City Offices and Facilities will be closed Sunday, May 26, and Monday, May 27, in observance of Memorial Day. As always, the Takoma Park Police Department is open for emergency services. We wish you and your family a safe and happy holiday.
The scheduling of demolition and construction timelines are pending weather.
The Takoma Park Arts cultural series is seeking an artist or artist team to paint a public piano that will be installed in the gazebo in downtown Takoma Park this summer. The theme is up to the artist but could include some aspect of diversity, community spirit, etc. The application deadline is July 28, and payment for the project is $500. Please click on this link for more details and share the news with your artist friends!
The City’s popular We Are Takoma arts and culture series has a new name and a new look!
The series has been renamed Takoma Park Arts to more accurately reflect the focus of the series which features many free events at the Takoma Park Community Center, including concerts, plays, art exhibitions, film screenings, poetry readings, lectures, and more. A dynamic new logo will be featured in promotions and publications about the series.
“We hope more people from Takoma Park and the surrounding area will learn about our events in the Takoma Park Arts series and experience the broad array of talent in the local creative community,” said Takoma Park Arts Coordinator Brendan Smith.
The City issues calls for proposals from performers, poets, lecturers, and artists each year to stage events at the Takoma Park Community Center at 7500 Maple Avenue. The center has a state-of-the-art auditorium where performances are held and are also recorded and shared on the City’s Facebook page, Youtube, and the City TV channel. Art opening receptions are held bimonthly with art displayed in several galleries throughout the Community Center.
Christoph Michaud, a graphic designer who serves on the Takoma Park Arts and Humanities Commission, created the new Takoma Park Arts logo, which features the same blue and yellow colors in the City logo.
Please go to www.takomaparkmd.gov/arts to learn more about our upcoming events and sign up for our Takoma Park Arts weekly e-newsletter.
In a celebration of spring and all of Earth’s creation, nine artists will explore the grace and beauty of flowers, plants, and nature in Petals and Stems, a new group exhibition at the Takoma Park Community Center with an opening reception on May 16 at 7 pm.
The diverse work includes close-up photos of plants by Paige Billin-Frye, finely stitched quilts by Elaine Katz, and hand-carved gourds by Meipo Martin. Janel Leppin’s large yarn weavings will be suspended from the atrium ceiling in a unique installation.
Five artists from the Botanical Art Society of the National Capital Region also will share lifelike paintings and sketches of flowers and plants, including Judy Brown, Heidemarie Copiz, Joan Maps Ducore, Marsha Ogden, and Barbara Sweeney.
After being mentored by master carvers, Meipo carves and stains gourds with fluid designs that merge Eastern and Western artistic traditions. Leppin’s weavings incorporate cherished clothing, including her wedding veil and her grandmother’s red dress, evoking the persistence of memory and the power of nostalgia.
Billin-Frye has traveled across the country and into her own backyard to find seed pods and plants to create soft-hued images that revel in nature’s innate architecture. Katz is an art teacher whose quilts feature three-dimensional elements, and the Botanical Art Society artists merge art and science in their realistic depictions of various plant species.
Please join us this Thursday to see the art and meet the artists!
The Takoma Park Community Center is located at 7500 Maple Avenue. For more info, contact Arts Coordinator Brendan Smith at brendans@takomaparkmd.gov.
Join us as we celebrate the vibrant cultural diversity that the City of Takoma Park and its residents have to offer at the Annual Celebrate Takoma Festival on Saturday, May 18 on Maple Avenue from 4:00-7:00 p.m.
This family festival block party held in front of the Community Center and Piney Branch Elementary School will feature crafts, entertainment, music, games and food from all over the world. Takoma Park is the true definition of a “melting pot” with residents form Ethiopia, El Salvador, and Guatemala, just to name a few. This event offers a social benefit to Takoma Park and brings the community together to celebrate the diversity the City is known for.
Celebrate Takoma fosters community pride, teaches people new things and strengthens relationships unbound by a resident’s place of birth. We hope to see you there!
In order to make the event a safe one, Takoma Park Police will have road closures and no parking signs in the festival area. Bus routes will be effected during the road closures.
For more information please visit https://takomaparkmd.gov/government/recreation/celebrate-takoma-festival/
The Great Octoshedopus Parade rolled through Takoma Park this morning! An excited pack of preschoolers helped fiber artist Stacy Cantrell move her 17-foot-tall crocheted octopus from the downtown clock tower to the playground shed at Takoma Children’s School. The City of Takoma Park commissioned Cantrell to create the colorful cephalopod called Oct O’Clock which lived on top of the clock tower for six months. The Takoma Children’s School submitted the winning video in the City’s Octo-Gone contest where contestants could say why they wanted the octopus and what they would call it. The preschoolers decided the octopus should live on top of their shed and be called Octoshedopus! It’s a mouthful but it has a nice ring to it.
The City of Takoma Park celebrates and supports the arts through public art projects like this one. We also host many arts and culture events at the Takoma Park Community Center, including art exhibitions, lectures, film screenings, poetry readings, concerts, and more. Info about upcoming events in the We Are Takoma cultural series can be found here and you can sign up for our weekly e-newsletter here.
Across the centuries in countries spanning the globe, women have been denigrated as the “weaker sex” and faced pervasive discrimination, but progress and history are being made as more women are elected to political office and sexual harassment is confronted.
Five international artists will explore the inspiring power of women and their struggles in Women of the World, a group exhibition at the Takoma Park Community Center with an opening reception on March 14 at 7 pm. The exhibition, which celebrates Women’s History Month, features work by Sobia Ahmad, Maysoon al Gburi, Olivia Tripp Morrow, Elayna Speight, and Evans Thorne.
