There are, of course, a lot more than two signs of spring in New England about now. But these are my favorites… After the various early signals of spring in New England — the Boston Flower Show, spotting a robin among snow patches on the lawn, and gathering pussy willows for the dining room table […]
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Art As Experience
Garry Mitchell lives about five miles from me in North Yarmouth, Maine, yet for some reason I have never gotten around to taking him or his wife, writer Debra Spark, up on invitations to visit his studio. I have, however, admired Mitchell’s work from afar. I have seen it online, here in town at a […]
The Drama of It All
March is usually snowstorms and mud, mud and snowstorms but this March has been warmth, thaw, and mud. I have not kept track but it seems we have had warm weather for the past three or so weeks, with a few high wind storms thrown in to keep us honest. In the beginning of this […]
Read More: New England Numbers: Hurricane of ’38 Wind That Shook the World $308 million total price tag from devastation caused by Hurricane of ’38 1,100 deaths in Massachusetts during July 1911 heat wave, with temps topping 110 degrees in BostonGet Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations Guide! Email(Required) Subscribe 94 deaths and 1,300 […]
Back in 1990, I selected an image of “Rising Cairn” by sculptor Celeste Roberge for the cover of my book Maine Art Now because it perfectly embodied the point I wanted to make with the book – that Maine art was no longer just romantic landscapes and seascapes by artists from away attracted to the […]
The Magic of the Magic People
I am working on a new book, which will hopefully be published this spring. In Love with New England is a collection of some of the stories I’ve written in the past, about unusual and interesting people, essential Yankees, if you will. This has sent me hurtling back in time and I have been lost […]
Roni Horn aka Roni Horn
Roni Horn is an androgynous artist. She wears horn-rimmed glasses and keeps her hair cropped short. She has said that her name is her destiny. Just as her name and her appearance defy easy gender identity, her art defies easy categorization. Though she majored in sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA “75) […]
In the Realm of Ideals
I’ve been hearing good things about what Fr. Iain MacLellan has been doing at the Chapel Art Center at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, so I was not all that surprised when two of Maine’s best painters turned up in the current three-artist show there. Mirare (through March 20) features geometric abstractions by […]
When Granny D Walked Across America
NOTE: Doris “Granny D” Haddock died in Dublin, New Hampshire, March 9, 2010, at the age of 100. This article is from Yankee Magazine November 2000. The rising sun brings veils of mist out of the damp soil, and the rain-swollen stream tumbles jubilantly behind Doris Haddock‘s Dublin, New Hampshire, home. Into this new morning, […]
The Sweet Smell of March
I went off on a bit of a chase for spring on Friday, without really knowing that was what I was doing. I was to write about a woman who lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, outside of Portland, about three hours from here. I left early to be able to arrive at 11. The hills […]
This Is Still Life
The most intriguing object in the Objects of Wonder: Four Centuries of Still Life from the Norton Museum of Art at the Portland Museum of Art (through June 6) is not a still life painting at all. It is a sculpture entitled “Grouper,” the skeleton of a fish rendered in linden wood by Fumio Yoshimura, […]
AUDIO: Andrea Phillips Interview
MORE: Yankee‘s interview with Captain Richard Phillips Audio Interview: Captain Phillips _________ Captain Richard Phillips jokes that his wife, Andrea, had it harder at home than he did with the pirates. He may be right. In this interview with Yankee editor Mel Allen, Andrea Phillips describes the bonds of love and faith that kept her […]