Adam Waimon’s path to becoming an artist was, well, as clear and smooth as glass. With an artist mother—Connecticut printmaker Deborah Weiss—and grandmother, he grew up in an art-focused environment.
Images of the ordinary take on a transcendent, almost mythic, quality through the lens of Boston photographer Christopher Churchill.
Weaving is a solitary art.
On any given day Patricia Burling spends seven hours standing at her loom. And it can take days, weeks, even months for her to coax myriad spools of yarn to come together as one. It takes focus and concentration to thread lengths of yarn over and under and over again until they are no longer discernable as lengths of yarn but rather a rug, throw or wall hanging. It’s repetitive to say the least, yet Burling never tires of it.
You can see Tom Patti’s work—everything from crisp-edged, multi-hued cubes of glass to entire walls of iridescence that change as you walk by them—in major cities and museums around the world. His career as a glass artist, however, came about rather like the discovery of penicillin: the result of a combination of experiment and accident.
A hard spring rain is falling, the kind that forms angry little vees when it hits the pavement. But Frances Palmer is smiling as she descends the stone steps in front of her studio, a rebuilt barn in Weston. A small woman with short, curly hair, Palmer wears retro well: cat’s-eye glasses, flax-colored slacks, vintage cardigan sweater. “Come in,” she says. “This is where it all happens.”
At mid-career, Paul Bowen has built up a considerable fan base. His admirers like everything about him: the Welsh accent, the spark in his eye, the grin preceding a self-effacing pause and, most of all, the stubborn love he devotes to his art. He has spent decades gathering, choosing, recycling, sawing, gluing and nailing choice bits of wood and debris for his sculptures, and countless hours fishing for squid to collect its ink for his drawings.
Rich with archetypal images and evocative color, Roxanne Faber Savage’s uninhibited printmaking reflects the psychologist Carl Rogers’s idea that “what is most personal is most universal.”
You never know what goes on behind closed doors. In a section of Boston’s Allston neighborhood where the unremarkable facades provoke little curiosity, what meets the eye inside the Boston Ornament Company’s showroom is enough to make you swoon. Bright-white plaster medallions, cornices, brackets and rosettes—like flourishes of icing on a wedding cake—cover every inch of the butter-yellow walls and dangle from the rafters.
In his tool-scattered, wood-flour-coated, Billie Holiday–blasting workshop, Silas Kopf is building a cabinet with trick drawers and secret compartments. It’s made of mahogany and narra, with graceful, curving legs. The piece is impressive, but it’s the doors that make you do a double take: they’re closed, but it looks like one is slightly open to reveal a glimpse of people inside the cabinet using various twenty-first-century gadgets such as laptops and cell phones. This bit of trompe l’oeil isn’t painted; it’s made entirely from thin pieces of wood.
New England Home showcases the unique architecture and superior design and building that define the luxury home in New England. From cutting edge lofts to historic dwellings, New England Home is your guide to the very best of New England style. Each issue includes beautifully produced images of our area’s most amazing homes, along with profiles of artists and artisans and all the latest resources and design trends.