My Take on "My Take"

Yesterday, I finally made time to make my way over to My Take: Arlington at the Arlington Center for the Arts (ACARTS), where Lily and I got a personal tour from Linda Shoemaker in air-conditioned comfort. If you have not been yet, I urge you to go. Curator Lorraine Sullivan has done a masterful job of displaying the images. You won't believe how many Chamber members locations are My Take subjects! You'll just have to take a peek at the photos I took yesterday!

You may recall that last year, ACARTS received a grant from the Arlington Cultural Council to help produce this show. The Center distributed disposable cameras to dozens of folks representing all walks of life-younger, older, residents, business people, artists and non-artists. I wore two hats while I viewed the photographs: my hat as a member of the Cultural Council Board that awarded the grant and my Chamber hat. In both roles I was thrilled beyond belief. I can't think of a more wonderful way to make the Center more accessible to Arlingtonians than exhibits like this. The images below don't do justice to the real images which jump off the walls with color, personality and point of view.

Linda estimates that almost 1000 people have come through the Gibbs Gallery. Many of them were visiting the gallery for the first time. When exhibits like these are combined with the warm welcome you get when you enter the door, I bet many will return for other shows, too. All parts of Arlington got a chance to shine. The most popular subject? The GIANT slide at Robbins Farm. I'm not surprised. That is my claim to fame with my nieces and nephews. Sliding down the long, long, long, long, long slide with Lily on their laps is on the must do list when they visit.

Pam Shanley, ACARTs' operations manager, with her trademark grin invites you on the tour! The show continues through June 23 and the gallery is open Monday-Friday from 9:00am-5:00pm.

To give you a sense of scale, Lily sits beside the scale model of the gallery Lorraine created. She affixed a map of Arlington's streets to the model's interior and then used the model to drew the streets to scale on the walls where she arranged the photos along the byways.

This will give you an idea of how the photos are laid out
on the map of Arlington that surrounds the gallery.

Quebrada, The Capitol Theatre and Maxima Gift Center

La Buona Vita and Not Your Average Joe's

Leland Stein changing the signs at The Regent and Playtime

Balich 5 & 10

Interior shots of Shattuck's and Punjab



Johnny's Foodmaster



Arlington Children's Theater,
the Farmers Market with Karen Zolner of Juice Plus
and a view of A Taste of Arlington 2007




We end this blog entry with another invitation!
Shakespeare in the Park
Sunday, July 27, 5:00pm
Menotomy Rocks Park
for Much Ado About Nothing

Everyone at the Center of the Arts hopes to see you there!