My View of Life on the Dock
How cool is that? Thank you Beauport Hotel for this community support. What a gorgeous venue and fitting locale for this work! Cape Ann Reads is led by the 4 public libraries of Cape Ann. Deliberations for the first ever Cape Ann Creates for Cape Ann Reads Picture Book Contest are in process and underway!
After a year of monthly programming by the libraries and community partners, the Cape Ann Reads contest is in full swing. Cape Ann residents of all ages, students attending school on Cape Ann, and people who work on Cape Ann were invited to create part or all of a picture book for consideration to be published. A first edition printing of one of these submissions will be published in 2017, timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of a Caldecott award for the children’s book, Little House, by Virginia Lee Burton, eminent Gloucester artist, author and illustrator.
To read more about the jurors, please follow this link
Here is the link to the Cape Ann Reads website.
Opportunities to contribute or sponsor the Cape Ann Reads contest are available.
Sponsors and contributions can boost awards that the jury panels may suggest as they complete their evaluations and determine recognition options. Sponsor contribution opportunities could include prizes to artists and writers, underwriting the publishing, and any exhibitions and readings to be held after publication in all the communities.
Thank you, Beauport Hotel!
~DRAWING instruction with a LIVE MODEL:
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~PAINTING Instruction
WATERCOLOR and ACRYLIC
Fundamentals and Expression with Still Life
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Every Monday 9:30am – 12pm
@ Ten Pound Studio:1 Center Street 3rd Floor
$160/ every four classes plus shared model free
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978-879-6588
Congratulations to the 2016 (round 7) awardees! Their final presentations were at City Council on Tuesday.
Since Gloucester voted to approve the Community Preservation Act (CPA) in 2008, the city has administered 7 rounds of funded projects throughout our community. Have a look at who you helped fund in 2016
Safe bet you might know someone assisting one of these projects. Who else helps? The volunteers on the Community Preservation Committee are fantastic: Catherine Bill Dugan, Catherine Schlichte, Henry McCarl, David Rhinelander, John Feener, Barbara Silberman, Heide Wakeman, Ellen Preston, and Scott Smith. There’s no break for this committee. From start to finish the process from an applicant’s perspective takes nearly a year. Depending upon the project, it will involve assistance from the Community Preservation Committee, City staff and various departments, City Council, City Council sub committees, and the administration. Just as one round winds down, the next year’s process and round of applicants gears up. Visit the Community Preservation Committee page on the City website to learn more about the CPA and to see prior projects.
Debbie Laurie, a Senior Project Manager in the Community Development Department who manages Grants and CPA for the City writes about the info meeting: “We want to help guide applicants through the process and answer any questions you may have before filling out an application. We can also determine if your project is actually eligible or not. Please pass the word around if you know of anyone that may be interested. “
Here is a list of vendors who will be participating at this show:
Melissa Cox Soaps
Sand to City Style
Premier Imprints
Erin Pequeno Stone Designer
Diane Saunders, Represent Lularoe
Criadh Morrison – Roberts, Edible Art Cookie Creations
Paula and Emma Sanders, hand painted greeting cards
Lisa Ann Schraff, India Hicks styling and jewelry
Amy Hunt, Watercolors
Cape Ann Animal Aid
Donna Ardizzoni – Photography
Lizzi Harrington, Rodan and Field’s Skincare
Stephanie Vanderbilt, coastal and window and exteriors
City Adams, Memory Quilt
Scott from the new Restaurant Press
Pauline Bresnahan, Pauline’s Gifts
Kylee Foote, Herbalist
This event will be covered in a live feed broadcast by Kory Curcuru for The Magnolia Library’s Bridge Page
I have meaning to get over to Magnolia to visit the studio of Rusty & Ingrid Creative Company since purchasing some of their artwork at City Hall Plaza’s “Boston Winter” back in December. I have yet to do so, but wanted to give a shout out to their amazing work now anyway. If I’m being honest, I didn’t realize when I first started to look through their shop for some holiday gifts that Rusty & Ingrid actually calls Gloucester/Magnolia home. I was poking around and picking out some prints when I overheard someone mention that their studio was located on Cape Ann. How have I missed that? Their artwork is gorgeous! Of course, and I should have know, upon conducting some research, both Donna and Joey have done numerous posts here on GMG about the phenomenal art that this talented duo creates…and their super cute kids.
