The Vero Beach Museum of Art is trotting out its best crystal this weekend for an exhibition of studio glass from the museum’s permanent collection.
Among the artists featured is Harvey Littleton, who died at 91 in December 2013 and for many years kept a studio on U.S. 1 between Vero and Fort Pierce.
Two of his works were the first examples of studio glass purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Widely known as the father of studio glass, Littleton offered the first college course in glassblowing in 1962 at the University of Wisconsin. His students included Dale Chihuly, who also has a piece in the show.
In the half-century that followed, other techniques were developed beyond traditional glassblowing, and the museum exhibits examples of those methods, too.
Masters of Studio Glass will be up through Sept. 11.
At the Foosaner Museum in the Eau Gallie arts district of Melbourne, the exhibit “Population” has just opened by California artist Ray Turner. His 600 small, oil-on-glass portraits are hung like a mosaic and include paintings he’s done of people from whatever city he’s showing in.
And at the Ruth Funk Museum of Textile Arts, there’s a great exhibit to see if you’re rusty on your elements. Quilters have taken the periodic table as inspiration and made art quilts. Along with finding inspiration from the elements, the artists were asked to expand on the usual cloth and thread, and use other surfaces and stitching materials.
That last requirement officially broadens the definition of studio art quilt. The museum called this a signature exhibition for the international organization Studio Art Quilt Associates, a group of 3,000 art quilters, some of whom created the current exhibit.
Also at the Funk, the sixth exhibit in a series called “A View from Within,” in which quilters create works from medical imagery of the human body. The current show features two collaborating artists, Paula Chung and Karen Rips. Rips will be giving a gallery talk July 23.
At our own arts district’s gallery stroll Friday, Gallery 14 will be featuring the underwater photos of the Tasmanian-born Greg Hills, a former Royal Australian Navy helicopter pilot. And they just welcomed a new artist to the coop: Beth-Anne Fairchild, who’s been showing her oils at Melbourne’s Fifth Avenue Art Gallery.
It’s a Comedy Zone weekend again at Riverside Theatre, with Ron Feingold as headliner. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate in psychology with a master’s degree in counseling, he now is a cruise ship entertainer, along with working comedy clubs. Also on the ticket is Doug Almeida, a native of Queens whose bread and butter is corporate presenter for some of the country’s largest financial planning firms.
Comedy Zone shows include a concert outside the theater. Friday night the band is Wiley Nash and Saturday it’s Big Coque. Both bands do a mix of blues and rock. Music starts at 6 p.m.; the comedy sets are at 7:30 and 9:30.
Weird Al Yankovic is playing at the Kravis Center Saturday night. His pop-music parody has won him four Grammys and he’s sold more comedy albums than anyone else. That, despite the fact that he started out in high school as an accordion player with a bad case of bashful. He’s calling this his Mandatory World Tour. Two years ago, with his hit “Word Crimes,” a play on Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” he earned his mandatory one-per-decade spot on the Billboard Top 40 chart. It was his fourth; the only other artists who can match that are Madonna and Michael Jackson.
Thursday, June 9, at Melbourne’s King Center, the golden-oldies Happy Together Tour returns with a roster of musicians from a number of back-in-the-day bands, including Paul Revere and the Raiders, Three Dog Night and the Turtles. Make sure your appetite is large because this concert sounds supersized: The tagline on the King Center web page reads “59 Billboard Top 40 Solid Gold Hits in One Concert!”
