Category: Art

Maine Time: Jaunting Around

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JAUNTING TO WATERVILLE

We know a few folks who’ve worked at or graduated from Colby College, but had never visited the campus. It’s located about ten minutes from downtown Waterville on Mayflower Hill—a pleasant spread of green dotted with red brick buildings and athletic fields.  A guard at another museum (which will remain nameless) told us that the best art museum in Maine, “its Louvre,” is the art museum here, which prompted this visit. 

Founded in 1959 and housed in a contemporary building with two levels and five wings, the Colby College Museum of Art has a wonderful collection focusing primarily on American art from all periods with some pieces from Europe and Asia.

Whimsical seating

The entrance hall includes some fanciful shrub seating while the lobby area is airy and light-filled with splashy red chairs.   The young woman at the reception desk was most welcoming and helpful.

Photo in Theaster Gates collection

We spent time looking at some of the thousands of photographs from Ebony magazine in Theaster Gates:  Facsimile Cabinet of Women Origin Stories and then marveled at the intricately worked baskets and the colorful paintings which are part of an exhibit of arts and crafts of the First Nations People of Maine and Maritime Canada.  

Fancy Basket, 1997 by Peter Neptune

The exhibit is titled, Wiwenikan:  the beauty we carry, and includes works from the Maliseet, Micmac, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, and Abenaki that collectively are known as the Wabanaki. 

I also particularly enjoyed some of the contemporary paintings and sculpture in the permanent collection including two works by Maya Lin, with whom we spent some time in our San Francisco years.   Lin’s works are small in scale, one made all of straight pins, and better appreciated up close in person.

Burning House, Night, Vertical, 2007 by Lois Dodd
Untitled, 2010 by Anish Kapoor
The Hostess, c. 1928 by Ellie Nadelman

This is a first-rate museum and well worth a visit. For us, it was only about an hour and half’s drive from the coast.  Admission is free to both the campus community and the general public.

To cap off our tour, on the recommendation of the museum staff, we drove downtown, easily found a place to park in a large free lot, and then had a most satisfying lunch at the Last Unicorn Restaurant.  

The Chief Penguin and I both selected one of the lunch-sized chicken entrees which came with a small green salad and basmati rice.  Salads and sandwiches were also on offer with seating inside or outdoors at umbrella tables.

Note: Text ©JWFarrington and all photos by JWFarrington. Header photo is a birch and cedar bark canoe in the Colby museum.

Maine Moments

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COASTAL MAINE BOTANICAL GARDENS

Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens is ten years old, and it keeps getting better each year.  We visit on our own and also bring all of our guests. Our granddaughters are especially fond of the play house where there are kitchen appliances, a cupboard, and a small table and chairs where you can serve tea and cupcakes.  Also a draw are the two old fashioned water pumps, a laundry tub with a washboard, a rowboat to climb into, the puppet theater, and a sandbox.  

Steve Tobin sculpture

For adults, the scent garden is always worth wandering. And there’s also an outdoor art exhibit, “Unearthed,” a series of towering root sculptures by Pennsylvania artist Steve Tobin. The sculptures are made of metal and placed throughout the grounds. Some are realistic colors (brown and black) while others are bright such as a mustard yellow one and a glossy white one. The sculptures will be on view into 2020.  A few years ago Lehigh University presented an outdoor exhibit of Tobin’s impressively large “Termite Hills” sculptures.

MAKING MEMORIES

Our son and daughter-in-law and two granddaughters were here for the week.  E is a poised seven and F an active three, the age at which most kids form lasting memories.  The Chief Penguin and I very much enjoy their annual visits to Maine and know that even when we’re gone, they will have Maine memories. 

 Memories of making blueberry pancakes with Grandma, of sampling Grandpa’s muffins, of visiting the botanical gardens, of clambering on the rocks at Molly’s Point for sea glass, shells, and smooth stones, of checking out the books and toys at Sherman’s, and memories of riding the narrow gauge train at Railway Village and more.   

E is a voracious reader and quickly devours chapter books.  F is at the “why?” stage and is a fan of trains and motion.  Together the girls and I read umpteen stories, played with Josie and Rosie, their dolls, and colored and created with construction paper using an assortment of pencils, pens, and crayons.  

