I love many things about this area, but one of my strongest pulls is from the legacy of art that underlies this and our surrounding towns. Beautiful landscape paintings seem like the very earth beneath our feet here, or at least this earth is the sustenance out of which these paintings have grown. Many artists […]
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 […]
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 […]
Before it’s too late, allow me to call your attention to a nifty little exhibition at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Entitled Nature/Artifice, the exhibition features 13 works from the museum’s collection that artfully speak to the relationship between nature and culture. I say before it’s too late, because the RISD Museum is […]
I am truly blessed by the mail that I receive. It all seems to me to come out of the blue. A letter from a member of the National Guard, telling me how much he loves Yankee, how it used to be the perfect size to fit into the pocket of the cargo pants of […]
Real Art Ways, an alternative arts space founded in Hartford, Connecticut in 1975, is one of New England’s liveliest contemporary arts venues, like Space in Portland, Maine, and AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island, presenting a heady mix of fine and performing arts. This summer, Real Art Ways has commissioned four works of public art for […]
SLIDE SHOW: Cape Cod Houses This is a story about summer and light. About inner and outer beauty and how a house reflects them both, on its own and in relation to the landscape around it. It’s about the yearning we feel here in New England when our brief but glorious season is finally upon […]
A cool mist and a milky, overcast sky mercifully keep the sun off the backs of the blueberry rakers on the desolate barrens north of Columbia Falls, in Maine’s coastal Washington County. Close to 100 rakers, stooped and sweaty, work their way across the vast open landscape, littered with pickup trucks and brightly colored plastic […]
There are times when being there beats getting there by a long shot. We want our foliage vistas, and we want them now — so, onward and upward, in our cars. Herewith, a rundown of nine New England mountain summits attainable by auto road. Some are among the region’s loftiest and most majestic mountains; others […]
There is an old farmhouse on the edge of the town where I live that has stood forlorn and empty for as long as I can remember. It’s shabby, but it has, as architects are wont to say, “good bones.” Sometimes I think I’d like to buy it and fix it up. Other times I […]
Good landscaping is about more than just plants. Paths, benches, walls, water features — they’re all part of hardscaping and can make or break the look of your yard and garden landscape. In the competitive housing market, every feature of a home is crucial in attracting potential buyers. The home’s exterior makes the first impression, […]
Retreat to the Island Isle au Haut, Maine, for a look at the classic center-chimney New England Cape home of author and lobsterman Linda Greenlaw.
