Michael Kusek announced today that Stacey Kors purchased a percentage of Take Industries. Based in Northampton, Massachusetts, Take Industries is the publisher of the award-winning Take Magazine and www.thetakemagazine.com.

The terms of the sale are private and the sale price will not be disclosed.Take Magazine began publishing in January 2015.  After six issues and several awards, Take suspended publishing a print edition in June 2016 and switched its focus to building the editorial offerings and audience of the online edition.

With Kors’ investment, Take has been able to clear all past debt to freelancers and vendors and begin work on relaunching the print edition, currently slated for late summer/early fall 2017. Existing subscriptions will restart with this issue.

“Since I started Take Magazine, I have been on the lookout for a business partner who saw the potential in a magazine that covered culture makers across New England. Stacey arrived at a time when her investment could build on our past success and provide us with the capital we needed for stability and to grow and expand,” said Kusek.

In addition to her ownership stake, Kors will join the Take team as Editor in Chief. In the next few weeks the magazine will be announcing additional staff hires as well the opening of new offices.

“From the moment I saw Take, I knew that I wanted to be a part of it,” said Kors. “New England is such a vibrant region, with so much happening artistically and culturally; Take is the only publication that covers New England’s new culture, and the people spearheading it. I’m thrilled to help present an editorially rich, visually stunning platform for our region’s most creative voices.”

Kors’ publishing career began in Western Massachusetts when she worked as a college intern for the region’s first high-end culture magazine, New England Monthly. Over the two decades in between, the New York native has worked as an editor, music critic, and arts features writer for the Financial Times, New York Times, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, and TimeOut New York.

The post New Investment in Take Magazine appeared first on Take Magazine.

Dear Readers:

Many of you have been following our ups and downs over the last year. One issue that has resonated has been our difficulty in paying freelancers that have done work for our print and online editions. As this most challenging year draws to a close, I’d like to let you know some good news on that front.

This week, thanks to new investment in Take Magazine that has been in the works for the last few months, we mailed full payments to all freelancers that have open invoices with us. Very talented people who did excellent work for us waited far too long to be compensated. This should never have happened and – lessons fully learned – will not happen again.

Additionally, this investment also allows for Take to continue publishing into 2017 and beyond – please keep an eye out early in the new year for more news concerning our plans.

Thank you very much for continuing to be one of our readers. On behalf of all of us at Take, I’d like to wish you all the best the holiday season.

Michael Kusek
Publisher

The post An Update on Take’s Finances appeared first on Take Magazine.

To hear Tim Rollins talk about his story, his art and the process of creating is like listening to a preacher for the creative. In the early 80s, the Pittsfield, Maine, native began teaching a combined curriculum of art and reading to children in the South Bronx. From their work together, he and his students developed a collaborative process that combined working with printed matter as the core of and art making process that eventually grew beyond the classroom.

He formed the Art and Knowledge Workshop with a group of academically at-risk students who became known as the art collective K.O.S. (Kids of Survival). Current members of K.O.S. include Angel Abreu, Jorge Abreu, Robert Branch, Ala Ebtekar, Ricardo Nelson Savinon, Noe Sosa, and Logan Swedick. Now more than 30 years later they are still making work together as well as exporting their process of collaboration and creating through workshops in schools and art installations around the globe.

This September, the Portland Museum of Art (PMA) is presenting Unbound: Tim Rollins and K.O.S., the museum’s first survey of work by the group.  The show contains work from the PMA’s collection as well as works from the museums and private collections that have added Rollins/K.O.S. to their holdings.  As part of the exhibition, the mural A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be placed on permanent exhibition, unveiled in a very special collaboration with the Portland Symphony Orchestra featuring live music and narration by the artist Tim Rollins on September 16th.

Take recently had a chance to speak with Rollins about his life growing up in Maine and how it impacted his development as an artist and how it has influenced his work with K.O.S.

Tim Rollins (third from left) and the artists of KOS | Photo courtesy Portland Museum of Art

Were you always an artist, or did that come after some particular moment? Did that moment happen when you were still living in Maine, or did it come elsewhere?

