The Swellesley Report

More than you really want to know about Wellesley, Mass.

BabsonARTS exhibit comes of age at Hollister Gallery

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BabsonARTS Announces A Coming of Age: Paintings by LaShonda Cooks and Jamaal Eversley Artist Talk and Reception: Friday, September 15, 4:30 P.M. Exhibit on View: September 15-October 26 Hollister Gallery, Babson College Wellesley, MA — BabsonARTS is pleased to announce A Coming of Age: Paintings by LaShonda Cooks and Jamaal Eversly, from September 15 through October 26 at the Hollister Gallery, Babson College. The exhibition will open with an Artists Talk and Reception on Friday, September 15 at 4:30 P.M. in the Gallery.   This joint exhibition features two new series by two 2010 alumni: The Pursuit of Womanhood by LaShonda Cooks and Smells like Teen Spirit by Jamaal Eversley. Cooks has found strength and solace in painting women who define and defy societal roles. In this exhibition she combines her paintings with text collage to create a large mixed-media installation depicting her favorite female identifying influencers and icons, from familial to famous. Eversley’s bold paintings and drawings integrate influences of Geometric Abstraction and Pop Art with the West Indian palette of Barbados. His compositions are driven by the fictional characters that inhabit them; the focal character in this series is Eversley’s alter ego, Spencer Ward, a nerd in pursuit of love.  Jamaal Eversley, born in 1988, hails from Randolph, MA. With a business degree from Babson College, he has decided to pursue his talents as an eccentric abstract artist, intertwining business with the arts in order to serve the community. His art has been exhibited at Massachusetts General Hospital and shown throughout the South Shore and Boston area including Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. In the past couple of years, he has received several public art grants to bring his colorful patterns to the community and was featured in the Boston Globe for one of his grant funded murals. This year, he has received three grants to create bold abstract paintings for this exhibition and to establish a scholarship fund for Massachusetts high school seniors. Mor information about him, his scholarship and his work can be found at jamonit.carbonmade.com LaShonda Cooks is a Dallas-based artist and writer who loves exploring cultural norms, identity and beauty through words and images. She received her BS from Babson College in 2010. While there Cooks, the daughter of an art teacher, balanced her business education with her life-long interest in the arts, by working in the college’s ceramic studio and exploring color in glaze and underglaze tiles. Those color studies birthed her signature pointillist painting style that features short fluid strokes and multiple layers of colors. Painting people is her specialty. She regularly captures the features and essence of clients for commission pieces of all sizes and depicts her favorite icons and influencers on canvas as well. Her work has been featured in the Conception Dallas Art Show, Pancakes and Booze Art Show, ArtLoveMagic Girl Show and UrbanChatter Art Show. Her work can be found at www.shondasart.com or on her six-year- old blog, The Re-Education of LaShonda.  This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the Bridgewater, Brockton, and Randolph Cultural Councils, local agencies that are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. BabsonARTS presents visual and performing arts events and exhibitions at the Sorenson Center for the Arts and other venues on the campus of Babson College in Wellesley, MA.  Program offerings include works produced by Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Babson’s theater-in- residence; visiting artists, performers, and speakers; and the activities of Babson’s faculty-directed student groups.  The mission of BabsonARTS is to serve the educational needs of students, to provide cultural avenues to the residents of communities surrounding the campus, and to explore the connections among entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity through the arts.  For more information call 781.239.5880, or visit  www.babsonarts.org.

BabsonARTS announces its upcoming exhibition,  A Coming of Age: Paintings by LaShonda Cooks and Jamaal Eversley.

Artist Talk and Reception: Friday, September 15, 4:30 P.M.
Exhibit on View: September 15-October 26
Location: Hollister Gallery, Babson College

This joint exhibition features two new series by two 2010 alumni: The Pursuit of Womanhood by LaShonda Cooks, and Smells like Teen Spirit by Jamaal Eversley.

Cooks has found strength and solace in painting women who define and defy societal roles. In this exhibition she combines her paintings with text collage to create a large mixed-media installation depicting her favorite female identifying
influencers and icons, from familial to famous.

Eversley’s bold paintings and drawings integrate influences of Geometric Abstraction and Pop Art with the West Indian palette of Barbados. His compositions are driven by the fictional characters that inhabit them; the focal character in this series is Eversley’s alter ego, Spencer Ward, a nerd in pursuit of love.

This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the Bridgewater, Brockton, and Randolph Cultural Councils, local agencies that are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

For more information about BabsonARTS call 781.239.5880, or visit BabsonARTS.

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Bab$on boasts of $36M gift to help build new collaboration center

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babson college wellesley

Serial donors Robert and Jan Weissman have outdone themselves with a $36.3M gift to Babson College that the Wellesley school will use in part to start building a 10,000 sq.ft. collaboration center designed to help fuel entrepreneurial ideas.

