hello everyone welcome to citizen herald reports i'm your host joanna jewell is editor of the belmont citizen herald and with good local belmont dot com i'm pleased to have with me today rebecca richards director of the belmont gallery of art which recently celebrated its ten year anniversary rebecca has lived in belmont with her family for more than twenty years she's been involved with visual arts ever since she was a teen she minored in studio art at emerson college and has taken studio art courses at museum school and mass art she enjoys painting printmaking and really enjoys children's books and illustrations she is a writing instructor at boston university's college of communication and  been an editor of a media arts publication called imagine news in belmont she's well known for her involvement in art and film she's a founding board member of belmont world film and has been director of it in you'll family film festival wonderful thank you was a milestone for the gallery was very pleased it was a wonderful event so we're very proud that and we're going to be we're going to be showing clips of that event throughout the show but before we get into that i thought it would be helpful if you could tell viewers who are not familiar with it is shocking to even think someone would not be familiar with the belmont gallery of art but anyone who isn't familiar could you tell them about it yes so there actually are a number of residents who are unaware of the belmont gallery of art which is surprising since we have been around for ten years i think part of the challenge is the gallery is located on the third floor of the home where municipal building in the town hall complex and the fact that we're upstairs on the third floor and we're not visible at the street level i think presents a little bit of a challenge for the gallery even though we have been successful for ten years and so you have to be somewhat thursdays fridays sometimes saturdays and sundays but we do a lot of promotion of the shows and thank you the paper's always been very supportive and we use a lot of social media and other types of outlets and we do get people in there but it's interesting because when i'm talking to some of the the visitors to the gallery some of the shows we have many more people from outside belmont really at some of the reception is and i sit on you know the cultural council and a couple of my colleagues on the cultural council a couple of years ago when i mentioned something about the gallery they said there's a gallery in belmont just like years ago somebody said there's a  this right up the top of my head but i do not and then there's a smaller east gallery which takes up a big section of the third floor of the homer municipal bit building right and i do want to mention that the home we're building it's just a really nice coincidence serendipitous in some ways that the home we're building was actually designed by an uncle of the artist winslow homer so there's a sort of arts connection to being in that in that space so the fact that we are upstairs on the third floor again is a bit of a challenge and we don't have any permanent signage and i have talked with some of the town leaders about how to go about getting some permanent signage outside of the building and possibly on leonard street so people just you know going about to visible yes to be more visible people going about you know their daily routine in you know in belmont center pushing square we have you sandwich boards and we've got some vendors who are very supportive in terms of hanging up posters in their windows so that's wonderful but again we would really like to have some permanent signage so people even people coming from out of town who have sometimes gotten lost walking  told me they've been walking around the center of the parking lot looking for the space so that's one of the challenges we'd like to see addressed in the next ten years and that's that's been the home that space has been the home for ten years that space  come to be how did they end up in so so the way that the belmont gallery of art came to be is very interesting it actually started the idea started with the cultural council and we're still connected to the cultural council a number of years ago we were getting grant applications for visual artists and part of when you apply for a grant to the cultural council you have to have a partner a low partner it could be like a venue where your work is going to be displayed or so on and for most of these artists the they had very limited opportunities where were they going to show their work the primary place in belmont at that time was the library and we actually still have an ongoing relationship with the library they do exhibit artists work but we thought wouldn't it be wonderful to have a dedicated space that's really for art a professional space and again this was serendipitous because at the time we were thinking of doing something in a permanent location the there was renovation going on and so there was a small group of people connected to the cultural council who work closely with the building committee and the town leaders to make this realization and i do have t mention to people jennifer smith was a member of the belmont cultural comes with the time she was very instrumental in doing a lot of the research and getting the gallery established and also trey klein who was on the cultural council with me at the time and he is an architect by training and he could envision what the space could be and so i think having somebody who was skilled you know in that regard and could see what the possibilities were that was very helpful and i mean there were a lot of negotiations that went on working with the town's you know general council and and going to the general council but the lawyers for the time and there's a memorandum of understanding and everybody was pleased with with how everything turned out and so you know that started the first show as you know was ten years ago actually ten years ago july and calm so the celebration was a few months past the actual you know the first ago but we wanted to do something in the in the fall we thought everybody would be back from vacation and and so on and so and then there was also so nan broad jurors the first administrator of the gallery so she ran the gallery with a small group of us as we call ourselves the b j committee right so we were like the board of directors working hand in hand with her she worked very hard she established a lot of protocols and so on for the gallery which we're very focusing more on doing his own are right richard