‘The dead ripen’
— Photo by Gerthorst78
“….The creek swells in its ditch;
the field puts on a green glove.
Deep in the woods, the dead ripen,
and the lesser creatures turn to their commission….’’
— From “Jug Brook,’’ by the Cabot, Vt.-based poet Ellen Bryant Voigt. Cabot is where Cabot Creamery, a producer and national distributor of dairy products, is based.
Birchbark building
“Back of State and Main” (in Montpelier Vt.) (inkjet on birchbark), by Burlington, Vt.-based photographer Richard Moore, at The Front gallery, Montpelier, Vt., though Jan. 29.
Main Street in downtown Montpelier.
— Photo by GearedBull
Montpelier in 1884. Note the state capitol. The Winooski River enjoys flooding the city from time to time.
'Sameness and difference'
”Reconfiguration #2’’ (acrylic on canvas), by Rupert, Vt.-based artist Jane Davies, at Edgewater Gallery, Middlebury, Vt.
She says on her Web site:
“No matter what format or style my work takes, the pivot point of my visual explorations is sameness and difference. I like assembling a collection of visual elements that are markedly different from each other, like putting together a dinner party of people that have wildly different backgrounds and interests, to see what happens. I want to be surprised by the conversations or juxtapositions of my visual cast of characters, and then see how I can relate them to one another formally.’’
Soft to rough
“Charlotte” (Italian marble,) by Scott Boyd, in the show “Rock Solid XXII,’’ through Oct. 29, at Studio Place Arts, Barre, Vt., in the heart of Vermont’s granite quarrying and finishing region. (Think of the Rock of Ages Corporation’s gravestone and other products.) The state is also the source of high-grade marble.
— Photo courtesy: Studio Place Arts.
The gallery says that the exhibit “showcases the work of 20 sculptors whose work in stone is able to bring out all of the qualities of the medium — from delicate flowing sculptures that turn stone into something that looks as soft as silk to rough pieces that emphasize the rugged nature of the material.’’
The entrance to the Vermont Marble Museum, in Proctor. The Green Mountain State has been a major source of marble as well as granite.
— Photo by GK tramrunner
Rock of Ages granite quarry
— Photo by Z22
Surreal view
“North Head Afternoon’’ (oil painting), by Evan McGlinn, at the Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester, in its “Fall 2022 Solo Exhibitions,’’ through Nov. 6.
The gallery says the show features 10 artists representing “a wide range of mediums and styles from photography to painting to etching.’’
Mr. McGlinn's "North Head Afternoon" is “a surreal snapshot of a classic New England scene. The oil painting behind the three bottle-lined windows seems to glow from within, illuminating the space.’’
A start on the housing crisis
“Dream Home Dream” (exterior latex paint, plywood, metal, and chalk), by Rob Hitzig, in the group show “Exposed 2022’’, at The Current, in Stowe, Vt., through Oct. 22.
The gallery explains:
The show represents nine artists “in an outdoor sculpture exhibit sprawling across the streets of Stowe….'Dream Home Dream’ invites viewers to engage with the piece, covering it in chalk markings.’’
Mr. Hitzig is based in Montpelier, Vt.
Stowe Community Church
-- Photo by Terry Foote
State Street, in the Montpelier Historic District
— Photo by Georgio
Noble nectar
The Truro Vineyards in North Truro, Mass.
— Photo by Caliga10
"Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy."
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), American founding father, scientist, inventor and businessman. He grew up in Boston. Apparently, contrary to the old story, he never cited beer as proof that God loves us. We briefly fell into that error here.
‘Utterly without pretense’
Dan & Whit’s, the famous general store in Norwich, Vt., where Peter Welch lives when not in Washington.
“I represent a rural state and live in a small town. Small merchants make up the majority of Vermont’s small businesses and thread our state together. It is the mom-and-pop grocers, farm-supply stores, coffee shops, bookstores and barber shops where Vermonters connect, conduct business and check in on one another.”
— Peter Welch (born 1947), Vermont’s sole member of the U.S. House.
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“Vermonters are not only charmless of manner, on the whole; they are also, as far as I can judge, utterly without pretense, and give the salutary impression that they don't care ten cents whether you are amused, affronted, intrigued, or bored stiff by them. Hardly anybody asked me how I liked Vermont. Not a soul said 'Have a nice day!'‘'
“Vermonters, it seems to me, are like ethnics in their own land. They are exceedingly conscious of their difference from other Americans, and they talk a great deal about outsiders, newcomers, and people from the south.”
