The historic Newtown Theatre will screen Alan Magee: art is not a solace on Thursday, July 13 at 7 PM. (watch excerpts from the full documentary above)
This one-hour documentary explores the recurring subjects, locales and historical sources which have sustained well-known artist and Newtown native Alan Magee’s creative passion for five decades.
A Q&A and meet-and-greet with Magee, his wife Monika, and film co-director David Berez will follow the screening.
Tickets will be sold at the door starting at 6 PM. Cost is $12 or $6 for Newtown Theatre members.
About the Artist
Magee’s arresting images—which comment on corporate greed, cruelty, gun violence, and civilian and military victims of war—at first seem at odds with his exquisite and serene paintings of nature and found objects.
The James A. Michener Art Museum has presented two retrospective exhibitions of Magee’s work and owns a selection of his paintings.
Alan Magee: art is not a solace examines the ways in which art can address some of the greatest challenges that we face as a society, including social injustice and violence, the increasing threats to our democracy, and the urgency of speaking truth to power.
Now a resident of Maine, Magee grew up half a block from the Newtown Theatre. Some of his earliest memories involve drawing at a little table his mother set up for him in the family home at 103 N. State St.
“My mother was my earliest influence…she would put piles of paper in front of me along with colored pencils and crayons,” Magee says. “In the documentary, I talk about her exceptional drawing ability and the absence of support from her own parents.”
Magee also cites his Council Rock High School art teacher, Isabel Westberg, as a mentor who “inspired and guided the kids with artistic inclinations.”
“She was a remarkable teacher who came along at the right time for me,” he says. “I think she understood better than anyone else in my world that I needed to go to art school. Toward the end of high school, she drove me to the Tyler School of Art so I could show my drawing portfolio and apply to the school.”
Magee attended Newtown Joint Elementary School (now the Chancellor Center) and remembers Newtown as an idyllic place to grow up.
“Even as a toddler I had the run of the town,” he recalls. “We would play and fish in the Newtown Creek, eat ice cream at Harry’s Sweet Shop and at Goodnoe’s, build lean-to huts, a go-cart, and even a working rollercoaster out of wood scraps we pulled from the free bins at Watson Lumber…the entire town was a playground for us.”
Movies at the Newtown Theatre were also an important part of Magee’s world growing up.
“My mother loved movies. I would sit with her as a child and watch some of the great classics of the 50s,” he says. “I remember being thrilled by The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Incredible Shrinking Man. I was attracted to anything with a spooky nature and, fortunately for me, my mother was, too. Later, my friends and I went on dates at the theatre—laughing through A Shot in the Dark, or terrified by Psycho. After Monika and I were married, we often walked from our Newtown apartment to the theatre; we continue to see films there when visiting Newtown.”