August Art Augments

August 11, 2025
• Needham artists discuss ongoing exhibits and locations that locals can visit this month.

When Vicki Garbe started with the Needham Art Association five years ago, the organization boasted 40 members. They ended last year with 86 artists.

Garbe, president of the NAA, attributes those growing numbers to their online presence, but also to Needham’s unquenchable thirst for art within their community. Other Needham-based artists acknowledged the town’s desire for color and creativity in unused and unconventional spaces as the summer comes to a close.

In celebration of their growing membership, the NAA organized a New Members Show, featuring seven of its approximately 20 new members at the Center at the Heights through the end of the month. The show opened in early July.

During the NAA’s 75th anniversary last year, the group displayed vinyl banners across town for its ongoing Art Outside exhibit, featuring diverse works of art along wired fences and unoccupied walls. That program drew attention from both residents and artists alike.

“The Needham Art Association has kind of exploded,” Garbe said. “We were really excited about that, and we wanted to do something to welcome them, and we just thought a new member show was a great idea.”

Barbara Levitov, a pottery artist and longtime Needham resident, discovered the “pure joy” of ceramics about 13 years ago, when she fell in love with the medium during a workshop.

About 25-30 of her works last month traveled to the Needham Free Public Library, where they’ll be on display until after Labor Day. Much of the collection, which is for sale, is housed on the second floor near the Reference desk, where she hosted a meet-and-greet Thursday afternoon.

“My objective was to share what I do with where I live and at the library that I attend so often,” she said.

Several pieces on display are in the raku style — a Japanese pottery tradition and practice wherein the ceramics are fired at a lower temperature over a longer period. Some of Levitov’s raku pottery on display is decorative, including vases and a platter, while others, such as a couple ramen noodle bowls, are functional, but all embrace the cracking and texture that epitomize the style.

While she does keep just some of her creations, Levitov said her goal is to share her work with others and continue to discover new ways to work with clay.

“There are successes and tons of failures. What you do with the failure is, you just wrap yourself up, throw the ball of clay in the bucket and start all over again,” Levitov said of the medium. “It’s resilient, and I have to keep myself resilient to keep going.”

For Simone Azevedo, summer means the Needham Farmers Market, which she attends along with her collection of pottery. Imperfect Art Studio, the moniker she operates under, appears frequently among other art vendors at the Town Common on Sundays, including Weaves N Threads and Vilca Body Arts.

Azevedo creates ceramics and large embroidery pieces, where she literally weaves stories into the fabric. But in the summertime, she concentrates more on her ceramics, creating a series of mugs and little animals, including penguins and birds, that she displays at the market.

Forging connections with the community — through her art but more so through teaching art to others —is a large part of her creative endeavors, she said. The process is about letting go of your control and tapping into your childlike sense of wonder and playfulness, she added.

“I was a chief executive in the biotech space, and it was this sense of urgency to get things done and everything is important and so on. And pottery teaches you that there are things that you can’t control, no matter how good you are you absolutely cannot control. You have to be patient. You can’t accelerate the process,” Azevedo said. “If you try to dry a piece of pottery too fast, it will crack. It’s most likely that something bad will happen at one phase of the process or the other.”

Her next market appearance is slated for Sept. 14.

“It has been really amazing also, because you have great conversations with customers,” she said. “It’s really cool to see people that, whatever they got, brought them some joy.”