Photo by Sindayiganza Photography. The FIFA World Cup tournament was full of thrills, drama, chaos, unity, and live television shots of devastated children in tears after their team lost a heartbreaking match. The final whistle brought...
Matthew Provençal as Thomas Andrews in ‘Titanic: The Broadway Musical’ at Bill Hanney's Theatre By The Sea July 23 – August 15, 2026. Photo by Mark Turek. The challenge to staging a production of “Titanic: The...
The Tattoo Awards featured a gallery wall populated by local artists. Here is a selection of the artwork on display! By Brianne Elizabeth @foxhallowart By Victori Leo Riel Grab Your Heart & Go by Allie Boyer @peaceflowercreations MONSTROELIZASUE by...
Photo by Jess Lee Images. I met Lily Spencer in an acting class taught by Eric Lutes, whom many television fans will remember from the 1990s sitcom “Caroline in the City.” Eric, who now lives in...
Rachel WS. Favorite Animal/ Favorite Floral Tara D’Agostino – Iron Lion Tattoo By the numbers, Tara D’Agostino got her first tattoo at the age of 15, picked up her own tattoo machine at the age of 19, opened...
Photo by Jillian Clark. There’s no feeling quite like finally being able to fully step into your own, to truly embrace your whole self and carry yourself through the world with that mentality. Not an identity...
Kai Nanfelt. Okee dokee folks… Last weekend I went on a ten-hour, each way, road trip to play a show. The drive wasn’t so bad, but the music was horrible. As I have mentioned before, I...
Photo by Isaac Laliberte Wards 2, 9 and 12 all report the same. Mendez wins in each! It appeared that Providence was perfectly poised to usher-in its first female mayor in history. The polls were closed and...
“You’re late, Brother,” she said, hovering outside the weathered cottage near a pebbly beach, indistinguishable from the shadows cast by moonlight that hit the thick hydrangeas. It was late in the evening of a seawind-chilled...
The NecronomiCon is a biennial celebration of the works of HP Lovecraft and beyond, and throughout the genre of “weird fiction.” Centered in downtown Providence, it boasts four days of literary panels, readings from various...
It’s almost Cthulhu – pardon my hiccup, I meant, “election” – season again. And if the tactics of these times don’t make your head swim and your bowls ache, as if you were being eviscerated...
When cover artist Bob Eggleton of Warwick first got interested in art and started sketching nightmarish creatures, he recalls, an aunt asked him, “What’s drawing a monster gonna get you in life?” He’s spent the last...
Skyler Shields (Kenickie) and the cast of the Theatre By The Sea (Wakefield, RI) production of “Grease” running thru July 18, 2026. Photo by Mark Turek. “A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop! A-wop-bam-boom!” BY ALISON O’DONNELL ON JUNE 27, 2026 Grease is the...
Isham, Sheila. Teth (#8 Creation Series). 1972. Acrylic spray on canvas. Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI. (Image courtesy of the Newport Art Museum.) Quite some time ago, I read a quip that the art of diplomacy...
As an international student a year into Rhode Island, yet still only a breath into America, I finally found a question that I might be able to answer – this is my continued exploration of: What...
Tucked inside the historic Harrison Steam Complex in Providence's Olneyville neighborhood, Siren Spirits is redefining what a visit to a distillery can be. Equal parts neighborhood gathering place, cocktail destination, and craft spirits experience, this...
Music makes beer taste better? In 2016, Vrije University in Brussels, Belgium, conducted a study that showed scientific evidence that music has an impact on our taste of beer. This study concluded that lower audible...
Cold Chocolate. Okee dokee folks… Well, summer is here and for me, summer is HELL! A few years back I wrote a song about my disdain of Summer for the Empire Revue’s “Cool” show. Here are...
America, the focus of this issue, runs on wealth. So here’s how to get yourself some. It’s the perfect opportunity to launch a new column aimed at helping non-one-percenters with financial matters. Feel free to...
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“Foreigner.” I find it a harsh word that I hate seeing applied to others. Yet applied to myself, it’s the only word that half conveys how baffling I find this country at times. I’d like...
In his final year at college, cover artist William Schaff truly learned what it was like to work in a studio. “I developed a course of study in general fine arts with one of my...
Rachael Warren as Diana. Photo by Mark Turek. The Next to Normal audience is exposed to waves of raw emotions drowning your soul and dampening your eyes. You may wish you had premedicated with any of...
