Greetings!

We are so glad to welcome you! We hope that you have come with spirit, energy, passion, curiosity, and wonder for the arts. Arts on the Edge is a conversation of art and spirituality. In its inaugural year of 2009, this creative festival brought renown local and international artists to the central New Hampshire’s Lakes Region with a series of musical performances, dance experiences, visual art masterpieces, and workshops to compliment. This year, Arts on the Edge will welcome scholars and artists in sculpture, poetry, music, film and dance.

A creative outreach project of the First Congregational Church of Wolfeboro, United Church of Christ (UCC), Arts on the Edge is brings a progressive faith voice to the town of Wolfeboro— expanding our understanding and being, our faith and our appreciation for the many expressions of human gifts and talents, perspectives and experiences. A call for faith communities to continue to emerge in new ways!

And so, we welcome you…
We welcome you into beauty and intrigue
We welcome you into bold vision and contemplative silence.
We welcome you into sensation and harmony.
We welcome you into creating and appreciating.
We welcome you into reflection and conversation.

We bid you gracious welcome.

With peace and all blessings,

The Reverend Gina M. Finocchiaro,
Interim Senior Pastor, First Congregational Church of Wolfeboro, United Church of Christ

ARTISTS & SCHOLARS

The Rev. Gina M. Finocchiaro- Interim Senior Pastor

A.B., Mount Holyoke College
M. Div., Yale University, Divinity School

Gina brings much energy to Wolfeboro and Arts on the Edge with her arrival. Music has always been a spiritual expression for Gina, who enjoys singing individually and in choirs of various genres. Gina also harbors a great love for poetry and literature, nature and dogs! She is passionate about ministry in this emerging and renewing age of the church, and has served United Church of Christ congregations in Connecticut and Maine before arriving at First Congregational Church, UCC of Wolfeboro.

Walter Butts

W.E. Butts, the current Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, is the author of several poetry collections, including Sunday Evening at the Stardust Café, which was chosen as a finalist for the 2005 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry and selected winner of the 2006 Iowa Source Poetry Book Prize, and the chapbooks What to Say if the Birds Ask (Pudding House Publications, 2007) Sunday Factory (Finishing Line Press, 2006), White Bees (Oyster River Press, 2001), and A Season of Crows (Igneus Press, 2000). He has received two Pushcart Prize nominations and a Massachusetts Artists Foundation Award, and has taught in poetry workshops at the University of New Hampshire, and has been a featured presenter at several community events and conferences. In 2007, he was a visiting writer at Cornell College, Iowa. He is a member of the faculty of the BFA in Writing Program at Goddard College, and is listed in two editions of Who's Who Among America's Teachers. His poems appear frequently in such magazines as Atlanta Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Cimarron Review, Mid-American Review, and Poetry East, and have been anthologized in The Anthology of Magazine Verse (Monitor Books), Under the Legislature of Stars: 62 New Hampshire Poets (Oyster River Press, 1999), Open Door: A Poet Lore Anthology, 1980 – 1996, (Writer’s Center Editions, 1996), Heartbeat of New England: Contemporary Nature Poetry (Tiger Moon Press, 2000), Leaves by Night, Flowers by Day (Iowa Source, 2006), and elsewhere www.webutts.com

Alice Fogel

Alice B. Fogel’s most recent book of poetry, Be That Empty, was on the national poetry bestseller list in 2008. Her 2009 book, Strange Terrain: A Poetry Handbook for the Reluctant Reader, is a nonacademic guide for those who don’t “get” poetry. A recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, her work has appeared in the Best American Poetry series, former Poet Laureate Robert Hass’s Poet’s Choice, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Pleiades, and many other anthologies and journals. Publishers Weekly has compared her work to Rilke’s, and poet Charles Simic has said, “Her poems shine with intelligence. Fogel is a poet alert to every nuance of the inner life, a true phenomenologist of the soul in the New England tradition of Emily Dickinson and Jane Kenyon.” She works as a writing mentor, reading group facilitator, and arts-in-the-schools instructor; and, through her company, Lyric Couture, is a designer of one-of-a-kind clothing made of reprised materials. She lives in Acworth, NH. Visit her website at www.alicebfogel.com.

Michael Guadagno

Michael Guadagno is a professional Artist-Educator with great involvement in the Fine Arts. He has an extensive list of exhibitions and awards as well as many large commissions for works in clay. He works in mixed media and his most recent works are marble sculptures. Michael has studied in the USA and Italy and has a strong background in classical western art.

