Steve Almond Book Reading and Candy Free-for-All

Dewey Family Gallery

Sunday, February 12, 2006 from 1:30 – 3 pm

LINCOLN, MA—Willy Wonka meets David Sedaris—and goes joyriding with Dr. Ruth! Just in time for Valentine’s Day, local boy and avowed chocoholic Steve Almond takes us on a sugar-fueled spin through his twin obsessions of candy and modern love. The Somerville-based author will read some of his most recent work, take no-holds-barred questions from the audience, and dole out an assortment of treats from days gone by—the Goo Goo Cluster, the Twin Bing, and the Idaho Spud—collected on his candy-factory odyssey and immortalized in his 2004 book, Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America.

Steve Almond’s reading selection will dovetail with the exhibition James Surls: The Splendora Years, 1977–1997, as both artists explore the concepts of pleasure, pain, and a universal life force. Steve’s books will be sold and signed following this event, which is intended for mature audiences 18 years of age and older.

Members, Free. Non-Members, $5; students with valid ID, $3 after admission. Space is limited. No refunds. This event is expected to sell out, so reserve tickets by calling 781/259-3629 or emailing membership@decordova.org.

Steve Almond was raised in Palo Alto, California, aka The Town Where God Will Retire. He spent seven years as a newspaper reporter, mostly in El Paso and Miami. He has been writing fiction on a regular basis since 1997, and is a frequent contributor to such local staples as the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, Boston Magazine, Boston Phoenix, The Improper Bostonian, and WBUR’s “Here and Now” and “Morning Edition” programs. His work has also appeared in Playboy, The Los Angeles Times, McSweeney’s, and a riot of literary magazines around the country. He lives in Somerville, MA, and teaches creative writing at Boston College.

About the Related Exhibition

In James Surls: The Splendora Years, 1977–1997, the monumental carved works of a renowned contemporary American sculptor come to life in DeCordova’s galleries on January 28, 2006. Literally hacked from fully grown trees with a chainsaw, Surls’s “animistic” sculptures derive from the forces, imagery, and materials of nature. Surls revels in a romantic vision of the land—as did such historical writers as the English Romantic William Wordsworth, and the American transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau—and his works often represent the natural cycle of creation and destruction.

Surls’s work is at once joyously optimistic and darkly expressionistic. His signature forms—diamond shapes, whirling vortexes, needles, knives, and houses—infuse highly personalized folk idioms with the aesthetics of high modernism.

Surls was born and raised in East Texas, and no artist of his generation has had a greater impact upon the development of Texas as a locus of vibrant creativity. The exhibition focuses on a twenty-year period when Surls owned a large tract of land in Splendora, from which he took both raw materials and his intellectual inspiration. The artist moved to Colorado in 1998.

The exhibition has been organized by Terrie Sultan, Director of Blaffer Gallery, The Art Museum of the University of Houston. Generous support has been provided from an anonymous donor, the Eleanor and Frank Freed Foundation, Houston Endowment Inc., Marilyn Oshman, Jane Blaffer Owen, and Carey C. Shuart. The onsite curator for The Splendora Years is Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, Director of Curatorial Affairs.

Funding was also provided by Nancy C. Allen, Tim and Nancy Hanley, Ann and James Harithas, Claudia and David Hatcher, Molly Hipp and Ford Hubbard III, Sharon and Gus Kopriva, Nancy and Rob Martin, Karen and Eric Pulaski, Shirley and Don Rose, and Texas State Bank. The Splendora Years is accompanied by a full-color catalogue available for $40 at The Store @ DeCordova and online at www.decordova.org.

General Information

DeCordova Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 am to 5 pm and on selected Monday holidays. General admission during Museum hours is $9 for adults, $6 for senior citizens, students, and youth ages 6–12. Children age 5 and under, Lincoln residents, and Active Duty Military Personnel and their dependents are admitted free. The Sculpture Park is open year round during daylight hours. The Store @ DeCordova and the School Gallery are open Monday through Thursday, 9:30 am to 7:30 pm, Friday through Saturday, 9:30 am to 5:30 pm, and Sunday 11:30 am to 5:30 pm. The Café @ DeCordova is open Tuesday from noon to 3 pm, and Wednesday through Sunday from 11 am to 4 pm. Free guided public tours of the Museum's main galleries take place every Thursday at 1 and Sunday at 2 pm. Free tours of the Sculpture Park are given on Saturday and Sunday at 1 pm from May to October. Visit www.decordova.org or call 781/259-8355 for further information. This press release is available electronically on our Web site.

2006 marks the 100th anniversary of the American Association of Museums and has been designated the Year of the Museum. AAM's annual meeting will take place in Boston from April 27 – May 1. Learn more at www.aam-us.org.

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