is a very talented painter ease also he's a retired executive an attorney and when he retired a little bit young he was absolutely determined he was going to spend all of his free time strengths are which is working very closely with the artists and helping to come up with some of the show the exhibit ideas and so on and it's actually it's been a wonderful partnership and sometimes we go like this but then we always end up you know friends and so on and we have three other people who are on the board who have also been very instrumental and i have to mention them which is and cats if and helen morse and kathy lobo and kathy and i go way way back to the very beginning she was part of the initial board of directors as well and it's strictly volunteer run self sustaining you don't pay any rent to the town right now so the arrangement that we have with the town is they do donate the space which is absolutely wonderful so they donate the space and as they would say and the heat and the lighting and so on so that's that's wonderful they're very generous in that regard outside of that there are no additional there are no town funds no taxpayer funds that are used to support the gallery it is self sustaining by the sale of work in the shows and also we have different we might have events where there's a you know a small fee or whatever we also we have a donation jar the ten year event was was also it was there was a donation we asked for a very small donation which helped cover the expenses and also helped us raise a little bit of additional operating you know over her answers and so on let's talk about that event that recent ten year event it was recently was in october was at over sixteen teams yes and what how did you celebrate the ten year anniversary  ut at the gallery do so what we did first of all we had a we invited every artist who had ever been in the gallery in the past to take part in a special ten years celebratory exhibit and we had seventy five artists who took part in that exhibit well that's a lot and that that's right it was a lot and and and so we have this show which was really wonderful for for visitors to come and see sort of the variety of techniques and in subject matter and so on that that artists you know have chosen to show in that in that exhibit and then we have we said let's have a party and celebrate you know the gallery but celebrate the artists who made the gallery you know with success as well so we had a wonderful party we had catered food we had a wine bar we had a raffle and then we had the people's choice awards where people who were at the party could could walk you know among the exhibit and decide which pieces were their favorites in three different categories including painting yet harbor fee and three dimensional slash other other work how many emmy winners were there then so there were two so there was a you know a first place winner and then an honorable mention and then the the gallery committee also chose our favorite piece in the show and what was that so our favorite piece in the show was christine chang's painting julia clint which was a portrait of her daughter as a girl who's now a young college student and it was the people's choice first place for her painting water wetlands to excuse me and the second the honorable mention with care if it's given her or her or her painting called champlain and then for photography jonathan hansen who was our dear cuba photography show in the spring so we were pleased that he was the favorite for the show and second place was nicole bernstein and it was a  that was the second place for the photography exhibit and then for the three dimensional work derek to passkey was did a beautiful wooden high hand carved wooden vessel that was studded with metal and so on and then  and so we were very pleased that these people were knowledge for the work all the work was wonderful and the show i don't i do want to mention that and i want to thank all the artists for participating in that ten year show as well i shows who have never been there before if i'm if i'm there working they will you know ask me how does one get to show in the gallery and it's a very good question because how do how does the process work and so generally the way it works is first of all we have the shows change approximately six to eight weeks and so what is that you know a year i think we might have like five or six year we always have the belmont school show in may in early june that's a given and that's really that's that's a wonderful show at the cherry no no no it's all the it's all the elementary rights today at all the public high school day yeah ok three twelve we love that show it's a huge amount of work for the teachers to put together but you get i mean honestly those shows we might get like fifteen hundred people coming through the shows really are that show i mean yeah so very popular but other than that the other shows we have are professional invitation only where those of us you know myself and richard and you know helen and kathy you know just through research what have you decided what we'd like to invite those people to take part and we invite them they don't have to go through a formal process of being you know i'm accepted and so on into the gallery but again a lot of people will just submit a proposal with images they fill out the paperwork will sit and discuss is this something that that we think would make good sense in the gallery or if an individual submits a proposal and we think well you know we try to have a small group or large group shows that's that's preferable for the gallagher experience has shown u there seems to be more interest in that way as opposed to a solo show ok so if somebody submit something but you know we say will be there are these other two artists who have submitted proposals as well and you know what their work is very complementary so why don't we try to put those three people together and we do i do want to let people know that the exhibits are programmed really far out in advance i mean when you run a gallery it's not anything dad you know in february you can put together your show for march i mean it has there's a long lead time we have to you know figure in marketing and p r that's a big part of it you need a lot of the time for that just how we're going to actually put the show together how it's going to be hung in displayed in and so on so that at least a minimum generally i would say of six months if somebody is just going assume it interposed there's a lot of work involved in it and still you can't believe that it's all volunteer run is it is volunteer