I saw them that same day on Long Beach, September 6, 2021. I only saw seven, and one was a piece rather than whole, so I can’t confirm hundreds were there.
The one in the photo with the sneaker was the largest I observed. They were hard to miss. Four were in proximity at that spot. On the other side of the beach, one group of kids scooped up a sample with a sand shovel, running back to the furthest Gloucester end to show their parents.
The two times I’ve seen lions mane on any beach, I was wrong. If these were lion’s mane this will be the third time they’ve looked like a different jellyfish to me. The beached jellyfish on Long Beach this week looked a bit like pictures I’ve seen of mauve stingers.
Everyone has been remarking how warm the water’s been, and these deposits followed Hurricane Ida. Storms bring in unusual gifts from the sea.
Looking forward to a marine educator helping us learn more!
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marvelous photojournalist, Leslie Jones, Boston Public Library collection (date of this Labor Day photo featuring female telephone operators is unknown-circa 1917-34. Any guesses? Amazing despite WWI and the Spanish Flu epidemic that they would need to strike–and won–in 1919.)
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This week from Jane Deering news of the final summer show of 2021:
Capping the summer season of exhibitions @ Jane Deering Gallery is The Cyanotype …. and the end-of-summer blues. The gallery will host an Open House Saturday September 4th from 1:00-5:00pm at 19 Pleasant Street in Gloucester.
Artists Elizabeth Awalt and Tom Fels celebrate the luscious range of blue produced by unique cyanotypes and pay tribute to both Anna Atkins (long associated with the medium) and French photographer Charles Aubry. Fels’s work will also include several images related to Cape Ann.
THE CYANOTYPE
How often we think of Anna Atkins, the 19th-C botanist and photographer, when talking of cyanotypes. Atkins is strongly associated with the medium. Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, which Atkins privately published in 1843, has long been considered the first book illustrated with photographic images, cyanotype photograms of seaweed. I am delighted to bring to light a different algae, Elizabeth Awalt’s cyanotypes of dried kelp which the artist found in the cold, nutrient-rich waters near her summer studio in Maine. Akin to her paintings, Awalt’s cyanotypes ‘express her connection, curiosity, and concern for the natural world.
Tom Fels, of Vermont, first learned about cyanotypes through his work as a curator and writer with 19th century photographs. Fels writes ‘In my attempt to capture some shadows on my home, I realized that cyanotypes were the right medium to employ…The appeal of the cyanotype comes in part from its color, which viewers often find spiritual and relaxing, as well as its ability to capture the nuances of movement inherent in working with living plants. Its interest to me was also in the process, which is fairly simple and can be done mostly outdoors.” His series Homage to Aubry is inspired by the still lifes of the French photographer Charles Aubry.
Gallery hours: Friday & Saturday 1-5pm; Sunday 1-4pm and by appointment at 917-902-4359 and info@janedeeringgallery.com.
ELIZABETH AWALT
Elizabeth Awalt grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and moved to Boston to attend Boston College. As an undergraduate, she studied Fine Arts at Boston College where she returned to teach and became a tenured professor. She received her MFA degree at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by several fellowships including the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Yaddo, and MacDowell and the Millay Colony. She has been the recipient of both a Massachusetts Artists Fellowship in Painting and an Individual Artist Grant in Painting from the National Endowment of the Arts. Awalt’s work is in numerous public and private collections in the US and abroad. The artist maintains a studio in Concord Massachusetts and northern Maine.
TOM FELS
Tom Fels, independent curator and writer specializing in American culture, photography, and art, has worked as consultant and guest curator to a number of museums, including the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the J. Paul Getty Museum. In 1986 he was named a Chester Dale Fellow of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in 1998-9 a Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellow of the Huntington Library. He has organized more than fifty exhibitions, and is the author of numerous catalogs, articles, and books including Sotheby’s Guide to Photographs (1998), and more recently works on contemporary American history. His large cyanotypes are represented in several museum and private collections, including the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Fels lives and works in southern Vermont. In 2013 he was writer-in-residence at the Gloucester Writers Center. Since 2014 he has shown with the Jane Deering Gallery.
from the release
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Maha Jabba, owner and chef at Markouk Bread, and crew create flavorful and delicious Mediterranean everyday eats at their location on 338 Main Street, in Gloucester, MA, near houses that inspired artist Edward Hopper, and famed public stairs and Crow’s Nest featured in books, art and cinema. Their popular and traditional dishes highlight Lebanese cuisine. Customers can eat standing or sitting–inside and out; most people opt for grab & go. Customers may find it helpful to call ahead (they sell out), and find it easier parking across the street.
