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By Hilda Wong-Doo, Guest Contributor, Winchester Cultural District Managing Partnership Chair
The summer season is underway in the Winchester Cultural District with outdoor art and events all season!
The Griffin Museum of Photography launched its fourth annual Photoville x Winchester exhibition with Photoville cubes, Photosynthesis and Our Town on the Town Common fence, and sidewalk art around Winchester Common and along the main streets of the downtown area. Art by Winchester residents is woven throughout.
Some of the topics this year range from water, children’s rights, to nature. On each exhibit is a QR code that activates music performed by the Winchester Community Music School faculty.
The cubes at the end of Shore Road include work by Network for Social Justice interns. The cube at the high school tells the story about “Heroes,” girls surviving the brutality of being kidnapped by the Boko Haram. Across Skillings Road at the entrance to the bike path is the CASE Art Fund’s “I MATTER” project cube. The CASE project’s goal is to raise awareness about children’s human rights through the support and exhibition of photography. Included in this worldwide effort are photos of Winchester children. The cubes at the intersection of Main Street and Mystic Valley Parkway feature topics about “nature nurturing”.
The Common is surrounded with art this year by local artists. The annual high school honors photography project “Photosynthesis” is displayed along the fence. It features work by Winchester and Burlington High School students. It is joined this year by a new exhibit called “Our Town” – local photographers interpreting Winchester.
This year, there are two sidewalk art categories – student work and local New England artists’ work. The student work is bright colorful art created by K-12 Winchester students. Curated by the Winchester Visual Art Department led by Jennifer Levatino, this exhibit was made possible by the generosity of the Winchester Foundation for Educational Excellence. The New England artists’ work was curated by Griffin Museum Executive Director Crista Dix. Each tile is sponsored by a local business or organization. If you come down during the week, the fence is further augmented by student work of Studio on the Common.
All this art augments the many happenings at the Town Common including the Recreation Department’s weekly concert series and the Saturday Farmers Market.
The Griffin and the Cultural District are pleased to present the Griffin Terrace Series again this year. Porchfest kicked off the series after rain postponed our Town Day Beer Garden to July 29. Join us on July 13 for Kidstock’s Oh No! Improv performance. The Chamber of Commerce’s beer garden on July 29 will feature local group “Sonic Honey”. Classic rock band, “Diver9” will perform at the Spirit Night Beer Garden on September 23. Admission is free but the Cultural District kindly requests that you bring a can of food to share with our neighbors at the En Ka Food Pantry.
This year, the backdrop to the Griffin Terrace Series is a beautiful, can’t miss, augmented reality exhibit by Liz Hickok and Phil Spittler.
The Cultural District is grateful to the support of Mass Cultural Council, Winchester Cultural Council, WFEE, Studio on the Common, Hall & Sullivan, The Nolan Group, Quinn Builders, TAB The Alternative Board, Winchester Co-Operative Bank, Winchester Chamber of Commerce, Coldwell Banker Realty, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, and GreenLine Consultants, for their support for our summer exhibit.
