Joy Spontak~ 2-2:30 Art Show:

Attended the H. S. of Music and Art in NYC, and the Art Student’s League. She received a BFA from City College of NY, and a MFA in visual art from Vermont College of Norwich University. Joy taught drawing, painting and art history at Community College of Vermont, the Adult Degree Program at Vermont College, the Vermont Institute for Teaching the Arts, Norwich University, Vermont Technical College, Johnson State External Degree Program, Goddard College and in numerous schools through the Vermont Arts Council. Joy has worked in a variety of mediums including oil, pastel, acrylic, graphite, charcoal, mixed media, assemblage, collage, clay, stone, papier mache and water color. Joy has won several grants and awards for her work. She has been a judge in statewide art shows working with Jim Jeffords and Bernie Sanders. Joy was a scholar in a Renaissance Lecture series sponsored by the Vermont Council of the Humanities and the Kellogg Hubbard Library. Joy has had numerous solo and group shows. She served as President of the Art Resource Association and is currently on the board. She served as co-founder of the North Branch Studio Association and Gallery with 18 studios in Montpelier.

Her published work includes a CD cover for Michael Arnowitt’s Beethoven piano sonatas, book cover for Judith Chalmar’s “Out of History’s Junk Jar” , cover of “From Life to Death”, published by Inner Traditions Internatural and 13 issues of covers for “Big Fish” magazine published by Bob and Charlie Messing. This retrospective exhibits work honoring two mentors. Julia Winston was Joy’s first art teacher at the H.S. of Music and Art in 1959 and Billy Brauer who was her mentor and friend from 1980 until 2019.

Bob Messing:

Left New York for Vermont in 1970, lived in the woods off the grid for 30+ years. Bob and Deborah have one child, Joanna, who is not a child any more. Bob worked as a farmhand, a logger, a truck driver and a natural foods buyer for our local Coop. That job lasted 16 years. They bought a house in Montpelier 22 years ago. He retired about 10 years ago. Bob has been writing for about 50 years. He self published about 100 poems about 20 years ago and in the interim, the last 20 years, wrote many more. This is a selection from those poems.

Tim Mayo:

Tim Mayo’s poems and criticism have appeared in Barrow Street Journal, Narrative Magazine, River Styx, Poetry International and Salamander among other journals. His third collection Thesaurus of Separation was a finalist for the Montaigne Medal and for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. He lives in Brattleboro, VT, where he works at The Brattleboro Retreat and is a founding member of the Brattleboro Literary Festival. His fifth collection Muscle Memories of Love and Disaster is forthcoming in April, 2026 from Bainbridge Island Press.

Kim Ward: 

Kim Ward is a poet, playwright, theater producer and visual artist who founded The Vermont Playwrights Circle in 2000, shortly after receiving her MFA in Performance Poetry from Goddard College. Her poetic play Angel in the Fire was a winner in the 1990 Vermont Theaters and Theater Artists Playwrights Showcase and was accepted into the Last Frontier Festival in Alaska in 1999. 

She has had poems published in The Green Mountains Review; Metropolis; Circumference; Vermont Times; and in Birchsong: Poems about Vermont, Volumes I & II, and in Poetry Alive, Montpelier, Vermont as well as Poem Town Randolph, Vermont. She was happy to win the Jeff Hewitt Anything Goes Poetry Slam in 2020. Her first book of poetry, Fire on a Circle, was released from Rootstock Press in April, 2023. 

Sunday Afternoon Poetry at the Jaquith monthly poetry readings are free and open to the public and held at the Jaquith Public Library, 122 School Street, Marshfield, Vermont.

sponsored in part by Jasper Hill Farm