The current show in the back room of the Frank Bette Center for the Arts (FBCA) is a paean to the Park Street Bridge — a fruitful dialog between visual and written art forms. When the Alameda Women Artists decided on a group project this year, they chose to focus on Park Street Bridge. They posted their images on the FBCA website and invited poets to respond to their paintings.
In a collaboration of the Alameda Women Artists, the Alameda Island Poets and other poets, the Frank Bette Center for the Arts (FBCA) will present a new show of artwork and poetry titled Celebrating the Park Street Bridge.
The show goes up tomorrow, Friday, Nov. 4, and will be on display until Christmas Eve. A formal opening and poetry reading is scheduled for Friday, Nov. 11, from 7 to 9 p.m.
Frank Bette Center for the Arts (FBCA) is holding a grand reopening and fundraiser Friday, Sept. 30. The event will include live poetry readings, hors d’oeuvres, a cash bar serving wine and beer and a silent auctions of art, gifts and unique experiences.
Frank Bette Center’s focus is to fulfill and build upon Frank Bette’s dream to create and maintain “a place for meetings, readings, showings, and other creative doings.”
Many people who stop by the Frank Bette Center for the Arts are curious about the history of the big golden yellow building at the corner of Paru Street and Lincoln Avenue. They also ask about the man behind the center.
Students at Amelia Earhart Elementary School will dedicate a statue in front of their school on Tuesday, Dec. 15. The life-size bronze sculpture of Amelia Earhart has been installed at the elementary school on Bay Farm Island that bears the legendary pilot’s name.
The Davis Family Foundation granted the Frank Bette Center for the Arts a $32,000 gift to commission the statue. The Davis Family’s grant ensures the sculpture will belong to the school in perpetuity.
Abstract art just one exhibition up at midtown gallery
The new show at the Frank Bette Center — Driven to Abstraction — is unique in a number of ways. Immediately, the viewer will notice several very large pieces in a gallery usually designed with more but smaller pieces. Arlene Risi Streich’s “Sea Ranch,” for example, is a big, adventurous mixed-media piece arranged in a landscape-like format with a hot yellow sky behind a field of rich texture and color.
Local art experts have been participating in monthly Art Talks for Art Lovers with the Frank Bette Center for the Arts. This months talk features Jane Alexiadis, a personal property appraiser.
While works by master or rising celebrity artists bring hundreds of millions of dollars at auctions, fine works of art can be purchased from artists, galleries, group shows and even eBay and thrift shops for a fraction of that cost.
