Author: Michael Witthaus

Two distinct styles join at Outer Space exhibition

In mid-July, a small second-floor gallery in Concord opened a show called “Montages,” with two artists, Peter Cordova and Kyoko Idetsu, showing their work. It’s billed as an artistic conversation, and that’s the idea that led Roger Buttles to open Outer Space Arts in a well-lit space across the hall from his own studio in the former residence of a Civil War colonel.

Pairing artists has been a constant at Outer Space since it opened in 2023. Sometimes Buttles looks for resemblances in genre or style. Occasionally he’ll mix media, bringing together a two-dimensional painter or drawer with a sculptor or ceramicist. “I’m not repeating myself over and over, because that becomes stagnant to me,” he said by phone recently.

For Buttles, the connection between Cordova, an illustrator who also works in ceramic sculpture, and Idetsu, a Japanese painter, was that both disorient the picture plane in their work.

“That’s why I titled the show ‘Montages,’” he said. “There are multiple perspectives — not in a cubist sense, but a distorted perspective coming together into one unified image.”

Cordova’s ceramic works aren’t included in the exhibition. “There were a few I could have chosen, but logistically it made more sense to keep this show all two-dimensional,” Buttles said. “His works are all colored pencil on cardboard. Kyoko’s side has both paintings and works on paper — pen and ink.”

The inspiration for Outer Space, and the reason Buttles pairs artists rather than mounting solo shows, traces back to his time studying under Michelle Grabner at the Art Institute of Chicago. Grabner, an artist and curator, ran an exhibition space called The Suburban out of her garage and tool shed outside of the city.

Buttles, whose primary job is advising collectors in New York, Miami, San Francisco and other big cities, never planned to open a gallery. That changed when his wife, a radiologist, took a job in Manchester. The couple and their family, two twin daughters and a son, relocated from NYC.

Upon arrival he found a studio on Pleasant Street in Concord with enough space for small exhibitions.

“It’s affordable,” he said. “I don’t have the pressure or expectations of running a commercial gallery in an expensive city. That gives me a lot of creative freedom in what I show, because I’m not going to go bankrupt doing this.”

In other words, he’s not trying to build an empire.

“I’m basically breaking even … it’s not a money-making venture,” he said. Outer Space is closer to a calling, and a way of staying connected to the artist he still primarily believes himself to be. “I consider myself an artist first, who happens to run this artist-run exhibition space.”

Buttles grew up on Long Island with little exposure to art. His creative outlet was sports, and he played lacrosse through college. Photography found him almost by accident, sparked at 14 by an offhand comment from his older brother’s college friend about earning credit for a photo class.

That seed grew into a career in black-and-white photography. Finding William Eggleston’s color work at 22 was a key jolt of discovery. During his twenties, Buttles apprenticed in San Francisco galleries and frame shops, mounting Diane Arbus and Robert Frank photos one day, and Mission School painters the next.

His entrée into collecting came when he discovered Creativity Explored, a nonprofit studio in San Francisco, began buying their 20- and 30-dollar pieces and embraced the idea of affordable art. Coincidentally, Cordova worked there. He immigrated to San Francisco from the Philippines at 19 and joined the studio in 1996, having never made art before.

Buttles has already featured Creativity Explored artists in two prior Outer Space shows but held Cordova back, sensing he deserved one of his own. That show found its second half in Idetsu, an artist Buttles connected with separately. Her work centers on domesticity and child-rearing filtered through a Tokyo perspective.

Buttles insists that the upcoming show should feel unintimidating. He compares the experience with listening to classical music without needing expertise in music theory. “I don’t know anything about it technically, but I really enjoy it; I feel like that’s how art should be too,” he said. “There shouldn’t have to be a prerequisite of knowledge.”

“Montages”: Peter Cordova & Kyoko Idetsu
When: Saturdays, through Sept. 19, noon-3 p.m. (or call for appointment)
Where: Outer Space Gallery, 35 Pleasant St., 2nd floor, Concord
More: outerspacearts.xyz
A reception with both artists happens Wednesday, July 29, at 5 p.m.