There was no set schedule and the mornings flowed from a leisurely breakfast, to a walk in the yard or games on the deck, followed by an afternoon outing, and then dinner, be it pizza with friends and their grandkids, hot dogs and lobster rolls on the deck at Cozy’s, or comfort food here at Grandma and Grandpa’s.  It was about as perfect a week as could be!

RECENT READING

America’s Reluctant Prince:  The Life of John F. Kennedy Jr. by Steven Gillon

Much has been written about JFK Jr. and the Kennedys in the twenty years since his tragic death in 1999.  One might wonder why we need yet another tome, and this one is a tome.  Gillon was the graduate assistant in an undergraduate course Kennedy took at Harvard.  Only a few years older than John, he became a friend and the two got together occasionally over the years.  John sought out Gillon’s advice and writing suggestions when he was editing George magazine.  While John was alive, Gillon respected and protected his privacy; now he feels comfortable sharing his perspective and his knowledge of the challenges John faced as a Kennedy, the standard bearer after his father’s death.  

What was most interesting to me was the account of Kennedy’s years founding and creating George and struggling to make it a truly viable proposition.  There is new information on his wife Carolyn’s inability to adjust to being trailed by the press, her volatile behavior, and her drug use, all of which made a marriage fraught with tension more tumultuous.  It is in this context of daunting issues at work, difficulties at home, and the prolonged dying of his closest friend (his cousin Anthony), that John Jr. takes off on that fateful flight.  The book is overly detailed and, sometimes tedious, but I found myself modifying and enlarging my view of this Kennedy.  (~JWFarrington)

Note: Photos and text ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved). Header photo taken at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.

Maine: Reading & Art

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SUMMER READING

How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry

If you are a reader and a booklover, then this novel set in a small town in Cornwall should delight you.  When her father Julius, bookshop owner extraordinaire, dies, his daughter Emilia inherits Nightingale Books.  Emilia has lived in Hong Kong for some years and returns to deal with his affairs and discovers that he was beloved by the townspeople.  Julius was an unofficial therapist or at least a willing ear, but a lousy businessman. While Emilia’s efforts to save the shop are one focus of this story, it’s also a series of vignettes of individuals who patronize the bookstore, some of whom have been unsuccessful or unlucky in finding love.  Like a box of bonbons, it’s a sweet and charming novel with happy endings for all. 

SMALL SCREEN

Borgen (Apple TV)

Last summer we binge watched the final season of The Americans.   This year we raced through all of the latest Grantchester episodes and were hungry for more good viewing.  The Chief Penguin found us Borgen and now we’re glued to it.  

The prime minister and Katrine (Vanity Fair)

It’s a fictional Danish political drama produced in 2010 about Birgitte Nyborg, the first female prime minister.  With a parliamentary system that requires the party leader who becomes prime minister to have a majority of seats or a majority made up of a coalition of parties, there’s lots of wheeling and dealing among the players to arrive at a viable candidate.  Besides the prime minister and her husband and two children, the key characters are Katrine, a TV news reporter, and Kasper, a politico/spin doctor.  The series is fast paced and totally absorbing, partly because you become enmeshed in the complicated personal lives of these individuals.  There are three seasons and we have now watched the first five episodes in Season 1. The first episode is free, but then you have to pay.

RETURN TO ROCKLAND

On another gorgeous Maine day, we took our friends up to Rockland for a visit to the Farnsworth Art Museum.  This lovely museum has a strong collection of works by various members of the Wyeth Family from N.C. Wyeth, the patriarch, to Andrew Wyeth, his son, to Jamie Wyeth, Andrew’s son, as well as works by the siblings and other relatives.  

Catching Pollen

This summer, in addition to the Wyeth family paintings in the permanent collection, there are two special exhibits of Jamie Wyeth’s work, Untoward Occurrences and Other Things, scenes of Monhegan Island featuring artist Rockwell Kent and others, and Phyllis Mills Wyeth:  A Celebration, paintings of his wife over more than 50 years.  Sadly, she died this past January.

I especially enjoyed the Phyllis paintings for the range of emotions depicted, from the exuberance of “Catching Pollen” to the quiet determination in “And Then into the Deep Gorge,” and the mystery of “Wicker.”

And Then into the Deep Gorge
Wicker

In addition to the Wyeth exhibits, there is a small one of some contemporary screens, room dividers, that are quite a mixed lot in terms of style.

From The Screen Show exhibit

We had such a great experience we returned to Rockland and the museum this week with my sister and brother-in-law. I loved the Wyeth exhibits even more the second time!

