Painter Christina Major works on her large portraitsfor the MFA exhibition at Florida Atlantic University.
Art: Florida Atlantic University’s current Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition at the Dorothy F. Schmidt Gallery on the college’s Boca Raton campus features the work of painter Christina Major and ceramicist Bethany Cohen.
Cohen’s exhibit, An Intimate Encounter, is a display of miniature repositories that the artist says reflects America’s “need for more in contrast to the human need for intimacy from within that abundance. It questions how one can find a level of kinship within excess.”
Major’s thesis exhibition, Components of Self, features huge portrait paintings on canvases that also are covered with writing, offering a deft exploration of the identities of painter and subject. The Schmidt Gallery is open Tuesday through Friday from 1 to 4 p.m., and on Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m. For more information, contact FAU galleries at www.fau.edu/galleries/or call 561-297-2966. The MFA exhibit will run through the summer.
Also ongoing at FAU is the Potters’ Guild Spring Pottery Sale, which begins today and concludes tomorrow in the Majestic Palm Room at the Student Union Building. Organized by FAU ceramics professor John McCoy, the sale includes both functional and sculptural ceramics by professors, students and professional artists. The sale’s hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and Saturday. – K. Deits
Pianist Hyojin Ahn.Music: At the end of January, the Canadian-born violinist Yuki Numata came to Stage West at the Duncan Theatre for a strong program of music by Bach, Ravel, Ysaye and American composer Ryan Francis. Her accompanist was the South Korea-born pianist Hyojin Ahn, like Numata also affiliated with Miami Beach’s New World Symphony.
The next performer in the series was supposed to be violinist Mikhail Simonyan, but he canceled due to illness, leaving the Stage West series shorter than scheduled. But this Wednesday, pianist Ahn will come to the rescue, performing a recital at Stage West to finish off the programming. She’s chosen Ravel’s Miroirs and the Moritz Moszkowski transcription of the Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, a selection that hearkens back to the great pianists of the last century. Violinist Ko Sugiyama, another New World fellow, then joins Ahn for the three Myths for violin and piano of the fascinating Polish composer Karol Szymanowski.
It’s a very interesting program, and a good way to close up the young artist’s showcase. Ahn performs at 3 p.m. Wednesday at Stage West, Duncan Theatre, Palm Beach State College, Lake Worth. Tickets: $20. Call 868-3309 or visit www.duncantheatre.org.
Pianist Joseph Kalichstein.As it happens, Simonyan is in town this weekend, where he’s appearing as part of a piano quartet in the Miami Friends of Chamber Music series at Gusman Hall on the campus of the University of Miami. The eminent pianist Joseph Kalichstein will be joined by Simonyan, violist Cynthia Phelps and cellist William De Rosa for the Piano Quartet (in E-flat, Op. 47) of Schumann and one of the two quartets of Mozart. Kalichstein was here earlier in the season with the rest of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson trio in a concert at the Kravis Center that featured a new work by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.
The concert begins at 4 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $30. Call 305-372-2795 for more information or visit www.miamichambermusic.org. — G. Stepanich