I was always an artist since I or anyone in my family remembers as I was raised in Burnham and Pittsfield, Maine. While my brother wanted GI Joes and my sisters wanted Easy Bake Ovens and Barbies, my favorite thing to get would be a dozen of those newsprint Doodle Pads and the big boxes of Crayola crayons that you could get at the Mammoth Mart at the Elm Plaza in Waterville.

Funny, but I was recently asked by Phaidon, a major art book publishing house, to relate when I first encountered a work of truly fine art. What a question. I was racking my brain and memory. I loved the illuminated marquee over my beloved Bijou Theatre on Main Street in Pittsfield.  Liked the slowly spinning safety yellow and red arrow Sunoco gas station sign on Main Street as well. But then it all came back to me – when I was real little I used to visit the Unitarian Church just off Main Street as well. The church had this magical stained glass window in the back portraying Jesus preaching to a group of children in front of Tree of Life. My folks remember me running to the back of the church and standing on the back row pew and just gawking at the glowing apparition until they had to drag me out of there. That was it, I was to be an artist. Just found out a year ago after research for the Phaidon thing that the window was made in the early 1900’s by the great Louis Comfort Tiffany. In Pittsfield, Maine! Amazing Grace.

What about growing up in Maine has influenced your work? Has it been a constant thread or is it something that rears its head from time to time?

While I was growing up on Somerset and then Cianchette Avenues in Pittsfield, my daddy was a hand sewer of shoes at the Northeast Shoe Co. and then Dexter Shoes.  It was hard work and sometimes he would bring materials home to make in the house to add to his piecework. He made the best things and to this day I can’t look at a pair of shoes from New England (those that are left!) and not see the craft and beauty but the sweat that went into their making. My mum worked there for a while also, took a break and then became for many years a ward secretary at the small Sebasticook Valley Hospital in town.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (detail) , ink on latex saturated cellulose | Image courtesy Portland Museum of Art

I believe Mainers have a very strong culture of makers and healers and – yes – very pragmatic mystics. Almost all the people I had engaged with in my youth were “doers of the word.” My White Light moment came when I was maybe 12 years old and Gramm (Alice) Rollins was working in the dorm dining room at Colby College in Waterville.  One blustery winter night, she needed a ride home from the college to her place in Burnham. She called my dad and she told him to “bring Timmy.”  He wanted to know why and she said, “Just never you mind and bring him!”  I was thrilled because I always loved seeing her and had never actually been to Colby before. The college is on a hill just outside of downtown and there is a blue beacon on a spire in the center of the campus. Going into the building to pick up Grammy we slowly trudged through the snow to get to the car and she turned to me looking me straight in the eye and said, “Timmy you are going to a school like this someday.” While I didn’t end up at Colby, her prophecy was done. Now the Colby Museum of Art has our Darkwater work in their permanent collection and will be included on view in the Portland Museum of Art exhibition. I very lucky and blessed to have received a superlative education at Warsaw Junior High School, the Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield and the experimental University of Maine in Augusta under the leadership of Philip Paratore – all who encouraged (or better, tolerated) my attempts at becoming an artist as maker…as healer…as preacher.

Your history of your collaborative work with KOS is rooted is an urban educational experience. What do you think the work would have been like if you started working collaboratively in a rural setting?

Some of my most moving experiences as an educator have been encountered in the workshops I’ve conducted with youth and communities in Maine over the years. I’ve worked with the wonderful Edge folk in Washington County, the Denmark Arts Center, A Company of Girls in Portland and most recently another almost all girls workshop toward the making of a large scale painting in celebration of the life and legacy of the great Sen. Margaret Chase Smith that is now on view in the renovated Sen. MCS Federal Building in downtown Bangor. Would love to do something in Portland soon…it’s been in my mind for a while.

How does it feel to be coming back home and making work in Portland?

As for the Portland experience, I hope it’s going to be like a Homecoming Service – a revival meeting praising the everlasting power of art and true community.