Josie Campbell Dellenbaugh

Josie Campbell Dellenbaugh was born in Albany, NY, in 1948, the daughter of a surgeon and a watercolor artist. In 1969 she received a B.A. in Fine Arts with a Biology minor from Chatham University, Pittsburgh, PA. That same year she married Geoff
Dellenbaugh. They moved to New Jersey in 1974, where they raised their 3 children. In 1976 she began her studies of three dimensional art at the Johnson Atelier in Princeton, NJ. In 1977 she took a course in the process of bronze foundry at Rutgers
College, Camden, NJ. She concurrently studied the technique of stone carving with hand tools at the Princeton Art Association. In 2008 she attended a carving symposium in Marble, CO, where she learned the art of carving with power tools. She attends
several workshops at the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center in W. Rutland, VT every year. She and her husband split time between their homes in Glastonbury, CT, and Center Harbor, NH.

Matt Jasper

Matt began writing for publication in student magazines at the University of New Hampshire shortly after his arrival there in 1984. As an undergraduate he won the Dick Shay Memorial Award (an award that drew submissions of fiction and poetry from graduate and undergraduate students) and He edited the UNH literary magazine for two years. In 1988 he founded a small press called Tray Full of Lab Mice which published chapbooks and magazines that included work by Charles Simic, Mekeel McBride, Russell Edson, Franz Wright, and many others.

Matt's work has appeared in Grand Street, Fine Madness, Evergreen Review, and elsewhere. Chapbooks have been issued by Contre Coup Press and Publishing Genius. A book of poems entitled Moth Moon was published by Blazevox Books in late 2009.

Blaze Box Books published Mr. Jasper's book of poems entitled Moth Moon in late 2009. Matt has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes by Fine Madness and No Colony.

His work has been called “documentary surrealism” by several critics, much of this work describes or is inspired by mental illness. Some of it is about parenting.

He has given many readings at UNH, The Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program, and elsewhere. He lives in Farmington, NH with his wife and four children and is working on a novel and a book-length poem.

Alla Kovgan

Alla Kovgan is a Boston-based filmmaker, born in Moscow (Russia). Her films – and films that she co-directed –have been presented worldwide including at the Sundance, Rotterdam, Toronto, Melbourne, Durban, Oberhausen, Clemont-Ferrand, MOMA, Louvre, Centre Pompidou, PBS (US), ZDF (Germany) and numerous others. Alla's most recent film NORA (2008), her collaboration with the British filmmaker David Hinton, is an art film – a poetic biography of the Zimbabwean choreographer Nora Chipaumire. NORA has been an official selection of over 80 festivals, received 23 awards and will be broadcast on PBS in 2010. The two latest documentaries, which Alla co-directed and edited, an Emmy-nominated "Traces of the Trade" (2007) and “My Perestroika” (2009), premiered at Sundance and on P.O.V. (PBS). Since 1999, Alla has been involved into interdisciplinary collaborations – creating intermedia performances (with KINODANCE Company), dance films and documentaries about dance such as “Movement (R)evolution Africa” (with Joan Frosch). Alla's projects have been supported by Open Society Institute, LEF Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding, Bank of America Celebrity Series, among others. Since 2000, she has taught and curated dance film and avant-garde cinema worldwide as the Programmer of St. Petersburg Dance Film Festival KINODANCE (Russia) and as a co-Curator of Balagan Film Series (Boston). In 2009 Alla was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship and a Brother Thomas Fellowship for artists working at a high level of excellence and creativity. www.kinodance.org

Ingrid Schatz

Ingrid Schatz is a Boston-based dancer and choreographer. She received her BFA in dance from the University of Massachusetts in 1997, and has made a career of pushing the boundaries of dance, and in the process has studied aerial dance, horse handling, stilt walking, and Authentic Movement. Ms. Schatz currently collaborates with visual artist Michael Dowling and dancer/choreographer DeAnna Pellecchia with whom she founded Kairos Dance Theater, and has collaborated/worked with Bennett Dance Company, Nicola Hawkins Dance Company, Caitlin Corbett Dance Company, Joyce Lim, Ernesto Pujol, Jin-Wen Yu and others. Ms. Schatz is a principal dancer and rehearsal director for Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works with whom she has toured, taught, collaborated and choreographed throughout the US, and in France and Russia. She has been called "...strong, dramatically intense..." by the Chicago Sun-Times and "...a committed and superbly skilled dancer..." by the Boston Globe. www.kinodance.org

Neely Bruce

Neely Bruce, Professor of Music and American Studies at Wesleyan University, is a composer, conductor, pianist and scholar of American music. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa; he received his DMA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His principal teachers were Ben Johnston, Hubert Kessler, J. F. Goossen, Lara Hoggard, Charles Hamm, Byrnell Figler, Roy McAllister, Soulima Stravinsky and Sophia Rosoff. He has been visiting professor and artist-in-residence at Middlebury College, Bucknell University, the University of Michigan, and at Brooklyn College. He is the chorus director for Connecticut Opera, and, with his wife Phyllis, co-director of music at South Congregational Church in Middletown, Connecticut. Bruce has worked indefatigably to promote American music of all periods. He was on the Editorial Committee of New World Records and was the first chairman of the New England Sacred Harp Singing. He is one of nineteen living composers represented in The Sacred Harp, and music in this style is an important part of his output. In June of 1997 Larry Gordon conducted Village Harmony, an inter-generational choir of shaped note singers, in a touring program devoted to Bruce’s music in shaped note style. Gordon’s recording of these choruses was released in 2000. In 2003 Bruce, along with Peter Amidon and Larry Siegel, conducted the choral group Festival Harmony in pieces from their shaped-note œuvre. www.neelybrucemusic.com

