Outgoing President Joan C. Lester’s Letter to the Membership

Greetings ! After two years of monthly “talks” with you as MAC President, this is my last letter because my term of office is over. It has been an honor to be your President. It has also been fun, very busy, interesting, often challenging, yet always rewarding; I have loved it all.

MAC is a very special place. It is more than the beautiful building and grounds and a Board of Directors who plan artistic events. It is the environment of creativity and caring. It is the Founding Members who gave it life. It is our present members who sustain that life and growth. It is the ambience of history and local culture. It is all of us who support the philosophy of art in its myriad forms as necessary for a full life. It is the artists. It is the art lovers. It is being part of a marvelous venture.

For me this venture has been a particularly vivid experience. As many of you know, my husband Lee & I moved to Italy just after our honeymoon, expecting to stay only for a year or two. Twenty-four years later we did leave, but while there we were blessed to live with the great art, architecture, music, and culture of the western world. Vasari wrote his “Lives of the Artists” about the men whose works became familiar to us. The past is alive wherever you go in Italy, in every city, village, and countryside, on the streets where we lived and the churches and museums we know so well. But Rome, Caput Mundi, is my spiritual home and that past is part of me wherever else I may be.

Then back here in Lee’s home town I found art in the present, both in the sense of time and as a gift. MAC has given me the opportunity to know today’s artists right here, to see them work, to see the world through their eyes, to marvel at how they can change any substance into something unique born of their thoughts and feelings – and to know them as colleagues.

As an art lover, these vastly different experiences have been the best of both worlds: the past and the present. I feel truly blessed and I thank MAC, and all of you, for the pleasure. Frankly, Marlborough and the region is very fortunate to have this Arts Center with all that it signifies.   I am sincerely grateful to be a part of it all.

This sounds like a Farewell in this season of Salve et Vale; it is, but only of a sorts. I have been asked to stay on as Vice- President to Fran Terase’s 4th Presidency. Fran and I are also co-chairmen of the ART PARK committee, therefore seeing that Vision come to fruition means I can be part of MAC’s future too. We still need a few thousand dollars and with additional help through continuing donations we will secure ART PARK for everyone’s future enjoyment.

So I close this letter as I began, with greetings and sincerest thanks to you all.    Grazie mille.

Joan

Pot-Luck Picnic this Monday, June 15

Remember the Members’ POT-LUCK PICNIC is this Monday, June 15, at Blish Park in the Pavilion.
The Board is hosting with a great Buffet of favorite foods. This is the time to meet them all!
Come and bring friends, and a dish to share.
Hope to see you all there at 6:00 p.m.!

Marlborough Elementary School Band plays at Marlborough Arts Center

The Marlborough Elementary School Band under the direction of Maestra Donna Arsenault played an open-air concert Wednesday, June 10, 2015, from 7-8 p.m. on the beautiful grounds of the Marlborough Arts Center. The twenty student band members played a variety of music including the opening America to the memorable Pink Panther Theme.

It was a perfect June evening. The air was warm and comfortable for all who sat surrounding the band on chairs or blankets they had brought. The early evening sky was a cloudless blue. The flowering trees of the lawn and the Arts Center building itself presented a lovely background for the young musicians who thrilled the audience with their professionalism and skills. The finishing touch was the “Ice Cream Lady” who brought her truck of goodies available for everyone to enjoy.

The Marlborough Arts Center, a regional center for the arts, has a long history of collaboration with the schools and hosts both the Elmer Thienes-Mary Hall Elementary School’s Spring and Winter Concert.

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Marlborough Arts Center’s Annual Pot-Luck Picnic and General Meeting

On Monday, June 15, 6:00 p.m. at Blish Park, the Marlborough Arts Center holds its Annual General Membership Pot-Luck Picnic hosted by the Board of Directors who set up a great buffet of their own favorite dishes. Every member, and friends of the arts, is invited to attend and is welcome to bring a dish of their own to add to the largess.

Come meet the Board in person, greet other members and friends, hear the latest report on the ART PARK project, and have fun in the lovely setting of the Pavilion with Lake Terramuggus in the background. What a way to start the week! Each year we look forward to sharing this time together and each year seems nicer than the last. And, mid-June’s early evening warmth promises to add the “cherry on top” for this treat of the senses.