The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the only institution in Connecticut devoted solely to contemporary work, boasts 17,000 square feet of gallery space and a two-acre sculpture garden. Open since 1964, it has a history of showing now-legendary artists, including Agnes Martin, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella. Admission is just ten bucks. So why haven’t you been?

For one thing, “We’re in a colonial-era town, in a historic district—not the normal place you’d expect to see contemporary art,” explains executive director Alyson Baker of its Ridgefield location. But far from displaying musty antiques, the former home of visionary collector Larry Aldrich shows only the most of-the-moment art. Aldrich grew to understand that keeping a permanent collection limited his ability to support current artists. In the 1980s, he sold his acquisitions, and the Aldrich Museum was reborn as a place able “to be nimble and responsive,” says Baker. “Often, we’re commissioning artists to make work.”

For example, take a look at Your Turn. Through April 22, artists Alex Schweder and Ward Shelley are living on either side of a wall-like structure comprising sliding modules—bed, desk, kitchen—that can only be used by one person at a time. Visitors can chat with the artists as they go about their day.

Baker hopes pieces such as Your Turn will make Ridgefield your next art destination. “Places like MASS MoCA have done a great job of making people understand that contemporary art can be seen in places that are non-traditional or unexpected,” she says. “You really have to make it a sort of pilgrimage.”

Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Ridgefield, Connecticut
Website

Illustration by Jen Epervary

The post Quick Takes: Hidden Riches appeared first on Take Magazine.

Even though we at Take get to look at art made by different New England artists all day long, we are still regularly, pleasantly surprised by the work of someone new—or several someones, as you’ll see here in our third annual listing of artists to watch.

We asked curators from esteemed galleries and museums to tell us about artists they’ve been especially impressed by lately who deserve a wider audience, and were thrilled to get input from Trevor Smith, curator of the Present Tense, and Lydia Gordon, assistant curator for exhibitions and research, both at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts; Elizabeth Spavento, visual arts programmer at SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine; Lindsey Stapleton, codirector of GRIN in Providence, Rhode Island; Suzette McAvoy, executive director and chief curator at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, Maine; Will K. Wilkins, executive director of Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut; and Alan Chong, director and CEO of the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire.

With such an illustrious panel, we know you’ll want to keep an eye on these artists in the coming year—and beyond.

Nicole Duennebier

Nicole Duennebier, Still Life with Meat Pile, 2017, acrylic on panel, 24 × 30 in. Photo by Christian Skorik

A bona fide New Englander, Duennebier was born in Hartford, went to college in Maine, and now lives in Boston. “Riffing off the formal tradition of Dutch still lifes, Duennebier is obsessed with excess and growing, throbbing masses,” says Gordon. “Yet, she spends a great amount of time on delicate surface treatments, complete with glimmers of gold and super fine detail. They’re repellant and beautiful at the same time.”

Duennebier has been experimenting with making clay models to help her visualize specific forms and textures in her paintings. The results of this process, including a brighter color palette, will be on display in a solo show at 13FOREST Gallery in Arlington, Massachusetts, in May.

Heather McPherson

Heather McPherson, Bupropion, 2016, painted chiffon, cast epoxy, drawing pad, 36 × 20 in. Photo by Karen Philippe

Although she freely incorporates colorful sheets of chiffon, puddles of clear epoxy, and plexiglass sheets into her work, “Heather is a painter inside and out, whether she’s making traditional paintings or animating a video—it doesn’t seem to matter,” says Stapleton. “Her language is recognizable as her own, full of history and self-reference.”

McPherson, who is based in Providence, makes decisions through the physical, experimental process of making, but that’s not to imply her work is only about mixing materials. In the pieces she’s currently creating, she’s exploring the ways art has been used throughout history as a spiritual tool.

“Last time we were in her studio, she had an enviable pile of massive primed canvases on her wall,” Stapleton says. “Something astounding is going to be on those bad boys next time we’re there, I just know it.”

Dell M. Hamilton

Dell M. Hamilton, To Haunt Is To Love: Reina #6, from Fallen Angels: Making Sense Out of Nothing, 2014–present, color film and unique digital scan on paper, 25 × 37 in. Photo courtesy of the artist

A true interdisciplinarian, Boston-based Hamilton has been tackling topics as diverse as the United States’ influence on Honduras and the history of desegregation in Boston through performance, writing, installation, curation, and more. Gordon recalls, “I had the pleasure of witnessing Hamilton perform at Boston University’s 808 Gallery. Sharing a contemporary response to historical narratives steeped in collective trauma and memory, her gestural performance involved thinking, making, and doing at the service of imagining a better future. It was really a transformative viewing experience.”

At press time, Hamilton was in the middle of producing a body of two-dimensional work called Punta: Pregunta (translated as Point: Question). She’s exploring the intricate tangles of family identity, trauma, and personal neuroses through large-scale, flat, mixed-media artwork, though she isn’t sure how two-dimensional they will stay.