While the boys were skating at #BostonWinter that afternoon I quickly purchased a print of Brant Point, Nantucket for my own home (that’s where we got engaged) and a print of Martha’s Vineyard for my mom…who visits there often. I really wanted, however, to also buy the print of Fenway’s Green Monster and at least ten of the prints depicting many of my favorite haunts of both Gloucester and Rockport…including, of course, Thacher’s Island for Thatcher. I also texted photos of a print of Lake Winnipesaukee to a friend who owns a home up there….and several of their ski destination prints to friends who frequent various mountains. I would totally decorate a beach cottage or ski lodge with a large series of these….if I had one to decorate.
If you haven’t seen their work, take a peek at their website in the link below. I’m in love with their work…but also that they are local and make magic happen as a small, family run business.
Mary Sullivan and Brett Dunton, fine artists and visual arts teachers at O’Maley Innovation Middle School, Gloucester, MA, act like art is the best subject anyone could dream of teaching. It’s evident that they’ve established an inspiring collaborative approach; they work together seamlessly and dazzle the students. Their art rooms are just the way you’d dream they should look–ample rooms that look like art work is done there in a big way.
They are super resourceful and adept at re-purposing and re-inventing materials. They adhere to the ‘your trash is our treasure’ school of thought. Any donated supplies can be dropped off at room 130 before or after school.
– Yogurt cups (clean)
– Cardboard (clean)
– Wood (untreated by chemicals)
– Large paper grocery bags
– Magazines
– Hardcover books
– Yarn or string
– Fabric
– Any art supplies (crayons, colored pencils, paint, brushes, etc)
– Any kind of paint (tempera, acrylic, watercolor, latex house paint . . .)
– Posters of artwork
– Hardware (hammers, nails, screwdrivers, clamps, saws, sandpaper . . .)
– Other building supplies such as carpet, tiles, and linoleum
– Doo-dads and whatcha-ma-call-its
– Anything that could possibly be turned into art
contact: msullivan@gloucesterschools.com mcsullivan.com and bdunton@gloucesterschools.com
There’s a monumental outdoor mural behind Prince Insurance at 3 Washington Street, Gloucester, Massachusetts, that changes every year. It’s sited on private property.
Thanks to the Greeke family who own Prince Insurance and let him have at it, artist and writer Danny Diamond has expressed his ideas and showcased his can command on this same outside wall annually since 2011.
My favorite sight line is from Middle Street heading to the Captain Lester S. Wass American Legion Post 3 and the Joan of Arc sculpture by Anna Hyatt Huntington. It’s in a tight spot, and so is the kid with the green, green eyes staring back from the latest mural.
Diamond is using his talents to bring awareness to homelessness and the economy. Here’s an excerpt from his statement about 21st Century Orphans: “The windfall of green-backs that flies from my letters gives way to dingy news-print and beggars’ placards–this orphaned child’s currency. It’s rarely discussed, in our scenic little fishing town, that the homeless population has increased in Massachusetts by 40% since 2007, even as the national average was in decline. This in part due to the fact that the cost of living here in Mass is among the highest in the country; the cost of housing continues to increase now that the market has come back, and there is no relief in sight… Fifteen percent (over half a million) of our children here in the Bay state live in poverty; of the over seventeen-thousand homeless people here, thirty-eight percent are children.” – Danny Diamond, 2016
A Gloucester native, Diamond is busy with commercial art and commissions on both coasts. I had a chance to ask him more about his art and writing after I did a post about the sea monster fence he painted. He brushed off the street artist description: “I consider myself a graffiti-writer and sometimes a mural-artist, but not a “street-artist” (semantic distinction).” I asked him about Gloucester connections and if he went to the high school. Did any teachers influence him? He wrote back swiftly:
“I studied art under Jackie Underwood, who was “Jackie Kapp” at the time, as well as theatre and set-design with Krista Cowan and Kim Trigilio. I went on to earn a cum laude BA in English Lit and Creative Writing at UMass Boston, class of ’06… I spent a lot of time at Artspace on Center St. as a kid, and so Gloucester’s sub-cultural grandmaster Shep Abbott had a big effect on me by bringing punk rock and mural art into downtown. I was mentored in the world of graffiti art by the late Jed Richardson of Manhattan who was a major figure in the NYC subway-train art movement of the 1980’s; he moved to Gloucester in 2001 or so and remained here until his passing in September of ’09… ”
Diamond created a tribute chalk mural to his mentor at Minglewood Tavern. I worked in New York and saw first hand the 1980 era kings (and not so kings) of subway and club graffiti. I didn’t know Jed Richardson’s work and wondered if Diamond had an image to share for this post.