Born and raised in Pakistan, Sobia Ahmad moved to the United States when she was 14 years old, becoming an immigrant straddling two vastly different cultures. Her video installations and mixed-media work grapple with the complexities of national identity, cultural memory, and notions of home.
Maysoon al Gburi lived through the brutality of war in Iraq before emigrating to the D.C. area. Her paintings are influenced by the richness of Mesopotamian history coupled with the dire outcomes of war suffered by women and children.
Olivia Tripp Morrow’s suspended installation titled Stretch reconfigures clothes donated by women into strips of intricately woven fabric layered over chicken wire. She reinterprets the personal histories associated with the clothing to reflect upon the contributions of women past and present.
Elayna Speight’s watercolors celebrate the strength, vulnerability, and magic of black women. Her series titled Her Crown and Glory portrays positive images of black women with their various skin tones and natural hair styles (their crowning glory).
After growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, Evans Thorne moved to the D.C. area to study art. His paintings explore his cultural roots in the Caribbean through nature, dancing, and family portraits of generations of women and girls.
For more information and high-res images, contact Arts Coordinator Brendan Smith at brendans@takomaparkmd.gov.
Artwork image: Tobago Jig by Evans Thorne
By Claudine Schweber, co-chair, Emergency Preparedness Committee
Don’t wait until April to pay attention to your financial situation. The people trying to separate you from your money are ready to act now—by phone, text, or email (online). While many financial preparedness advice columns and websites focus on the elderly, millennials have joined the “seriously at risk” group for being scammed. Indeed, “millennials lose more money to financial scams than seniors” according to a Federal Trade Commission Report issued in March 2018 (See Zach Friedman’s March 9, 2018 article online at Forbes.com.).
Are you prepared to avoid the traps? Last March I wrote about the need for basic Financial Preparedness. A year later, being prepared also means being aware of and prepared to avoid scams and other thefts.
Step 1: Awareness
Call the IRS immediately 1-800-366-4484; for email contact, report to phishing@irs.gov.
There are also charity scams, tickets scams, housing scams, lottery and sweepstakes scams, banking scams and many more. See www.usa.gov/common-scams-frauds for more schemes and what to do if you encounter them.
Step 2: Action
Do you know exactly what your assets and expenses are? Is there a list with specifics? If you are ill, is there a back-up person/s? Do they know how to contact key persons? Create a financial checklist that identifies the income, asset and expenses and medical information, etc. Give one copy to a trusted person/s and save one for yourself (paper or electronic).
Documentation
For each item, list its name, the supporting documents, and reminders, such as renewals, contact persons and account numbers.
Education
Thank you Dr. Kathleen Sindell, certified financial planner (www.fpedec.org); Kathleen Quinn EPC Committee and JumpStart Clearing House (www.jumpstart.org) for your assistance with this article.
Contact us at tpepc@takomaparkmd.gov or 301-891-7126. Listen to Bea(trice) Prepared the first Sunday of the month on WOWD/ Talk of Takoma.
This article appeared in the March 2019 edition of the Takoma Park Newsletter. The Takoma Park Newsletter is available for download here.
The City of Takoma Park’s We Are Takoma arts and culture series needs YOU! We are seeking proposals for performances and lectures for our 2019-2020 schedule, as well as applications for a paid arts internship. There is more info about all of the opportunities at www.takomaparkmd.gov/arts.
Performances and lectures are held in the state-of-the-art auditorium at the Takoma Park Community Center. Performances can include concerts, theater, dance, poetry, etc. Use your imagination because we’re open to new ideas. A $200-$300 honorarium and all audience donations are paid to the performers.The deadline for proposals is March 4, 2019.
Monthly lectures are held on a wide variety of topics, and a $100 honorarium is paid to the lecturer. The deadline for proposals is March 4, 2019.
We also are seeking applications for a paid 12-month arts internship beginning in March 2019. The arts intern will work approximately 20 hours per week assisting with the We Are Takoma series. The deadline for applications is March 8, 2019.
We know that during a federal government shutdown, many employees and businesses in the DC Metro Area experience a sudden loss of income. We also know that the effects are not limited to federal employees and that there are trickle down impacts on our local economy. Here is a list of resources that are available for information and guidance.
Many banks, credit unions and credit card companies are offering assistance. Contact your financial institution to see what options are available for you.
Many gas and utility companies also are working with furloughed employees. Contact your company to see what options are available.
Pottery by Tanya Renne
Why shop for holiday gifts in a mall or on Amazon when you can support local artists and our creative community?
The 13th annual Takoma Park Holiday Art Sale makes that goal easy and affordable with more than 30 local artists and artisans gathered at the Takoma Park Community Center on Saturday, Dec. 8 from 10 am – 4 pm. There is no admission fee, and you will find a broad array of creative gifts for your friends and family (and yourself!), including paintings, pottery, photography, handmade clothes, jewelry, toys, and more.
The City of Takoma Park’s Arts and Humanities Commission hosts the Holiday Art Sale each year to support the local artist community. It has become a tradition in Takoma Park that has expanded into a juried event featuring vendors from across the D.C. area, says photographer Rob Rudick who helps organize the event.
“I like getting all of these great artists together,” he says. “We have some vendors who come back every year, but we also bring in new vendors so there is something new every time.”
During the Holiday Art Sale, the Friends of the Takoma Park Maryland Library also will hold their annual fundraiser from 10 am – 3 pm where people can support the library by buying new or used books at low prices in the Community Center’s game room.
