The Redwoods, Mill Valley’s community of seniors, appointed five new members to its board of directors this month.

The new members are, from left: Scott Miller, a partner with a San Francisco accounting firm; Genevieve Moore, an estate planning and elder law practice expert; real estate broker Michelle Steinhart; Sarah Oliver, CEO of Sarah Oliver Handbags; and former Mill Valley City Councilman Andy Berman.

"We are very pleased to have such wonderful and committed individuals join the Board," board president Betsey Cutler says. "As The Redwoods gets closer to completing the first phase of its Revitalization Project - and begins to plan the second phase - their expertise will be invaluable.”

“I wasn’t really even expecting this – but it was my dream to one day work with my daughter,” Kress Jack says. “And my mom’s art has become so popular, and my furniture line with my boyfriend is doing really well – it all just feels good.”

The aforementioned family affair also encompasses friends: Jack’s longtime friend Bea Johnson, the Zero Waste Home blogger and media star who is also an artist, creates “amazing pieces of art” with the very few disposable items her family uses, like butter wrappers.

It also includes mask maker Rachel Pozivenec, an artist who creates life-like animal masks that have taken off over the past year.

While the Marin Theatre Company is in the midst of a lauded production of August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean, it's already getting set for its next act: Rachel Bonds’ Rella Lossy Award-winning Swimmers, which opens March 3. MTC says Swimmers is a beautiful "slice of life" ensemble play (that) explores the relationships we take most for granted – those with whom we work every day.

Set in a contemporary office, Bonds’ play explores the relationship paradigms of the work space environment through a set of diverse co-workers and their personal lives and habits. This ‘slice of life’ play reveals how each of the characters intermingle with their day-to-day routines and the quirky social dynamics among one another. While each tries to cope with their own realities of the pressures, politics, and company culture inside, a strange tide seems to be rising outside. Sink or swim, each one of them tries to navigate their course against the current, while the world outside their cubicles looms with ominous signs of impending doom.   

Swimmers was honored with the 2015 Rella Lossy Award for excellence in a world premiere script. The Rella Lossy Award honors the memory of the late Rella Lossy, a lifelong lover and champion of the American theatre and playwriting. She published several plays, served as the theatre editor of Bay Arts Review, and was a founding member of Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Ms. Lossy was also an actress, poet and supporter of the arts in the Bay Area. This award is funded annually from an endowment created by Dr. Frank Lossy, Rella’s devoted husband, and administered by The San Francisco Foundation.

The 411: Swimmers opens March 3 at the Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., and runs through March 27. Info, showtimes and tickets: marintheatre.org | (415) 388-5208 | boxoffice@marintheatre.org.

On Jan. 17, the Mill Valley Chamber Music Society continues its 42nd season of presenting "exceptional classical musicians in Mill Valley at affordable ticket prices" with a performance from the Prima Trio, known for its engaging and lively repertoire of classical and contemporary music. 
 
Prima Trio performs a program of compositions from Mozart, Max Bruch, Glick, Khachaturian, Piazzola, Schickele at 5 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 17 at the Mount Tamalpais United Methodist Church in Mill Valley.
 
Described as "a virtuosic tour de force...a whirlwind of joy," by the Palm Beach Daily News, Prima Trio was founded in 2004 while its members (Boris Allakhverdyan, clarinet; Gulia Gurevich, violin; and Anastasia Derik, piano) were studying at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio.
 
Prima Trio was named Grand Prize and Gold Medal Winners of the prestigious 2007 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. In addition, Prima Trio was awarded a Midwest Winner’s Tour and a European debut at Italy’s Emilia Romagna Festival, as well as a total of $10,500 in prize money.
 
Prima Trio has performed throughout the United States and Europe - including the Chicago Chamber Music Society, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Dumbarton Oaks, La Jolla Athenaeum, the Dayton Art Institute, CityMusic Columbus, Da Camera Society, Fontana Chamber Arts and Cleveland Chamber Music Society and Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Music Festival in Germany.
 
The 411: Prima Trio performs at 5pm on Sunday, Jan 17 at the Mount Tamalpais United Methodist Church, 410 Sycamore Ave. Tickets are $18-$35 via Brown Paper Tickets, at 1-800-838-3006 or at the door.

A step into the new Poet and/the Bench space on Locust Ave. reveals far more than the newest jewelry shop in town – it’s a walk through the life that its owners have created together, a celebration of craftsmanship, creativity and a love for the arts.

Jeffrey Levin and Bonnie Powers opened Poet and/the Bench at 10E Locust Ave. in late 2015, building on Levin’s 30 years as a jewelry maker and goldsmith, a career spent in nearly every aspect of the jewelry business, from model making to distribution and retail.

The couple describe Poet and/the Bench as “their lifestyle store and jewelry atelier inspired by and celebrating beautifully crafted objects and the narrative behind each one.” The space has two primary components.

First and foremost is Levin’s retail shop and workspace, including the vintage bench he found in the late 1980s in New York City that serves as one half of the shop’s moniker, as Levin for years has referred to going to work on his jewelry craft as “getting on the bench.”

The other half of that name reflects the second and overarching focus of Poet and/the Bench. The couple wanted to expand “the philosophy of the store to include all makers who all work on a bench of some sort and the poetry of what is created,” Levin says. “We arrived at the name at the end of a brainstorming session and when it was floating in the air, we just stopped. It was the right name.”