“If only you could cook like his mom.” Fun fact: As a longtime fan favorite at Cape Ann Farmers Market and Main Street events, people are familiar with Jabba’s everyday gourmet and dazzling saj-grill meals. What they may not know is when her son played for GHS sports (eventually soccer co-captain), those lucky athletes had the best team dinners ever at their house, enjoying classic comfort dishes and other specialties. She can cook everything!
The little summer gardens of Gloucester grow and grow. Gardener poets show us not only “who loves the flowers, but whom the flowers love,” an axiom my grandmother was fond of.
In praise of deft spade and artful tending, virtual blue ribbons for making a garden of their world and a crowd of joyous color all around us. [Centennial, Prospect, Tolman, Hovey, Rocky Neck, Bass Ave and Rockport Rd.] photos: C. Ryan August 2021
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August 2021 – Splash! Enjoy photographs of Grimdrops jazzy hometown portrait off the Elm Street side of Action, Inc. **new** Harbor Village apartment building in downtown Gloucester, Massachusetts. The large scale commission heralds Gloucester’s upcoming 400th celebration in 2023. The artist was born and raised in East Gloucester.
Hopefully NSCDSC will consider commissioning an extra add on for Grimdrops so the artist can extend his characterful water motif ideas straight to the top (and maybe add a gal for history! His vibrant notes brought Virginia Lee Burton Mike Mulligan Mary Ann and folly cove pattern references readily to mind). Come winter the mural might be visible from Chestnut Street. Bonus: if it’s topped off it will be visible year round from that vantage.
Gloucester Mural Map | Public Art
Grimdrops mural is on the map! Gloucester murals | Public art Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Per reader request, over the next few days I’ll be reposting mini chapter excerpts — primarily illustrations– from a longer read about the evolution of outhouses and public utilities specific to Gloucester, Massachusetts, Privy to Privy History, on Good Morning Gloucester June 6, 2021.
Catherine Ryan, Aug. 2021
Gloucester housing stock (and hotels) included luxury homes with bathrooms and water closets as well as modest solutions. Rough outhouses were common, too. Can you spot the outhouses downtown and in East Gloucester?
(Reminder about the photographs: you can pinch and zoom to enlarge and right click for descriptions. Some media offer the option to “increase file size”.)
Then (below the garden) | Now
Gloucester – Victorian Age outhouses
1930 – 1941 American outhouses – cross county photos
photographs outhouses across America – Library of Congress
Cincinnati row houses with backyard outhouses, 1930s
privy plant pre cast base, Missouri, by Lee Russell, 1938
Placing concrete in form for privy slab, MN, by Shipman, 1941, Library of Congress (collection FSA Office of War Info)
South family’s shaker style privy, Harvard, Worcester County, MA 1930s
General Israel Putnam Privy, Brooklyn, CT after storm
Arlington, MA, Walker Evans 1930s
Privy Monterey, Delaware, circa 847
Washington DC “slum” privy, Carl Mydans, 1935
“old six hole privy, Wiggins Tavern”, Northampton, MA, Lee Russell, 1939
photographs Indoor bathrooms residential and public – New York Public Library
Cincinnati backyard outhouses
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Per reader request, over the next few days I’ll be reposting mini chapter excerpts — primarily illustrations– from a longer read about the evolution of outhouses and public utilities specific to Gloucester, Massachusetts, Privy to Privy History, on Good Morning Gloucester June 6, 2021.
‘Gloucester Outhouses in American Paintings’ copied below is “Excerpt 1” (stay tuned for some more Cape Ann Museum additions); Excerpt 2 will focus on early 20th century photographs; future excerpts might highlight some of the history mentions such as the bathroom fixtures at the Crane estate; and so on.
Catherine Ryan, Aug. 2021
EDWARD HOPPER – gloucester outhouses
Edward Hopper included outhouses in numerous Gloucester vistas. Hopper depicted buildings and worked with watercolor and gouache long before his renowned first sell out show of Gloucester images in the 1920s.
Illustrations: Reminder- You can pinch and zoom to enlarge (and select “full size” image if that option shows)
Whitney Museum estimates circa 1903
The Whitney Museum of American Art has the largest collection of Edward Hopper art. This small watercolor study the museum dates circa 1900 contains germs of his later work. There is an elusive building, or nestled buildings, front and center. Strong shadows are emphasized. Is the shed attached or not? An entrance, a ticket booth, an outhouse? Is that a circus tent flag squiggle? The pencil line beyond the vertical street light (or railroad signal) might be a train track. Further right, there’s a red dab. Perhaps another structure. The window with yellow has a barn vibe. I did think about the scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when Katherine Ross looks down from a hay loft to catch the ‘Paul Newman riding a bike for the Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’ show.
early Stuart Davis – Gloucester outhouses
Gloucester Outhouses in American Art
Selection of Gloucester scenes with outhouses by various artists: Dennis Miller Bunker; Charles Burchfield; James Jeffrey Grant; Emil Gruppe; Max Kuehne; William Lester Stevens; Paul Bough Travis; and Louise Woodroofe. Stay tuned for more.
