Members Meeting Oct. 2023

MEMBERS MEETING

Zoom is open at 6:45 for pre-meeting socializing

Happy spring! Are we in April or July? We hope everyone is artistically inspired by the great weather we have been enjoying this week.  We have an equally inspiring program planned for our next BAA Members meeting. Please scroll down for coming events and details.

Business Meeting, 7:00pm

AGENDA

Business portion of the agenda:

• Welcome to new members! – Dari & Naomi
• Belmont Farmers’ Market Artisan Table – last day tomorrow – Lauren Palmer-Merrill. 
• Belmont Gallery of Art current and upcoming shows – Lauren Palmer-Merrill. 
• Winter Holiday Market – Lauren Palmer-Merrill. 
• Upcoming BAA member meetings: Golden watercolor artist Jenny Granbury, watercolor artist, Laura Quincy Jones – Dari & Naomi
• Lexington Garden Club invitation to BAA members to participate in their garden plein air event on June 8, 2024 – Karen Berman Mulligan.  
• BAA 10th Anniversary Celebration: Show at BGA!.
• Members upcoming shows and events.
• Introducing tonight’s guest presenter, Ann Hirsch – Naomi

Program, 7:30pm

JOURNEYS IN PUBLIC SCULPTURE

Talk and Power Point with noted artist Ann Hirsch

Cambridge/Somerville-based artist Ann Hirsch has completed commissions in bronze and stone across the U.S. She is recognized for her Bill Russell Legacy Project at Boston City Hall Plaza, a public artwork that is part sculpture and part interactive playground. The artwork embodies a unique approach to sculpture in bronze by going beyond the traditional statue with interactive site design and the incorporation of community engagement into design and fabrication. Other commissions include large wall sculptures for the east entry to Patriot Plaza at Sarasota National Cemetery and many site-specific monuments in bronze including a sculpture of the first female CEO in the US, Anna Bissell. In 2018, Ann was shortlisted for the first monument to real women in New York’s Central Park.

In addition to public sculpture, Ann has worked with local communities in community-engaged public projects. As a 2016-2017 Boston Artist-in-Residence, she worked on a 10-month project with the Vine Street Community Center in Roxbury.

As partner in the multidisciplinary collaborative A+J Art+Design, she co-created the floating installation SOS (Safety Orange Swimmers) which was awarded 2017 Outstanding Project of the Year by Americans for the Arts. The kinetic sculpture group was commissioned as a Featured Project for ArtPrize9 in Grand Rapids, MI in 2017 and by Waterfront Toronto in 2019. With A+J Art+Design, Ann completed a permanent public artwork in bronze for Boston’s oldest public square, North Square, in September 2019. North Square Stories is the pilot project for Boston’s new Percent for Art program. This addition to Boston’s landscape of public art in bronze is exceptional for the extraordinary degree of community involvement it has entailed. Along with the reconstruction of North Square, North Square Stories was named a 2020 Project of the Year by the Boston Preservation Alliance and The American Public Works Association.