Brattleboro, Vermont’s most famous landmark seemed destined to die—but the townspeople had other ideas.
york
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 […]
New England trains are part of this nation’s collective memory and in this train book review, a collection of midcentury images are waiting to be discovered.
The audience for art is small. The readership for art writing is even smaller. But at the risk of driving what few faithful readers Just Looking has to another art blog, I am devoting this final posting of 2009 to an interesting dialogue that has been taking place between Boston Phoenix art critic Greg Cook […]
Traditionally, the visual arts have been object-oriented, involving the creation of paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture. Increasingly over the last quarter of the 20th century and accelerating here in the early years of the 21st, the leading edge of creativity has become the art of installation, the creation of environments and the staging of events. […]
Drawing is the most immediate and intimate of art forms, at once direct and often tentative or preparatory. Modernist master Paul Klee called it “taking a line for a walk.” Traditionally drawing has tended to be a linear pursuit in graphite or pen and ink, but in the prevailing pluralistic aesthetic of the 21st century […]
Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut, has organized a multimedia celebration of contemporary West Indian culture that includes videos, films, live music, readings, and a wide ranging art exhibition. Entitled Rockstone and Bootheel: Contemporary West Indian Art, the exhibition (through March 14) was curated by Real Art Ways director of visual arts Kristina Newman-Scott and […]
Magazine
The Metropolitan Opera in the Pines
I went to the opera on Saturday afternoon. The Met. Verdi’s Aida. Around noon, I put on a pair of slacks and a sweater, gave the dogs a cookie and left the house. I turned left out of my driveway, headed down a paved road which soon turned to dirt. I was on my way. […]
Robert Solotaire passed away a year ago this month at a very youthful 78 years of age. Bob was a downtown kind of guy, a ubiquitous presence on the streets of Portland, particularly up in the West End where he ran a boarding house, wrote for the neighborhood newspaper, and painted the lively urban scenes […]
Design
For Kids
1. Put a pony under the tree–if it fits in this folding stable ($99.99). Melissa & Doug, Wilton, CT; melissaanddoug.com; available at Wood ‘n Things, New Ipswich, NH; 603-924-6381 2. This sweetly chic dress ($158) in organic terry will make your budding fashionista giddy. Sarah Waldo, Providence, RI. 401-272-1003; sarahwaldo.com 3. Young shredders can hit […]
New Hampshire
Orange, NH: The Town Party
Read more: Small-Town Holiday Celebrations There are layers in every town that touch and connect its residents. Ritual, communal gathering, collective memory: In the New Hampshire town where I live, those layers are almost visible in our annual town Christmas party. I think of them most strongly at the end of the party, when, by […]
Yankee
Modulating a Maine Modernist
Back in the 1950s, three artists lived in a building on 28th St. in New York City. Bernard “Blackie” Langlais lived and worked on the top floor. Alex Katz had a studio on the second floor. And Charles DuBack lived on the first floor above the street level lumberyard below. All three men attended the […]