Hey yo! Valley Art Share has got a new face!  I've been picking away at new design ideas and seems like about time to make it live. Check it out.  In the coming days and weeks I'll be shifting things around a bit and tweaking the design. Let me know if you love it or hate it.

It's been great to come back to the Valley after a year away in New York City (graduate school). Time away has given me space to incubate some thoughts and ideals and it's a delight to come back to the Valley and explore with fresh eyes and energy.

I just went to visit Flying Object for the first time last week. It's a beautiful place in an old firehouse right on the Hadley commons. They've got a sunny open space that functions as a gallery, bookshop and classroom. Members of Flying Object get access the letterpress studio (really cool) and then publications made on their press can be sold in the shop. Guy, a local writer and founder of Flying Object has some great ideas for the future of the space including more workshops, a fellowship for print and book makers and an artist residency program. Check it out this week when they host a book launch for Mark Leidner's Beauty was the Vase that They Gave Me, Thursday July 21st 8-10:30pm.

I've also been talking with Adele Mattern of Artists in Context (AiC), an organization out in Cambridge that is starting to support some things out here in the Valley. They're interested in 'hybrid practices' that is, where the line of art, or being an artist blurs into other contexts and disciplines. I've been thinking about this a lot, what kind of artist am I and where do I want my work to live? What kinds of ways do I want to see creative practice live itself out in daily life here in the Valley?

Adele lives in the Valley and is helping AiC get a sense of what's shaking in our neck of the woods. AiC is offering some scholarships for people to attend the Urban Homesteading workshop at Montview Neighborhood Farm (co-produced with C3) and it looks like AiC and Valley Art Share will be collaborating in the near future.

I've curated a small collection of images from the archive In Honor of Summer.
I hope you take a gander and then go swimming. : )
I'm excited for your present and near future scheming and dreaming.

yours truly,

Julia Handschuh
Valley Art Share Creator
valleyartshare@gmail.com