I don’t know about you, but when I travel these days, my itinerary is all about food. As Anthony Bourdain (and so many others before and since) have taught us, you get to know a place by eating its food. But there’s so much great food out there; it’s tough to choose just a few great places to eat. Enter food truck festivals.

The New England Food Truck Festival, scheduled for September 2-3, will feature a variety of trucks from all over New England and the Northeast, and food from around the world, everything from Polish and Indian to Laotian and Mediterranean. The festival can satisfy less adventurous comfort-based culinary tastes, too. Always wanted to try a steamed cheeseburger? Walk 20 feet in that direction. Square donuts? Walk 50 feet over there. All varieties of barbecue and sandwich are represented here, plus a few specialty carts (grilled cheese! WAFFLES!). Here’s a sample of the trucks you’ll find at this food-lover’s weekend.

Away Cafe
A food truck from the Boston area with a lot of range. They’ve got classic fair food in addition to Thai, Cuban, and Italian.

Clyde’s Cupcakes
Sweet bakery treats from New Hampshire. All the cupcakes you could ever want. End of story.

Friskie Fries
Do you want fries with that? Why, yes, you do. Crispy hot fries with a variety of toppings, in fact; all fresh from Rhode Island.

Kettle Girl Popcorn
Kettle corn is that elusive mix of salty and sweet that is mostly irresistible once you’ve had a taste. It is especially irresistible if the kettle corn is from this food truck, from deep in the heart of Connecticut. Go ahead. We dare you to eat just one handful.

Makin’ Jamaican
You may not be able to make it to Jamaica, but you can enjoy some of its tasty treats, thanks to this truck. Rated one of the 10 best food trucks in Massachusetts!

Nora Cupcake
Hailing from Connecticut, Nora has cupcakes for everyone, including vegan and gluten-free options. Who could say no to 50 Shades of Chocolate?

Nom Nom Hut
Want a little kashi katsu, aka pork on a stick? You know you do. This is Japanese food at its best.

Open Season
This Rhode Island truck got game—as in venison chili, bison burgers, elk hot dogs, and wild boar quesadillas. Game on!

Redbean Coffee Roasters
A cup of Redbean is going to help you through this food fest, believe us.

Red’s Street Kitchen
A Rhode Island truck with a passion for street food. Their slider sandos, as they’re called, include Portuguese burgers, a Chimichurri cheesesteak, and the Cubano.

Say Cheese!
The answer to answer to many of life’s conundrums is to say cheese, IMHO. This truck, based in Worcester, Massachusetts, takes the lowly grilled cheese and moves it up several notches. Two options include the wedge (blue cheese crumbles, cheddar, bacon, and tomato) and the picklebac (cheddar, bacon, and dill pickles).

Shuckin’ Truck
You can’t get your seafood any fresher unless you grab it from the sea yourself. The fresh shellfish and fish on this truck are either fished by local fisherman from Point Judith, Rhode Island, or from the Salt Pond Oyster Company.

Spuds Your Way
It’s a meal in a peel as this Connecticut baked-potato wondertruck likes to boast. And they’re not kidding. Their Supreme Baked Potato includes butter, sour cream, bacon, chives, and shredded cheese as well as your choice of steak, grilled chicken, burger, turkey burger, or Buffalo Philly chicken. Phew!

Sultan Kebab
Kebabs, falafel, and baklava are coming to your mouth from this truck that calls Connecticut home.

Ted’s Restaurant
If you haven’t tried a steamed cheeseburger, this is your chance. Ted’s, which also has a restaurant in Meriden, Connecticut, is apparently the only restaurant in the U.S. to solely serve steamed burgers.

Teri-Yummy
If you’re into teriyaki, this truck from Boston has it all—chicken, beef, shrimp, shrimp and chicken, vegetarian—you get the idea.

The Whoopie Wagon
For all of your whoopie-pie needs and desires—and you know you have them. Based in Massachusetts.

Tony’s Square Donuts
This Connecticut truck serves up donuts with more surface area for your munching pleasure. Tony—and his donuts, of course—have been featured on Donut Showdown. He didn’t win, but his unique donuts remain winners here.

Trolley Dog
Their dogs are handmade, all-beef and, apparently, gigantic. What else do you need to know? Based in Natick, Massachusetts.

Zinneken’s
This Boston-based waffle truck is owned by Belgians who decided they needed to bring the authentic, liege-style Belgian waffles of the youth to the U.S. All we can say is, lucky us.