Christopher Layer

Christopher Layer is an extremely diverse musician. His orchestral appearances include: The National Symphony (Kennedy Center), The Alabama, Detroit, Lafayette, Knoxville, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Muncie, and Richmond Symphony Orchestras, as well as The Aspen Festival Orchestra, and The Bard Festival Orchestra. Festivals include: Moab Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Bard Music Festival, Festival Internacionale de Louisianne, Musiksfest-Regensburg, BDR, The Bard Festival at Lincoln Center. Concert Production: First folk concert Ticonderoga, "La Nouvelle Orleans" and "Music In The Barn" for Project America at the 92nd St. Y.

Mr. Layer composed the music score for Irish independent film Exile. Solo recordings include Out of This Air and Return of the Rivers, both available through the artist. Christopher is a native "Hoosier" and the son of soprano Dolores Layer and fiddler Ed Layer. Since 1996 he has been the principle pipe soloist and flautist for the Trinity Irish Dance Company and currently resides in New York City.

Lee Barrett

Lee Barrett is the Mary B. and Henry P. Stager Professor of Theology at Lancaster Theological Seminary where he has taught since September 1993. Prior to this, Lee taught theology at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Virginia. He holds B.A., M.A., M.Div., and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University. Lee’s interests include the relationship between the doctrinal traditions of the Christian churches and contemporary culture. He is the author of essays concerning the present-day implications of the theology of the Reformed tradition, as well as the thoughts of Søren Kierkegaard. Lee is particularly interested in the theological significance of literature and the visual arts.Lee’s wife, Betty Snapp-Barrett, is a pastoral counselor in Lancaster, PA. They live in Lancaster . www.lancasterseminary.edu

Elizabeth Nordbeck

Moses Brown Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Andover Newton Theological School

In her writings, lectures and work as a resource to national and international church bodies, Beth Nordbeck offers insights into the historical roots and precedents of today’s trends in American religion. Her interests range from the roots of Congregationalism in New England to ecumenism and new religious movements.

Her recent books address denominational consolidation and expansion in the 19th century and the history of Congregationalism in New Hampshire. In 2002 she published a history of the Massachusetts Council of Churches and “O God Tender and Just: Reflections and Responses after September 11, 2001.” An ordained United Church of Christ minister, she is co-editor of Prism, the theological journal for the denomination. She joined the faculty in 1990 and served as dean for 11 years.

Muriel Angelil

Muriel Angelil studied art at the "Bicchi School", Alexandria, Egypt; The Carpenter Center, Harvard University; The Boston Museum School; The Mendocino Art Center, California; The San Miguel de Allende Art School, Mexico and The Rhode Island School of Design. Muriel exhibited her relief and sculptural forms of rope and yarn until 1979. She has done extensive work in a variety of media including paperpulp, acrylics, oils and watercolors. Her paintings are inspired by natureÕs geological formations and her installations are rooted in spiritual and environmental themes. www.murielangelil.com.

Greg Spitzer

Greg Spitzer is an evolving stone carver working in alabaster, marble and limestone. He creates one of a kind abstract and figurative pieces. Spitzer began experimenting with stone sculpture while living in Denver. There, he worked alongside the various carvers at The Purple Door Studios. He moved to the Boston area in 2008 and began learning foundry practices at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Spitzer carves stone to create unique biomorphic forms. His cast metal work also reflects this spirit. Much of Spitzer's work centers on abstracting the human figure and experimenting with negative space and volume. His pieces represent familiar complexities. By manipulating form and exploring gender ambiguity in sculpture, Spitzer forces us to examine how we view and interpret the body and how we define gender and beauty.

Spitzer currently works at the Hillside Sculpture Studios in Medford, MA and he is being represented by L'attitude Gallery on Newbury Street in Boston, MA and The Walsingham Gallery in Newburyport, MA. www.sculpturebyspitzer.com

Joan Schwartz

Joan Schwartz (artist statement): My sculpture reflects my interest in the interaction of space and form, inside and outside, body and spirit, and the nexus of science, technology, and art. As a former dancer I am drawn to the nuance of gesture and the ability of the body to communicate through subtle changes of position. As a writer who reports on the results of contemporary scientific research I am fascinated by the endless complexity of relationships in the natural world. As a lover of mythology and the stories and art of indigenous people throughout the world I see a continuous process of — human, plant, animal — and elemental forces — earth, air, sky, and water.
My installations respond not only to their immediate physical environment, but also to the time and space in which we live. Increasingly I am drawn to use recycled and recyclable materials to point to the enourmous amount of needless consumption in our daily lives.