Blaq Sav. Photos by Lillian MK Photography. Favorite Free Verse Spoken Word 2026 Ashley Hosa Sending out a big congrats to Ashley Hosa, who came to the Spoken Awards with a multitude of wonderful supporters (shoutout to Ryan!)....
The founder of the long-standing hipster-ish West Side restaurant Julians hadn’t been involved directly with the restaurant in quite some time. But his legacy persisted. A larger-than-life personality, you never knew at what event Julian...
Renowned supporter of local music and arts Lisa Gourley (Sometimes Lisa Gourleyx) passed away on June 15. Reading reactions on social media, you can’t help but notice how often the words “nice,” “kind,” and “photography”...
This beautiful Solstice moment, June 21, 2026 brings the winds of change into our lives. The pivotal points among the planetary movers and shakers of the Zodiac find Gemini, with Uranus and Ceres, reaching across...
By Olivia Lunger By Lillian MK Photography ...
Favorite Color Tattoo Evan Olin, Powerline Tattoo Runner-up: Luis Bold, Unicorn Ink Favorite Black & Gray Ryan Dowden, Dark Ritual Runner-up: Luis Bold, Unicorn Ink Favorite Black & Gray with Color Steven McDonough, Secret Safe Tattoo Runner-up: Rachel WS, Rachel WS Fine Art...
By Lillian MK Photography By Olivia Lunger ...
When Wu-Tang Clan’s debut album Enter the 36 Chambers was released in 1993, I was thirteen years old. I remember it vividly because Theodora, my longtime friend/ crush, had gifted me a bootleg copy of the LP on cassette tape. For those too young to remember, pirated copies of tapes and CDs were the only […]
Mirah’s second full-length, Advisory Committee (K Records, 2002), came out during the spring of my freshman year at Boston University. While the album’s title perhaps suggested some homage to academia, the songwriting mostly revealed a study of contrasts. Spartan and robust, serious and mirthful, soft and assertive, literal and symbolic, the singer-songwriter Mirah Yom Tov […]
Okee dokee folks… I realized that I am now in my 40th year of being a performing songwriter. My first real gig was at AS220 in Providence in March of 1985. This was the original 220 Weybosset Street location in downtown Providence, above the Providence Performing Arts Center. I made $1. I still might have […]
In the last two months, eight bodies have been found in New Haven, Norwalk, Groton, and Killingly, Connecticut; Foster, Rhode Island; and Framingham, Plymouth, and Springfield, Massachusetts. Amateur detectives on social media claim that these discoveries of human remains, particularly of women, could indicate the presence of a serial killer. Police, however, have made no […]
R.I. Coastal Regulator Receives Passing Grade from Federal Government WAKEFIELD, R.I. — The state’s coastal regulatory agency has received a passing grade from the federal government. Federal officials from the Office of Coastal Management in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have deemed the Coastal Resources Management Council to have successfully achieved many of the […]
On social media I saw a guy on a mission to walk every street in Providence, so I invited Daniel Morris for a Motif interview along his next walk. We met up, and sure enough, he was already a 2F2B (my regular column, Two Feet, Two Bucks) fan. He showed me how he manages the […]
“This is not a sad story,” declared Daniel Crenca on the closing of his family restaurant, NicoBella’s, in downtown PVD, after a 10-year run that weathered a pandemic, a partial bridge closure, rising rents, and a dramatic hike in electricity costs. The final straw was, facetiousness aside, the rising price of eggs. “It is a […]
From pin-up girls and anchors, to clocks and lions; fine-line infinity signs and finger mustaches, to cyber-sigil and patchwork, tattooing is an art that is in constant flux and conversation with the changing world and culture around it. Originating as a practice used for religious and spiritual rituals, to mark status, love, and even used […]
“As an artist, you need to have an open mind to learn and grow,” says Motif cover and tattoo artist Jay Blackburn of Pawtucket, “You’re constantly learning,” he emphasizes. Speaking in his workspace at Unicorn Ink, a tattoo parlor in Lincoln, the artist says he wanted to do something fun and different for the cover. […]
When I got my first tattoo in Caracas, at 18, it was the start of what would become a deeply personal and evolving relationship with body art. Today, at 45, I carry nine tattoos — each one representing a moment in time, an emotion, a transformation. One of those tattoos was created by Rhode Island […]