Featured photo: “Two Indian Head Tail” by Peter Cordova. From outerspacearts.xyz.

Shakespeare al fresco returns to Saint Anselm College

For the past two summers, Theatre Kapow’s Shakespeare on the Green has leaned dark. A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2024 was filled with shadowy fairy magic. With last year’s Romeo & Juliet, the dusk forming over Saint Anselm College and the following sunset offered a celestial comment on the tragic love story.

With this year’s As You Like It, director Emma Cahoon is changing the weather, Shakespeare-wise.

“It’s a bit more contemplative,” she said by phone recently. “It’s a very considerate play … each of the characters, to me, feel less like caricatures and more like real people, which is something that I just love.”

As You Like It introduced Cahoon to Shakespeare, courtesy of an eighth-grade teacher with an innovative streak. Years later, living abroad in London, it was the first Shakespeare she saw performed live.

“It completely charmed me all over again,” she said. Making it this year’s Shakespeare on the Green production was an easy decision, partly due to its setting.

Much of the action unfolds in the Forest of Arden, where exiled characters shed their old identities and find clarity among the trees, making it perfect for an al fresco stage ringed by real ones.

“Shakespeare on the Green has some great elements for it,” Cahoon said. “It’s kind of ready-made for a play set in the forest.”

One thing is notably absent this time: the Manchester dance company that partnered with Kapow on both previous Green productions. Ballet Misha weaved choreography into Midsummer’s fairy realm and Romeo & Juliet’s doomed romance, but that collaboration isn’t part of this year’s show.

“This is really not a dance type production,” Cahoon explained.

Rather than treat the absence as a loss, she framed it as an opening. The language of As You Like It, uniquely dense with plot and character even by Shakespeare’s standards, rewards the kind of close attention that previous Green efforts didn’t demand. “We’re meeting the absence of Ballet Misha by really digging into the language, which is its own kind of fun.”

An expanded eight-actor cast is made up entirely of returning Kapow company members, many who appeared in the previous two Green shows — from Midsummer, Emma Weller, Molly Litt, Claire Soleil Gardner, Cecilia Lomanno and Samantha Griffin, with Courtney St. Gelais and Jay Doane carrying over from Romeo & Juliet as well.

St. Gelais, who played Oberon in Midsummer and Mercutio/Prince in R&J, takes on Oliver and Jacques this time; Doane, previously R&J’s Benvolio, plays Touchstone, Charles and Jacques de Boys. This continues the company’s gender-blind approach to casting classic texts with a fluid ensemble.

This allows performers to cross the gender lines Shakespeare wrote into characters like Rosalind, who spends most of the play disguised as a young man, Ganymede.

“I am super excited about the cast; it came together in what feels like kind of a miracle to me,” Cahoon said. “It’s a really, really strong group.”

Asked for an early favorite moment, Cahoon was quick to respond, even as rehearsals had just begun. At the play’s first read-through, St. Gelais took on Jacques’ famous “All the World’s a Stage” monologue, arguably the most recognizable speech in the play, and thrilled everyone in a way Cahoon had been hoping for.

“As soon as I picked As You Like It, I was like, I need to hear Court do [that] speech, and … it was the best reading of that monologue I’ve ever heard; it knocked us out of the water,” she said, already picturing how it will land outdoors, delivered beneath open sky with Alumni Hall as a backdrop. “I think it’s going to be beautiful to hear it in that space.”

The production serves as the opening of Theatre Kapow’s 19th season, built around the theme “Elemental.” Each show tied to a classical element, with As You Like It serving as the Earth effort. That’s apt for a play focused on characters getting back in touch with something more grounded than the court politics they’ve left behind — and it’s also being staged in the elements.

Shakespeare on the Green Series 2026: As You Like It
When: Thursday, Friday & Saturday, July 16 – 25, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Koonz Theatre, 100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester
Admission: $25, anselm.edu (children free, no ticket needed)

Featured photo: Cast of As You Like it. Courtesy photo.