Sarah Tortora

Sarah Tortora, Last Bastion of the Loser, 2016, steel, felt, cotton, hardware, 54 × 46 × 72 in. Photo courtesy of the artist

Vermont-based Tortora “is a machine, and her sculptures are the real deal,” Stapleton says. “Her craft and execution is always impeccable. She was making pretty massive work last year, but we’ve seen some small, intimate pieces on her social media that look outstanding.” (Look for her on Instagram.)

Past work includes painted wood wall pieces that resemble letter forms from an unknown language, and full-size abstractions that hint at marching soldiers or classical architecture. “One of my favorite things about her process is how she titles her work,” Stapleton continues. Titles such as Septum, Pallbearers, and Power Bottom “really solidify each sculpture’s identity in a way I haven’t experienced,” she explains. For 2018, she’s developing a new series of sculptures titled Witness Mark, which will reference the way museums illustrate geological time.

Belleau + Churchill

Belleau + Churchill, The Red Ghost, part of Fantasia Colorado, 2016, mixed media, 18 x 132 x 72 in. Photo by Caleb Churchill

This artist pair from Providence was nominated by two members of our panel. Raina Belleau and Caleb Churchill “make interesting work about history and the environment. They are sweet individuals and masterful craftspeople,” says Spavento.

“We are really into how their projects are visually interesting and accessible while ultimately being heavily research-based,” adds Stapleton. “The work is fun, but still challenging.” For a 2016 installation titled Fantasia Colorado, the pair created memorabilia such as “vintage” postcards, handmade rugs, and historic portrait busts to re-create and commemorate an odd piece of American history: a failed attempt by the U.S. Army to use camels as pack animals in the Civil War; the ultimate release of the animals into the wild; and the terrifying, truth-stretching stories of camel–human encounters that ensued.

“2017 has been a lot of residency and research work, and we’re really excited to see what comes out of that time spent in development,” Stapleton says. Indeed; as of press time, the two were planning to study the concept of utopias—and learn Esperanto, a language created in the 1800s in the optimistic hope of unifying the world—at the Wassaic Artist Residency in Wassaic, New York, in October. 2018 will see their second solo exhibition at GRIN in Providence.

Hong Hong

Hong Hong, Passage II, 2017, cellophane, wood, steel, 8 x 228 x 144 in. Photo courtesy of the artist

Born in China, Hong immigrated to the United States at the age of nine and now calls Hartford home. Working with materials as humble as mulberry fiber, mylar, Scotch tape, and fishing line, Hong creates large-scale pieces that suggest, interact with, and (when made with mylar) literally reflect their environment. She’s been making massive sheets of paper—as tall as 12 feet—using buckets and water pistols to manipulate pulp on homemade screens. Far from being precious about her finished pieces, Hong has no qualms about taking work that’s been shown and resoaking it, turning the paper back into a slurry of fiber that can be reused and remade. The work becomes cyclical, self-feeding. Wilkins says, “Hong Hong delves into the mysteries of deep time, even as her work is imbued with the sensuous presence of here and now.”

Hong had a solo show at Real Art Ways that ran from August through October, and she has an ongoing relationship with the Hartford arts organization. “We are commissioning a new work titled Everlasting Ephemera, which she will be working on during the coming year,” says Wilkins. The piece is a yearlong investigation of the temporal nature of human perception, and how those parameters affect our environment and our culture.

Farzaneh and Bahareh Safarani

Farzaneh and Bahareh Safarani, a still from Cocoon, performed at the Boston Center for the Arts, 2015. Photo by Hannah Bates

Having trained as painters at the University of Tehran, twin sisters Farzaneh and Bahareh have been branching out into video and performance while they continue their studies in Boston. The Safaranis use their twin-ness to full advantage, acting as each other’s mirrors or as dual selves on stage. “In their melding of meticulous realistic painting, extraordinary performative discipline, and the most exquisitely subtle use of video, the Safarani sisters create an uncanny sense of intimacy,” says Smith.

And it is truly a melding. The two decide which form their art takes—painting, live performance, both—by determining which will explain their idea better. They’re now hard at work on a series of paintings that each act as a paragraph in a larger story, but performance will certainly be a part of their future. In 2018, you can see their internationally recognized work in Los Angeles, Berlin, Armenia, and Iran.

Emilie Stark-Menneg

Emilie Stark-Menneg, Big Kitty Picture Show!, 2016, acrylic, oil, house paint, and sand on canvas, 70 x 105 in. Photo courtesy of the artist

Stark-Menneg was enthusiastically chosen by two of our curators. Spavento says, “Her paintings are delightful, expressive and totally singular in their vision and content. I would recommend her for everything—I’m so in love with her work.” McAvoy agrees, “Stark-Menneg is one of the freshest and most exciting young painters I’ve encountered in a while. Her work is smart, sassy, inventive, and skillful all at once, plus it is a hell of a lot of fun.”

A Massachusetts native, Stark-Menneg was based in Brunswick, Maine, until recently, when she relocated to Providence to enter an MFA program at RISD. At school, she plans to continue to explore ways to depict the shared energy found between people and places, and to examine how technology distorts and relocates our physical bodies.

