Come celebrate at the Museum after regular visiting hours! Join us for interactive games in the galleries, a dance performance “Dancing the Woods” by artist Dawn Pratson, light refreshments and local beverages.
CAMafterhours is perfect for people looking to meet and mingle with other creative adults, switch up their date-night, and/or experience the Museum in a more hands-on way. If you haven’t visited us before, then this is the night to do so and enjoy the magic of the Museum after dark. Guests are invited to continue the evening with our collaborator, Short & Main restaurant, a short walk away.
Tickets are $20 for Cape Ann Museum members, $25 for nonmembers (ages 21+). Includes Museum admission, guided and self-guided games in the galleries, dance performances, music, hors d’oeuvres and local brews –…
Spectacular day, spectacular turnout, and spectacularly positive Boston women’s march. Tons of men participated, too, and the event was a true rainbow coalition. Wonderful to see so many friends from Cape Ann! We arrived extra early because of the train schedule, which allowed us to be super close to the stage. The crowds just grew and grew and grew throughout the day. Lots and lots of photos to share, too many to look through tonight after a long day “marching.” Quotes around marching because the turnout was so tremendous that there was marching foot-traffic-gridlock throughout the city. Estimates have participants numbering somewhere around 125,000. EVERYONE was calm and patient and thoughtful. I think the most wonderful part was seeing so many young people at the march. So proud to be an American ❤
Every two months, Juni Van Dyke, Director of the Rose Baker Art Program selects two artists from the program to have their works exhibited in the lobby of the Rose Baker Senior Center. For the first exhibit of 2017, Juni has selected a mother and daughter for this honor: Helen Burgess and her daughter Valerie Sadler.
At first when Valerie Sadler would ask her mother, Helen Burgess, join her at the Rose Baker art room Helen would reply: “I have no artistic talent at all.” But Valerie kept asking and eventually Helen gave it a try. Juni and the participants in the program are glad she did as they have found her participation inspiring.
Helen’s individual artistic style confirms Juni’s belief that “whether or not we have a history of formal art training — all of us have something truly unique and wonderful to share by way of the art…
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… ”Â
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.
artist Jed Richardson c.2008 (photo from artist Danny Diamond)
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.
Chef Eric’s Spanish inspired menu was beyond delicious and Nick Defasio from M.S. Walker selected some pretty amazing wines to go with. I highly recommend trying both of these outstanding wines and am planning to look for them at our local shops–a lovely white, the Burga’ns, Albarino, that Eric paired with a haddock entree; and a rich chocolatey red, the Casa Castilo, Monastrell, accompanying beautiful smoked paprika pork with grilled vegetables.
Passports wine dinners are typically in the $40.00 to 45.00 dollar range and I simply don’t know how they can afford to do that, truly an exceptional value The four course dinners are wonderfully inventive, the portions generous, and the wines, top of the line. Every third Thursday of the month – GO!
I think I have posted this letter from the White House once before, but it seemed extra fitting today of all days. Â As with the letter I wrote about earlier this week, this is another piece of mail that I will always treasure. Â No political rants here…just thankful for this letter…and thankful for the message. Â “We wish you a long and happy life filled with chances to learn, ideas to explore, people to love, and dreams to fulfill.” Thank you.
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A place where non-profit Cape Ann organizations can post press releases directly and then those press releases will be reposted to http://www.goodmorninggloucester.com . This is not an advertising space for businesses, fitness or wellness organizations, or music listings.
Come celebrate at the Museum after regular visiting hours! Join us for interactive games in the galleries, a dance performance “Dancing the Woods” by artist Dawn Pratson, light refreshments and local beverages.
CAMafterhours is perfect for people looking to meet and mingle with other creative adults, switch up their date-night, and/or experience the Museum in a more hands-on way. If you haven’t visited us before, then this is the night to do so and enjoy the magic of the Museum after dark. Guests are invited to continue the evening with our collaborator, Short & Main restaurant, a short walk away.
Tickets are $20 for Cape Ann Museum members, $25 for nonmembers (ages 21+). Includes Museum admission, guided and self-guided games in the galleries, dance performances, music, hors d’oeuvres and local brews – including Far From the Tree (Salem), Old Planter’s Brewing Co. (Beverly), and Ipswich Ale Brewery (Ipswich), among others.
Dawn Pratson was an active member of the arts community in and around Cape Ann and Boston from 1983–2003 as a dancer/choreographer, musician, teacher and creative arts therapist. Dawn and friends will perform thematic movements throughout the Museum culminating in a music and dance performance in the exhibition gallery of Voicingthe Woods. Performers include: Sarah Slifer Swift, Lou Cannon, Carl Thomsen, Reg Edmonds, Cynthia Williams, Sue Ann Willis, Dawn Pratson.
Our Lady of Good Voyage was designed to resemble the Church of Santa Maria Magdalena on the island of Pico in the Azores. The west tower houses one of the oldest collections of carillon bells in the nation. The community is treated to a concert of the bells of Good Voyage on Tuesday evenings during the warmer months.
The above photo is of the original Our Lady, which now lives on at the Cape Ann Museum. She was shared by Anita Coullard Dziedzic.
“Originally dedicated in 1893, Our Lady of Good Voyage was built for the Portuguese community in Gloucester, after they petitioned the Roman Catholic Church for the establishment of a place to worship dedicated to the Madonna. Large numbers of Portuguese immigrants migrated from the rugged Azores Islands and began settling around Gloucester’s Inner Harbor as early as 1829 to work in the city’s active fishing industry. By 1888, approximately 200 Portuguese families lived in Gloucester making it the largest Portuguese colony on the East Coast. According to the story of Our Lady of Good Voyage, a stranded fisherman in the rough Atlantic Ocean broke one of his oars and could not return to his homeport. He sought help from the Madonna and the sea miraculously calmed allowing him to reach port safely.”
Good Morning Gloucester 