Poet and/the Bench celebrates makers by exhibiting the work of artists they love. As a result, the shop’s relatively small space is bursting with creative energy. Levin’s jewelry is intermingled with art installations from the likes of Adele Crawford, Lisa Joss and Bob Dinetz, as well as Gallery for Good, an ongoing initiative of donation-based tiny art with 100 percent of proceeds to the organization FORCE, which provides support to women and men with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. This first installation comes from Hatch, the San Francisco creative design agency for which Powers is the managing director.  

​“Both of us have been collecting art and things for our entire lives,” Levin says. “When we thought of the shop, we knew that we wanted it to be a lot like our home, where you invite people into your personal tastes with design and decor.”

The myriad works of art add a unique flavor to Poet and/the Bench, complementing Levin’s jewelry, a mix of precious metals, gems and natural materials, including the hearts and crosses pieces that are among his signatures.

Levin began his career in jewelry in his native South Africa in his early 20s, apprenticing with Franz Huppertz in Cape Town and other outfits in Johannesburg lecturing on his craft to other jewelry apprentices. Levin moved to New York City in 1986, as “things were drying up in South Africa” and his brother already lived in Manhattan.

Four years later, he fled the harsh winters of the Northeast and moved to Los Angeles, where he became immersed in the community in and around Santa Monica. He quickly made a name for himself, making masters for designers to make a mold of and then manufacture.

“That’s what I’ve done for the bulk of my career,” he says. “There’s nothing to sell without the master.”

Levin combined his master-making and design expertise into the wholesale side of the business in the mid-1990s at his own firm called u+i. He then served as partner and chief operating officer of Julez Bryant, overseeing daily operations and national branding and sales strategy performing all modelmaking.

Each of those steps in the journey gave Levin a handle on all aspects of the business. In the years since he and Powers met in 2006, they’ve known they’d eventually like to open a shop like Poet and/the Bench. They moved to Marin in 2014 and Levin continued working out of a space in Sausalito. When they found the space on Locust Ave., they were drawn to the emergence of the Mill Valley Design District, as a confluence of design-oriented businesses have opened on and around Miller and Locust avenues in recent years.

“There’s a great energy around here right now,” Levin says.

Appropriately enough, Poet and/the Bench's January 30th opening party (1–5pm) is a celebration of "the upcoming month of love" as well as the latest designers to be incorporated into the space, including jewelry designer Danielle Welmond, known for "weaving gems with fine threads and precious metals. Her signature lace making is delicate and feminine and we're in love." The event also features the work of photographer and designer Nico van Dongen, whose "Tulipa Erotica" exhibit "celebrates common objects' personification through magnification. Removed from their environment, his subjects become transformed. In this series, he reveals the seductive and whimsical."
​
The 411: Poet and/the Bench is at 10E Locust Ave. More info.

Through all its changes over the years, one fact has remained true of Mill Valley: the person sitting next to you at Peet’s or behind you in line at the Market likely has one heck of a back story.

That is definitely true of longtime local fixture Shane Kennedy, one of the most well regarded soccer coaches in Marin and an artist whose career has spanned decades and myriad mediums, including exhibits in New York, Los Angeles, Memphis and San Francisco.

Kennedy showcases his work, including paintings and mixed media pieces featuring found objects, throughout January at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center (85 Throckmorton, with a wine reception on January 5 (6–8pm) as part of the Mill Valley Arts Commission's First Tuesday Artwalk.

The monthly celebration of local art includes a host of venues, including the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Seager Gray Gallery, the Mill Valley Public Library, Zener Schon Contemporary Art, Gelateria Noci, Julie Tuton Boutique, Terrestra, the Depot Bookstore & Café, City Hall, Famous4 and the Mill Valley Community Center, Seager Gray Gallery and the Throckmorton Theatre. Receptions at each venue are Tuesday from 6–8pm. First Tuesday Artwalk Guide with venues and a map.

Kennedy has lived in Mill Valley for nearly three decades, having moved here from New York in 1988. The decade-plus prior to that cross-country relocation found Kennedy immersed in the “art furniture” movement in 1980s New York City, where his work under the name Furniture Club blended simple shapes with dyed concrete and steel and was the subject of a New York Times’ feature story in 1984.

But it was the decade prior that saw Kennedy perfecting a different art: preventing some of the world’s best soccer players from scoring goals on him. A state champion goalkeeper at Staples High School in Westport, Ct. in 1972, Kennedy went on to win a national championship as a team captain at NCAA Div. III Babson College in 1975. He set an NCAA career record for shutouts at Babson and was named Soccer America’s All-Collegiate Most Valuable Player.

In 1976, Kennedy was drafted by the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League whose roster then included Pele, Giorgio Chinaglia, and legendary American goalie Shep Messing. Despite his success as an artist, Kennedy is perhaps best known in the Bay Area as a go-to coach for aspiring goalkeepers.

Whether it’s his own Dominate the Box teaching school, as head girls soccer coach at Tam High or as assistant men’s coach at Dominican University, Kennedy has had a hand in shaping some of the best young goalkeepers to come out of Marin for years.

When he relocated to the Bay Area, Kennedy scratched his artistic itch by turning to junkyards, dumpsters and flea markets, giving an array of found objects a second life through his creations, from welded masks and totems to constructions and collages.

“Working quickly and without plan,” Kennedy says he “looks for moments to start and stop and capture the unexpected.”

The 411: Shane Kennedy exhibits his artwork at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center, 85 Throckmorton Avenue, throughout June. The First Tuesday Artwalk receptions are Tuesday, June 2, 6–8pm. First Tuesday Artwalk Guide with venues and a map.