My View of Life on the Dock
January sky 1/25/2023, Gloucester, Ma. This morning’s elongated cloud roll/cloud shelf tube wrapped around the coast and tapered to a funnel horn tip. Views passing Good Harbor Beach and Long Beach
A shelf cloud stacks with the storm cloud. A roll cloud doesn’t. Both were at play today. The roll was prominent 8AM to noon.
School vacation week 2023 is just around the corner! Check out the acting classes in Gloucester at the Cape Ann YMCA
Gloucester 1/24/2023: Yellow and gray streaked sky, roads clear, and light accumulation from yesterday’s snowfall. Despite the sunny and warming up that’s forecast, there should be enough snow when school lets out suitable for building a snowman and slow sledding!
Finally! A major exhibition of Hopper’s Gloucester is underway, and one that will be mounted right here in Gloucester. Mark your calendars for visits to Cape Ann Museum this summer to study up close 60 Edward Hopper paintings, drawings and prints inspired by Gloucester and Cape Ann, on loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art and other public and private collections, and featuring a selection of work by Josephine Nivison Hopper.
Masterpiece drawings are rarely on public view or loaned because 1)they are fragile and watercolors are especially susceptible to light damage and 2)they can be a fixture highlight of a permanent collection which does not warrant any absence easily. This gathering of Hopper originals inspired by Gloucester at the Cape Ann Museum will truly be a once in a generation or lifetime opportunity to see the drawings on view and together in one venue. Investments and improvements into Cape Ann Museum facilities undertaken during Ronda Faloon’s tenure as former Director improved conditions so much that the museum can secure and protect temporary loans of such significance.
“Edward Hopper & Cape Ann: Illuminating an American Landscape is on view at CAM this summer 2023. Opening on July 22, Hopper’s birthday, exactly 100 years after his pivotal trip to Gloucester (then celebrating its 300th anniversary), this once-in-a-generation exhibition offers a fresh look at one of America’s best-known artists at the crucial moment that profoundly shaped his art and his life. It shows the largely ignored but significant origin story of Hopper’s years in and around Gloucester, Massachusetts—a period and place that imbued Hopper’s paintings with a clarity and purpose that had eluded his earlier work. The success of Hopper’s Gloucester watercolors transformed his work in all media and set the stage for his monumental career.”
Cape Ann Museum read more here
Edward Hopper (1882-1967) earned respect from his colleagues since his student days and ‘world famous artist’ status in his own time. Admiration for his contribution to American 20th century art did not fade in the 21st century. Indeed it’s been supercharged. Dr. Elliot Bostwick Davis, a long time curator and former museum director, was brought in to lead the survey at Cape Ann Museum, and its accompanying catalogue, published by Rizzoli, the preeminent art publishing house, with a foreword by Adam Weinberg and available in May. Davis was part of the curatorial team that produced the major 2007 Hopper exhibit for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston which traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago and National Gallery. Significant Hopper artworks are on permanent display and revered worldwide. One imagines that Davis’s efforts were certain to secure the loans Cape Ann Museum sought, and perhaps a future Hopper bequest for the museum. As an art dealer, I first met Dr. Davis when she was an assistant curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when Colta Ives was the director of the print department.
I determined that there are more than 120 Edward Hopper works of art inspired by Gloucester, and mapped them which helped with the walking tour developed at Cape Ann Museum years after and was credited in CAM’s brochure. Less than 30 had been identified and some were credited to locations elsewhere in Massachusetts or out of state.
Publishers back in 2010 and 2012 did not think there was enough of a market for a Gloucester focused Hopper monograph. Good Morning Gloucester did and was the first to publish that research. In the past decade, Hopper surveys–whether narrow in focus, a broad retrospective traveling in the United States and abroad, or a viral social media expression during the pandemic–have been blockbusters and relevant, inspiring bequests, discoveries, and original work by filmmakers, playwrights, authors and musicians. It’s Gloucester’s time!
Edward Hopper, House in the Italian Quarter, 1923, watercolor, Smithsonian.
“#16 Fort Square Road, Gloucester, MA. Turn around with your back to Gloucester harbor and face “Tony’s House” at the angle shown here. In the painting, note the hint of city skyline lower left, and the slight slope along the right of the harbor. The double house and outhouses were irresistible and inevitable subjects.”
Catherine Ryan, 2010. Update: Shingles gone. The home was for sale in 2020, sold, and renovated. Blue cladding is recent. Photo with snow 1/24/2023. Note Birdseye in 2010 photos where Beauport Hotel is now.
The cover for the new catalogue features this home on Washington Street. The painting is in private hands, part of a wonderful collection in New York advised by fantastic curators associated with the Whitney. After this exhibit at Cape Ann Museum perhaps an eventual bequest here in Gloucester could happen.
photos – road conditions 7am Main roads, side roads Eastern Ave, Hartz
Our Opening Weekend is Saturday January 21st (11-5pm) and Sunday January 22nd (1-4pm) 2023 to coincide with the 2nd Annual Gloucester So Salty. George Wingate opens the season with ‘Letters / Words / and.’ In the words of an artist friend, George is a postmodernist, a minimalist, a sculptor, a poet and an all over evocator. I would add he is a wordsmith; he invigorates the mind.
