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 […]
connecticut
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 […]
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.
How New England Can Save the World? wonders the author in Part IV in a series.
The Addison Gets a Makeover
No one has ever been able to satisfactorily explain to me why a traditional New England prep school boasts an art museum that would be the envy of most colleges, but the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts is just that. The Addison has been closed since 2008 for a […]
Here’s a life list of 75 essential things for anyone who loves New England, native and visitor alike. How many have you done?
The Return of Rackstraw Downes
The Maine art community, myself included, never really appreciated painter Rackstraw Downes when he was a seasonal resident of the state. Though he had a summer home in rural Morrill from the 1960s until fairly recently, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Rackstraw Downes show in Maine. Now that Downes, a New York City […]
Back in 2006, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, received a $140,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the exhibition and publication of its extensive collection of works on paper. The following year, the Henry Luce Foundation gave the Wadsworth $50,000 to do conservation work on the works on paper in […]
Clarence Rhodes, celebrated rosarian and longtime judge for the American Rose Society, lives in Portland, Maine, where this retired electrical engineer has dispelled the notion that New England’s harsh winters kill the prospects of anything outside of, say, an ‘Elina’, ‘Dublin Bay’, or ‘Hot Princess’. More than 250 bushes consume his backyard, line his driveway, […]
The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut (wadsworthatheneum.org), is home to the largest portion of Wallace Nutting’s collection of original 17th- and 18th-century furnishings, some 550 pieces of furniture, ironwork, lamps, kitchen tools, and other goods, in addition to a sizable collection of the Nutting factories’ 20th-century reproduction furniture, design templates, and hand-tinted photos. Nutting furniture […]
If necessity is the mother of invention, what gives birth to reinvention? Is it dire necessity? A quest for perfection? Or a deeply personal conviction? Whatever the case, scrapping something back to its beginnings and re-creating it is a monumental task. Don’t ask me how, at the age of 43, Wallace Nutting had the energy […]
To look at Casey and Garret Roberts’ home, you’d think it was part of the coastline. Their Rhode Island house sits so close to the oceanfront that their backyard should be considered the sea. The driveway is “paved” with glistening white clamshells, and their garden has plants designed in the shapes of nautical knots. In […]