I also thought about the owners who turned over their wall for Diamond’s art. I learned that the building is owned by Peter Greeke who founded Prince Insurance. Aha! A creative family that understood and allows Danny Diamond the use of a large wall to practice and express his art. The Prince Insurance company is on Washington Street between Middle and Main and directly across from the Legion. It is a second generation family business that has specialized in personal insurance for more than 35 years. It’s now co-owned by sisters, Melissa Moseley and Wendy Prendergast. A third sister, fashion designer Jennifer Greeke, operates Harpy Fashion out of the back office. The Prince Insurance storefront stands out with such original picture window displays.These windows are an entire family affair. Melissa doesn’t remember a time before the windows. Their mother creates them; Jen has made clothing, sculpted papier-mâché creatures and mermaids. “Of course because of the community we live in, over time artistic customers and friends joined in…like Richard Harding and the built boat. They’re just a lot of fun.” Prince Insurance has a beautiful new website.
I hoped Danny Diamond had a record of his devoted wall mural project, which he obliterates and repaints every year. He did. Photographs below are from Diamond or his website, www.skribblefish.com. His Instagram is @pyse117. I added one showing a work in progress he is completing for a new restaurant opening in Salem in February and other local commissions.
I’m looking forward to seeing work by artist and dealer, Ken Riaf, showing Saturdays and Sundays at Jane Deering Gallery, 19 Pleasant Street, Gloucester, just across the street from his own Law and Water Gallery, 18A Pleasant Street, Gloucester, MA.
Cape Ann Museum and the Hive are on the same block, and then there’s Trident Gallery and Cape Ann Art Haven just a skip away at the intersection of Main Street and Pleasant. The Hive has just announced their new winter classes: Foundations of Drawing class Wednesdays; Watercolor Studio: Basics of Watercolor Painting class on Tuesdays; Painting Studio all levels class on Wednesday evenings; and Ceramic Studio with Ruth Worrall on Thursdays. Register for the Hive’s upcoming classes here.
Please join Marilyn this Saturday, January 14th, from 1 to 4pm, for her painting reception at the Beverly Farms Library, located at 24 Vine Street, Beverly Farms.
The awarded project “Walking Cinema: Museum of the Hidden City” is headed by Michael Epstein, Untravel Media. You can see more about their work at www.walkingcinema.org including the one that is part of the Gloucester HarborWalk designed by Cambridge Seven Associates, and earned a 2013 Gold Muse Award from the American Alliance of Museums. Epstein also produced an audible original podcast, “Pen and Place”. Congratulations!
