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Showing posts from April, 2019

Hubris Atë Nemesis at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art

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First and foremost let me just preface this post by saying that I'm generally the person who doesn't "get" contemporary art oftentimes having a hard time wrapping my head around what it is that I'm supposed to be looking at. Let's face it, I'm a Monet/van Gogh kinda gal who takes a hard pass at the artwork of Picasso, Matisse, Kahlo and the like. I'm pretty much vanilla in the flavourful world of art but every once in awhile, I'll come across something out of my comfort zone that really gets my attention and makes me think "WOW!" That's exactly what happened recently when I was visiting the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, Maine where I turned a corner and saw what looked like a room where ginormous strands of wood had exploded as boardwalks ran amok through them. I was immediately entranced, intrigued and sucked in. Hubris Atë Nemesis by Maine artists Wade Kavanaugh, of Bethel, and Stephen B. Nguyen, of Portland,

Celebrate the Legacy of a Maine Artist at the Langlais Sculpture Preserve

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Should you find yourself wandering in the Midcoast Maine region and you'd like to take in some art of a different nature, a short drive off of Route 1 as it passes through Thomaston will lead you to the Langlais Sculpure Preserve in the town of Cushing at the former homestead of Maine-born artist Bernard "Blackie" Langlais.  Langlais,  an oil painter for many years before putting down his oil paints and brushes in 1958 to begin creating art from wood instead as he felt it was a more intuitive medium for him,  is best known for his sculpture the " Skowhegan Indian " which stands 62 feet tall atop a 20-foot-tall base. Dedicated to Maine's Abenaki Native American tribe - "... the first people to use these lands in peaceful ways" - the sculpture is located on High Street behind a local Cumberland Farms about 45 miles north of Augusta in the town of Skowhegan. During the summers of 1949-51, Langlais  attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and S

Harwood Hill - Where Arts Meet Hospitality in Bennington, Vermont

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I've wandered up to the wonderful town of Bennington, Vermont several times over the years but had never stayed for an extended amount of time until a recent trip with my friend Paula, one of my distracted sidekicks who likes to travel almost as much as I do. Even though there were a couple chain motels in town, we wanted to try to find a local 'mom and pop' sort of operation as it not only helps support the local folks but generally also gives one a place to stay outside of the cookie cutter mold of major lodging chains. To that end I began a web search for a decent place in Bennington where we could hang our hats for a couple nights that would be clean, comfortable and wasn't going to break the bank in the process. After raising my eyebrows at several other possibilities that were reasonably priced but had mixed reviews on TripAdvisor, I came across the website for The Harwood Hill  which boasted a "million dollar view" just a bit north of downtown Benn