New England Food Truck Festival
$5 per person
Sept. 2-3
Mohegan Sun
Winter Parking Lot
1 Mohegan Sun Boulevard
Uncasville, Connecticut
Website
Twitter
Facebook

The post Food Truckin’ appeared first on Take Magazine.

When the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts opened about seven years ago, co-founder and director Denise Froehlich, who is also a photographer, saw the museum as a way to give Maine photography a presence in the American conversation about art. The current exhibit of work by Meggan Gould, on view through September 30th, is a good example, she says. “The work is about the process and tools used in making photographs,” Froehlich says. “It is modernist in style and really, very smart.”

That’s true of so much of the work on display at MMPA. We emailed Froehlich to find out more about her hopes for the museum—its mission, exhibits, and her thoughts on the future (and present) of photography. Here’s what she had to say.

Denise Froehlich

What was it that inspired you to start MMPA? And why did you choose to open it in Maine?

DF: In 2010, when we launched MMPA, there were only a smattering of idiosyncratic photography collections throughout the state and photographic exhibitions were scant and mostly historically based. People were coming from all over the world to study photography at the ME Photo Workshops and our colleges and were making images here, but contemporary works weren’t being exhibited or collected by local museums. We likened this to plein air/landscape painting in Maine in the 1800s. MMPA decided that we would exhibit and collect contemporary photographic works by Maine artists. Because photography is linked to science and technology, it’s ever shifting in creation and representation. We want to bring the most avant-garde work being made in the state to the public and collectors. Also, the medium is shifting and no longer just flat and two-dimensional. Photographers are reaching forward to contemporary art that bridges the gap between drawing, sculpture, installations, film and projections, and painting. They’re also looking back and creating works with antique processes like daguerreotypes, cyanotypes, etc., by concocting their own emulsions or making camera-less imagery. This is important and needs to be collected.

The MMPA mission notes that the museum seeks to “inspire, engage and educate.” What would you say is the role of photography—as an art and as a tool of documentation—in 2017, when nobody seems to believe anything they see, read, or hear anymore?

DF: Ah, documentation is one way to use the medium. Our government is doing this well; the average person is photographed 75 times a day, and now we are installing facial recognition software into airports. Surveillance is real. Photography, film, and video are only tools like a typewriter or keyboard. It’s up to the artist to make art or communicate an idea to an audience. Form + Content + Context = Art.

How has the art of photography changed since the introduction of the iPhone 10 years ago? Where do you see it heading?

DF: I like to think about the iPhone or camera phone’s popularity and compare it to the Brownie camera that became available in 1900. The Brownie was a cheap, easy-to-use box that would bring the idea of a snapshot to the masses. Because it was inexpensive and readily available, thousands of people used them. Did they make “art” with them? Some did.

What do you think is misunderstood about photography?

DF: Because photography is so linked with in-the-moment technology, people think that anyone can create great art with it. Like painting or sculpture, it requires time, craft and skill, and, most of all, a unique voice and point of view. Look carefully, slowly, and ask yourself, ‘What does this image mean?’ If the intent and content is there and the formal qualities are worked out, and the audience is clear, chances are you’re looking at art.

What would you like to accomplish with MMPA in the next year?

DF: As director, I would like to collaborate with other institutions and bring Maine art to focus in the U.S. We are growing our small collection, and I would love to have exhibitions traveling. Of course, because we are small and recent—we’re in our seventh year—growing our operating budget is also a very real goal, too. Maine photographic artists are creating amazing things that need to be shared with the public. My hope is that we can expand our nonprofit and accomplish more. So far, every year we gain in reach, popularity, and depth of exhibitions.

Denise Froehlich–director, co-founder
Maine Museum of Photographic Arts
Portland, Maine
Website
Facebook
Twitter

Top image: Meggan Gould, Bob’s, November 19, 2012, pigment print, 24 x 30 inches, photo courtesy of Maine Museum of Photographic Arts

The post Keeping Maine in the Game appeared first on Take Magazine.

It started as many of life’s greatest moments do: with the smell of bacon. Jacques Lamarre was at a book expo in New York City, browsing the new releases. And there he was, just hanging around in the small- and academic-press aisle—the best aisle—when he smelled it. Bacon.

“I was like, ‘That’s always of interest,’” says Lamarre. He followed the aroma to a feminist-press booth and it was fronted by the mono-monikered celebrity Chef Rossi, with a tray of peanut butter bacon sandwiches. She was signing her memoir, The Raging Skillet: The True Life Story of Chef Rossi, a Memoir with Recipes.

