Meet Bruce Crawford

Meet Nicole Friday

Learning Legacy

Bruce Crawford is a recent addition to our roster, and this spring he will be teaching two classes in our Home & Garden section: Designing with Ornamental Grasses (Tuesday, March 15th from 7:15-8:45pm for $35) and Container Gardening (Thursday, May 12th from 7:15-8:45pm for $35).

After studying Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Crawford spent the next twenty-three years running a small garden design firm. He became the Director of Rutgers Gardens six years ago because he wanted to share his knowledge of gardening and the advantages of plants and design with a wider audience,

and The South Orange-Maplewood Adult School is happy to have him doing so with our classes!

While Crawford’s favorite ornamental grass varies depending on the needs of a particular site, we did manage to get three recommendations from him. Crawford suggests Hakonechloa macra ‘All Gold’ for shade and average moisture, Carex stricta for wet sites in sun or shade and Panicum ‘Dallas Blues’ for height in hot dry locations.

When we asked him about the current popularity of container gardening, Crawford explained that the recent surge in interest is due to a number of things, including:

• the lack of open planting space and free soil;

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Nicole Friday is a new instructor at The Adult School. She will be teaching two Culinary Arts courses this spring: Cupcakes and Kids (Thursday, April 14th from 7-9pm for $60 for one adult and one child) and Gourmet Cupcakes (Thursday, May 5th from 7-9pm for $35).

Lemon Meringue. Sweet Potato. Coconut Cream. Chocolate Soufflé. At The

Cupcake Craze, all your favorite deserts are cupcakes. Nicole Friday started this gourmet cupcake catering company last year, and she has

been going non-stop since then. She has a fan base, she writes a weekly column for Essence.com and she has been a featured baking expert on Brides.com.

The cupcake is experiencing a renaissance, and Friday believes it is because few things in life are as satisfying. It’s like the cupcake said, “Step aside,

nostalgia--I’m all grown up!” With sophisticated fanfare and flavors aplenty, Friday says, cupcakes are outright

irresistible.

Friday won Macy’s Battle of the Cupcakes last summer, and she regularly showcases her

(continued on page 4)

Home/Garden Instructor Bruce Crawford

1

Culinary Arts Instructor Nicole Friday

1

Celebrity Readings 2

Active Mind Instructor Loughran O’Connor

3

Chef Jesse Jones 3

About The Adult School 4

Inside this issue:

get your tickets for

Celebrity Readings

Monday, April 4 7:30pm

Woman’s Club of Maplewood

wine & dessert reception

$40 in advance, $45 at the door

It’s like the cupcake said, “Step

aside, nostalgia--I’m all grown up.”

Bruce Crawford

Spr ing 20 1 1

stage and screen. Our very own Emily Zacharias, trustee and professional actor, will once again host the evening. This year the show features Robert Cuccioli, Laila Robins and Isaiah Sheffer.

The program, modeled after

National Public Radio’s “Selected Shorts” program, features readings of classic and new short fiction chosen by the artists. The Woman’s Club of Maplewood will serve as the stage for this pairing of authors and actors.

Tickets are $40 in advance; $45 at the door. They can currently be reserved by phone (973-378-7620) or online at www.somadultschool.org. This event benefits the educational classes and lectures offered by The Adult School.

Celebrity Readings with Revelry! Celebrity Readings, an evening of short stories, will return to Maplewood on Monday, April 4th at 7:30 pm. Presented by The South Orange-Maplewood Adult School, the annual literary series features readings by accomplished actors of

Robert Cuccioli’s most recent project, as Norman Rhodes in Bruce Hornsby’s new musical, “SCKBSTD,” wrapped up in early February. His Broadway credits include “Les Miserables” and “Jekyll & Hyde” (1997 Tony nomination, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Awards and Chicago's Joseph Jefferson Award) and his off-Broadway credits include “Temporary Help,” “Enter The Guardsman” and “And The World Goes ‘Round” (1991 Outer Critics Circle Award). Cuccioli has also made television and film appearances.

Laila Robbins is currently Paola Franco in “Dangerous Beauty,” which is making its premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse this February. She was seen on Broadway in “Heartbreak House,” the Tony-nominated play “Frozen” (Lucille Lortel Nomination), “The Herbal Bed” and “The Real Thing.” Robins’ credits also include off-Broadway and regional productions, as well as film and television appearances that include the series lead in “Gabriel’s Fire” opposite James Earl Jones. Robins trained at the Yale School of Drama.

Isaiah Sheffer started Symphony Space with conductor Allan Miller over thirty years ago; it has since become an Upper West Side institution, a complex performing arts center with increasingly diverse programming. Sheffer is also the host of “Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story,” National Public Radio's award-winning series of short fiction read by actors and recorded live at Symphony Space. Inspiration for “Selected Shorts” came from Bloomsday, an annual celebration of the life of James Joyce that includes “Ulysses” readings.

Robert Cuccioli Laila Robins Isaiah Sheffer

Celebrity Readings with Revelry! (wine & dessert reception following performances) Monday, April 4th at 7:30pm at the Woman’s Club of Maplewood

2 Learn ing Legacy Spr ing 20 1 1

Meet Loughran O’Connor

Chef Jesse Jones

Loughran O’Connor will be instructing two of our Active Mind courses this spring: Leonardo and Michelangelo: Giants of the Renaissance (Tuesday, March 15th and Tuesday, March 22nd from 7-9pm for $47) and Mary Cassatt and Georgia O’Keefe: Iconic American Painters (Tuesday, April 5th and Tuesday, April 12th from 7-9pm for $47).

