Last year was one of the worst years for hay that I can remember. Aside from the need for sun to dry the hay before baling, these fields are wet anyway, so if it rains too much, the fields are too wet to bear the weight of a tractor. So the farmers wait for that […]
Yankee
The DeCordova Gets Tired
Forgive the tired pun of the title. When it comes to sculptor Chakaia Booker’s art, it’s hard to avoid. Rubber Soul. Retread Retro. Rubber Made. Rubber Maid. Where the Rubber Meets the Museum, etc. Suffice it to say they’ve all been used. That’s because Chakaia Booker makes fantastic sculptures out of old tires. I first […]
Joe Nicoletti Has the Blues
Though I have known Joe Nicoletti for more than 30 years now and have admired his paintings even longer, I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that he was born in Italy. The occasion of his upcoming retrospective exhibition at the Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, Maine, where he has taught since 1981, […]
Welcome to the June 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. Get Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations Guide! Email(Required) Subscribe What to Do When Your Car Steering Wheel Comes Off Get Our FREE Yankee […]
What We Have Lost
It seems as if we are constantly being reminded of how dangerous this world is, what with bomb scares and airport scanners that render us all guilty until proven innocent. This results in a climate of fear which I find tragic. I feel I live in place far away from the life depicted on television […]
Provincetown Comes to Boston
Provincetown is terra incognita to me. I have visited this outpost of art and beach culture but twice in my life. Like Key West, it struck me as an almost foreign place, a gritty and sensual end of the road illuminated by the bright sun, the sparkle of the sea, and the glow of free […]
Setting Sail on a Sea of Oil
Hundreds of New York artists spend time each year in Maine, but Katherine Bradford is one of the few who swan against the flow. Though she is a New York native, she was a Maine artist before she was a New York artist. Kathy Bradford first came to Maine in 1968 at the age of […]
Paradise Lost
In June, I am heading to Iceland, a long awaited return to a country that I love. I spent part of one year living there in 1969 while trying to figure out what life was all about. College was making me restless, a bit bored. I wanted to experience something more so I went to […]
Art At The Edge
Just three months ago I reported on the ambitious beginnings of the Portsmouth Museum of Fine Art and an excellent exhibition there entitled Sacred and Profane (Just Looking 2/4). Now the Portsmouth MFA has mounted a new exhibition entitled At the Edge that continues the museum’s mission of bringing the best in contemporary art to […]
Bits of Sea in Concord
Unbeknownst to both of us, I played a small part in the development of painter John Bonner’s career. Back in March 1991, Bonner saw an article I wrote about noted Boston cityscape painter George Nick in Yankee and, struck by the aesthetic similarity to his own paintings, he wrote Nick a letter. Nick, an influential […]
Out of the Zone
Spring came in a rush, a tumble of images. A month ago, I saw a bear amble across the back field. It might have been my imagination but he appeared to be sleepwalking, loping along almost in a daze. It was hardly spring, still cold, grass not yet green. But time enough for the bears […]
Welcome to the May 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. Learning the New England Language Trouble is, as soon as you’ve identified a rule, you discover more exceptions than examples.Get Our FREE Yankee Best New […]