My View of Life on the Dock
Gloucester artists, Deb Hardy (singer/songwriter) and Kerry Mullen (painter/sculptor and sexton at the UUC) and lovers of the blog, stopped by the gallery to say hi, talk art and pick up GMG stickers. Now Deb is going to be one of the performers on Madfish Wharf during our next NOTN on August 4, possibly with Kerry accompanying on drums.
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
That brother and sister, Will and Molly Cox came all the way from LA looking for Joey C. because they love Good Morning Gloucester and think he’s cool? He wasn’t around, so they got the consolation prize of a GMG sticker and are now are on GMG themselves. They are here visiting family (the Bell family) near Good Harbor Beach. Will has been reading the blog for about a year, and says his Dad reads it too. They are leaving tomorrow, but will be back, so we’ll have to hook up a meet-up with Joey for them then.
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
That tomorrow is Sunday, and you know what that means? Mug Up at Khan Studio and the Good Morning Gloucester Gallery. 10:00 a.m., 77 Rocky Neck Ave.,G3. Rumor has it that Paul Morrison is bringing his (Sue’s) famous smoked bluefish pate’. I’ll be making my deviled eggs and a mean cup-a-jo, and there’s no way of knowing what someone else might bring to add to the offering. Always fun, and a great place to meet new and old friends from the blog.
Also don’t forget that Laureen Maher will be having the opening reception for her new exhibit “Brushwork” on Sunday from 6:00 to 9:00 pm.
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
That last evenings Night on the Neck on Madfish Wharf rocked the place? Unfortunately, it was so crazy on Madfish Wharf that I never got the chance to get out and check out what was happening on the rest of Rocky Neck, but here are some photos of the happenings at the East End of Rocky Neck. Harpist, Moira Kelly, serenaded attendees with her magical voice and instrument. Then we moved to the rockin accordion, wailing harmonica, jumping guitar and powerful voices of Bird Mancini, who had everyone on the wharf swaying, bopping and dancing. Paco enthralled the crowds at Alma’s Art & Antiques with his accordian playing. The galleries were full, as was the wharf, and everyone had a great time. Mark your calendars now for August NOTN, which will take place on Thursday, August 4. It’s only going to get better.
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com 
Launch of the Ardelle
That the schooner Ardelle is ready to launch? The historic launch will take place on Saturday, July 9 at high tide, which is set at about 6:40 p.m., although the launch could happen a little sooner. If you have not witnessed an historic Essex side launch before, it is a sight to be seen! I watched the launch of Fame on video and it was amazing to see her finally let go, hit the water sideways with a big splash, right herself and then glide gracefully like a swan across the water, as she was painstakingly built to do. The adjacent Essex shipbuilding museum will be a great viewing area. The celebration will begin at 3:00 at the Essex Shipbuilding Museum with beer, hotdogs and Woodman’s chowder and music by Michael Forney’s bluegrass band. Photo is of the Isabella launch in 2006. I can’t be there, but I hope someone can get there and capture this historic event and then share it with us on GMG.
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
That Rebecca Rettig and Mitch Mahoney just bought a house in Lanesville? Rebecca is a devoted FOB and came into the gallery to get a sticker. Lanesville, welcome a lovely new couple to your great little village. Jim, keep an eye out for them – I told them about the great community center you have there.
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
That this Thursday is July’s Night on The Neck on Rocky Neck?
Come celebrate post-4th of July with unique summer fun on Cape Ann’s historic Rocky Neck Art Colony in East Gloucester. Thursday 7/7, from 5 to 9pm, is ‘Night on the Neck’– a summer series orchestrated by the Rocky Neck Art Colony, held on the first Thursday of each month, June – September. Taking place all along Rocky Neck Avenue, galleries and shops will be open and serving refreshments as well as hosting street-side entertainment by musicians, authors, sea shanty singers, dancers, as well as various artistic demonstrations.
Highlights of this free public event include:
Bird Mancini at the Madfish Wharf, 77 Rocky Neck Ave.
7-8:30pm: outdoor concert
“A cosmopolitan fusion of blues-tinged rock, Latin-flavored Bossa Nova, country folk balladry, and woolly psychedelia!” Listen: http://www.birdmancini.com/
Moira Kelly, Traditional Celtic Harpist.
6-7:00 at Madfish Wharf, 77 Rocky Neck Ave.
Goetteman Gallery, 37 Rocky Neck Ave: 7:15pm Local author Carole St. John will be speaking on ‘Owning the artist within.’
Rocky Neck Gallery presents “The Quarrymen” featuring Matt Natti on the Didgeridoo, Eli Natti on Upright bass and Jim Corcoran on the hand drums.
