Support ARTS/West!

The mission of ARTS/West is to make facilities, resources, and opportunities available to arts organizations, individual artists, and community residents.

Give the gift of an ARTS/West membership to support our mission!

ARTS/West memberships support "ARTS/West presents" (42 so far in '11), Classes and Workshops (over 400 so far in '11), and help us to match our Ohio Arts Council Sustainability operating support grant

As a special offer to bring you closer to the artistic heart of Athens, Ohio, we want you to Become a Member of ARTS/West today or, buy a membership for a friend, family member, stranger, you name it!

Benefits of membership include:

• FREE admission to ARTS/West Presents events, plus 20% off all other participating organizations ticket sales
• Priority enrollment and FREE admission to ARTS/West Presents classes and workshops, plus 20% off all other participating workshop and class fees
• Invitation to Members-Only talkbacks and behind-the-scenes opportunities
• Inclusion in ARTS/West mailings, plus access to special Member Updates to keep you up-to the-minute on upcoming opportunities

ARTS/West wouldn't be possible if Athens wasn't a very special place, indeed. And what makes Athens so special is the community of people like YOU, whose ideas, creativity, and energy make our work possible. Thanks to you, ARTS/West is the place to take in a play, dance to your favorite local band, join a workshop, you name it!

To become a Member or purchase a membership today, please fill out the Membership Form found HERE and return to ARTS/West at 132 W. State St. Athens, OH 45701. There are two levels of membership - a $25 Individual level and a $45 Household level. Both ensure that you won't miss a moment of the great things happening at ARTS/West - Athens' Community Gateway to the Arts!

With thanks,

Emily Prince
Program Specialist, ARTS/West

Many Moons Exotic Market

This weekend marks the return of the very popular Exotic Market presented by Many Moons.

The Exotic Market is a sale of jewelry, textiles, Tibetan sacred objects and gift items collected during journeys to Nepal, India, Thailand and Bali by two travelers.

The market will be in the basement of ARTS/West on Saturday, November 19 from 10a-6p and on Sunday, November 20 from 1p-6p.

Aquabear Thursday, Literary Evening on Friday

Aquabear Live @ARTS/West 11/10/11 at 7:30pm
Aquabear is having another fantastic evening of music at ARTS/West in Athens, Ohio. We hope that you will join us. We welcome Chat Logs and Many Mansions both on tour from the far away land of Brooklyn, opening will be Dead Winds of Summer.

Chat Logs
is an experimental psych-punk band whose visceral live show, coupled with projections, and a balls-to-the-wall performance acumen has led them to being featured at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, many music venues around NYC and the United States and has been featured on Japanese television by filmmaker Yukihiko Tsutsumi, as a subject in his documentary, "Beat Goes On," while sharing the stage with bands as diverse as Fang Island, Delicate Steve, mems Oberhofer, yeah yeah yeahs, Xiu Xiu, Beirut and many others. - www.chatlogs.bandcamp.com

Many Mansions
makes post-world music fused with psychedelic and hypnotic passages of aural landscape and danceable world beats, and has been featured on Pitchfork, Daytrotter, Nitetrotter and has played extensively across the United States as part of the famed White Haus collective based in Boston, MA. - www.manymansions.bandcamp.com

Dead Winds of Summer
is the beautiful atmospheric loops and sounds of Andrew Lampela.

$5 for touring bands and space
ALL AGES, no booze
Doors at 7:30pm, music starts shortly after

A Literary Evening Featuring Marie Manilla & Laura Treacy Bentley 11/11/11 at 7pm
Join us at ARTS/West for A Literary Evening featuring Marie Manilla and Laura Treacy Bentley reading their work!

West Virginia native Marie Manilla is a Pushcart-Prize nominee and graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in The Chicago Tribune as a Nelson Algren finalist; Prairie Schooner, where she received the Lawrence Foundation Award for best short story; Mississippi Review; Calyx Journal; The Portland Review; The Long Story; Kestrel; GSU Review; and other journals. Her collection of stories, Still Life with Plums (West Virginia University Press, 2010), was nominated for the Weatherford Award and ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year in the short story category. Author Daniel Wallace selected her forthcoming novel, Shrapnel, as winner of the Fred Bonnie Award for best first novel sponsored by River City Publishing. Manilla lives in Huntington, West Virginia where she is Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Marshall University. Her website is www.mariemanilla.com.

Laura Treacy Bentley is a poet, fiction writer, teacher, and book editor ("Conversations") for WV Living Magazine. She served as writer in residence for the past three years at the Marshall University Writing Project in Huntington, West Virginia. Her work has appeared in the United States and Ireland, and her first book of poetry, Lake Effect, was published in 2006 by Bottom Dog Press in Huron, Ohio. In 2003 Laura was one of seven featured writers at a literary symposium which was held in Athens, Ohio: Appalachians: Contemporary Cultural Perspective. That same year she traveled to Venice California, to read her poetry with Ray Bradbury. Laura received a Fellowship Award for Literature from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, and her poetry has been featured on the websites of A Prairie Home Companion and Poetry Daily. One of her poems, "Keepsake," was recently chosen by Maria Shriver and the editors of O Magazine to be featured on Oprah's website. Visit Laura's website: www.lauratreacybentley.com/.

This event is a part of the ARTS/West presents series. There is no admission charge. Donations will be accepted.

Big weekend on tap

First up on Friday, 11/4/11 at 6:00pm join us for "Women Speak" a juried performance of Story, Poetry, and Song

Words are as necessary to us as breathing. As women, we come to each other to share words that bring us familiarity, support and trust. Women create attachments from which we divine the necessary elements to find our sense of the world and our place within it. From childhood to womanhood, generation to generation, words spoken in secret, through giggles and tears, through births and deaths and endless loves, forming communities in which we grow and thrive - and always, always we share our stories.

We are women of Appalachia, from diverse backgrounds, ages and experiences who come together to embrace the stereotype - to show the whole woman; beyond the superficial factors that people use to judge her.

We believe that all women are capable, courageous, creative and inspired.

Kari Gunter-Seymour, Founder/Curator
Woman of Appalachia
For website and more information click HERE


Then, "Wit" 11/5/11 at 7pm & 11/6/11 at 2pm- In Celebration of national Hospice Month Appalachian Community Hospice presents two screenings of the Mike Nichols film WIT A literary scholar experiences a personal awakening in the face of a diagnosis of advanced cancer.

Featuring: Emma Thompson Christopher Lloyd Eileen Atkins
Audra McDonald Jonathan M. Woodward Harold Pinter

$3 suggested donation

Advanced Directives packets (living will & healthcare power of attorney) will be available for those interested in completing them with assistance from hospice staff.