Walking between oval mirrors mounted above altars on opposite walls in the entryway of the Pawtucket Arts Collaborative gallery in Lorraine Mills, the theme of the mixed-media and immersive In-Between group exhibition became readily apparent. As a sign of welcome, an alabaster hand and an ebony hand reached out from one mirror, while a white […]
The Warwick Public Library (WPL) on Sandy Lane, whose reading programs run from infancy to adulthood, is abuzz with the Summer Reading Challenge. Split into three age groups, participants have to log 16 hours of reading time by August 23 to earn their prizes. They also get a halfway prize after reading for eight hours, […]
“I get paid to do the Hokey Pokey. It’s kind of a cool gig,” Anne Leyon Kilkenny says of her job at Providence Public Library (PPL) on Empire Street. She joined PPL 15 years ago as an early childhood/children’s educator, which was a new position at the time. The Library, a 150-year-old nonprofit institution, wanted […]
The pandemic delivered an uppercut, but not a knockout punch, to the print magazine industry. Still, a number of titles vanished from newsstand racks in the wake of COVID-19; either folding outright or migrating to online only, according to retail sellers. And readership? It’s likewise been trimmed, partly by the departure of Millennials and Generation […]
In her compositions, multimedia artist Alejandra Spruill of Orange, MA, focuses on contrast. “I look for things that don’t go together, but create a whole,” she says. For example, Spruill says, “I took a painting palette and sliced it up. Then, I combined it with a silver gelatin portrait of a friend of mine.” Her […]
From clam shacks to high-end restaurants, the lobster roll has become a quintessential item on the menu in RI. In early 20th century New England, fishing folk put lobster meat into buns for convenient meals. A hot buttered lobster roll made its debut at Perry’s Restaurant in Connecticut in 1929. In a decade, a cold […]
When cover artist Esther Helas of Providence was in high school, her biology teacher caught her drawing in class. One day the teacher, Edwin Yoo, handed her a sketchbook and said, “Do it here,” the digital illustrator recalls. “That changed my life,” Helas says. She became serious about art and, after taking a figure drawing […]
At my house, we use a homemade dry rub to propel chicken wings to the tasty heavens. And we cook them in the oven, because they always come out with a crispy skin and a moist meaty inside. When he concocted it some years ago, the rubmeister of our household dubbed it Something’s A-Fowl. The […]
The cover artist for the Queer issue took their name from their favorite dinosaur, the Tyrannosaurus rex. Rex LeBeau of Newport, for as long as they can remember, loved dinosaurs. “When I was little,” they recall, “I completely covered the walls of my bedroom with dinosaur drawings. Taking them down when we moved left a […]
Persistence is a means of resistance for this queer arts collaborative By John Picinich Recently, Binch Press x Queer Archive Work (BinchxQAW) found itself thrown into the front lines of the White House’s renewed culture wars. The collaborative nonprofit was notified that its $15,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts had been withdrawn. […]