“I was standing in line with the book, reading the back of it,” Lamarre says. “And by the time I got up to talk to her, I said, ‘Would you be interested in seeing this become a play?’”

Chef Rossi, the muse behind Lamarre’s new play, The Raging Skillet.

When Lamarre moved to Hartford in 1990—he’d been offered a job at Hartford Stage—he fell in love with Hartford’s “tremendous art scene,” he says. Since then, he’s become a staple of that scene. In addition to Hartford Stage, he’s worked with the Hartford Symphony, the Mark Twain House, Real Art Ways, The Wadsworth Atheneum, among others. And he’s an accomplished playwright—The Raging Skillet is his 12th full-length play, and his third for TheaterWorks, where it will premiere on July 20.

Photo of (l to r) Ronn Carroll and Harry Bouvy in Christmas on the Rocks, photo by Lanny Nagler.

Lamarre calls his latest play “the first punk-rock, lesbian, Jewish catering show.” The Raging Skillet, which Lamarre worked on closely with Chef Rossi (and which will star Mary Testa and Barbara Rosenblat, whom you’ll recognize from Netflix’s Orange is the New Black), honors the book’s quirky format, with recipes actually being made on stage.

“It’s going to be very fun,” says Lamarre. “There’s going to be a lot of music, cooking on stage, comedy, and mama drama.” Chef Rossi herself is coming to Hartford to see her story on the big stage, too. (“She is beyond excited about this,” Lamarre says.)

Jacques Lamarre

“I love Hartford,” he continues. “It’s been so good for me and so good to me. I’ve been able to make an impact in the cultural scene here that I don’t think I would be able to do in a place like New York. But also I just find the people in the region to be so wonderful. I’m so lucky to have this community.”

Jacques Lamarre–playwright
Hartford, Connecticut
Website
Facebook

Top image Antoinette LaVecchia in I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti at TheaterWorks. Photo by Lanny Nagler.

The post A Life in Recipes appeared first on Take Magazine.

After graduating from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, Jeffrey Devereux could’ve gone anywhere. A highly motivated and enterprising 20-something, Devereux could’ve followed his ambition to New York, Chicago, L.A., or any of the other major markets in the country. Instead he created the Know Good Market in Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood.

“I saw opportunity in Hartford where other people would see opportunity in New York or Boston,” Devereux says. “There’s a lot of places where there’s a need to create new things and create more value in a place. That’s what I saw in Hartford. As an entrepreneur, that’s how I stubbornly chose to think about it.”

The Know Good Market is a monthly food and craft festival celebrating the local food, art and music scene. Devereux started it more than a year ago to give entrepreneurs and ambitious chefs an opportunity and space to test their enterprises.

Know Good Market, photo by Erik Williams, Black Frame Vision

So far, so very good. “We’ve gotten [Know Good] to a place where the vendors are doing really great and the community seems to like it,” Devereux says. When the first one launched in the fall of 2015, it was just a couple of food trucks and craft vendors, and a couple hundred people in attendance. Now, the festival, comprising about eight food trucks, about as many craft vendors, craft brewers and, most recently, a live music stage, draws between 500 and 600 people. That’s good for the local businesses operating out of trucks and from behind tables each month at Know Good.

“One of the things we always wanted to do is make sure there’s strong pathways for local people who wanted to start a food business,” Devereux says. He’s a founder and partner of Breakfast Lunch and Dinner, the venture-building firm behind Know Good, which located in an adjacent building to the market. Breakfast Lunch and Dinner specializes in social enterprise, public art projects, community events, and other forms of entrepreneurship in Hartford. “We’re a place where businesses can be incubated,” he says.

Photo by Erik Williams

“That’s what we’re in the middle of creating now,” Devereux says. “We’re really excited about creating that economic pathway. We’re not going to make people lots of money overnight. But the food business is a good business if you can figure out what you’re doing and find your market. If our vendors are doing well, then we’re doing well.”

Know Good Market
Hartford, Connecticut
Website
Facebook
Instagram

Top image by Erik Williams, Black Frame Vision

The post The Good Stuff appeared first on Take Magazine.

Many scroll through Instagram to see the latest photos of stunning sunsets, inspirational vacation shots (so you can pretend you can go there, too, one day) and pets—lots of pets. What Instagram users may not realize is that the spot is an increasingly popular publication arena for poets. The New Yorker wrote about the phenomenon in a profile about Reuben Holmes, who goes by the name r.h. sin on Instagram and who has over 600,000 followers.

