First Friday June Happenings and more at the Milton Art Center
by Joan Clifford, Executive Director
First Friday June 7, 6-9pm, “Pride Amplified”
At Milton Art Center’s next First Friday, June 7, 6-9pm, we honor Pride month with “Pride Amplified.” Local musicians will perform lift up songs by LGBTQ artists and icons of today and years gone by. We are thrilled that special guest artists from the LGBTQ community will grace the stage. Please join us for a fun, empowering night of music and celebration. All First Fridays are free, family friendly with refreshments, join us.
“Large Paintings of Our Beautiful World” on display at Milton Art Center
First Friday June features Milton artist, Beth Neville’s “Large Paintings of Our Beautiful World” on display. A beautiful cascading waterfall tumbling down a rocky mountain tree-lined gorge… a Hawaiian volcanic lava flow of red and gold molten rock. These large scale paintings, dynamic and bold, including, “Earth, Air, Fire, Water,” will be on view.
The colorful and appealing paintings are part of Beth Neville’s retrospective of her six decades as an artist and founder in 1964 of “Neville Art Enterprises.” Neville writes art criticism for Artscope Magazine and teaches adult painting classes in Milton. Four other exhibitions of Neville’s art can be located at Council on Aging, Milton Public Library, Forbes House Museum and Neville Gallery during June.
Funny Family Stories for Long Car Rides: A Podcast launches on June 20th with Live, Free Show, 11am at the Milton Art Center
On June 20th, at exactly 8:37 a.m., Funny Family Stories for Long Car Rides, a family-friendly podcast hosted by Milton resident Mike Stewart, Pierce Middle Schooler Cecilia Campbell-Stewart, and Rory Campbell-Stewart, of Cunningham School fame, will launch on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
To celebrate the launch of the podcast, there will be a free live show at the Milton Art Center at 334 Edge Hill Road on June 20th from 11 to 11:53 a.m. The live show and the podcast feature funny, true stories told by real people while the hosts add questions, commentary, and figure out the meanings and lessons of the funny stories in people’s lives. “It’s kind of like if Mr. Rogers hosted This American Life,” Stewart says. “Our whole family loves the funniest, family-friendly This American Life stories, like ‘Squirrel Cop’ and ‘Peter Pan Catastrophe’ so that’s what we’re kind of going for by blending interviews, music, and storytelling.”
The show’s first season will feature six episodes with a bonus or two along the way and kicks off with an episode of Stewart’s own family story where he tried to stop groundhogs–particularly the groundhog named Peanut–from eating his wife’s vegetable garden. The season also includes a couple of inspiring and hilarious baseball/softball games, two stories about being young and getting locked out of one’s home–while only wearing underwear…in winter–and a skunk that seems to love coffee.
The live show at Milton Art Center will run just like the podcast, with one key difference–people will act out the stories as they are being told. “We’ve already secured a skunk actor and are pretty close to convincing a couple of Rory’s friends to play the role of the groundhog and a sprinkler.” The hosts promise lots of laughs and audience interaction and with school out just the day before the show, they’re hoping the 11 o’clock hour brings in families with kids of all ages.
Mike Stewart has been an eighth grade Writing teacher at Braintree East Middle School for 21 years where, besides teaching that his students should actually use commas occasionally, he tries to inspire a love of storytelling with his students. He’s also a storyteller at The Moth events in Boston and the author of the soon-to-be published children’s book, “The Peculiar People of Piffle Park,” chapters of which will be available to listen to as a bonus to Season 1 of Funny Family Stories for Long Car Rides. For anyone who thinks they have a funny family story, you can fill out a form on the website or email a 20-30 word pitch to stories4longcarrides@gmail.com.
Teen Art Show,” Like It or Not”, Artists
We are so grateful to artists, Ella Cammack, Genevieve Hitt, Kailin Shi, Mia Gordon, Oge Umerah, Jax Lee, Juni Pinchera, Christian Gurrier, Kyla Sheedy-Goff, Sophie Samara, Reese Schoettle, Tatum Schoettle, Jane Schoettle, Katie Donahue, Orlaith Killion, Ellie Blalock, Teagan Sweeney, who participated in the exhibit, “Like It or Not,” and agreed to have their thought provoking art on the walls. Thank you especially to our teen ambassadors, Teagan Sweeney, Sophie Samara and Katie Donahue for their assistance in producing this exhibit.