Come whenever you can.
Come often during 2023; it’s Gloucester’s 400+ and there will be lots to view.
The gallery welcomes all.
Jane Deering – Jane Deering GalleryPleasant St. Gloucester, MA
Jane Deering shares news about an upcoming special event:
Save the date January 21, 2023!
As You Like It: candlelight masque & listening party with Lanes Coven Theater and new music by Scott Moore
As You Like It brings a newly-composed score to the Annisquam Village Church on Saturday,
January 21, 2023 at 7pm. Artist-in-Residence Scott Moore created the eclectic large-scale work
throughout the spring and summer, playing and recording every instrument himself. The music
brings to life the forms and gestures of Shakespeare’s beloved pastoral comedy with a fun, fresh
pastiche of styles and sounds—from absurd, neo-Baroque strings and harpsichord, to hip-hop
drums and impressionist dream folk. Originally commissioned by the Louisville (KY) Ballet, and
premiered as a ballet in August, the piece has been substantially reworked to include dialogue
from the play, delivered live by Gloucester’s rising theater stars, Lanes Coven. Conversation with
the composer will chronicle the journey from conception to premiere, illuminating the artistic
process and framing the evening’s performance. A feast for the ears and the mind, this unusual
and enchanting evening will also feature light refreshment. All are welcome; donations are
gratefully accepted, and will benefit the AVC music program.
Annisquam Village Church, 820 Washington Street, Gloucester MA 01930
Now there’s three centuries of striving for equality expressed in public art sculpture on Boston Commons.
photo caption: Daybreak photos on Boston Commons, January 13, 2023, a few hours before the Embrace unveiling ceremony- and the rain.
The memorial by Hank Willis Thomas is installed just inside the Boston Common Parkman Plaza entrance (across from 151 Tremont St.). Today’s event precedes the public access to the site. Note: The area will be fenced off for a few more weeks before public access is cleared.
In addition to photo documentation of how the Embrace looks today as its readied for the unveiling event, there are photos of the art featured on the temporary fence wrap; the surroundings alongside the new installation and how the Embrace is set into the Boston Commons to give an idea of scale; and photos of the Robert Kraus Boston Massacre / Crispus Attucks Memorial (dedicated 1888), the Augustus St.-Gaudens Robert Gould Shaw | 54th Regiment Memorial (1897), and the John Paramino Signing of the Declaration of Independence tribute tablet (1925) for context and to illustrate their proximity. With the addition of the Embrace (2022) commission, three centuries of striving for equality– now including a tribute to a woman* rather than an allegory for the spirit of Freedom– are located on the Boston Commons within sight of the State House.
*Cyrus Dallin’s Ann Hutchinson and Sylvia Shaw Judson‘s Mary Dyer statues are on the State House grounds.
Embrace is by American artist Hank Willis Thomas, with Mass Design Group architects. It’s 22 feet high and was fabricated in the Walla Walla Foundry. Thomas was inspired by a photograph of the spouses hugging when MLK was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. When it’s open, people can walk through the heart of the sculpture. I’ll write more about it later. Hank Willis Thomas is now represented by Pace Gallery, NY.
The Embrace will fall on the Freedom Trail and Black Heritage trail. It’s incredibly moving to visit these liberty milestones sited in such close proximity.
Jan 23, 2023 photos emphasize site lines in relation to the new Embrace commission.
Boston Massacre – Crispus Attucks bronze by Robert Kraus. The 25 feet high obelisk marks the day of the Boston Massacre and includes a tribute to its victims.
Crispus Attucks, a freed black man, whaler, and sailor, was the first revolutionary killed in the battle for liberty.
The sculpture was inspired by Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People commemorating France’s battle to overthrow the King in 1830 (decades following the French Revolution). France’s National Assembly disclosed the Declaration to the Rights of Man and Citizen in 1789. Olympe de Gouges pamplet, Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (the Declaration of the Rights of Women and the (Female) Citizens) came soon thereafter.
Boston Commons: Boston Massacre | Crispus Attucks Memorial on left; Embrace King tribute between the trees, past the temporary fencing; State House dome on right. Rainy day scenes are 2023. Blue skies were March 2018. All photos: C. Ryan
Sculptor John Paramino, after (John) Trumbull’s monumental painting completed in 1818 and installed in the Capitol, The Signing of the Declaration of Independence (Aug 1776), tablet set into granite with eagle carving and produced at the Gorham foundry, Providence, RI.
Closer to home in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the bronze doors on the A. Piatt Andrew bridge are by Paramino.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens took nearly fourteen years to finish. The memorial was unveiled May 31, 1897. Charles McKim designed the site. The names are carved at the back The paths slope down in the direction of the new statue.