For more information on the Portland Museum of Art, follow them on Facebook, Twitter and their Instagram.

Top Image: Tim Rollins and K. O. S. (United States, established 1984), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2016, ink on latex saturated cellulose, 159 3/4 x 416 5/8 inches. Museum purchase with support from the Maine Center for Creativity, 2016.7. | Image courtesy of Portland Museum of Art

The post Tim Rollins & K.O.S.: Art for revival appeared first on Take Magazine.

It was one of those stories that just caught Take‘s attention from go: a group of acclaimed painters, street artists, muralists (pick your favorite term) who periodically assemble from all over the globe and descend on city to paint its walls are coming to the East Coast for the first time. New York? No. Boston? No. They are coming to Worcester.

Yes, Worcester, and they couldn’t have made a better choice.

For a solid week gawkers, the curious as well as devoted followers of the latest in art ambled about the center of the city and watched a community be transformed.  Certainly there was the more obvious change – there were now a dozen huge, brightly colored murals dotting the urban landscape – but there was something else that will be felt in the longterm from this whole process. Worcester has always had a thriving art scene, but if you aren’t from there it might not be easy to spot. There are the institutions like the Worcester Art Museum that have an obvious presence, but there are also a huge number of community-based organizations, artist-run collectives and communal work spaces throughout the city that are also part of creative buzz this city has. By all pulling together to make an event like POW! WOW! happen there is no doubt they not only shifted how they work with each other, but also how the rest of the New England creative community has to take notice of what their city is capable of making happen.

Go to Worcester. See the murals and check out the all the great creativity the city has to offer.

– Michael Kusek, publisher

Top Image: Street Artist, Arlin from Brazil | Photographer: Austin Harney

The post Notes on the POW! WOW! appeared first on Take Magazine.

For Lance Davis and Graham McKissock of Hive, taking the party on the road is all in day’s work.

Professional event planners engage in their own kind of arms race. When creating a wedding or a fundraising gala, clients will eventually want – or outright demand – something for the party that no host has ever done before. There is a perpetual hunt for the next cool cuisine, entertainer, event space or decor idea. Along with the rise in popularity of craft cocktails, it seems the most highbrow of events now must have a signature drink or at least a bar staff that knows a Sazerac cocktail and a list of Manhattan variations.

But what about the bar itself? When it comes to impressing guests with a unique cocktail delivery system, the gentlemen behind Hive of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, have a corner on the market. Hive boasts two completely refurbished vintage Airstream trailers designed and tricked out to make the experience of getting your cocktail from the bartender as memorable as what’s in the glass. Lance Davis and Graham McKissock conceived of Hive right at the cusp of the current rage of food trucks being firmly planted on the culinary radar – each bringing some of their professional background into the mix of the business development.

Davis, a Jackson, New Hampshire native with an art background and a self-described “design brain,” developed a passion for the service industry early in his life eventually ending up in Boston where he worked in all aspects of the wine distribution business from retail to restaurants.  McKissock is a woodworker, general contractor and a serious foodie with roots in Westwood, Massachusetts. With their common passion for food and drink, the two began to toss around the idea of a mobile cocktail catering business.

“It had never been done. In the early days we had to deal with a lot of government regulations as there had never been a cocktail or beer truck. But we knew this would take it to the next level,” says Davis.

They both have an affinity for the Airstream’s classic Americana and began to look for one they renovate, finding a 1983, 32’ model in the back woods of Maine in 2012. Davis came to the project with some experience with the process. He and his wife had the opportunity to acquire one – a 25’ 1973 model that was being renovated by a friends father.  They gutted that Airstream a few years earlier and turned it into a personal boutique hotel room on wheels for them to enjoy on their vacations.

Hive founders Lance Davis (far left) and Graham McKissock (center) at the maiden event for Hive.

The two began a process that of refurbishing that took a bit longer than a year while facing a number of challenges in taking a modern icon of American industrial design and transforming it into “the coolest urban bar you’ve ever stepped into.” Not only did the design need to be on point, but the layout needed to be able to accommodate serving drinks to up to 500 people. One particular element that set the path for the final design are the spaced wood slats that run along the walls and ceiling.