English teacher Susan Laurencot sees Instagram poets all the time in the monthly Arm Your Voice poetry performance series she coordinates at the Hygienic Art Gallery in New London, Connecticut. They love the kind of poetry aesthetic they see in amateur poets. Poets like @atticuspoetry, @tylerknott and @thealiciacook rack up thousands of likes and shares; they share short, typewritten stanzas on crinkled scraps of paper or old Polaroids(!). Pressed flowers and inky quills are heavily suggested. It’s a world young poets today have no real experience in but one in which they’re completely obsessed.

“These Instagram poets are becoming wildly popular overnight,” says Laurencot, an English teacher at Montville High School. “And you don’t want to ignore the fact that these Instagram poets have given rebirth to something that could have been a dying art.”

#atticuspoetry #atticus #poetry #loveherwild

A post shared by ATTICUS (@atticuspoetry) on Apr 16, 2017 at 8:30am PDT

Each Arm Your Voice features student poets, in addition to one “featured poet” and a student poet laureate. Newer poetry writers and performers can win a featured spot by returning to Arm Your Voice over and over to prove themselves worthy of that position.

Typewriter Series #1846 by Tyler Knott Gregson … bit.ly/WildlyIntoTheDark

A post shared by Tyler Knott Gregson (@tylerknott) on Apr 16, 2017 at 12:45pm PDT

Laurencot inherited Arm Your Voice from a spoken-word poet who was in residency at Hygienic Art. Once his residency ended, Laurencot, who’d been volunteering with Hygienic, took over. “I said I would do it with the caveat that I could include high school students,” she says. “Because, especially with how things are politically, it’s been my goal to have my students use their voices authentically.”

Many of her students are interested in spoken word and slam poetry, which is how Arm Your Voice was first conceived. When Laurencot began hosting, she also invited narrative and other forms of poetry. Still, her students, inspired by the poets of Instagram and Tumblr, vent their frustrations with politics, social issues and growing up primarily through slam. (Slam for the political, spoken word for the personal, Laurencot says.)

"What's the greatest chapter in your book?/Are there pages where it hurts to look?/What's the one regret you can't work through?/You got it baby, mine would be you." – Blake Shelton, Mine Would Be You. #writersofinstagram #writerslife #amwriting #lifequotes #poetsofinstagram #relationshipquotes #lovequotes #empowerment #inspirationalquotes #selflove #breakupquotes #movingon #lettinggo #lovepoem #blakeshelton

A post shared by Alicia Cook (@thealiciacook) on Apr 6, 2017 at 8:11am PDT

“Slam has become very popular,” she says. “And poetry is a quick write. It’s a perfect blend of what Gen Z is interested in. ‘I don’t want to spend a long time writing a novel, but I’ll work on a poem and I’ll post it on Tumblr and Instagram.’ And there is some benefit to it because it gets kids to look at poetry, and read poetry, and experiment with poetry. You think, Wow, this is a door. It’s gateway poetry.”

Susan Laurencort, director, Arm Your Voice
New London, Connecticut
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

The post Arm Your Voice: Instagram Poets in New London appeared first on Take Magazine.

Some people look at the breadth of our planetary pollution problem—in particular the plastic clogging our oceans and seas—and just throw up their hands. Amy Merli started Trashion Fashion, a Hartford-based program that uses fashion and design to educate communities about the problem of waste. By turning unrecyclable, uncompostable materials into wearable art, Trashion Fashion sends a strong message about what we choose to throw away, and the possible opportunities beyond the garbage bin that exist for items like K-cups.

Merli, whose background is in stage management and dance, launched the idea in 2011. “It was one of those things I saw at a runway show,” she says. “I saw something made from trash and I was like, ‘Oh, that’d be really cool to put that together, but bring it together with dance.’”

Trashion Fashion show, photo ??

Since that first trash-as-fashion show, Trashion has grown throughout Connecticut and expanded into New York and Washington, D.C. Trashion Fashion visits schools and, online, has reached 45 different countries, many of whom have contributed designs to Trashion Fashion shows.

There’s a “nice, growing movement of environmental enthusiasts and activists” in Hartford, Merli says, which is something she loves about the city. Connecticut’s efforts in general to be a green state have kept Merli here since childhood. She grew up in Harwinton, where her mother strictly enforced recycling, and studied dance at the Hartford Conservatory.

Now, she finds herself surrounded by likeminded people with similarly enthusiastic ideas about upcycled trash. “Last year, we had this artist who had been collecting gum wrappers since the ’70s,” Merli says. Other students and artists have used little bits of plastic and styrofoam to create clothing, or old wires and CDs, shower curtains, bubble wrap and, of course, K-cups. One person made a piece out of crotcheted VHS tapes.