People on their phones that morning whether standing, seated or walking.
site work
Rainy day scenes, today, Jan 13, 2023. Before scenes depicting site preparation and leafy trees dated June 2022. photos: C. Ryan
featuring Rixy Fernandez, Yotron the Don, Malakhai Pearson, Harry Scales, Zahirah Nur Truth, and Ngoc-Tran Vu
Wayfinding: Commissioned for a 1958 build out for Parkman Plaza designed by Shurcliff and Merrill, this tribute celebrates Boston’s industriousness, scholarship and spiritual history. Sculptors Arcangelo Cascieri & Adio di Biccari completed the series before a 1960 installation. The unveiling dedication was in 1961. This is the closest park entrance to see the Embrace.
blue sky photo: C. Ryan, March 2018 – Religion, Industry, Knowledge Boston Tribute 1961
Cape Ann Symphony Orchestra, Inc.
Notice of the upcoming Annual Meeting
Wednesday, January 18, 2023 at 7:00 pm
via Zoom
The Annual Meeting of the Cape Ann Symphony Orchestra, Inc. will be held on Wednesday, January 18, 2023, at 7:00 pm. The purpose of this meeting is to hear reports of the past year’s activity by the Music Director, President, Treasurer, Manager and Board Officers. The meeting is also convened to elect Directors and Officers for the period from January 19, 2023 through January 18, 2024. All regular patrons of the Cape Ann Symphony are welcome to attend. The meeting will be held via Zoom conference. To receive a Zoom invitation to attend please send an email to info@capeannsymphony.org. Enter “Annual Meeting” in the subject line and include in the email your desire to attend the meeting and an email address so that you can receive a Zoom invite. For further information please contact Cape Ann Symphony at 978-281-0543.
After five years on the block of Whistlestop mall in Rockport, Mayflour (and its bakery/coffee shop formerly known as Blume) is temporarily closed. Mayflour is reopening in 162 Main Street, Essex come Spring 2023, just perfect timing for new beginnings. How will they build out and design their new space?
Photos: Mayflour, Rockport. November 21 and December 30, 2022
177 Main Street was most recently occupied by a CVS pharmacy branch which moved to Gloucester Crossing.
Photos: November 17, 2019; November 17, 2022; November 21, 2022; December 4 2022
The property was acquired by Granite Cove Equities in March 2022
Jan. 10, 2023.
Before spring, DPW is managing a gas work project on Main Street between Duncan and Hancock Streets.
A temporary staging site has been set up on I4,C2 (65 Rogers St). Street signs alert drivers on Main. This job is by National Grid that has a subcontractor, Neuco.
Public Works is heavily involved in all aspects of any utility work in the city and “stays tight with projects every step of the way.”
Picnics, promenade, and polar plunge- there were fresh starts everywhere we turned.
Photos: Gloucester, Ma. New Year’s Day, 2023. Coffin’s Beach, Long Beach, Good Harbor Beach, Niles Beach, Stacy Boulevard, and Wingaersheek Beach.
Just outside the window, my neighbor encountered a hawk which had been there all morning. Here’s the expressive Juv. Cooper’s Hawk. Dec. 30, 2022 that took breaks digesting and feasting on a branch in a tree, on a downed branch, and the ground during a four hour window that was long after its feast began.
Opted for a downed branch, then ground.
Back up to 2nd perch, more digesting. Head turn in response to distant train whistle.
This is all normal digestive process for the bird. It takes hours depending upon the size of the prey (birds, small mammals). Prey is ripped apart and swallowed down the esophagus into an ingenious multi compartment stomach sorter –a hopper (the “crop”), the acid bath proventiculus, and gizzard– then on through intestines till it poops. The pellet is coughed up long after.
Dec. 25, 2022
Gloucester, MA 2022
May your day be merry
and bright
Dec. 23, 2022
Views from winter storm walk an hour after high tide when the splash over waves settled back from the Long Beach seawall. The waves are not as huge as some storms. Still, stair and platform debris at both ends of the beach. Surge pushed back into the street. This is the 2nd of 3 high tides in the forecast.
at St. Ann’s 12/19/2022
Dec. 17, 2014 throwback- East Gloucester Elementary theater holiday concert, and before the show seeing the classroom snowman decorating friendly competition displayed
listen to 14 seconds from 2014 singing at EGS theater holiday concert (snow falling down, down, down)
Update. http://mema.mapsonline.net/
9AM. 72,000+ out across Mass.; 1006 in Gloucester; 9 in Essex
Jingle Bell Storm rise sunrise photos Dec. 23, 2022, about 3 hours before the next high tide: Power is on at Long Beach; Creek level at Good Harbor Beach footbridge; Salty Salt Island; Twin Lights, Thacher Island – sunrise spray and waves; Back Shore
8 AM No power outages reported on Cape Ann – 60,000+ in Mass.- http://mema.mapsonline.net/
9AM Update – 1000+ outages in Gloucester
Good Morning Gloucester 