This article appeared in the April 15, 2004 Jewish Advocate.

Cambridge gallery celebrates 7^th year

By Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

Art and merriment will be ubiquitous this weekend at nine of Out of the Blue’s satellite galleries, as the Cambridge cultural mecca celebrates its 7^th year of encouraging all forms of local creativity. The weekend festival, entitled “Art, Art, Everywhere!”, will feature original artwork and various live performance throughout the city. The April 17 and 18 opening receptions are free of charge and open to the public.

Out of The Blue, founded in April 1997 by photographer Tom Tipton and painter Sue Carlin, was originally located in Chinatown, and then at 168 Brookline St. in Cambridge, before settling in its current location, 106 Prospect St. in Central Square, Cambridge. Its mission has been to encourage and support underserved craftspeople in every genre of visual art, including painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, mixed media, jewelry, textile, and mosaic. The volunteer-run center also runs many workshops, classes, and performance art in dance, poetry, music and drumming. Their exhibitions are shown in Central Square’s Middle East Restaurant, Brookline Lunch, Citizen's Bank, 1369 Coffeehouse (Central and Inman Square locations), the Overdraught in Kendall Square, and Amelia's Trattoria at 111 Harvard St. Outside Cambridge, Herrell's Renaissance Café in Allston, Grotto and Cassava in Boston, Paolo's Trattoria in Charlestown and Sage in the North End complete OOTB’s artistic spectrum.

“I wanted to reach out to those who had not been given an opportunity because of a lack of exposure or funding,” recalls Tipton. Indeed, 70 percent of OOTB’s artist are unknowns. A hub of community outreach, the gallery’s efforts have benefited many non-profit and social causes including Cambridge’s On the Rise women’s assistance organization, the Bosler Humane Society (the largest no-kill animal shelter in New England), the Annual Art Display for the Black History Month Celebration at Cambridge City Hall, varied children’s arts shows, the Gray Panthers and other senior groups, and artists with mental, social and physical handicaps. OOTB artists have participated in auctions with WGBH-TV, and have been featured on ABC-TV’s Chronicle.

Volunteers include artists Carly Weaver, Loren Geraghty and Richard Freeman and poet and painter Deb Priestly, who has helped Tipton run the gallery for the past six years. Priestly, a poet since the age of nine who studied at Emerson College’s creative writing program, has published her work in The Boston Herald, Bay Windows, Boston Girl Guide, Goddess Dancing and The Cambridge Tab and Chronicle. An organizer of the Out of the Blue Writers Unite anthology which was funded by a Cambridge Arts Council grant, she has self-published poetry collections entitled Kiss of the Tiger Woman, The Pieces that Remain, The Soul of the Sunflower, Hey, Buy a Camera—You Ain't That Ugly!, and The Woman Has a Voice.

Priestly, whose maiden name was Deborah Miriam Block, is an honors graduate of Temple Beth Am in Framingham’s Hebrew and Sabbath Schools, where she studied for nine years under the late Rabbi Alfred Friedman. She has helped the gallery promote local Jewish photographers and artists including Miriam Fogelson, Emily Keeler, Jenny Nathans, Naomi Rubin, Paul Weiner, Glenn Weinreb, Melody Winnig, as well as the senior groups of elder activist Fran Chaiken, “I contemplated becoming a rabbi, but it was not a popular idea really at that time in 1982,” she recalls. “So I decided to go into arts, poetry and creative writing at Emerson College.”

"Part of being Jewish is not only feeling Jewish, but thinking and behaving and doing mitzvahs for people of the community. I hope and believe

that through my service in the Out of the Blue Art Gallery that I am

fulfilling that part of my Jewish heritage - doing good acts for the service

of humanity - women, the homeless, the poor, the abused (women and children), and animals," she reflects.

Many relatives of Priestly’s mother, Anne Helen Fine, were killed in pogroms; the rest escaped to America on cattle carts. The family of her father, Ralph Stuart Block, were from Madrid and Italy. “It is difficult to trace our exact origins because many of his relatives were killed as well in the Inquisition, and others shortened their names to mask their Jewishness,” she says. Her high school experience in Medfield was, unfortunately, tinged with bigotry. “It was a predominantly white, Irish Catholic school; I looked different and was teased for being Jewish,” she recalls. Priestly was sometimes beaten, books were knocked out of her hands and she was even pushed into lockers and called "kike" or "Christ killer.” “I had to get a note from my rabbi to take a few days off every year for Yom Kippur and for Rosh Hashana,” she remembers.

Fortunately for those she interacts with, however, Priestly has blossomed into a warm and welcoming networker for those of all persuasions. She has taught poetry at Cambridge’s Arts in The Parks, the Boston Rape Crisis Center, the Walden Pond Series, Newton Community Education, and Bay State Prison Reading Program.

She runs the gallery’s unique "Open Bark" Saturday night poetry series, which is named for her large white dog Bear, a gallery mascot. Other OOTB-housed poetry series include Jack Powers’ Monday Night Stone Soup, Tim Gager’s First Friday Dire Reader and Filepe Victor Martinez’ Fourth Friday Wordbeat. Varied classes and workshops include Thursday Figure Drawing, Sunday African Drum Class, Saturday Mosaic Class and Wednesday Oil Painting. OOTB personnel and community artists meet weekly at The Middle East Bakery, 480 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, on Tuesdays at 6:30 p.m.

Reception/Locations: The Middle East Restaurant 476 Mass. Ave., Central Square Sunday 3-5 p.m. (Boston Smile Project: Acrylic Character Paintings by Bren Bataclan); The Middle East Bakery 480 Mass. Ave., Central Square Sunday, 8 p.m.: Creepshow 2: Return of Creepshow: New Work by Salty, EEE, The Count and Joe Keinberger; Out of the Blue Gallery 106 Prospect St., Central Square Sat/Sun12-5 p.m.: From Boston Through Georgia to Corpus: New Artwork by Carly Weaver, Curly, Swirly, Dreamy: New Paintings by Sue Carlin, Original Bauhaus Artist, Margarite Koehler-Bittkow (1890-1964), Richard Freeman: Paintings/Drawings and Michael Alfano: Sculpture; 1369 Central Square, 757 Mass. Ave., Sat 4-6 p.m.: Moo Moo Kitty says “All Artists Have ADD…Not To Worry!” and Expressionistic Oil Paintings by Deborah Priestly; 1369 Inman Square 1369 Cambridge St., Inman Square Sat 2-4 p.m.: Springworks: Abstract Acrylics by Todd Wright; Brookline Lunch, 9 Brookline St., Central Square, Sat. 4-6 p.m.: Celebrity Lies: Comics and Illustrations by Ian A. Maisel; All Asia 334 Mass. Ave., Central Square Sat. 8 p.m.: Nice Things: A Saturation Campaign, Mixed Media and Oils by Joshua Wallis; Amelia’s, 111 Harvard St., Kendall Square Sat. 3-5 p.m.: Vegetation and Disintegration, New Paintings by Rachel Ross; Overdraught, 877 Cambridge St., Kendall Square Sat. 6-8 p.m.: The Overdraught and Cambridge St.: Black and White Photography by Mike Ritter, and From Boston, Through Georgia, To Corpus New Paintings by Carly Weaver; Out of the Blue Gallery: Opening Reception Saturday and Sunday, April 17 and 18, 12-6 p.m.

Out of the Blue Gallery is located at 106 Prospect St., Central Square, Cambridge. The gallery is open 1-7 p.m. for daily viewing. For more information, please visit www.outoftheblueartgallery.com, email ootb@att.net or call 617-354-5287.