"Heat Wave" (watercolor on paper), by Brian Herrick, at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery, Center Sandwich, N.H.
Watch for jellyfish
"Beach Stroll'' (acrylic on paper), by Madeleine Lord, at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery, Center Sandwich, N.H.
So get in your cave
"Cave Bears,'' by C.C. White, at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery, Center Sandwich, N.H.
Shopping at the fish market
"Noddies Above the Waves'' (woodblock print on Stonehenge paper), by Margaret Barnaby, at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery, Center Sandwich, N.H.
Dark and windy city
"Unquiet City XXA'' (pigment print on canvas) in the "Boston Through the Eyes of Robert Hesse Collection'' at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery, Center Sandwich, N.H.
I must admit that I have always found Boston unfriendly, class-ridden, too ethnically and religiously tribal and too windy. This picture reminds me of the chilling scenes outside my father's office on Federal Street in downtown Boston more than 50 years ago, when he worked for a long-dead Boston company called the United Shoe Machinery Corp. in a stepped, gold-topped Art Deco skyscraper put up right before the Depression. That slump lasted, off and on, into the '50s in Boston, at least in some ways. The Brink's Robbery was a nice distraction.
Poor John Cheever, the novelist and short-story writer who grew up just south of what we headline writers used to call "The Hub,'' used to get so depressed and anxious when he returned to Boston that he'd get drunk and sometimes be found like a bum sleeping on a bench in Boston Common.
Of course, he did have various "issues,'' as they say. But growing up in the downcast environment of Greater Boston was one of them.
The city is a lot spiffier now than it was a few decades ago, but no friendlier.
I'll take Manhattan., or even Brooklyn.
-- Robert Whitcomb
Sun on the sink
''Kitchen in Sunlight'' (oil on plexy), by MICHAEL DOYLE, via Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery, Center Sandwich, N.H. At this time of year, the light slants in beautifully if painfully, especially for drivers.
Honey, I'm home
"What the Beekeeper Didn't Tell Us'' (lithographic monotype on panel), by BLAIR FOLTS in the show "Adventures in Printmaking: A Selection of Hand Pulled Prints,'' at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery, in Center Sandwich, N.H.
A desk with delight
"The Editor's Desk'' (installation: antique desk, chair, FujiColor prints, FujiFilm envelope, 35mm color film, archival gloves) by FORREST K. ELLIOTT, at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery, Center Sandwich, N.H.
In an age of cold, untactile digital art, the physicality of film and gloves is inviting. And while many people associate desks with grinding work, this one looks like a refuge, as is my (Whitcomb's) desk, safely positioned eight feet below ground level in our basement. I look almost straight up through the thick wire mesh at a rose bush hit by the afternoon sun. It's rather like being in a friendly prison.
