At first glance, Jill Hoy and Eric Hopkins: Elemental Rhythms seems an odd pairing, not because the artists have so little in common but because they have so much. The occasion of their joint exhibition at the Thos. Moser Cabinetmaker gallery in Freeport, Maine (January 28 to March 31) provides an opportunity to consider their […]
gardens
Gardens
Winter Gardening: Eliot Coleman
For more than 30 years, Eliot Coleman of Harborside, Maine, has successfully grown food in winter without heated greenhouses. Think outside your zone. Each winter, his gardens head south, to Georgia, without moving an inch. How? For every layer of protection–a cold frame, for example–the growing environment shifts 500 miles. By doubling up, says Coleman, […]
Magazine
Finding Grace in a Cemetery
I grew up in cemeteries. One Sunday afternoon a month, after Mass, after the midday meal of lasagna or spaghetti and meatballs, my grandmother visited the dead. Mama Rose never learned to drive, so her cousin–Uncle Rum–took her from graveyard to graveyard in his square green Ford. I didn’t have a choice; when Mama Rose […]
When Don DiMugno moved into his house in Kensington, Connecticut, he went straight to work creating space to display his ever-growing collection of memorabilia. Five additions and 41 years later, DiMugno’s collectibles fill his 2,000-square-foot home, a new barn, and the garage–and, as any passerby will notice, spill into his yard and driveway. DiMugno admits […]
Magazine
Here in New England: Hard Work
When strangers taste Nancy Brown’s balsamic vinaigrette, they know it’s special. What they don’t know is just how special.
Yankee
Artist in Residences
Since 1990, artist Connie Hayes has been painting landscapes, still-lifes and interiors in and around houses where she has stayed as a houseguest, methodically borrowing the homes of friends and friends of friends in order search out new subject matter. In 2004, Hayes documented her peripatetic paintings in Painting Maine: The Borrowed Views of Connie […]
Teresa D’Angelo was 7 years old when the German army stormed her home village of Orsogna in Abruzzo, Italy, in 1943. She and her family fled, hiding in a cave for 13 days. Neighbors sneaked small pieces of food to them. “Just bits of bread,” she says now, standing in her recently renovated kitchen in […]
Homes
Boatbuilder’s House
For years Stephen Florimbi and his partner, Sarah Price, had a vision of what they wanted in a home: a life tucked away in the woods, isolated, private, off the grid. For Sarah: lavish vegetable gardens. For Stephen, a boatbuilder: a barn for his work. And at the center of the property: a small, energy-producing […]
I guess I must have missed Alan Gussow. Though he painted on Monhegan Island from 1949 until his death in 1997 and I have written about art in Maine since 1978, I’ve never seen a major Gussow show. Apparently, there was a ten-year retrospective at the Portland Museum of Art back in 1970, the year […]
Yankee‘s September/October Best Cook Teresa Scenna brought her Italian cooking style with her when she and her husband moved to America, specifically Massachusetts. With gardens in her back yard, she believes teaching people to cook would help the economy. “Instead of giving people a loaf of bread, give them a five-pound bag of flour,” she […]
Yankee
A Summer Flower Show
As I sit here at the keyboard, my backyard view is of gardens punctuated by deep red bee balm and bright yellow black-eyed susans, pink lilies and lobelia, buttery primroses and lilac hostas. High summer is not a time for strenuous intellectual or artistic activity. It’s a time for rest and relaxation, for enjoying the […]
Magazine
Homes and Gardens on Display
Yesterday I went on a house and garden tour in the next town. There are many historic houses in that town, especially on their main street, which looks more like a stage set for Anne of Green Gables than it does a real town, operating in the 21st century. But it does operate every day, […]