“Those are old cedar clapboards off a house – probably from Maine, ” said McKissock. “We did our best to handcraft everything inside.  We didn’t want to go out and just buy stuff.”

Some of the final design elements are the result of trial and error, Davis describes months spent building something only to rip it out because it didn’t quite work. Others were more nerve-wracking – like cutting a bar service window right into the side of the trailer.

What they have achieved is a real stand out. The genius of their final product is that they managed to build upon and complement the industrial design that makes the Airstream such a beloved icon of modernists. The inside of the trailers feature a strong design concept that is incredibly of-the-moment, mixing an Instagram-ready palette of cedar wood, blackboards and other handmade wood touches. In contrast to the shiny ‘silver bullet’ exterior– a perfect backdrop for a million party selfies– the interior’s rich woods highlight the trailer’s curves. Opposite the bar, walls are lined with comfortable couches.

For Hive success has come quickly, boosted by word-of-mouth and some early media attention after their first event, McKissock’s wedding (which required a rush finishing job on the original Airstream).  Since then, Davis’s own personal trailer has been pressed into service adding a second trailer to their inventory as their event planning business grew to include numerous weddings, corporate events and – most recently – the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. While they mostly work on events located in New England, their mobility (the ability to just hitch it up and drive) means they can work just about anywhere they can drive to.

We had an absolute blast at the #dnc! Here's a shot from the setup for a post-gala event celebrating our national parks. Met new friends and felt the magic @swigevents

A photo posted by hive (@hiveevents) on Jul 28, 2016 at 5:41am PDT

As Hive has organically grown over the last five years, it has become more than just a shiny rolling bar but a full event planning service that includes the option of renting fifteen ‘glamping’ tents (beds included) to extend your evening of merriment until the next morning or over a whole weekend. Their team of exceptionally skilled bartenders draws on some of the greatest talent behind bars in the region and develops the inventive, evolving cocktail program they offer to clients. Through their Boston-area restaurant ties they work with numerous local distillers including GrandTen, Bully Boy, Privateer Rum and Berkshire Mountain Distillers and regional craft brewers like Trillium, Notch, Night Shift Brewing & Cambridge Brewery Co.

“We try to stay as local as possible with our spirit and beer choices,” says Davis. “We want to support local businesses that have a great product.”

“We rarely serve a beer that isn’t made within 100 miles of Boston,” adds McKissock.

When asked about what makes his a true New England company, Davis added, “We’re really proud of Hive and developing it. Often you hear the coolest new thing is coming out of California–never Boston. When we developed Hive we were one of the first–and we’re from New England. There are copycats now but we established the ground rules and we’re really proud.”

Betting that Wally Byam, builder of the first Airstream, would be too.

All photos courtesy of Hive

The post A Hive Mind for Great Parties appeared first on Take Magazine.

Welcome to Take Magazine’s new home on the web.

Maybe you’re new to us.  Perhaps you’ve been a reader since last year when we first launched. Either way, I’d like to welcome you and hope that you’ll be back many times in the future to find out the best of what is happening in the cultural communities of New England.

The news coming out of Take over the last few weeks has been pretty bad. Just a few short weeks ago, I had to make the decision to stop publishing our print edition.  It wasn’t from lack of subscribers, or newsstand sales, or lack of interested advertisers – or even that printing on actual paper is passé or too expensive. We had to end the print edition because I was never able to pull together enough capital to keep the magazine going while we built up our advertising.

We managed to get very, very close to raising the money we needed from some generous and very supportive lenders – but what we did raise ultimately wasn’t enough. As we were about to go into the design of our August/September issue, I woke up one morning and finally decided it was time to pull the plug. The more I looked at our perpetually empty bank account and countless spreadsheets detailing mounting debt, the answer was pretty plain.  Our only shot to stay in business – and to pay the many people that we owe money to – was to further trim our sails and go digital only.

