“Through my work, I can create this cultural connection with nature and the places around us,” says this month’s cover artist May Babcock. Babcock forages for inspiration and raw materials where land meets sea. On windswept shores, she wades through tidal pools and combs beaches, gathering cast-off treasures brought in with each alternating rush of […]
A small building tucked into a rainy day. The ocean hums quietly in the distance, a small, warm light glows steadily from the windows. On the corner of Hall and Van Zandt Ave in Newport, Overlap Gallery is a small, modernist gallery full of surprises. The artists featured in this month’s exhibit “Counterpoint” are Rhode […]
With 384 miles of shoreline, buoys are plentiful in the Ocean State. Buoys are anchored floats strategically perched above shoals or near hazard-prone coastline to help steer sailors. First bobbing to the surface in the thirteenth century as moored rafts or tethered barrels and casks near the Iberian Peninsula, buoys expanded to aid in seafaring […]
There exists a house, off Broadway, that rises from a grass courtyard like a colonial bull. It is eggshell white, and its three stories slope and curve with jagged edges and antique designs. Fog hangs around its spires. From the street, the windows peek out like eyeballs. A swath of fabric roams across one window. […]
Susan Clausen has been a presence in the Providence art scene since 1985 but it wasn’t until 2021 that I first glimpsed her work through the half open door of her studio. I was on assignment to interview her husband, well-known artist Umberto Crenca, and I was intrigued by this unexpected find. Why hadn’t I […]
Our state is home to a unique and inspiring institution, the Tomaquag Indigenous Museum in Exeter. The museum is led by executive director Lorén M. Spears, an artist and author with a background in education. Spears is an enrolled Narragansett Tribal Nation citizen. Tomaquag is the only museum in Rhode Island entirely dedicated to telling […]
Yeah, I was that little 5 year old girl watching Gypsy with Natalie Wood on a little 9-inch black and white TV on a sick day in my mother’s bed. (Did she even know I was watching this movie? Probably not, I’m Gen X and she was busy.) I totally fell in love with Natalie […]
A cyan sky swirls luminescent around pink daffodil trumpets and petals that curl and stretch skyward as a pipevine swallowtail comes to rest, its metallic blue hindwing shimmers above its characteristic orange dots. Yanggen un tånom, siempre dokko, created using soft pastels by artist Fu’una, is Chamoru for: If you plant it, it will grow. […]
Walking into Nick McKnight’s neon studio in Providence, I immediately see the signature glow of neon. The studio, Night Light Neon, is warmer than the warehouse-type building it is housed in. The signs are kicking off heat. There is a sign on the opposite wall that demonstrates the different colors of neon in two columns, […]
Behind every abandoned building is a story. Within its walls forgotten voices whisper endless conversations, once-important papers yellow in the sun that sneaks through cracked windows, old time cards sit in their holders, covered in the smudged fingerprints of their old owners. Rhode Island is full of these vacant, lively, buildings. For someone who builds […]