Trashion Fashion 2013, Hartford, photo Steve Lashever

Merli encourages her designers to use materials that can’t be recycled. If you glue together and paint a bunch of tissue and newspaper, you’re essentially rendering formerly recyclable material into nonrecyclable material, which is antithetical to the spirit of the show. By focusing on garbage that truly can’t be reused, she says, you start to pay new attention to the little items we throw away but don’t think about.

“People who come to the show or the designers who are involved, as they start to investigate their lives, they’re not passengers,” Merli says. “They’re active members of life and society. And they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s these little doohickeys that I get at Home Depot and can’t throw away.’ Thinking of trash this way is “an investigation of your whole world,” she says. “I’m giving people trash OCD.”

Trashion Fashion, photo Steve Lashever

That’s the objective of Trashion Fashion: to start a dialogue. “This is a a platform for something we all connect with,” Merli says. “We want to have that conversation. ‘Wow, that’s made from what?’ And it’s like, ‘Let’s talk about this. Let’s go into it.’ We use fashion to make a statement. To actually make change.”

Trashion Fashion
Hartford, Connecticut
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Top image by Sabato Visconti

The post Waste Management appeared first on Take Magazine.

As Supreme Leader Donald Trump hovers his ax over funding for the arts, it feels like now is a very good time to spend your money on paintings, drawings, poetry, sculptures, pottery, and BandCamp downloads. But art can be pricey, and elusive, and you’ve already given what you can to Planned Parenthood and the UNHCR. Which is why we’d like to introduce you to: flair, specifically New Haven’s annual Flair Fair.

Flair, you may recall from Mike Judge’s 1999 cult comedy, Office Space, is what Jennifer Aniston’s character was lacking. Patches, pins and stickers, small-form art, and messaging that decorate your clothes and bags the way paintings decorate the walls of your home. Flair is all that and more. It’s fashion, it’s style, it’s your Facebook likes. It’s art.

That was what motivated Alex Dakoulas when he opened up his web shop, Strange Ways, in 2014. (The physical storefront opened in the arty Westville neighborhood of New Haven in 2015.) “Strange Ways was founded featuring artists and designers and smaller brands,” says Dakoulas. “We’re not selling fine art or high-end clothing. I wanted to make things affordable; I want people to support these artists without spending a lot of money.” Strange Ways sells patches, pins, screen prints, pennants, and other collectibles. “These smaller-price items keep people coming to the shop and supporting the artist in a more accessible way,” Dakoulas says.

Flair Fair, New Haven, Connecticut | Photo by Antonio C. Esposito

The 32-year-old is also the organizer of the Flair Fair, an event premised on the same idea as Strange Ways. Last year, 300 people came to the festival to browse about a dozen vendors’ works. This year’s (free) fair, which takes place April 15, will have about the same number of vendors—some different, some the same—in addition to a food truck at Lyric Hall.

And if you’re wondering about “flair”: Yes. Though pins and patches have largely been a prominent aesthetic for a couple of subcultures (punk, hip-hop), “flair” as a name for these pieces did actually come from the movie. “We took it from Office Space,” Dakoulas says. “It feels weird saying we brought that back, but, across the country, that’s helped revitalize the trend. [I thought,] ‘I’m gonna call it flair,’ and then everyone started using it.” He adds that people primarily do come into the store and to the market for pins and patches. “That’s really what people have been drawn to from the start,” Dakoulas says. “I think there’s a resurgence in it.” He points to similar trends of self-expression and custom art in the ’60s. “I think what makes pins and patches different now than before is that artists are using the medium really well.”

Dakoulas has a degree in graphic design from MassArt in Boston. After he graduated, he designed footwear for Converse and then Puma, before deciding he wanted to sell his own designs and the work of artists he admired. “I have personal thoughts about what works better as a pin or a patch or a button or a sticker,” he says. “I think pins are really cool because they’re sort of like jewelry. The patches are great for statement pieces.” Some flair is better for bags, some is better for people who like texture, some is better for people who want to go bigger.

“The great thing is flair is accessible,” Dakoulas adds. “It’s not expensive; the pins are very easy to buy or stick on your lapel or your bag. The great thing about [flair] is they don’t cater toward any one demographic. What you buy is an expression of yourself.”

Alex Dakoulas – founder of the Flair Fair

Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Images by Antonio C. Esposito

The post A Fair for Flair appeared first on Take Magazine.