O’Connor earned her MA in Creative Arts from San Francisco State University and studied art history through a scholarship at the University of London. She has been exhibiting paint-ings for the last forty years and teaching art history for the last thirty.

We asked O’Connor what fascinates her most about the

artists she will be focusing on during the spring semester, and this was her reply:

MICHELANGELO

How could one man from an illiterate family of stonecutters create such massive marble

sculpture and heroic architecture? His original commission for the Sistine Chapel frescoes was modest, but he gave us visions of heaven and hell, surrounded by creation, biblical prophets and the underworld… unlike any made before or since.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Leonardo's career as a designer and engineer was secondary to his commissions for portraits of nobility. He was called the greatest draughtsman of his time and has been an inspiration for artists ever since. He was also an inventor and musician. Most fascinating to me is his "Sfumato" (veiled) technique in painting, which has never met its equal in mysterious subtlety. We are still decoding many of the symbols that he placed within his paintings. They are secret gifts for generations to come.

MARY CASSATT

Mary Cassatt was the ultimate career woman who managed to

North Carolina. His family is full of great southern cooks; before he began his formal training, he built his skills by watching his mother.

Customers of his restaurant, Heart and Soul, encouraged Jones to share his talent with others by teaching at The Adult School. He enjoys his students and the look on their faces when they are excited about his food, and he enjoys

Chef Jesse Jones has taught his cooking classes at The Adult School for the last four semesters, and we’re thrilled to have him back for two more Culinary Arts classes this spring. If you weren’t able to sign up for his classes this spring, you can catch him on Fox 5’s “Good Day Café” on March 8th at 8:30am.

Jones was born in Newark but was partly raised in Snow Hill,

showcasing his gifts on the cooking stage. His students enjoy his passion, which manifests itself in numerous ways during a class, from singing to the telling of entertaining stories.

Sign up to take one of Chef Jesse’s classes and get caught up in the heart and soul of his cooking style!

preserve her genius as a painter. She loved the fashion and architecture of Paris. When she wanted a chateau, she simply bought one from her sales! She reinvented the use of French paste—finely ground pigmented chalks that she used in luminous portraits. Each painting is built upon solid design; together they form a serious narrative about family relations.

GEORGIA O'KEEFE

Georgia O'Keefe became famous almost despite herself. Unlike Cassatt, she shunned family and society and became more reclusive as she aged. After finishing a series of revolutionary paintings based almost purely upon design in New York, she moved to the American western plains. Her paintings—created in a renovated pueblo monastery—show us the magnificence of the desert country, mountains and life forms.

3 Learn ing Legacy Spr ing 20 1 1

Loughran O'Connor photo by Sue Zwick

Chef Jesse Jones

containers themselves, which can add additional color, texture and imagination.

Bruce Crawford enjoys spending his days helping improve people’s lives through gardening; sign up for one or both of his classes and get excited about the gardening season with this fantastic Adult School teacher!!

• the ease of introducing vertical height into a space when using containers;

• the ease of re-arranging and moving containers;

• the ability to create a variety of micro-climates, whether for a water lily or an Agave;

• the wide variety of the

Meet Bruce Crawford (continued) Meet Nicole Friday (continued) culinary talents at Williams-Sonoma, the New York Botanical Garden,

Whole

Foods Market, Architectural Digest Home Design Show, Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus.

Despite the love she has for cupcakes, Friday doesn’t actually indulge in the bite-sized treat. She tastes what she makes because that’s what any good cook or baker does. But she believes that, like every-thing in life, moderation is key. Nicole Friday

4 Learn ing Legacy Spr ing 20 1 1

The South Orange-Maplewood Adult School 17 Parker Avenue Maplewood, New Jersey 07040

PLEASE

PLACE

STAMP

HERE

About The South Orange-Maplewood Adult School “During the dark winter of 1933, a few enterprising men and women living in a New Jersey suburb launched their own campaign against the depression. New hours of leisure, suddenly at the disposal of many in the community, had begun to wear on their sprits like a sore affliction. So, to provide fresh interests for themselves and their neighbors, they set up an Adult School… and it was an immediate success,” said

of the Library of Congress, and today we offer nearly 200 courses each semester that range from the enlightening to the pragmatic.

When arguing the importance of creating an Adult School, the founders listed this among their reasons:

“Maplewood will be a live and growing community just to the extent that it is made up of live and growing people. Such an activities program as is

Minna Lederman, writing about the creation of The South Orange-Maplewood Adult School in the November 1937 issue of “Woman’s Home Companion.”

Three quarters of a century later, The Adult School is still going strong. In 2000, The South Orange-Maplewood Adult School was designated as a Local Legacy by Congress-man Donald M. Payne as a part of the Bicentennial Celebration

proposed means richer living for individuals and therefore a better community to live in.”

The Adult School is working as hard as ever to provide all the citizens of Maplewood, South Orange and beyond with opportunities for richer living through a comprehensive and exciting roster of classes and lectures. Peruse our listings on our website @ www.somadult school.org and find your perfect class.

Meet Bruce CrawfordMeet Nicole FridayLearning LegacyInside this issue:Spring 2011Celebrity Readings with Revelry!Learning LegacySpring 2011Meet Loughran O’ConnorChef Jesse JonesLearning LegacySpring 2011Meet Bruce Crawford (continued)Meet Nicole Friday (continued)Learning LegacySpring 2011About The South Orange-Maplewood Adult School

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