most of us and if you're not retired like richard we have other jobs part time jobs primarily because it would be very difficult i mean i really want to say i feel like running a gallery is a full time job do you think they would ever consider hiring someone i don't think that time would ever spend the funds on that we've thought i actually just recently i thought well maybe we should start a kickstarter campaign  you know just to see if they even to get a stipend if it's if it's you know the car and people involved are future people something you know because again i'm using all of my experience that i have from running different arts organizations in the past and when i was you know working full time running arts groups and and so on and love of art you know the research involved just dealing with you know the finances just again you know it is running it's  running a business it's an arts business but it is a business well would you like to reflect on the past ten years is there anything any highlights that you want to mention so i actually would  that we're very proud of and some have been more recent you know in the last five years and some more in the first five years of the gallery's operation and when you had mentioned it when you know you mentioned it to me previously i thought i'm going to go back and look and see what shows really sparked a lot of interest and so on and going back of course the first few years we feel like everything was just wonderful and we're learning a lot and so on and so forth but there was a show it was a show of masks is actually a very well known mask maker for for you know for the theater and he works with very he does some very like enormous pieces and so on so this show was entirely three dimensional and i wish that i had some visuals from it which i do not it was really stunning to to you know to be there to toward to view it except you think you might come back i don't know i mean we had a lot of school groups who came to see that show that was really wonderful another show that was very successful was the sheldon sisters these are sisters one is the cambridge area she is primarily a collage artist and the other sister lives in the north hampton area and she is a ceramic artist and we pair them together it was really nan's you know pairing them together i think every single piece of that show got sold every really piece so that was that was a wonderful show i have a few personal favorites from recent years jane han bird the color of lemons that was also a very successful show she's a wonderful painter it was a sort of a celebration of everything that she had accomplished in so many years of working as an artist and so on it's very colorful very colorful i had to mention the cuba show jonathan hansen's cuba show from last year love those pictures that was wonderful we did inspired by winslow homer show that was three years ago this this month where we worked with the belmont his subject matter however they interpreted that so that was a success and i have to mention a couple more one of my personal favorites was books on the charles we worked we worked with very closely with charles bridge children's book publisher in watertown it was their twenty fifth anniversary and again because i just i love children's books so very much it was that was a real labor of love for me i worked with the an artist name was lee evans who's illustrated many children's books and that was very very successful we sold a lot of work we had a book signing a book selling kids got to meet a lot of the artists you had the books there you got to see the painting on page ten or whatever from the book that's right here on site and really good and last year  away animal art richard really that was his that was his project huge success and also the the show that we did with the boston print makers working alongside the icelandic pr know how long do these shows usually last usually it's seven or eight weeks typically eight weeks and you have one that's running now it started very recently november sixth then if through december eleventh do you want to tell anyone i hold it up please i'm not sure so here is the this is a current show that opened just last we had just last week this is a cape cod print or it's actually it's a show called the cape cod print makers but the organization is called the print makers of cape cod they're incorporated so they said there's a difference there and this this show we have twenty five members from the cape cod print makers in the show over fifty pieces are displayed and this is happening in conjunction with the boston print makers do a biennial exhibit like a huge exhibit in five different galleries around the boston area and this is one of the shows one of the galleries it's beautiful work all of it's for sale i encourage everybody to come up and see the show which is up through december eleventh that's great definitely and check out the website which is belmont gallery dot org you know get all the volunteer gallery sitters now i do some gallery sitting richard and i have done a fair amount of that for years i will say but we also look to have people in the community come in and gallery sit and if artists are in a group show that's that's generally it's it's something that's expected of them if we have fifty artists and a show you know a few dozen of them will gallery sit on thursdays and fridays and sundays and you know i try to be there as i said you know at least once once we go onsite and gallery and the thing that's really interesting is it really adds to the gallery experience the sort of the gallery visiting experience if there's somebody there who can either talk to you about the show you know if you have any questions it's just nice to have a friendly face there on site so we're always looking for volunteers you don't have to be an artist i think if you love art or enjoy art that's a plus because you're going to be surrounded by art in this in this really nice study and so that's something if they go again to the belmont gallery dot org website there's all kinds of information on gallery sitting and we're always in need of donations so that's that's that's to pick up the latest edition of the belmont to disinherit all i've got a recent one here it's sold at star market or c v s or the loading dock you can also subscribe by calling one eight hundred eight my paper or visit belmont that would get local dot com to see our online version of the newspaper which is updated daily and we also have a facebook page and a twitter account with like us and follow us wishing everyone a happy holiday season thank you