Community Calendar

William Baczek Fine Arts, in Northampton, Massachusetts is pleased to announce the opening of two solo exhibitions which will run concurrently during the month of September. Charlie Hunter and Jeff Gola are two artists who focus on the American landscape, but in very different styles and mediums. Jeff Gola will be exhibiting a new body of work in egg tempera paintings and Charlie Hunter will be showing oil and acrylic paintings. The two exhibitions will be on display from Wednesday, September 3 through Saturday, October 18, 2025. The public is invited to an opening reception on Saturday, September 6 from 4 to 6 p.m.

Consistently rated the best local scavenger hunt since 2016!

Puzzling Adventures are a cross between a scavenger hunt, an adventure race, and an informative self-guided walking tour. Each adventure consists of a series of locations that you are guided to where you are required to answer a question or solve a puzzle to receive your next instruction. Compete as a group, individually or create multiple teams and race each other. Almost all of our adventures are designed to be wheelchair and stroller friendly and all are carefully crafted to be entertaining and informative with something to appeal to all ages. Complete the adventure as quickly as possible to win first place or take your time and enjoy the journey. Price is per team, not per person. Groups can be any size, but small groups are recommended for the best experience.

Enter the code EVENTPASS on the payment page for a $10 discount!

Most locations are available daylight hours every day.

The Norman Rockwell Museum is honored to present a rare series of early twentieth century lighting advertisements by Norman Rockwell and fellow Golden Age illustrators Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth, Dean Cornwell, Stanley Arthurs, Worth Brehm, and Charles Chambers created for Edison Mazda Lamps, a division of the General Electric Company. These luminous, richly painted works were widely circulated in published advertisements through the 1920s and are on loan to the Museum for the first time through the generosity of GE Aerospace.

Join us for a sweet kids' cookbook release: CUPCAKE CLASS! We’ll decorate cupcakes with local, best-selling children's baking authors Deanna Cook and Joy Howard.

CUPCAKE CLASS is ideal for bakers ages 8 and up, and offers step-by-step tips and tricks and creative designs that are perfect for birthday parties, holidays, and every day!

Participation is FREE. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Join us for fun and interactive programming inspired by the art of Norman Rockwell and Walter Wick, creator of the I Spy books for children. Try your hand at making art inspired by these beloved illustrators. You’ll want to return again and again with a variety of fun and engaging experiences for the whole family; it’s the perfect way to spend some quality time together!

For more information, visit https://www.nrm.org/events/list/?tribe_eventcategory%5B0%5D=795&hide_subsequent_recurrences=1

Capture the beauty of the Berkshires in this beginner-friendly “plein air” soft pastel workshop set on the Museum’s picturesque grounds. Surrounded by sweeping views, historic architecture, and vibrant late-summer landscapes, participants will explore pastel application techniques, composition, and color blending in an outdoor setting. All materials provided; no experience necessary.

Instructor: Caren Kinne, Manager of Learning & Engagement, Norman Rockwell Museum and practicing artist. Caren holds a BFA in Painting and a master’s in art education. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Rain Date: Saturday September 20 at 1:00 – 2:30pm.

For more information, visit https://www.nrm.org/events/from-nature-to-paper-beginner-pastel-workshop/

From Emotional Eating to Intuitive Eating: Reimagine a New Relationship with Food at Kripalu with Jenna Hollenstein, MS, RDN, CDN in the Berkshires September 12-14, 2025.

Emotional eating is a complex, multifaceted, and misunderstood issue. Few aspects of our relationship with food are as maligned as emotional eating, and our specific story about it contains hidden information essential to truly understanding our needs and ourselves.

You will:

+Learn how to decode your emotional eating.

+Understand what is happening in your body, heart, and mind in real time.

+Create a personalized menu of options to meet your needs with mindfulness, precision, and compassion.

Return home with a new way of looking at emotional eating, one that imagines it as an important form of communication from your inner teacher.

Jenna Hollenstein, MS, RDN, CDN, is an anti-diet dietitian, author, and meditation teacher who helps people struggling with chronic dieting, disordered eating, and body image.

Artists: Marianne Connolly and Rebecca Muller
Start Date: September 4, 2025
End Date: September 27, 2025
Reception Date: Thursday, September 4, 5–7:00 pm
Art Forum Online: September 18, 7:30 pm
Location name: Gallery A3
Hours: Thursday-Sunday, 2–7:00 pm
Address: 28 Amity St. 1D, Amherst, MA
City/Town: Amherst
Website: www.gallerya3.com
Description/info:
In Counterspells, Marianne Connolly works with intimately-scaled photography and hand-cut, hand-pasted collage, exploring familiar themes of nests, light, and winged beings while experimenting with new materials and methods. In Concatenations, Rebecca Muller exhibits several series of large-format photopolymer etchings and small groupings of mixed media assemblages composed of disparate matter and debris.

Take a guided walking tour of downtown Stockbridge and discover how the town and its inhabitants both inspired Norman Rockwell and appeared in some of his most iconic works of art. Explore the history of this 1734 village–including its Mohican origins.

Stops will include Norman Rockwell’s home on South Street, his first studio on Main Street, the Old Corner House (site of the original Norman Rockwell Museum), Chief John Konkapot’s property, the Red Lion Inn, the former site of Alice’s Restaurant, and more! 

These tours do not take place at the Museum. Tour groups will meet in front of The Old Corner House, 48 Main Street. Transportation to Main Street from the Museum is not provided. Event is rain or shine.

Meet in front of The Old Corner House, 48 Main Street; public on street parking, or designated spaces at Town Hall. Tour route is mostly flat, and on sidewalks.  

“New Songs for an Old Poet” is a series of four concerts spanning July through December 2025. Organized by long-time Valley vocalist Peter W. Shea, who is also the principal performer, the series presents an enormous variety of songs, all of them musical settings of the great nineteenth-century German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, whose verses have been set to music more than any other poet. All are works that Shea has in some way helped to bring into the world, either by suggestion, commission, or premiere, as part of his thirty- year project on Heine and the music his poetry continues to inspire.

“The Parting Summer” showcases the music of composer and pianist Kaeza Fearn, a former resident of the Pioneer Valley who now lives on Cape Cod. The major work is her song cycle “Der scheidende Sommer” (The Parting Summer) for voice and piano, based on a group of sixteen poems about a love affair with a woman named Kitty. In 1834 Heine sent a dozen of them to a composer friend, who unfortunately thought they were merely a joke. This inspired Shea to commission Fearn to write a complete, modern musical setting of Kitty’s story in 2006. The resulting song cycle was premiered by Shea and Monica Jakuc Leverett in 2009 on Fearn’s graduate composition recital at The Hartt School in West Hartford, CT. This will be its fifth performance. The other works on the concert include two stand-alone songs, the toy piano suite “A Day in the Life of a Toy Piano,” commissioned by Jakuc Leverett in 2015, and two short piano pieces performed by the composer.