To see the National Endowment for the Humanities complete list of grant recipients across Massachusetts and the country: NEH announces $16 million in awards for 290 projects
See the 2016 Cape Ann Reads selection panel
After a year of monthly programming by the libraries and community partners, the Cape Ann Reads original picture book contest is in full swing and has moved into the jury processing stage. The contest is hosted by the 4 public libraries of Cape Ann. They will publish the first edition printing for one book from entries that were submitted by December 15, 2016. The jury selection panel includes representatives from each of the public libraries: Justine Vitale Gloucester Lyceum & Sawyer Free Public Library; Carol Bender, Children’s and Teen Librarian, Rockport Public Library; Kate Strong Stadt, Head of Youth Services, Manchester-By-The-Sea Public Library; Anne Cowman, Young Adult Librarian, Manchester-By-The-Sea Public Library; and April Wanner, Assistant Librarian at the TOHP Burnham Library, Essex. Joining these talented library participants are three artists and award winning children’s picture book authors and illustrators: Pat Lowery Collins; Giles Laroche; and Anna Vojtech. Bob Ritchie proprietor of Dogtown Book Shop will provide another crucial area of book world expertise. Cape Ann Reads is grateful for their time and considerable talents to help the participants and the process. A second jury of children will select their favorites and is chaired by Liza Browning from the Cape Ann Museum, a Cape Ann Reads partner.
About the Cape Ann creates for Cape Ann Reads Children’s Picture Book Contest:
The 4 public libraries hosted a one of a kind call for entry seeking new and original children’s picture books showcasing local artists and writers.
Cape Ann residents of all ages, students attending school on Cape Ann, and people who work on Cape Ann were invited to create part or all of a picture book for consideration to be published, and to submit their entries by December 15th, 2016. A first edition printing of one of these submissions will be published in 2017 by the 4 public libraries and with the support of various sponsors. The copyright is timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of a Caldecott award for the children’s book, “Little House”, by Virginia Lee Burton, eminent Gloucester artist, author and illustrator.
There’s always something happening in the art sessions at Rose Baker Senior Center. With help and direction from the indomitably positive and dedicated artist, Juni VanDyke, participants in the art program share their talents and collaborate. Participants join in an amazing amount of creative work and activity and have the opportunity to exhibit their creations. Often they work together as a group toward a final outcome. Three quilt series became monumental and cherished works of public art. (See Kim Smith’s beautiful coverage on Good Morning Gloucester.) When you visit the art studio at Rose Baker you’ll see floor to ceiling examples of their creations. For the past few years, dolls have been blooming up the studio wall and steadily and similarly building into a kind and social public art project. Now it’s a mission for art and healing that’s reached beyond Gloucester and Cape Ann.
Juni Van Dyke shared the photographs in this post and writes about the iteration of this project:
“Two years ago, Lois Stillman, a regular participant in the Art Program at the Senior Center, shared an idea with our Monday art group. The idea became known as “The Endearing Doll Project” — “endearing” because the hand-made doll that Lois introduced to us was just that…endearing. By way of Lois’ initial instruction, the dolls began to multiply with a serious purpose: the dolls would be created for the comfort of children undergoing cancer treatment at Dana Farber. Later, more dolls…(baskets of dolls!) would be delivered to elderly residents at Golden Living and SeaCoast. Still later, more dolls…(armfuls of dolls!) would join volunteers headed to The Dominican Republic where children who have little in the way of playthings would receive them. The “Endearing Dolls” became known as “The Have a Heart Dolls”. To accurately describe the artwork attributed to each individual doll, (over four hundred dolls to date!) one would have to exhaust every synonym in a thesaurus under the heading “beautiful”. Indeed, the dolls are beautiful with exquisite individual attention given to detail: lace trimmings, velvet ribbons, eyelet petticoats, knitted caps, stylized tresses, etc. But the “Have a Heart Dolls” are so much more than beautiful works of art. These dolls, with their purpose of bringing comfort and cheer, are a definitive source of love.” Participants in the “Have a Heart Doll Project” are: Lois Dench, Judy Menicocci, Mary Noons, Maggie Rosa, Carmella Scola, Emily Soule, Ida Spinola, Lois Stillman, Teddy Talbot, Connie Troisi, Juni VanDyke, and Susan Wright
To help with the dolls or other projects and learn more about the art program: Council On Aging (COA) Rose Baker Senior Center Art Program. The mission statement under the direction of Juni VanDyke: To connect Gloucester Senior Citizens to their community through worthwhile art projects while encouraging artistic individuality and collaboration.
