minuchin, Michael Nix, Vanessa Query, Maria Servellon and the Four Rivers Charter Public School Class of 2021.
The festival will feature three programs, each debuting on a Sunday afternoon and running continually through the final day of the festival. Tickets will be distributed via free online registration. Reserve a ticket at eventbrite.com/e/156558054355/.
This program is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Sevenars Concerts celebrates 53rd anniversaryWORTHINGTON — Sevenars Concerts Inc. announces its 53rd anniversary season (1968-2021) of summer concerts. The music festival, held at the historic Academy concert hall in South Worthington, was once named by Time magazine as “one of the best small music festivals in the USA” and stays close to its roots, pairing professional musicians from the Schrade and James families with other nationally and internationally known artists in an intimate, idyllic setting near a rushing brook.
The academy is located at 15 Ireland St., just off Route 112. Concerts will take place Sundays at 4 p.m. from July 11 to Aug. 15. For information call 413-238-5854 or visit sevenars.org.
Admission is by a suggested $20 donation at the door. This summer’s lineup includes:
■Sunday, July 11: Sevenars 53rd Anniversary Opening Concert. Join members of the Schrade and James family of musicians, the heart of Sevenars, in opening the 2021 season and marking the gradual emergence from COVID lockdowns and quarantines.
Due to pandemic travel and health issues, there will be just three family musicians for this year’s opening of piano and cello music — Rorianne Schrade, Lynelle James, and Christopher James — but with some novelties in store, there will be no lack of variety.
■Sunday, July 18: The Elm Chamber Ensemble, with two Sevenars returnees, violinist Joel Pitchon and cellist extraordinaire Volcy Pelletier. They will be joined by prize-winning Georgian-born American Yelena Beriyeva.
■Sunday, July 25: Jiayan Sun, piano, in All Beethoven.
■Sunday, Aug. 1: Taconic Chamber Players in Music of Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Jessie Montgomery, and Stephen Dankner.
■Sunday, Aug. 8: Alexis Walls, violinist, and Lynelle James, pianist.
■Sunday, Aug. 15: The Bob Sparkman Trio, a jazz collaboration of clarinetist Bob Sparkman, pianist Jerry Noble and bass guitarist Kara Noble.