As I’ve previously stated in posts on Facebook, my commitment is to getting our financial house in order as quickly as possible. I have many obligations to fulfill to the lenders who have supported the magazine, the freelancers who we have a commitment to pay for their work and to the readers who purchased subscriptions from us.

There is much positive news to share that will help us meet those obligations. Thanks to the commitment of an amazing couple, they recognized our need for a new website that can grow to help us meet our goals and responded by helping us finance it. Many nonprofit partners and advertisers have reached out to us and said that they will continue to work with us going forward. Readers messaged us to say they would do exactly what we wanted to hear – they will keep reading. All those of us working at Take remain committed to publishing good, useful, fun and unique stories about the cultural lives of New Englanders.

Over the next few weeks you’ll be able to come to this site and find a mix of new stories as well as articles that we previously published only in print. We’ll also be highlighting hand-picked events from all over New England that we think you should get out of your house and go to.  Have a good poke around – there is a bunch of new stuff here on the site right now.

Don’t miss any of it as it is published. Please be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and also sign up to get our twice weekly emails (over there to the right – you can sign up immediately!).

As it has been since day one, if you think there is something we should be covering, please drop us a line and let us know at info@takeindustries.com.

Many thanks,

Michael Kusek, publisher

The post Welcome to the new thetakemagazine.com appeared first on Take Magazine.

When the eyes of the art world are increasingly turned to Instagram as the avenue to find the next big thing, Boroniec has very purposely avoided playing into the relentless documentation and exposure of “the process” of creating work that social media demands.

Keeping his process off the Net hasn’t slowed the career of this Lanesborough, Massachusetts, artist who teaches the ceramic program at the high school he graduated from. His past year has been full of positive press and attention from appreciative collectors and galleries. “I like to have 15 to 20 pieces finished before I show them,“ he says. Keeping all the complex steps it takes to create one of his eye-catching spiral artworks under wraps allows for the presentation of the finished piece to become more of an “unveiling.”  Each of the works starts as a familiar and functional form—a teapot, a vase—which he slices and deconstructs into a shape that presents as weightless, airy, and sculptural.

Even with the attention this particular series has attracted, Boroniec hasn’t stopped creating and experimenting with new works and frequently switches back and forth between projects in his studio. “Being a little scatterbrained in the studio helps me get work done. But it confuses gallerists when they come to visit.” This is where the skulls come in—one of his unseen projects not yet ready for an unveiling. Made from the waste clay that comes from the production of the spirals, they offer him a new challenge to tackle an intimately familiar form and transform it into something entirely new. Certainly they are worth keeping a patient eye monitoring his Instagram to see when they finally get their public moment.

The post Form and Substance appeared first on Take Magazine.

Well over 1,000 years ago, a Chinese potter made a tea bowl and glazed it using a process that gave it the appearance of holding an inky black sky with an entire universe of stars. Fast forward to the day when Hideaki Miyamura, an aspiring potter apprenticing in Japan, first saw these bowls, of which only five remain. The bowls provoked a profound shift in Miyamura’s artistic path, inspiring him to find a way to reproduce this iridescent glaze, the formula of which had been lost to time. Miyamura, who studied art history in college in Michigan, wasn’t always interested in becoming a potter, but he knew he wanted to be an artist. It wasn’t until he returned home to Japan to work for his father’s business and visited a master potter who lived nearby that he found his passion.

Early in his career, Miyamura, now based in New Hampshire, apprenticed with two master Japanese potters, the first of whom taught him the essentials of throwing and firing. The second was a master of glazes with whom Miyamura worked very closely for five years—so closely he virtually lived with the potter’s family, tutoring their children while working 16 hours a day in the studio. During those long hours, Miyamura would make new formulas for glazes every day, ultimately throwing and firing over 10,000 pieces as he perfected his reproduction of the glaze on the ancient tea bowls. Miyamura returned to the United States after marrying an American and continued his work as a potter while working part-time jobs. Bedeviled at first by chemical differences in the clay available in the United States, he happened upon some oak ashes in the fireplace of a neighboring furniture maker that resolved the problem and enabled him to recreate the glazes he had developed in Japan.

