Every two months, Juni Van Dyke, Director of the Rose Baker Art Program selects two artists from the program to have their works exhibited in the lobby of the Rose Baker Senior Center. For the spring 2017 exhibit, Juni selected two artists with very different styles: Judy Magee and Barbara Jobe.

Juni Van Dyke (c) with Judy Magee (l), and Barbara Jobe, the 2017 Spring Artists of the Month.

Judy Magee cannot remember a time when she was not painting or drawing. As a child she began drawing as a way to pass the time and the interest has only grown over the years.

Although she never had formal art training, one of her aunts had a deep appreciation for art and inspired Judy to believe in her talent and pursue her own accomplished versatility and style. In the spring exhibit, you will see the wide rage of subjects that Judy has captured on canvas and the variety of techniques she has mastered.

Barbara Jobe says she has always been a crafts person, creating pieces of art with tile and fabric. Painting is a new undertaking for Barbara as she has only been painting for a few years. She credits her advancement in painting to the encouragement, help and advice that Juni and the other participants in the art group have provided.

Barbara’s paintings are a window into her range of creativity. Whether she is solving a problem by fabricating creative boxes, or creating scenes in clay, watercolor or acrylic, her work is a colorful and interesting expression of self. In the exhibit, you will see a progression of her work and be amazed at how accomplished this new artist is.

The works of Judy and Barbara will be on display on display from now until the end of June in the main lobby of the Rose Baker Senior Center at 6 Manuel F. Lewis Street in Gloucester. The show can be viewed weekdays from 9am to 4pm.

Want to turn your food and garden scraps into some coveted “black gold” this summer? Then come learn how to start your own backyard composting system from the experts at Black Earth Compost! Both the urban and suburban gardener will learn easy, low-stress ways to turn your scraps into a useful organic soil amendment!

Tickets here!

The Seaside Garden Club’s Annual Plant Sale and Auction is Tuesday, May 9^th at the Manchester Community Center. This event is the Seaside Garden Club’s only fundraiser for the year.  Proceeds help fund their community service projects and programs.

This is a great opportunity to purchase tried and true perennials from the Garden Club Members’ gardens along with garden art and contributions from area businesses including:

• Mulch (delivered!) from Pallazola Brothers
• Ryan and Wood Distilleries
• Neptune Harvest Fertilizers
• Marshall’s Farm Stand
• Sea Meadow Gifts and Talbots
• Seven Central, Shea’s, Windward Grill, Ithaki and many more…
• Gloucester and Rockport Garden Tour Tickets
• Any much more…

6 pm – Plant Sale

7 pm – Auction starts

At this month’s GAAC meeting, 8:00 Friday night, May 12, at the Lanesville Community Center, we are thrilled to host Ed Los, a long-term member of the “Digital Access to a Sky Century team at Harvard” (DASCH). Ed will bring us up to date on the project to digitize over 500,000 images of the night sky collected on glass photographic plates between 1885 and 1993.

Image: Portion of Plate b41215 of Halley’s comet taken on April 21, 1910 from Arequipa, Peru with the 8-inch Bache Doublet, Voigtlander.

These images offer us far more than mere historic value. They have greatly advanced what we know of the composition of stars, their inherent luminosities and distances, and, as a 100-year record of the skies, they are sure to continue to inform our understanding. Already as part of this ongoing project more than 162,000 plates, along with data from a card catalog and 1200 associated log books, have been scanned into digital files, to preserve them and make them more readily available to researchers.

Ed will explain the ongoing project and its importance to our knowledge of the night sky, and will tell us some of the many ways that these data are even now helping us understand the universe around us. We’re very pleased to have Ed as this month’s presenter, for what is sure to be an entertaining and informative evening at GAAC. We hope to see you there.

The Gloucester Area Astronomy Club meets on the second Friday of the month at 8:00 at the Lanesville Community Center, 8 Vulcan Street, Lanesville. All are welcome; no special knowledge or equipment is needed to have a great time. There is plenty of free parking, and there is no cost. For more on the astronomy club see our website or Facebook page, or follow us on Twitter, @gaacster. Come see us!

This year’s luncheon recognized Wellspring House program participant, Jill Brown and honored Margo Casey of the United Way, Joan Whitney of Healthy Gloucester Collaborative and Rose Evans of the Department of Community Housing and Development.  Keynote speaker MA State Attorney Maura Healey spoke at length about the impact community support and educational opportunity have on the empowerment of women and families.  It was a powerful and inspirational event, drawing together a diverse representation of more than 650 women from communities all over the North Shore and beyond.