Thursday, November 12
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Registration Required Below
Get to know some of the celebrated artists who live in our community!
The Allen & Helen Hermes Art Series presents a new panel discussion in its series: The Secret Lives of Artists, where we hear from professionals who are renowned in their creative fields as they talk about their work, process and inspiration.
This month’s panel will include Director, Performer & Producer Pam Arciero, Actress & Educator Diana Canova, Novelist Tom Casey, Design & Decor Artist David Cramer and Artist, Curator & Writer Richard Klein.
Artist and Georgetown Arts & Cultural Center Co-Founder Bob Marty will moderate the discussion.
The series is organized by Redding’s Tom Casey and Carolyn Prusa, who are both published fiction authors. Prusa said she and Casey realized that many artists live and work in Redding, and the series is a way to both introduce them to the community and get inspired by these talented neighbors.
NOTE: This presentation will take place both in-person, at the Library, and virtually, over Zoom. For the optimal experience, we recommend attending programs in-person. Register for the virtual event by scrolling to the registration form below. Click here to register for the In-Person program.
The Allen and Helen Hermes Arts Series was founded in 2003, and is funded by a generous gift the couple donated to the Mark Twain Library. The mission of the series is to enrich the quality of life in the community of Redding by producing and supporting events in the visual, literary, theater and musical arts.
THE ARTISTS
Pam Arciero is a director for live theater, television, film, as well as a performer and producer. She choreographs and directs live walk-around (the big versions of the puppets) shows for Sesame Workshop in such far-flung places as Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, Barcelona, and Saudi Arabia, Sesame Place, PA and Sea World, USA. Pam performs for film, television and theater, notably as a puppeteer with Sesame Street (Grundgetta Grouch, Oscar’s girlfriend, and assorted characters) and for the Muppets for over 35 years. Pam has taught puppetry all over the world, from New York to Hong Kong, Hawaii to South Africa. Her love and joy of Puppetry is contagious. She is the Artistic Director of the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.
Diana Canova is best known for her role as Corinne Tate on the controversial show SOAP. She also starred in series of her own, Throb, I’m a Big Girl Now, and Home Free among others as well as many guest starring roles over the years. Film: One True Thing, First Nudie Musical. On Broadway Diana starred in They’re Playing Our Song, and the first revival of Company at the Roundabout Theater. Regional: I Do I Do, A Little Night Music, Thumbs, Company, Putting It Together, I Sent A Letter To My Love. The 92 nd Street Y Lyric’s and Lyricists Concert Series, Kander and Ebb. Diana’s voice can be heard on Weston Woods/Scholastic series videos, such as the Miss Nelson Books, The Island of Skog among many others. Diana was an Adjunct Professor of Voice at Manhattanville College for 13 years. She ran a theater program at John Read Middle School for 30 years, Joel Barlow High for 20. As a writer, Diana has also penned numerous musicals for middle school age actors. She is a member of the Playwrights/Director’s Workshop at Actor’s Studio in New York. Diana also directs local theater productions at New Milford Theater Works, Ridgefield Theater Barn among others. Diana is married to Grammy award winning recording engineer Elliot Scheiner and is a happy Redding resident for the last 42 years.
David Cramer is an artist, designer, and master woodworker whose work spans fine furniture, handcrafted decorative arts, and theatrical set and prop design. Through his woodworking practice, he has designed and created distinctive grandfather clocks, tables, and chairs, with commissions for organizations including Silvermine Gallery, Applebox Studio, and Maurice Sendak. His work has been exhibited at museums and galleries throughout the country, including the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, the Fuller Craft Museum, and the Amarillo Museum of Art. His craftsmanship has earned several awards, including the Silvermine Guild Award and an Award of Excellence from the American Society of Furniture Artists. Cramer also creates handcrafted decorative pieces through ArtAkimbo, with commissions from organizations including NOAA, Woods Hole, and Octopus Energy, and work sold internationally. His creative practice extends to theatrical set and prop design and construction for regional theaters, schools, and productions, including the Hermes Art Series at the Mark Twain Library and New Pond Farm Summer Shakespeare in Redding. His work has been featured in Fine Woodworking, American Craft, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe. He studied painting at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Tom Casey is the author of four novels and other works. A native of New York City, he grew up in the small Long Island Sound shore community of Rye, not far from Manhattan, where sailing was an early enthusiasm. Tom learned to fly in his teens and made a career of travel and aviation as he sharpened his skills as a writer. “Flying jets was a fortunate day job for a novelist. I retired as a B777 captain in 2008, after 30 years with American Airlines,” he said. Tom writes in a signature lyrical style and after reading one of his novels, Norman Mailer wrote of him, “From the brilliance of the opening chapter, one is aware of a writer with an exceptional point of view…who can write the story with his own fair share of winged prose.” His first novel, Human Error, was called “A first rate debut novel “ by Kirkus (starred) and his second, Strangers’ Gate, was optioned for film.
Richard Klein is a Connecticut-based artist, independent curator and writer. As an artist, he has exhibited widely, including the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY Purchase; Caren Golden Fine Art, New York; the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; Hales Gallery, London; Gavlak Gallery, Palm Beach, FL; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; The Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA), Portland, OR; Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown, MA; Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY; Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Brattleboro, VT; Exhibit by Alberson Tulsa, OK; Incident Report/Flow Chart Foundation, Hudson, NY; ICEHOUSE Project Space, Sharon, CT; the Mildred Complex(ity), Narrowsburg, NY; and Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Kent, CT. Reviews of his work have appeared in Two Coats of Paint, Whitehot Magazine, The New York Times, Sculpture Magazine, Art in America, and The New Yorker. From 1999 to 2022 he was Exhibitions Director at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield. In his more than two-decade-long career as a curator he has organized over 80 exhibitions, including solo shows of the work of Janine Antoni, Sol LeWitt, Mark Dion, Roy Lichtenstein, Hank Willis Thomas, Brad Kahlhamer, Jack Whitten, Jessica Stockholder, Tom Sachs, and Elana Herzog. Major curatorial projects at The Aldrich have included Fred Wilson: Black Like Me (2006), No Reservations: Native American History and Culture in Contemporary Art (2006), Elizabeth Peyton: Portrait of an Artist (2008), Michael Joo: Drift (2014), Hugo McCloud: from where I stand (2021), Duane Slick:The Coyote Makes the Sunset Better (2022), and Prima Materia: The Periodic Table in Contemporary Art (2023). Klein’s essays on art and culture have appeared in Cabinet magazine and have been included in books published by Gregory R. Miller & Co., Damiani, Picturebox, Ridinghouse, Hatje Cantz, and the University of Chicago Press, among others.
OUR MODERATOR
BOB MARTY decided to be an artist after falling in love with Willem De Kooning’s paintings at age 14. He graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in painting and took a job designing and building puppet characters for Sesame Street, including six Big Birds. As part of the same job, he also designed costumes, props, and sets for two George Balanchine ballets —Persephone and Symphony Pathetique — for the New York City Ballet. In 1985, he moved into television production and founded MPI Media Productions International. In the last 40 years, Marty has produced and directed programs for PBS, NBC, CBS, A&E, Discovery Health Network, BBC, the Hallmark Channel, and many others. His programs for PBS have helped raise an estimated $750 million and include some of the biggest hits in the network’s history including 22 Downton Abbey specials, 10 Ken Burns specials, eight Victor Borge specials and 50th anniversary specials celebrating Sesame Street, PBS NewsHour and Masterpiece Theater.
Register for the virtual program by completing the form below. Click here to register for the In-Person program.