Photo without irony. For irony scroll down to see the poem, Mending Wall, by Robert Frost, and for Hancock’s portrait of Frost.
Update: shortly after posting and thanks to Good Morning Gloucester facebook feed and readers, there may be more information coming on the outside-r artist who built such a great fence design. Please send in more information soon. And here is some! Danny Diamond writes: “I painted this octopus (and the rest of the fence) back in October. It belongs to Jon Just Jon and Lisa Bouchie. The octopus was painted entirely with low-pressure spray-cans.” And Lisa Redbird adds: “…conceived by Lisa Bouchie, built by Mark (Girard) of Spotless Monkey and spray painted by Danny Diamond. A true artist collaborative…”
1914 poem by Robert Frost, American poet (1874-1963), first published in anthology North of Boston
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door-game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go beyond his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Robert Frost sat for Walker Hancock, Gloucester resident, esteemed sculptor and one of the country’s Monuments Men. Frost walked our local woods.
Artist: Walker Kirtland Hancock, (b.1901-December 30, 1998)
Sitter: Robert Lee Frost, 26 Mar 1874 – 29 Jan 1963
Date: 1969 bronze sculpture cast after 1950 original (collection Amherst)
Dimensions: Without socle or mount: 16 1/2 x 9 1/2 x 10 inches
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
The Robert Frost Farm, Derry, NH (home 1900-1911)
Friends of Robert Frost, So. Shaftsbury, VT
Frost Place in Franconia, NH
Robert Frost Society established in 1978
Robert Frost collection at Amherst College (on the faculty for 40 years; also University of Michigan, Middlebury, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale, among other places) Hancock’s sculpture is in this collection. Sculpture of Frost by artist Penelope Jencks was unveiled in 2007
Robert Frost collection at Dartmouth College (alumnus)
A Frost Bouquet: Robert Frost, His Family, and the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, a digitized rendering of the 1996 exhibition at University of Virginia
Victor E. Reichert Robert Frost Collection, University at Buffalo
Audio of Frost reading poems, Part III includes Mending Wall or here read and listen to Frost’s voice as he recites Mending Wall:
Dusting of snow along the back of Anna Hyatt Huntington’s superb Joan of Arc WWI memorial, such a multifaceted muse and Gloucester landmark.
Whatever brings you there– artist, subject, sculpture, setting, history –its surplus of qualities alone and together reward gaze and inquiry. I took several photographs early December 30th, careful compositions against a gift of blues and vault of morning sky. For this one, I roughly edited out the telephone wires for my thoughts. Shake off 2016 and frame up a fresh start for the year ahead!
(See Joan of Arc HarborWalk story moment for more information.)
There were also large ice works of a lighthouse, clipper ship and sea serpent (live sculpting work in progress while we were there)
Across the street a favorite spot with more public art and large crowds– the ever stunning Boston Public Library. An art post for another day: for now some interior details. Here are a Kitson marble bust of Longfellow and a tease detail from the Sargent murals. (My sons said they like the Sawyer Free teen room more but this Boston Library was something to be proud of, too.)
More public art and heart-
Thanks to Janice Lufkin-Shea, Pauline Bresnahan, Hannah Morris, David Brooks Cape Ann Art Haven, Senator Tarr and others, Gloucester and its lobster trap tree and traditions have a place in the Massachusetts Senate President’s Office. Here are photos of Senator Bruce Tarr with Stan Rosenberg, the 93rd President of the Massachusetts Senate, in the Senate President’s Office. First two photos from inside the State House were from Senator Tarr.
David Brooks writes that he hopes the buoy will be a permanent ornament, “but I’m not sure how long it will last. Its made of a small plastic net buoy and plaster. We made it as an Art Haven team and tried to make it look like a kid did it so it fit the character of the tree.” Perhaps a bronze version may be commissioned from Cape Ann Art Haven one day.
There were special ornaments to discover on the tree in City Hall, too, in the rotunda outside the Office of the Mayor.
Good Morning Gloucester 