Hideaki Miyamura in the studio

Vase, sea foam purple glaze, Porcelain, 12.75 x 9.5 x 9.5”

The shapes of Miyamura’s work—vases with elongated necks and lidded jars with tiny openings—are both a conscious break from the functional pieces he made as an apprentice (think endless numbers of sake cups and plates for years on end) and inspired by the work of Venetian glass blowers and glass artists like Dale Chihuly. While made of clay, this combination of unexpected form and one-of-a-kind glazing technique transport Miyamura’s pottery from the everyday to the level of fine art.

Hideaki Miyamura – Potter
Kensington, New Hampshire
Website
Instagram

Top Photo Shinogite vase, gold glaze, Porcelain, 16.5 x 9 x 9” | Images courtesy Pucker Gallery

The post Glazed Expressions appeared first on Take Magazine.

This winter has been the worst. Putting that into words even feels like an understatement. It doesn’t do justice to everything that we’ve had to put up with this year: the unending shoveling, the scrabble for parking where you won’t get towed, and the resulting stir-craziness that comes from weeks on end being stuck inside. When friends in warmer climates point out that we live in a rather brutal part of the earth, it gives us an opportunity to say, “Well, we’re New Englanders!” (as if that explains so much).

In our meetings, the Take Magazine staff has been talking about what makes a New Englander. Maybe because the crap weather is weighing heavily on our minds this year, the topic jumps to the top of the list. Being a New Englander has to mean more than just putting up with bad meteorological reports. As we’ve been building the first issue of Take, we’ve been intently thinking about and discussing what it means to be a New Englander in the creative sense. We not only want to bring you the stories of people making culture in our neighborhood, but we also want to explore the reason why they are creating here.

One thing that I’ve known since since Day One of working on Take is that having a network of amazing contributors from all around the region was going to be essential to our success. When almost 500 of you signed up for our email list and said you wanted to be a contributor, there was a collective sense of amazement in our office. When that was followed up with about 200 responses to our contributor survey, where many of you pitched your talents and some amazing stories…well, it’s left us just a bit overwhelmed.

Thank you all for taking the time to be in touch. We are a small staff, and we are taking the time to review the submissions. We hope many of you will be able to join us as we build a vibrant New England-wide network of writers, photographers, and filmmakers that will be part of the creation of this monthly showcase of the best the creative community in New England has to offer.

Top photo by Michael Kusek

The post What Makes a New Englander appeared first on Take Magazine.

I’m the guilty party, I guess. This “start a magazine” idea is mine. I cooked up the idea of a new magazine about culture makers for an audience of New England readers while I was employed at an alt-weekly newspaper here in western Massachusetts. I really loved my job at the paper. It was the place where–as they say–I got ink in my blood. From my perch there I could see a real space for a new magazine in New England, but sadly the economy in 2008 had other ideas.

I got myself out of the newspaper business and back into public relations and marked some time until last year when it seemed that both the economy in general and the magazine business had started to dust themselves off and pick themselves back up again. There were more magazine startups here in the U.S., and around the world people were making beautiful, interesting, independently published magazines. It really felt like the right time to give Take Magazine a shot.

So here we are, giving this a go.

We thought it would be a good idea to give you a little peek behind the curtain of what it takes to get a magazine off the ground–at least the way we are doing it. So expect the regular update of how things are going as we work toward our first issue in print later this year. (“Later this year” is about as specific as we can get right now. We’re currently working to put all the different tasks we need to accomplish to get that first issue out the door on one timeline.) Already we’ve had a few surprises.

Case in point: we were really, really surprised by the response to our non-announcement announcement of a few weeks ago. We suddenly realized we had a decent-sized audience who is probably expecting something from us. To that end we’ve started releasing content a few times a week on our temporary website. Planned? Nope. A happy accident–to be honest, yes.

Here’s to more surprises and more happy accidents, and welcome to being a Take Magazine reader. We’re happy to have you join us.

Top photo credit | Michael Kusek

The post I’m the Guilty Party appeared first on Take Magazine.