LUNCH FARE

Continuing a quest to sample local beers, we ate lunch last week at the Rock Harbor Pub and Brewery on the main street.  The guys ordered two different beers and were happy with their choices.  The fish tacos and the haddock sandwich were both very good.  The lobster rolls, part of their summer lobster specials, had a decent amount of very fresh lobster, but the roll suffered from not having been grilled and buttered.  Fries and cole slaw were also fine.  

This visit, for an even better lobster roll (which also came with fries and cole slaw), we went down the block to the Brass Compass and sat outside at one of their umbrella tables. Perfect Maine.

Lobster roll done right!

Note: Text ©JWFarrington. All photos by J. Farrington.

Manhattan Finale: Frick & More

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FASCINATING FRICK
We made two visits to the Frick Collection and highly recommend two current exhibits. Unfortunately, there was no photography allowed. On our first visit, we discovered that Wednesday afternoons beginning at 2:00 pm, it’s pay what you wish, and the museum was packed. We took a brief tour around some of the Moroni exhibit and decided to return the next day in the morning.
Giovanni Battista Moroni is a lesser known Renaissance painter noted for his portraits of mostly wealthy and high-placed individuals. This is the first major exhibit of his work in the U.S. These people of means have great facial expressions, and he made wonderful use of shades of red and pink in their clothing with very finely detailed jewelry and ornamentation. There is one portrait of a tailor.

Elective Affinities: Edmund de Waal at the Frick Collection.
 Mr de Waal is a ceramist whose favorite medium is porcelain, but he is also attracted to working with steel and gold for his art. A longtime lover of the Frick, he has created a series of small sculptures in vitrines that are placed in front of specific paintings. Some of the works are white porcelain while others incorporate several shapes and thicknesses of black or gray steel. There is a short film showing the artist in his London studio and talking about what he’s trying to achieve in terms of light and form. I found it instructive to see the film before touring his work in the galleries. This exhibit runs into November, the first one closes soon.

What made our visit even more interesting was that a breakfast for press had just ended and I chatted very briefly with two of these individuals about the exhibit. It turns out we were present on opening day for de Waal. For those who don’t know it, you might want to check out his fascinating memoir cum history entitled, The Hare with Amber Eyes. I found it fascinating.

CLASSY DINER
 We had lunch at Three Guys on Madison, and we quickly decided it was the most pleasant, brightest and cleanest diner we’d eaten at. It’s a welcoming space with a mix of booths and tables and can easily accommodate groups. Several families with small children were in evidence and it’s obviously family friendly. Their menu is extensive with lots of breakfast fare, but also plenty of sandwiches, salads, and burgers.

We opted for a Reuben with fries and the tuna salad platter which came with a mound of cole slaw and some sliced tomatoes and cucumber and a hard boiled egg. The platter was a large portion (I didn’t finish it), but very good. The diner is located across the street from Met Breuer so would be a good destination after visiting their exhibits.

FABULOUS THEATER

We were able to squeeze in seeing Kiss Me Kate and are so glad we did.  What a fun, lively, energetic, performance it was!  Even with the understudy playing the lead role of Fred Graham/Petruchio, it was superb. Growing up, I was exposed to the LP record version of a much earlier performance which my folks had seen on Broadway in the 1940’s.  They played this record often, and consequently, I was familiar with the songs and knew most of the words.  The level of fitness and acrobatic skill required for the dancing, especially by Lois Lane and Bill Calhoun, was awe-inspiring.  There was some additional stage business and asides which made this a more contemporary “Kate.”  The song, “Tom, Dick or Harry” will never again be the same.  (~JWFarrington)

PRE-THEATER DINING

Nocello on W. 55, a block from the Roundabout Theatre, was an ideal place for an early dinner.  It appeared to have a regular clientele, even one family group, and not just tourists.  We had the nicest corner table on the lower level and were especially pleased with the fried artichokes and the chicken cutlet encrusted with Parmesan in a bit of lemon white wine broth.  

Artichokes

The Caesar salad was an acceptable rendition and the veal saltimbocca provided a slightly different variation on that classic.  The Chief Penguin sampled the nocello liqueur (made from walnuts and hazelnuts) and it was lovely, deeply smooth with a hint of sweetness.  The small plate of mini biscotti was just right.   We will remember this restaurant for another pre-theater meal.

Note: All contents and photos ©JWFarrington.