Elynn Kroger Gallery, 15 Rocky Neck Ave
Live music: Lisa Landry 5pm to 6:30 pm – Janet Young 6:30pm to 8pm – Jeweler, Skye Fresh, will be demonstrating techniques and selling her wares
Imagine Gallery, 43 Rocky Neck Ave.
7:15 Rick Drost, accoustic guitar player and singer
Sailor Stan’s, 1 Wonson St. – music and dinner 5 – 9pm
Sea Shanty Singers at Schooner Adventure in The Marine Railways: 5 – 9pm
Alma MacGloughlin Antiques, 77 Rocky Neck Ave.: Paco, Flamenco guitarist and Concertina player
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
Call for Fishermen for 2012 Gloucester Fishcake Calendar
That Adam Bolonsky came up with a great idea that Rocky Neck East End Madfish Wharf Girl artists Wendie “Bomb Diggity” Demuth, E.J. “Did You Know?” Lefavour and newest addition to the Neck, Gigi “Spicey Meatball” Mederos are running with? We are going to put out a 2012 Gloucester Fishcake Calendar (Gigi came up with the name) full of your favorite and hottest looking Gloucester’s Finest Kind. This is a call to all of you who know and love some of those strong, good looking, manly professional harvesters of the sea (fishermen, lobstermen, clammers, shrimpers, if it comes from the sea and they bring it home for a living, we’re looking for them) to be nominated to be featured in this one-of-a-kind, definitely destined to become world famous, Gloucester Fishcake Calendar. We need to move quickly to have the calendar ready to distribute to the world by September, so if you want to nominate your favorite fisherman or lobsterman, please email khanstudio@comcast.net, call 857-891-9054 (EJ at Khan Studio and the GMG Gallery) or stop by 77 Madfish Wharf at your convenience – we’re here all the time. This is going to be real, Glosta, oldest working seaport, finest kind, fishing capital of the world stuff.
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
That Jon and Elizabeth Dubin have buried a time capsule in the Bass Rocks area to be dug up when Benjamin Lewis (now 9 months) reaches the age of 10? The time capsule contains letter, photos and toys. Jon and Elizabeth are devoted FOB’s and came in today to get GMG Tees for themselves. They come back to Gloucester every summer.
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
That our next guest artist at Khan Studio and the Good Morning Gloucester Gallery will be painter and stylist, Laureen Maher?
Laureen, who lives in East Gloucester and owns and operates Beauty Bar at 12 Parker Street in Gloucester, will be exhibiting her landscapes, florals and portraits of local rock stars series of oil paintings in a show entitled “Brushworks”. Her exhibit runs from July 8-22nd with an Opening Reception on Sunday, July 10th from 6:00 to 9:00pm.
Laureen was first inspired to paint 9 years ago after she moved to East Gloucester from Melrose and saw the collection of paintings by Robert Gruppe’ at The Studio. She is working on an ongoing series of paintings of the local rock stars of Cape Ann. Laureen is very excited to be exhibiting on Rocky Neck, as this is where she was first inspired to paint. Come by and welcome Laureen to Rocky Neck and the Good Morning Gloucester Gallery.
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
That George Tzortzis is an old-school kind of guy? He came to Rocky Neck to search out Eric Kaplan, his girlfriend Julie’s Dad, to ask his permission to marry his daughter. George had come into the gallery yesterday while he was waiting for Eric to come home and talked about his plans. He then bought a Did You Know? Book. I offered to sign it for him, but he wanted to wait until he knew the outcome of everything. Last evening Eric came in and said he had given his blessings, and it was now all up to Julie. George had set up a romantic scene at Hammond Castle, where he proposed to Julie, on bended knee, on the stairs of the castle; and Julie said yes. Today the three of them came in to share the good news, and get the book signed, which could now include congratulations to the two of them. Such a sweet couple and nice Dad/father-in-law to be, and now everyone out there in GMG land can wish them well.
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
Happy Almost Independence Day
That the monkey bread miraculously made it intact from Rockport to Mug Up at Rocky Neck this morning? Here you see the proof with Paul Morrison holding up the prize (thank you Paul for your generous and delicious offering). Ed Collard took his rightful place at the head of the table, right beside the super special Lattof Farm monkey bread. Youngest mug uppers this morning were wharf neighbors Dahlia (3 months old, being held by newest Madfish Wharf artist, Gigi Mederos) and Lily, with their mom Violet. R. Duck was in attendance, but on a tight leash because she has been wandering a bit too much lately and went missing for 4 days. Greg Bover made the long journey back from Harvard Yard to join us, and Pete and Joyce Chamberlain were in the house, along with Stevie and some new visitors to the Neck. Finally, Gloucesterites, Kelly and Kai Rich stopped in for a GMG sticka and T-shirt for Kelly to wear to the parade today. Mug Up is held every Sunday morning at 10:00 at Khan Studio and the Good Morning Gloucester Gallery, 77 Rocky Neck. Put it on your calendar and join us. Coming attractions: next Sunday there is rumor that we will again be blessed with some of Paul Morrison’s amazing smoked bluefish pate’ (amazing stuff!).
