Hermitage Artists Present Art on the Beach

Hermitage Artists will present an open discussion on their process and work at the next beach reading on Friday, March 29 beginning at 5:30 pm. The program begins with open house tours of the historic Hermitage House and open studios with painter Michael Eade, and assemblage artist John Zaklikowski. Art will be available for sale with a portion of the proceeds being donated to the Hermitage. At 6:30, the program moves to the beach where Conservation Poet Sandra Alcosser will read from her work. Following Sandra’s reading, playwright Dare Clubb will lead a discussion about work and process with all of the Hermitage artists. Mother Nature’s sunset ends the evening’s festivities. Bring your beach chairs and refreshments.

            “Another interesting mix of artists are in residency and we are looking forward to our beach ‘show and tell’,” remarked Hermitage Executive Director, Bruce E. Rodgers. “Each one of these talented artists travels a different road to reach their destination. It will be interesting to have them all together, sharing how they get to where they want to go.”

Sandra Alcosser received her B.A. from Purdue University and M.F.A. from the University of Montana, where she studied with Richard Hugo. Her poetry is about ecology and nature. She is the author of Except By Nature, which received the Academy's 1998 James Laughlin Award and was selected by Eamon Grennan for the 1997 National Poetry Series; Sleeping Inside the Glacier, a collaboration with artist Michele Burgess, and A Fish to Feed All Hunger, selected by James Tate to be the Associated Writing Programs Award Series winner. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, New Yorker, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Yale Review. Alcosser's honors are many. She is the former director of Central Park's Poets-in-the-Park program in NYC and she started the MFA Program in Creative Writing at San Diego State University where she is currently a professor of poetry, fiction, and feminist poetics.

            Michael Eade received a BA from Oregon State University and further studied in Stuttgart and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. While at NYU, he was an assistant to the American sculptor Louise Nevelson. He has received many honors including his Hermitage residency, a studio membership at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, and fellowships from Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, the National Academy Museum and School of the Fine Arts, Artists’ Fellowship Inc., and Aljira. Eade is a finalist to create public art designs in NYC for the MTA Arts for Transit and for Metro Taipei in Taiwan. Eade’s work appears in public and corporate collections including the Harvard Business School, HERMÈS, AT&T, the Library of Congress Permanent Collection and many private collections.

            John Zaklikowski is a multi-faceted artist (writer, photographer, musician, painter and assemblage). At the Hermitage he is devoting his time to assemblage art, giving new meaning to the term repurposed. He uses pieces from computers and other high tech devices, as well as hand tools, kitchen implements, lab equipment, optical apparatus, vacuum tubes and surgical supplies to create large and imaginative works of art.

            Dare Clubb is an award-winning playwright and associate professor of playwriting, dramatic literature and theory at University of Iowa. Clubb is also co-head of Iowa Playwrights Workshop. He has taught playwriting at Princeton, Barnard College, and the Bread Loaf Graduate School of English at Middlebury College, and dramatic literature and theory at the New School for Social Research in NYC. Clubb’s plays have been performed at Yale Rep, Juilliard, and the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. His original play Oedipus was produced by the Blue Light Theater Company at the CSC Theater in New York City and received an Obie award in 1999. A workshop production of his play Light Leaves was directed by Robert Wilson at the University of Iowa in 2010.

            “Join us for an exceptional evening of visual and performing art,” continued Rodgers. ”You’ll be inspired and entertained in a beautiful setting for FREE. Just bring your beach chairs and whatever you like to eat or drink. What better way to begin the weekend!”

The Hermitage is a not-for-profit artist retreat in Englewood.  It brings accomplished painters, sculptors, writers, playwrights, poets, composers and other artists from all over the world for extended stays on its 8.5-acre campus. Each artist is asked to contribute two services to the community during their stay. So far, Hermitage artists have touched over 8,000 Gulf Coast community children and adults with their unique and inspiring programs. In addition, the Hermitage awards and administers the prestigious Greenfield Prize, an annual $30,000 commission for a new work of art, rotated among three disciplines: visual art, music and drama. For more information about the beach reading or The Hermitage Artist Retreat, call 941-475-2098 or visit the website at www.HermitageArtistRetreat.org.