Art
The Vineyard may yet be the scene of another big fish film under the eye of Steven Spielberg: the Jaws director’s studio, DreamWorks, has just bought the film rights for a soon to be released book about the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.
The book, The Big One: An Island, an Obsession and the Furious Pursuit of a Great Fish, by David Kinney, published by Atlantic Monthly, will be released on April 8.
Against the backdrop of a sustained national recession, the board of directors for the YMCA of the Martha’s Vineyard voted unanimously last Friday to begin construction on the long-awaited 38,000-square-foot YMCA building to be built across from the regional high school on the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road.
In this year-long serialized novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native Islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after two decades to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Abe fears and detests Richard Moby, the CEO of an off-Island wholesale nursery, Broadway. Convinced that Moby wants to destroy Abe personally, and all Island-based landscaping/nursery businesses generally, Abe is obsessed with “taking down” Moby.
Abigail McGrath, of Oak Bluffs, is researching and interviewing for a film on the artists of the Harlem Renaissance, a documentary called Chick Nor Child.
Call him a professional fighter, a specialist swashbuckler, the Errol Flynn of our era: Broadway combat choreographer David Brimmer next week bursts onto the Island stage for a week-long residency. He will teach a free public workshop for children and adults as well as work intensively with students at the regional high school.
Family Planning Art Show
Preparations have begun for this year’s Annual Friends of Family Planning Art Show Benefit which takes place May 21 to 24, Memorial Day weekend. New artists are invited to participate and returning artists are welcomed back. Paintings, all media and furniture, pottery, three-dimensional art, jewelry and weaving are all encouraged.