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
That tomorrow is Sunday, and therefore Mug Up morning at Khan Studio and the Good Morning Gloucester Gallery at 10:00 am. Come on by before you begin your horribles parading and fireworks oooing and aaaing. Rumor has it that Paul Morrison is bringing fresh baked monkey bread from Lattof Farm, and new Madfish Wharf artist, Gigi Mederos, is bring scones. I’ll be making deviled eggs again, and of course, coffee. Everyone is welcome. Just don’t tell Ed Collard about the monkey bread.
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
Gwen Wilcox and David Manis from Somerville found their way to Rocky Neck for the first time, at the direction of their Gloucester friend, Peggy. Gwen purchased Joey C.’s photo of the walkway to Good Harbor Beach at dawn and won the famous Discover Gloucester bag. David got my “Winter Plunge” painting print. They also got GMG stickers for themselves and their friend Peggy (of course they have to check it out and tell all their friends in Somerville now that they will be famous on Good Morning Gloucester).
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Help-Find-Amber-DeVoe/182175848505384
http://jamaicaplain.patch.com/articles/police-jamaica-plain-mom-amber-devoe-is-still-missing
Some indication that this missing mom could be in the Gloucester area, if anyone has seen her, there is a number to call for the JP Police.
E.J. Lefavour
That the Ancient and Horribles Parade was founded in 1927 in Glocester, RI (not Gloucester, MA) and named as a parody of the more somber Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, the oldest military organization in the United States? Calvin Coolidge, U.S. President when the parade was founded in 1927, was a member of the original Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. The Parade features both traditional Fourth of July floats and marchers, such as veterans and fire trucks, as well as often irreverent, satirical displays commenting on political and cultural issues, as local residents and costumed marchers parody news and cultural events along US Route 44 in Chepachet village. Nothing is sacred as Glocester locals spoof local and national politics during the famous Ancients and Horribles Parade on the Fourth of July. The parade first wound its way down Main Street in Chepachet in 1926 and has continued to delight Glocester residents (and many others) each and every year since.
This year is the 66th Annual Fishtown Horribles Parade in Gloucester, MA, so the parade started here in 1945, 19 years after Glocester, RI had its first Ancient and Horribles Parade in 1926.
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
That Wendie Demuth’s Photography Gallery at 77 Rocky Neck is located in the space that once housed the galleries of historically significant painters, Milton Avery and Ward Mann?
Milton Avery was born at Sand Bank, New York, today known as Altmar, on 7 March 1893. After studying for a while at the Connecticut League of Art Students in Hartford under Charles Noel Flagg and at the Art Society School there under Albertus Jones, Avery worked in manufacturing and with an insurance company until 1924. During the early 1920s, Avery spent his summers in Gloucester at Rocky Neck Art Colony, where he met his wife, Sally Michel, also a painter. In 1925, he moved to New York City and married Sally a year later.
He had his first one-man show as early as 1928 at the Opportunity Gallery in New York. The decades that followed saw him show work at numerous exhibitions mounted by New York galleries and American museums. Milton Avery’s preoccupation with French Fauvism and German Expressionism led him to develop a simplified formal idiom distinguished by clarity of line and an expressive palette. Whereas Avery’s early figurative drawings and paintings from the 1930s attest to affinities primarily with the work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, by the 1940s he was discernibly close to Henri Matisse.
As the American upholder of Matisse’s colouristic doctrine, Milton Avery developed the French artist’s decorative colour surfaces into subtly toned colour zones, thus breaking the ground for the Colour Field painting of Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, both of whom were friends of his. Even though his style was close to abstraction, Milton Avery nonetheless clung to representation throughout his entire career. Classical motifs and subject matter in portraits, still lifes and coastal landscapes were his main thematic areas and genres. Prolific as a painter, graphic artist and ceramist, Milton Avery received numerous awards from American art institutions before he died in 1965 although he only really became famous posthumously. Now he is acclaimed as one of the most influential US 20th-century artists.
