Local artist Ben Weiss (b.1923 –d. 2010) is August’s featured artist.  From his birth in Poland to a Jewish Orphanage in Rhode Island at five, (now Miriam Hospital), where he grew up, to a scholarship at RISD, to L’Academie-de La Grande Chaumiere in Paris, Ben Weiss was an exceptionally accomplished and well known fine artist and art educator in Providence, RI.  From sketches of his fellow soldiers and troops sailors during WWII, to paintings of freed Paris, to lush oils, pastels, and watercolors of landscapes, cityscapes and seascapes in sumptuous colors and strong geometric shapes, to perfectly formed charcoal figure drawings, Ben Weiss’s works are always pleasing.  In his words, "I like the work of Mondrian, with its neat and cheerful geometric shapes."