SPARK: Who Ignites the Arts in the Upper Valley?
SPARK: Who Ignites the Arts in the Upper Valley?
Must-see TV
Who and what drives the thriving Upper Valley arts scene? Artists, gallery owners, administrators of arts venues, generous donors, audiences and critics. Entities like Northern Stage, AVA Gallery, ArtisTree, Hood Museum, JAG Productions, community theaters, Lebanon Opera House, Center for Cartoon Studies, Junction Magazine, Opera North, the Hopkins Center, public libraries and bookstores . . . And more. The list is (fortunately) robust, varied, and long.
SPARK is a new local access TV program, hosted by Amanda Rafuse, that aims to converse with the many people who create and nurture the arts in the UV. Episode 1 premiered last week and featured Eric Love, Director of Education at Northern Stage, and arts writer Susan B. Apel (yep, that’s me), blogger at Artful (yes, this blog). The plan is to broadcast each episode on CATV on Mondays and Wednesdays at 3 and 9 pm and to post individual episodes to CATV’S YouTube channel. Episode 1 finds Eric Love in his impeccable kitchen (click here) and me in my home office, framed by (what else?) inevitably stuffed bookshelves (click here.)
Coming soon are interviews with more Upper Valley arts people. Here’s the schedule for the next few weeks:
Ep. 2: Joe Clifford, Lebanon Opera House / Katie Kitchel, Upper Valley Music Center (airs March 29/31)
Ep. 3: Gordon Clapp, Emmy Award-winning actor (airs April 5/7) (available now on YouTube here.) Includes an impressive Shakespearean monologue Gordon learned as a child and—watch to the end—just a taste of Robert Frost.
Ep. 4: Heather Szczepiorkowski, artist / Nick Gaffney, Education Manager, AVA Gallery (airs April 12/14)
Ep. 5: Marianne Barthel, Director of Arts, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (airs April 19 / 21)
Ep. 6: Heidi Reynolds, Director, AVA Gallery & Jackie Stanton Conley, Director, White River Ballet Academy (airs April 26/28)
How to watch: You will need to figure out your channel number. For Comcast users, the channel is 1075. VTel channels 169 & 1169. SPARK recommends:
a) There is a weekly Show Highlights e-blast of upcoming shows that people can sign up for here: https://catv8.org/show-highlights/
b) The cable air schedule is listed on the website:
- homepage: catv8.org
- arts channel weekly schedule: http://catv8.org/channel-10/
c) Easiest may be to go to the CATV YouTube channel where you can watch individual segments: https://www.youtube.com/user/catv810/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=0. Once there, just scroll and look for the SPARK logo with names and photos of individual guests.
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Welcome! You’re reading Artful, a blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley, and I hope you’ll subscribe and then share this with your friends and on your social media.
And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.