AMHERST — Local artists have two opportunities to participate in Amherst Public Art Commission initiatives, with the next round of Electrify Amherst getting underway and the Town Hall art gallery available for shows.
Electrify Amherst, started in 2018 and funded by the Amherst Cultural Council, with support from the Amherst Business Improvement District, has artists create paintings on utility boxes. So far, 16 have been completed around town.
Three artists will be selected for the latest round, with a $650 stipend awarded.
The boxes to be painted are on the North Pleasant Street end of the alley between Moge Tea and the Douglass Funeral Service; on Amity Street at the west entrance to the parking lot between Amherst Coffee and PeoplesBank; and on the Town Common, just south of the parking area where Spring Street crosses the greenspace.
Both established and emerging artists are invited to apply. To get more information, go to amherstma.gov/call-for-artists, with proposals due Aug. 7.
For the gallery, bi-monthly exhibits showcase local artists. Located on both the first and second floors of Town Hall, the gallery has space to display up to 18 objects and is open when Town Hall is.
A variety of artistic media are welcome including paintings, drawings, photographs, multimedia compositions or fabric works. The Public Art Commission, established in 1990, hosts a public reception for each artist.
Shade tree happenings
The Public Shade Tree Committee is holding its annual potluck picnic on the North Common in front of Town Hall Aug. 4 at 5:30 p.m. The committee is inviting tree lovers, both in town and from other communities, to the celebration.
The committee is also developing and maintaining a pollinator garden outside Town Hall, designed to support bees, butterflies, beetles and birds with native flowers and shrubs.
Amherst has been a pollinator-friendly community for more than six years and is responsible for providing pollinators with safe, secure habitats on town-owned land.
Police changes
Bill Laramee, a community liaison officer who established the department’s comfort dog program, regularly bringing Auggie to community events, has retired after 31 years as an Amherst patrol officer.
Town Manager Paul Bockelman wrote in his weekly report that Laramee’s duties of doing outreach, especially to area college students and neighborhoods where quality-of-life is impacted by loud parties, are being taken on by Sgt. Janet Griffin and Detective Yvonne Feliciano.
Griffin has 28 years in policing and has served 21 years in the Massachusetts Army National Guard, where she became the first female platoon sergeant of the 211th Military Police Battalion. Griffin deployed twice, including a tour in Afghanistan and Iraq, and earned numerous accolades.
Feliciano is trained in a variety of specialties including sexual assault investigation. She also serves as an adventure academy staff member and was formerly a field training officer. Feliciano’s been with the department for 21 years.
Saving the Lebrón-Wiggins-Pran Cultural Center
An effort is underway to preserve what exists at the Lebrón-Wiggins-Pran Cultural Center on the Hampshire College campus.
With a GoFundMe site already in place, Allyse Brockington, a Hampshire College graduate is working alongside student Tyler Parks to preserve the cultural center. The site has been known for activism related to Black, Indigenous and people of color and holds an extensive archives of the experiences of students of color. There is also worry about murals in the building being painted over.
Brockington recently appealed for help from the Historical Commission, though Walker Powell, a town planner, said the town’s Cultural Council, the Jones Library special collections or Ancestral Bridges might be more appropriate to provide assistance.
The GoFundMe write-up notes the center was founded in 1989 as a result of the Dakin Takeover a year earlier, led by Students of Under-Represented Cultures and Ethnicities, or SOURCE, a coalition of groups for identifying students of color.
The center has long supported the college’s commitment to antiracism. The archives are housed mostly in the Mitziko Sawada Resource Library, named for a member of the cultural center community who was committed to knowledge and multiculturalism.
New assistant planning director
Alexis Wheeler has joined the town as the assistant director of Planning and Economic Development, filling a vacancy when Nate Malloy left earlier this year to become Hadley’s town administrator.
The department still has a planner position vacant, but Bockelman said this will help deal with the existing workload.