Both Weissmans have degrees from Babson, as do two sons and a daughter-in-law, and the elder Weissmans have really paid things forward with a record-setting $100M in donations to the school so far. Robert Weissman made a killing in the cable TV and technology industries.

In prepping for its Centennial in 2019, Babson is going for a bold new look. It also has a mega-sports/recreation facility in the works, though has curiously not shed any light on how much that project might cost.

As for the new collaboration center, Babson says it will feature “a four-season garden for use by students and will serve as the gateway to Horn Library, making it much more accessible. Within the new structure will be group study areas and informal gathering spaces, a café, and a new home for the Stephen D. Cutler Center for Investments and Finance. This new construction will also establish centralized locations for Babson’s academic and extracurricular resource centers, create a state-of-the-art classroom, and provide additional faculty and staff offices.”

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First day of Wellesley schools is TODAY (Aug 30) — farewell summer

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Wellesley High School, sunset

It’s been a wonderful summer, but all good things must come to an end. Yup, ready or not Wednesday, August 30 is the first day of Wellesley Public Schools. If you’re just barely skidding into town after weeks of gadding about and aren’t even sure what time your brood is expected to show up ready to learn, I’d say a visit to the school website is in order.

Bates

Fiske

Hardy

Hunnewell

Schofield

Sprague

Upham

Wellesley Middle School

Wellesley High School

As for the private schools in town,  St. John School starts classes on August 30, while classes begin at Dana Hall  and at TenAcre Country Day School on September 5.

Babson College classes start August 30. MassBay Community College and Wellesley College start up on September 5.

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Wellesley Swimming Assoc. try-outs to be held at Babson College

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Wellesley SwimmingThe Wellesley Swimming Association is a family-oriented, non-profit private swimming club established in 1974 to provide an organized program of competitive swim training and team competition for boys and girls, ages 6-18. The Association, as members of the Winter Suburban Swim League, arranges for quality training facilities, coaching and swim meets from October through March. Members represent a number of area towns.

Registration for the September 17th tryouts is now OPEN
Registration Deadline: September 16, 2017

Where: Webster Center at  Babson College
Fees: $ 25/swimmer
Registration and all fees must be paid online prior to the event date.  No walk-ins, checks or cash will be accepted at tryouts
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Commonwealth Shakespeare Company at Babson announces 2017-2018 performances

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Founding Artistic Director Steven Maler of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, in residence at Babson College, has put up the 2017-18 Season, to be presented at the Sorenson Center for the Arts and on the Boston Commons:

Fear and Misery in the Third Reich: A Staged Reading

by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Eric Bentley, directed by Steven Maler;
featuring Tony Shalhoub and Brooke Adams
Monday, November 13, 7:00 P.M.
Carling-Sorenson Theater, Babson College
Tickets: $20-40

Brecht’s series of 18 interconnected playlets describe what life was like in German households in the 1930s as the Nazis came to power. Written while Brecht was in exile in Denmark and first performed in Paris in 1938, these poignant stories dramatize the suspicion and anxiety experienced by ordinary people, particularly Jewish citizens, as the power of Hitler grew.
Tickets: $20-$40
TICKETS NOW ON SALE

Meet the Cast and Support CSC — A limited number of tickets are available for a post-show reception with the cast. Tickets are $125 each and include priority seating for the performance. All proceeds to benefit CSC’s education and outreach programs.
PRIORITY SEATING + RECEPTION TICKETS ON SALE NOW

Death and the Maiden

A play by Ariel Dorfman, directed by Steven Maler
January 30–February 11
Sorenson Black Box, Babson College

After the fall of the totalitarian regime in a South American country, a former political prisoner finds herself face to face with the man she believes was her captor, a sadistic doctor who’s face she never saw. Is he guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, or is her paranoia getting the better of her?

Old Money

by Wendy Wasserstein, directed by Karen MacDonald
March 6–18, 2018
Carling-Sorenson Theater, Babson College

A dinner party in a fashionable home offers a rich and witty look at social classes and issues of wealth and privilege — from the Gilded Age of the early 20th century to the present day.

Macbeth

by William Shakespeare, directed by David Gammons
featuring the CSC2 Company of early-career actors
Carling-Sorenson Theater, Babson College
June 1, 2018

Shakespeare’s classic tragedy dramatizes the damaging effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake.

*Matinee performances available for schools and groups. For schedule and ticketing, contact Artistic Programs Coordinator Victoria Townsend at [email protected]

Richard III – Free Shakespeare on the Boston Common!

by William Shakespeare, directed by Steven Maler
July – August, 2018

Shakespeare’s searing chronicle of a ruthless leader’s ascension through betrayals and multiple murders, and the devastation he leaves in his wake as he gains power over the realm.

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