Hot glass in cool Vermont
Hot glass in cool Vermont By Joyce Marcel If we’re going to talk about art glass, we might as well begin with Aldous Huxley. In “The Doors of Perception,” Huxley’s 1954 book on his mescaline experience, he theorizes that mankind’s “otherwise inexplicable passion for gems” might arise because precious stones “bear a faint resemblance to the glowing marvels seen with the inner eye of the visionary.” And if you can’t have gemstones, he...
Reaching for the stars
Nurturing the Arts: Dina Janis, Theater: Reaching for the stars By Allison Teague Dorset, in Bennington County, has nurtured performance theater since 1927, when residents staged a three-act play, “39 East,” in the Town Hall. It was received with such great enthusiasm that it spun out the Dorset Players, and a legend was born. Two years later the community raised funds for a larger space, the Dorset Playhouse. Let’s leap ahead,...
Summertime is garden time
Summertime garden tours Cider Hill Art Gallery & Gardens June 14, July 15, ciderhillgardens.com Visit for the gardens and the art: 7 painters, all about peonys. Westminster Cares Annual Garden Tour June 29-30, 10-3p 802-722-3607, westminstercares.org. See 5 beautiful gardens. Prices are $15.00 and 2 for $25.00 (rain or shine). New Plants New Voices North Hill Annual Summer Symposium June 29, 8:30-4:30p Northhillgarden.com 18th...
Sweet success
Sweet success: With their goats’-milk caramels, Townshend farmers find their niche in the marketplace of locally produced speciality foods It’s no wonder Big Picture Farm’s silky caramels won the specialty food industry’s equivalent of the Academy Awards last year, and the awards keep coming: Pop one in your mouth — savor it — and you’ll understand that this is no ordinary caramel. Handcrafted from goat’s milk...
Rock-solid accolades
Rock-solid accolades Stone house wins top honor from design site Terrigenous Landscape Architecture of Chester, owned by Scott Wunderle, is winner of the Best of Houzz Community Design award for 2013. The firm won for its design of a local outbuilding: a coop made from local stone and extruded glass rods. Wunderle says he undertook the work as a private challenge and was inspired by Chester’s Stone Village, listed in the National...
Tony Conner, Visual Art
By Allison Teague Like many who take up the arts following a first career, Tony Conner needed only the right moment to act. When downsizing loomed in 2003, this former AT&T account executive leaped at the chance to paint full-time. He’s glad he did. But painting the rural landscapes of Vermont and New England, and tackling commercial work, is not all Conner, now a Bennington-based watercolorist and teacher, does — and many,...
Live performance as community
Nurturing the Arts: Liisa Kissel, Music: Live performance as community By Allison Teague It took the Grafton Music Festival only three years to rise to the status of go-to music festival, held in tandem with the annual visit of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra & Fireworks, itself a Grafton staple of the past 23 years. Grafton resident Liisa Kissel, president of Grafton Music Festival, Inc., serves with a board of three to get the...
Raising a ruckus in Southern Vermont
Raising a ruckus in Southern Vermont A show celebrating major themes of influental artist Red Grooms over 60 years — his first show ever in Vermont, and his first in New England in 16 years — opens in Brattleboro this summer By Arlene Distler And now, under the big top, in the center ring, Red Grooms, ringmaster of the human comedy, brings you jugglers, wild animals, acrobats, clowns, and trapeze artists; whole chunks of Manhattan,...
We’re celebrating 10 years!
Southern Vermont Arts & Living chronicles the innovative culture and sophisticated country lifestyle of Southern Vermont.
Subscribe! We'll mail you the next four issues if you send us a check for $25 made out to Primetime Concepts, Inc. The address is 1484 Middle Road, Dummerston Center, VT 05301.
