When the holidays descend, happiness sometimes may be muted by stress over gift-giving, food preparation, and questions that at the time seem so important: Where will all the relatives sit at the table? Will the turkey come out just right? This seems like a good time, then, to pause right here and take a look […]
Yankee
That 70s Show
Like Pat Steir (Just Looking, Feb. 18, 2010), the artist whose show preceded hers at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Lynda Benglis is a creature of the Post-Minimal 1970s. She is probably best known (or notorious) for the full-page ad she took out in a 1974 issue of Artforum in which she posed […]
Exactly Why the Leaves Turn
Jud’s New England Journal For October 2010 Welcome to the October 2010 edition of “Jud’s New England Journal,” the rather curious monthly musings of Judson Hale, editor-in-chief of Yankee Magazine, published since 1935 in Dublin, New Hampshire. Exactly Why the Leaves TurnGet Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations Guide! Email(Required) Subscribe We don’t fully […]
Minimal New Hampshire
Frank Stella, the pioneering Minimalist who is among the greatest contemporary American artists, is also one of the most famous artists that Massachusetts has ever produced though he has never really been identified with Massachusetts. Born in Malden in 1936, Stella graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover in 1954, left New England to attend college, […]
I love to bike in the fall. Just last weekend, I spent a day in Vermont, and from atop my bike, from one rolling hill to another, I saw real life versions of Sabra Field’s prints. Imagine spending a couple days or more biking through Vermont, with overnight stays at lovely inns. Richard First, founder […]
Expressionist Island
The gentle Cranberry Isles scattered off the shores of rugged Mount Desert Island have provided shelter and subject matter to some of the best artists in modern Maine art history – William Kienbusch, John Heliker, Robert LaHotan, Dorothy Eisner, Emily Nelligan, Ashley Bryan, Gretna Campbell, and Campbell’s son Henry Finkelstein. Like most of the artists […]
Meg Brown Payson is a Maine painter whose work tends to be seen more often in Massachusetts than in Maine. Currently, it’s in Chester, Connecticut, subject of a solo exhibition at Eo Art Lab entitled Hydrostatic Pressure (through September 26). The title, which in fluid mechanics is “the pressure at a point in a fluid […]
A Writer’s Holiday
These national holidays — Labor Day, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Martin Luther King’s Birthday — are an odd occurrence for a writer. For those who travel to their workplace each day and live by this other calendar that begins at 9 and ends at 5, these holidays are a respite from that schedule. Writers […]
Eye Spy in Salem
All representational art is an optical illusion, the representation of three dimensional objects and space on a two dimensional surface. But when we think of art and illusion, we generally think of things such as trompe l’oeil paintings, the visual conundrums of an M.C. Escher, and the hypnotic geometries of 1970s Op Art, art works […]
Running for Town Office
Jud’s New England Journal For September 2010 Welcome to the September 2010 edition of “Jud’s New England Journal,” the rather curious monthly musings of Judson Hale, editor-in-chief of Yankee Magazine, published since 1935 in Dublin, New Hampshire. Running for Town Office The late Vrest Orton, founder of the Vermont Country Store, had two words of […]
Thermoplastic Downeast
The Tides Institute and Museum of Art in Eastport, Maine, has been having a 1970s summer. The exhibition that just closed, The ’70s: Art & Place at Passamaquoddy Bay, Maine, featured artists active in the area in the 1970s. Now, (through September 19) the Tides Institute is featuring a solo exhibition by Richard Van Buren, […]
In 2010, we asked Massachusetts native and Connecticut resident Carroll Spinney what it was like to be the voice of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch since Sesame Street‘s debut in 1969.