— Jan Morris (1926-2020), British historian, author and famed travel writer
Faith and sex in New England
The Congregational Church of Middlebury, Vt.
— Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel
— Photo by Ms Sarah Welch
“In New England, especially, [faith] is like sex. It's very personal. You don't bring it out and talk about it. “
— Carl Frederick Buechner (born 1926), American writer and Presbyterian minister. He lives in Vermont. He describes his area:
“Our house is on the eastern slope of Rupert Mountain, just off a country road, still unpaved then, and five miles from the nearest town ... Even at the most unpromising times of year – in mudtime, on bleak, snowless winter days – it is in so many unexpected ways beautiful that even after all this time I have never quite gotten used to it. I have seen other places equally beautiful in my time, but never, anywhere, have I seen one more so.’’
In Rupert, Vt.
Big show at Vermont art museum features exciting ancient medium; see video
See this very unusual and exciting show at the Southern Vermont Art Center's Wilson Museum, Manchester, Vt., through Aug. 14: Hit this link for a video about the show.
It's titled "RELATIONSHIPS: hot, cold, intricate'' and features New England Wax, a regional association of 31 artists who work in encaustic and other wax mediums. The museum notes that encaustic, in Greek, means “to burn in”.
"It is an exciting art medium with a rich history that offers many creative options. Composed of beeswax, tree resin, and pigment applied with a brush or other tools while molten, each layer is fused to the previous one using a heat gun, torch, or other heated implement. Cold wax is a more contemporary medium combined with oil paint or other pigmenting methods. Each of these wax mediums offers many possibilities for translucency, layering, incising, and other techniques in both 2D and 3D work. The exhibiting artists, from the six New England states, use creative interpretations of the RELATIONSHIPS theme to demonstrate the many expressive and unique possibilities of working with wax-based materials.''
Protecting the pasture
“Cow Security: Homeland Security Series’’ (digital photographic composite), by John Douglas, in the show “John Douglas: A Life Well Lived,’’ at the Gallery@The Karma Bird House, connected with the Northern New England Museum of Art, Burlington, Vt., through Aug 22. (Photo courtesy of Eleanor “Bobbie” Lanahan).
The museum says:
“John Douglas’s memorial retrospective documents his long, productive, and substantive body of work. Douglas called himself a ‘truth activist.’ His irreverent, activist beliefs, and Zen-like appreciation of the world fueled his decades of creative output. Douglas unceasingly addressed injustice, hypocrisy, unjust wars, and climate change. In ‘Homeland Security' he leverages American symbols and uses himself as a central actor with near complete humility to create a forceful critique of our cultural priorities.’’
ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, formerly the Lake Champlain Basin Science Center, is an science and nature museum on the Burlington waterfront of Lake Champlain. It hosts more than 70 species of fish, amphibians, reptiles and invertebrates, major traveling exhibitions and the Northfield Savings Bank 3D Theater. It’s named for U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, of Vermont, who has long promoted the protection of the Lake Champlain Basin.
‘Construct an ending’
“An Interesting Light’’ (oil on canvas), by Julia Purinton, of Warren, Vt., (see below) at Edgewater Gallery, Middlebury Vt.
The gallery says:
Ms. Purinton “blends the distinguishable with the imagined, creating dreamlike landscapes in oil. The context of time and place for each work is gracefully ambiguous allowing the viewer to interpret the composition in a personal way.
“Setting a mood with her soft, subtle palette, Purinton begins a story and leaves the ending for us to construct.’’
At the Sugarbush ski area, in Warren, in February. The Warren area is a major recreational and second-home area, anchored by Sugarbush. It also has many artists.
— Photo by TaraMGordon -
In 1910, way before the ski boom.
Picturing Pownal
“Sunday, 1937 ” (oil on canvas), by Marion Huse, in the show “Marion Huse: Picturing Pownal’’, at the Bennington (Vt.) Museum through June 22.
The museum says:
“Huse’s work spanned forty years and a variety of styles and subject matter, from Regionalism in the 1930s to a more Expressionistic style that she developed in the post-war years. A selection of her prints, depicting historic local landmarks and covered bridges, will be shown alongside her paintings.’’