1938 NYC – Masterful Mabel Dwight
MABEL DWIGHT, 1938
Leave it to Mabel Dwight for a humorous and original take, Backyard, 1938 WPA/FAP lithograph.
Below – New York City images (collection, NYPL) for comparison of the flip view. More photographs featured in Excerpt 2.
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According to the Boston Globe article from 1904, Delia Tudor was the first summer resident of the North Shore, who went to Nahant in 1820. It took until 1840 for arrivals in Beverly.
Mostly the article covers Swampscott, Nahant, Manchester and Gloucester tony neighborhood of Magnolia.
Longfellow (his home in Nahant burned by the time of the article) and Hawthorne (Swampscott) were here visiting the North Shore. “To the North Shore also came Lowell and Daniel Webster–despite his fondness for the South shore–Charles Sumner and Rufus Choate. The list, in fact, of masters of the mind who have worked, played and rested along the North Shore is a very long one.”
Excerpt about Magnolia | Gloucester
“Kettle Cove, Magnolia, which took its early name from the formation of the coast, joins Manchester. It is one of the most beautiful spots of the beautiful North shore, and , like many other localities thereabouts, has a witch legend connected with its history. Kettle Cove was settled in 1645, and was under the jurisdiction of Salem. in 1838 there were 14 houses in the cove, and a small schoolhouse, which was used for religious purposes whenever a minister chanced to come that way. it was here that the artist Hunt established his studio, and old barn, calling it the Hulks. In this vine covered studio some of his most famous pictures were painted including, The Headsman, Tom in a Felt Hat, and Gloucester Harbor. Near here is Rafe’s Chasm, where one may find an iron cross marking the place where Martha Marlon a young girl was drowned many years ago…
“The fashionable world has found these shores, and handsome summer homes now rise at every vantage point.”
“A Part of Manchester Shore, Near Magnolia” also known as Rafe’s Chasm
The Oldest House at Kettle Cove, Manchester, built in 1700
The Dana House, Magnolia
photos: Coolidge Point, Kettle Cove vista; Rafe’s Chasm by Falt; William Morris Hunt (1824-1879)- paintings mentioned in article and Willow Cottage. A Boston painter who studied with Millet, Hunt held plein air art classes –in Magnolia –in 1876. (old Kettle Cove village became ‘Magnolia’.) He transformed the barn into his studio in 1877.
“The barn was two stories in height, the lower portion being occupied by the van, a phaeton and a dog-cart, as well as by stalls for two or three horses. The upper room was known as the ” barracks,” and half a dozen cot-beds were ranged around the sides, as seats by day and beds by night.”
“The scenery combined much sketching material in a little space. In addition to a small beach there was a rocky shore of much boldness, and the cliffs were surmounted by well-wooded groves. One of its charms was a willow-road of rare picturesqueness, and there was a graceful variety of hill and dale. The fishermen at their work, the simple cottage folk, and a few artists were the only people to be seen. In less than ten years the place became a fashionable resort, and its artistic interest was gone.”
Helen Mary Knowlton, Hunt biography,1899
Willow Road, Magnolia, circa 1910 (Library of Congress)Brothers (2 of 4): Richard Morris Hunt portrait (artist, renowned architect), and probably portrait of his famous older brother, William Morris Hunt (Library of Congress). Richard helped with the Hulk design.Pine Woods, Magnolia (MFA, Boston)
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“This item was specifically selected for virtual display during the summer months because from the mid-1800s and into the 1900s Magnolia was a vacation destination for Bostonians and other New England and New York residents. This map was published in 1887, so it depicts Magnolia in its relatively early days of development. “
Annisquam Village Hall and Rosemarie Hinkle to the rescue!
read all about it
“Then – due to circumstances beyond her control our planned solo flutist had to cancel.To the rescue: Rosemarie Hinkle, principal flutist for the Melrose and Quincy Symphony Orchestras.
The hall’s acoustics were brilliant.
Rosemarie was brilliant.
The musicians were brilliant.
A few comments heard after each performance: “What an incredible sound!” “This was a fantastic performance. I’m so glad I came.” “We can’t wait for the symphony’s concerts to return.”
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Good Morning Gloucester 