Ward Mann was born in Detroit on October 3, 1921, Ward Mann was introduced to drawing and painting at the Detroit Institute of Art. Encouraged by his parents and teachers, at age twelve his work was accepted in an open exhibition of the Scarab Club in Detroit.
During WWII, he volunteered and served as a commissioned officer in the US Army Air Corps. After service, he earned his engineering degree from the University of Michigan, College of Engineering. He then had a productive career as an engineer while raising three sons.
His childhood interest in art lingered. In 1963, after relocating to Webster, New York, he made a career change. A self-taught artist, he began achieving recognition in major exhibitions and by various art organizations. In 1974, he joined the historic Rocky Neck Art Colony and opened the Ward Mann Gallery on Rocky Neck at what is now called Madfish Wharf, 77 Rocky Neck. Renowned for his marine paintings, he traveled and painted extensively in Europe, Greece, Norway, South America, and throughout the United States.
His professional, signature memberships include Oil Painters of America (OPA), the Salmagundi Club (SCNYC), the International Society of Marine Painters (ISMP), and many other art organizations. He’s listed in Who’s Who in American Art and in Who’s Who in the East. He died October 13, 2005, in Webster, New York.
Wendie is in the company of some excellent artistic spirit at 77 Rocky Neck, G4. Stop in to see her very unique, Cape Ann and world view photography, and to visit her historically significant space within the Rocky Neck Art Colony.
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
That in addition to being a molecular biology scientist at Dana Farber, a serious contender for the Blackburn Challenge and personal trainer for Ed Collard, and R. Duck’s matchmaker, Paul Morrison also makes a really mean smoked bluefish pate’? He caught the bluefish himself, and then made it into this amazing pate’ which he brought to this week’s Mug Up, in one of his beautiful collection of handmade nut bowls (or pate’ bowls, or cracker bowls, or candy bowls), which we also now have available to purchase at Khan Studio and the Good Morning Gloucester Gallery. You can see from the photo that it was immediately tested by Ed Collard before I could get the shot (ok, I admit, I was testing it too).
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
That The Studio Restaurant at 51 Rocky Neck was once the site of the Breckenridge School of Art?
In 1920, Hugh Henry Breckenridge (1870-1937), avant garde painter, instructor and dean at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, founded a summer art school on Rocky Neck which was to become a critical force in bringing notable younger artists to the area during the period between the two World Wars. Breckenridge’s reputation for innovation and talent as a colorist—together perhaps with his tuition of $10 a week or $75 for eight weeks—kept his classes filled for almost two decades. In 1926 when asked “why Gloucester?” Breckenridge was quick to cite the visual stimuli afforded by the gritty locale.
“It is because Gloucester has everything that an artist wants…Here is a port more like a quaint foreign port than any other waterfront in the United States. There are strange and beautiful craft. There are the interesting characters of the fishing colony. There are fascinating colors in the streets, in the buildings, in the bronzed faces of the men who brave the raging seas and keep ever fresh in Gloucester the glamour of romance about the business of seafaring, the stories of shipwrecks, of heroism and of thrills like those the sword fisherman experiences. Flowers grow wondrously for those who like to paint flowers and denizens of the ocean are disgorged by the boat load to the joy of those who strive to put on canvas the opalescent hues of fish. There are magnificent skies and impressive shores. There is material for artists in the whole range from portraiture to pickled herring.”— (GDT, 10 September 1926, p.7)
Many Breckenridge School alumni became nationally acclaimed artists who returned to Rocky Neck each summer, and the Art Colony’s reputation for encouraging innovation in painting became as much a lure for artists as its scenic topography.
The Studio has a great collection of Gruppe paintings on exhibit, really cool painter’s palette tables, as well as a beautiful view of the scenic shore of Rocky Neck, great food and live music (including jazz on Sunday), and is also the spot to catch the ferry. The Studio has one of the biggest decks on the North Shore with a Cabana Bar.
If you’re out on your boat enjoying the day, come and dock overnight, or just cruise in for lunch or dinner. They have shore power and water available. The Studio has been a local and tourist favorite for years.
E.J. Lefavour
http://www.hobbithousestudio.com
Shwarya “Ann” Viboonlarp from Thailand represents at Khan Studio and the Good Morning Gloucester Gallery. Ann is the wife of Gloucester-born and raised, Alan Woodard. They are newly married this year and here for the summer. Ann now knows where to do get all her up-to-the-minute info on the goings on around Cape Ann, to aid her in her exploration of Cape Ann while Alan is working. What would people do without GMG? What did people do before GMG?
E.J. Lefavour
www.khanstudiointernational.com
Good Morning Gloucester 