Former Country Store in Pownal, Vt.
— Photo Doug Kerr
New England's indigenous horse
A young Morgan horse
At the Morgan Horse Farm, an historic breeding facility in Weybridge, Vt. Since 1907, it has been an official breeding site for the Morgan horse, one of the first American-bred horse breeds, and Vermont's official state animal. The breeding program was established in Burlington in 1905, and moved to this site in 1907 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and is now run by the University of Vermont. The farm is in the National Register of Historic Places.
“Close-coupled, sturdy, winsome, with a well-defined head and delicate ears, the Morgan horse is New England’s indigenous breed. The line goes back to a small bay stallion owned by Justin Morgan, a Vermont schoolteacher-farmer, who acquired the remarkable colt in 1795. For 32 years this stalwart animal served honorably under saddle and in harness. All Morgans descend from him.’’
Maxine Kumin (1925-2014) , Warner, N.H.-based poet and horse farmer, in Arthur Griffin’s New England: The Four Seasons
Needs replenishment
“Sustenance’’ (oil on canvas), by Kay Flierl, at Edgewater Gallery, Middlebury, Vt.
A place to be free
“We learned the shocking truth that ‘home’ isn’t necessarily a certain spot on earth. It must be a place where you can ‘feel’ at home, which means ‘free’ to us.’’
— Maria Augusta von Trapp, in The Story of the Trapp Family Singers (made famous by The Sound of Music). In 1938 the family fled the Nazis, who had taken over Austria, and eventually settled in Stowe, Vt.
‘Luminescent isolation’
“I Come from a Place Where No One Has Ever Been’’ (oil on canvas), by Ann Young, at Catamount Arts center in St. Johnsbury, Vt. She lives in Barton, Vt., not far from St. Johnsbury, the cultural center of Vermont’s “Northeast Kingdom’’.
The center says: Young’s outsize oil embodies a surreal luminescent isolation in both the background landscape and the foreground of a girl’s face. If you go in person, and linger, it may remind you of looking at “Girl with a Pearl Earring’’ (1665), by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer.
St. Johnsbury hosts the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium which opened in 1891 as a gift of Franklin Fairbanks, a businessman, naturalist and philanthropist, to the community. His donated collections remain northern New England’s most extensive natural history display, and the National Register-listed building is a splendid example of the Richardsonian Romanesque style.
Aerial view of beautiful by remote Barton
— Photo by King of Hearts
‘Vermonters fear no man’
From atop Mount Equinox.
“Vermont is a state I love.
“I could not look upon the peaks of Ascutney, Killington, Mansfield and Equinox without being moved in a way that no other scene could move me.
“It was here that I first saw the light of day; here I received my bride; here my dead lie pillowed on the loving breast of our everlasting hills.
“I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all, because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who have almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.
“Vermont is my birthright. Here one gets close to nature, in the mountains, in the brooks, the waters which hurry to the sea; in the lakes, shining like silver in their green setting; fields tilled, not by machinery, but by the brain and hand of man. My folks are happy and contented. They belong to themselves, live within their incomes, and fear no man.’’
— President Calvin Coolidge (18720-1933) on Sept. 21, 1928. He grew up in Plymouth Notch, Vt., though he went to college (Amherst College), practiced law and rose to governor in Massachusetts.
Visit the Coolidge homestead. Hit this link.
At the Coolidge homestead, in Plymouth Notch, Vt. Calvin Coolidge was born in the rear of the general store in the foreground and the Coolidges’ still operative cheese company is in the distance.
— Photo by Swampyank
The end of his quarrel and road
Robert Frost’s grave, in Bennington, Vt.
— Photo by Nheyob
One of the most famous — and misunderstood — poems in the English Language, first published in 1915
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
— “The Road Not Taken,’’ by Robert Frost
In The Paris Review critic, poet and essayist David Orr described some of the misunderstanding this way:
“The poem’s speaker tells us he ‘shall be telling,’ at some point in the future, of how he took the road less traveled…yet he has already admitted that the two paths ‘equally lay / In leaves’ and ‘the passing there / Had worn them really about the same.’ So the road he will later call less traveled is actually the road equally traveled. The two roads are interchangeable.’’
Purple P.M.
“Violet Afternoon’’ (oil on canvas), by Susan Abbott, at Edgewater Gallery, Middlebury, Vt. She live in northern Vermont.