Cover artist Dalton Kaplan of Pawtucket always had the art bug. “When I was a kid, I watched way too many cartoons,” the illustrator and graphic designer laughs. While sitting in front of the TV he would always draw, sometimes cartoonish characters, sometimes scenes. And he really got bitten by the bug at Mount Blue […]
“It went pretty well,” said Bobby Forand about the “Give or Take” food drive he coordinated on Thanksgiving weekend at the News Cafe on Broad Street in Pawtucket. “People stayed, and there’s a lot of food.” Forand, the drummer of The McGunks, which was one of three punk groups that played at the iconic bar […]
“I make art in the same way you walk, or breathe, or eat a meal,” says illustrator and designer John Gendron of Providence, who created the cover for Motif’s year-end issue. “I try to process the world around me, and communicate it to others.” He gets his inspiration from daily events, along with the jokes […]
Who spit on our cover? The cover art chose itself for this issue, says photographer and printmaker Carey Good of Providence, who created it.“I started etching on three copper plates. Soon, I discarded the biggest of the three. The second plate had a woodsy and pondish feel to it. But with the third scratch plate, […]
“I’ve leveled up,” illustrator Daniel Smelansky of Providence says with a chuckle of his latest gig: creating the cover of Motif’s Gift Guide. That’s because he made a word-and-image collage about the lack of nonbinary bathing suits for an article in the Queer Issue last June, and illustrated a Fun Map with pumpkins and ghosts […]
Classes in blacksmithing, jewelry, clay, and welding are on offer for the holidays. The Steel Yard (TSY) in Providence’s Valley Arts District is offering courses, workshops, and gift cards for this holiday season. You can choose from various options, such as taster classes in blacksmithing, jewelry, ceramics, and welding. For gift cards, the purchaser sets […]
In creating the cover of Motif’s Indigenous Peoples Month issue, artist and visual arts teacher Ella Mahoney took her inspiration from her birthplace, Aquinnah, in Martha’s Vineyard, MA. “Every year, the members of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe go to the cranberry bogs, and pick cranberries together,” she relates. “From that, I took images of the […]
Fittingly, old haunts surround a couple of skeletons on the cover of Motif’s Halloween issue, as designed by digital artist Matthew Bernier of Barrington. They are the names of businesses now gone: Goldy Records, Chez Pascal, and The Watershed, to name a few. “Some of these places were my haunts when I was growing up,” […]
The leading character of the audio series The Diaries of Netovicius the Vampire was spawned by an offhand comment while creator Hugo Pierre Martin and his partner, Sonja Kelly, were walking around downtown Woonsocket a couple years back. “My partner said she saw someone who looked like a vampire driving a lime green Cadillac,” the […]
For teenager Elliot Langston of Pawtucket, using pipe cleaners to craft characters from monster movies, games, and anime is painstaking work – in both definitions of the term. The 15-year-old spends hours fashioning figures that are as detailed as they are accurate. But working with these implements can be painful. “The metal will poke you […]