The overhauled former movie palace and museum of contemporary art that is now the Palm Beach Cultural Council building in downtown Lake Worth has a small gallery space inside. This Saturday, the council presents work by two local artists in the space: painter Alyssa di Edwardo and photographic artist Nathan W. Dean.
Both artists have exceptional stories. Di Edwardo was a paralegal and insurance adjuster before being laid off and returning to her abstract expressionist canvases. In addition to being registered in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, she also is featured in this year’s Fabulous at Every Age contest in Harper’s Bazaar as the winner in the 50s category.
Dean is a physicist and academic who worked at Iowa State, the University of George and the State University of New York before occupying top executive jobs at Florida Atlantic University, including being its vice president. He’s interested in showing the “magic of light and the mystery of shadow” in his pieces, gathered here under the rubric The Art of the Image.
Both shows are on display from Saturday through July 7 in the council gallery; the council, at 601 W. Lake Ave., is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily Tuesdays through Saturdays. Call 472-3336 for more information.
Theater: Summer can be uncomfortably humid in South Florida, but one of the best things about the season down here is surely Summer Shorts, City Theatre’s perennial festival of brief one-act plays, currently on at Miami’s Arsht Center. This 17th edition puts the emphasis on comedy, with sketches ranging from internationally known writer Israel Horovitz to Miami’s Christopher Demos Brown, performed by a cast of area favorites including Irene Adjan, Todd Allen Durkin, Elizabeth Dimon and Stephen Trovillion. Continuing through June 17. Tickets are $35, available by calling (305) 949-6672.
Film: For an intriguing look at post-Soviet Union Russia, go see Elena, director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s contemporary version of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, recast as a domestic drama of haves and have-nots that has plenty in common with today’s American economic woes. Nadezhda Markina plays the title role, a soft-spoken but determined second wife of a successful businessman, far more generous with his daughter from his first marriage than he is with Elena’s admittedly lazy, unemployed son. When her husband turns down the request to help out her grandson with college tuition, she crosses a moral line, taking matters into her own deadly hands. The film moves slowly and deliberately, building tension as it scans the nuclear power plant-strewn landscape. Opening this weekend at Mos’Art, Living Room Theatres and a few other venues around Palm Beach County.
If you’re interested in following the career of a rising operatic talent, you might want to head down to Coral Gables this Saturday night to catch Cuban-born coloratura Eglise Gutierrez in a solo recital at the University of Miami’s Gusman Hall.
A one-time resident of Miami who trained at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, Gutierrez has been making a name for herself in the bel cantor repertoire, most notably Lucia di Lammermoor and La Sonnambula, but also including rarities such as Donizetti’s Maria di Rohan and the same composer’s Linda di Chamounix at Covent Garden (now available on disc from Opera Rara).
Accompanied by pianist Elaine Rinaldi, Gutierrez will sing music by Handel, Bellini, Rachmaninov, Faure, Reynaldo Hahn and Meyerbeer, among others. She’ll also sing a large section of Spanish and Latin American music, including five songs by Cuban composers. It promises to be an enlightening evening of music for an artist who is trying to stretch herself as she makes her way in the operatic world. She’s booked, after all, into the early months of 2014.
The recital is set for 8 p.m. Saturday at Gusman Hall on the campus of the University of Miami in Coral Gables. Tickets range from $20 to $50; call 800-838-3006 or visit www.orchestramiami.org or BrownPaperTickets.com.