My process in clay is derived in part from the pottery traditions of the Hopi and Navaho people. I work primarily in terra cotta, because it is "the earth itself." I hand build the sculptural forms, coiling and smoothing in traditional ways, but guiding the walls in non-traditional directions. I finish the pieces with multiple washes of oil paint, building subtle layers of color as the pigment is absorbed into the body of the fired clay. Although my starting point is often a live model, I generally work with only a single body part or portion of the torso and allow the growing sculpture to transform, turning inward, changing direction, elongating, or contracting, to follow the inner logic of its own creation. My sitting figures grow from my own experience in meditation practice. www.studioswithoutwalls.org.

Morris Norvin

Morris Norvin began studying art at the age of 8 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. At age 12, Morris began taking figure sculpture classes with Ralph Rosenthal at the Museum of Fine Arts. He continued throughout high school and then went on to graduate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Today he teaches the very same sculpture classes he took from Ralph as a child.
Morris has worked with a diverse range of materials including metal, wax, clay, wood, plasticine, paper, glass and polymers. His preferred method is welded steel incorporating found, functional objects which he terms"Junk Art." He takes pride in using the objects as he finds them with little if any manipulation. Each piece will someday be the perfect part of a particular sculpture. A planing tool might become a high heel or a gear chain could end up being a tail. Each piece has a specific purpose different from its original function. His work is mainly figurative and somewhat anatomical. www.stoneybrookfinearts.com.

Zach Gabbard

Zach Gabbard (artist's statement):I am a mold maker by trade and a mad scientist by design. During my youth I spent a lot of time accidentally slicing open my fingers with serrated knives while reconstructing cardboard packaging into elaborate toys. These days I make and sell work professionally as well as run a one-man atelier. Bearing these things in mind, it is of no great surprise that last month while I was about to enter a massive abandoned building that a throwaway scrap of plastic should heighten the wonder and complexity of life for me.

On a previous occasion I had cased the hulking industrial specter and recovered a fabulous steel object that I immediately worked into Shadow Trap. This initial find lead me to assume there were treasures galore to be found within. I jump at any chance to acquire disenfranchised consumer objects that help me to elevate the mundane. For me a found object must be somewhat ambiguous in order to become a unified part of my work without coming off as a standalone readymade. The access into the building was a ground level ventilation duct, full of twisted metal, leading into a collapsed boiler room. The shaft was the dimension of a coffin, ending abruptly in a ladder descending a twelve-foot drop to a soggy asbestos floor. I was parked outside in my truck, and opening a value pack of flashlights, when the little plastic doodad that was to uplift me so fell onto my lap. The form was utterly abstract and yet still maintained the look of purposefulness. For me purposefulness without actual purpose is analogous to the predicament we face as humans where we try to create meaning for a universe with none inherent to it. I strive for the elimination of false moralities and meanings in my life and art. Only with their eradication can I be free to think and make judgments for myself. The shape in some ways resembled my use of obfuscated cap guns in the work Hydra, in that the cultural object was present and ordinary and yet hidden from initial detection. Controlling the speed with which a work penetrates its viewer is of importance to me. I decided to make a plaster block mold of its shape and then simply display the negative. Molds make the presence of negation palpable, and by having an object in negative I can imply it is dead and to be missed. Soon I was scrutinizing the other plastic packaging components, assessing their potential for a series of block molds that would stack together to form bizarre obelisks. It wasn’t long before I realized that so many little scraps of garbage were in fact potentially part of a transfigurative experience where the commonplace could indeed be exalted in a way that is very personal to me. The process of decomposing and reinventing the excesses of our consumer culture is sorely needed by this Wi-Fi jacked Roman soldier. I sometimes wonder if I am becoming Nietzsche’s last man, with no important battles left to fight, sitting on my laurels, choking down entertainment media, fast food, and pharmaceuticals with equal dispassion. As a result I feel a great need to render the “it” as “thou” in this information age life of mine. This activity helps me generate hope that reason and capitalism will indeed advance society rather then cause its slow implosion.

I went into the building and scoured it from top to bottom, finding no other objects suitable for my use. It is curious how I found what I was looking for despite looking for it in entirely the wrong way. Finding enlightenment in strange places has brought me to a sort of faith in chaos. I carry this faith of mine with me to the studio where I invite cross contamination not pretending to know what every component means. So long as there is positive equivalency between the components then the work is for me a philosophical and artistic success. www.gabbardstudios.com