Wang Yefeng (Frank)

Wang Yefeng, a screenshot from Drifting Stages, 2016, dimensions variable

Wang is a digital media artist whose surreal, disorienting animation should really be seen in motion to be fully appreciated. In one of his video pieces, generic, vaguely Asian MIDI music backs a tableau of Hooters waitresses with C-3PO heads holding meat grinders that cascade blood onto a plastic toy figure of a man in a suit, who’s lying in a bathtub with pigs’ feet, and . . . well, it’s better to visit his website and see it for yourself.

As a Rhode Island–based digital media artist with a sculptural background, Wang has been recently rediscovering his love of working with physical materials, including 3D-printed objects. Over the coming year, he plans to experiment further with mixing multiple disciplines to discover the best ways to make his ideas real.

“He’s making work unlike what we typically see in New England, probably in part because he splits his time between the United States and China,” Stapleton says. “There’s always a narrative—usually a surprising, semi-autobiographical one—behind his work, but it never gets too personal. There’s reservation in his lavishness, and now that he’s back in the States for a while, we’re looking forward to what he will come up with.”

Vivian Beer

Vivian Beer, Forth Bench, 2011, stainless steel, pure pigment, ferrocement, 96 x 48 x 48 in. Photo by Alison Swiatocha

While not unknown to us—Take profiled Beer last December, following her win on Ellen’s Design Challenge, a furniture designers’ competition à la Project Runway—Beer’s work isn’t as well known as it should be. “Vivian Beer is an exciting local artist who is pushing the boundaries of furniture making,” says Chong. “Inspired by various forms, from airplanes to high heels, her industrial chic work is both strong and beautiful.”

The streamlined, retro-industrial shapes in Beer’s work are clearly informed by her 2014 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum—a fitting place for an artist working primarily in materials such as steel, cement, and automotive paint. “Her inventive and stylish forms have crossover appeal between functional furniture and sculptural works of art,” continues Chong.

Over the last year, Beer has been sharing her appealing design skills through teaching residencies and public art commissions across the country. She also moved her furniture studio from Manchester to Pembroke, New Hampshire, where she plans to build out a space for holding design workshops. As for the work itself, Beer will be developing a line of limited-production furniture (all of her previous pieces are one-of-a-kind) in the spring.

top image: L to R: Wang Yefeng, Dell M. Hamilton, Farzaneh Safarani, and Bahareh Safarani. Photo by Izzy Berdan; composite image by Aaron Taylor-Waldman

The post Artists to Watch in 2018 appeared first on Take Magazine.

Most of us don’t have the time to study the snow that falls on our fair New England (and some of us are too busy swearing at it). Luckily, in 1885, an insatiably curious Vermont farmer named Wilson A. Bentley figured out how to capture the ephemeral snowflake on film, eventually shooting over 5,000 of them—and yes, no two are exactly alike.

Today, you can explore those photographs at the Snowflake Bentley Exhibit, part of the Jericho Historical Society in Jericho, Vermont. Besides sharing an array of nature-made designs with the world—Tiffany & Co. even bought a set of photos to use as jewelry inspiration—Bentley has a life story that’s Spielberg-movie-level inspiring. Sue Richardson, Bentley’s great-grandniece, grew up with stories about his persistence. “Initially he tried to draw them, holding his breath so they wouldn’t melt,” she says, “but he couldn’t draw fast enough to capture them!”

A selection from Snowflake Bentley’s work. Photos from the Wilson Bentley Digital Archives of the Jericho Historical Society

Once he had a camera and a microscope (both obtained by his mother, his only supporter), it took Bentley two years of obsessive tinkering—and “pure Yankee ingenuity,” says Richardson—to finally get a clear photo. He spent the next 46 years capturing snowflake images.

Although Bentley had no formal education, the records he created about the weather conditions of each snowflake were accepted as scientific data. But, as Richardson describes, “he was not only a scientist and photographer, he was an artist. He had an artist’s eye and an artist’s passion. The beauty really captured his imagination.”

Visit the Snowflake Bentley Exhibit, and you might learn to love the snow, too—or at least give it a closer look as you dig out your car.

A selection from Snowflake Bentley’s work. Photos from the Wilson Bentley Digital Archives of the Jericho Historical Society

Snowflake Bentley Exhibit
Jericho, Vermont
Website

Photos from the Wilson Bentley Digital Archives of the Jericho Historical Society

The post Quick Takes: Special Snowflakes appeared first on Take Magazine.

While painting a self-portrait as both a monk and a nun in the Middle Ages, Boston-area queer artist Ria Brodell got to thinking, “What would I have done if I had been born in a different era? What did people do? How did they get by?”

That’s how the project Butch Heroes was born. Painted in the style of Catholic holy cards, Butch Heroes tells the true stories of people assigned female at birth who rejected traditional gender roles and—in many cases—assumed a male identity. There’s D. Catalina “Antonio” de Erauso (1592–1650), a military captain and devout Catholic who got permission from the pope to dress as a man; Biawacheeitche or Woman Chief (1800–1854), an adept hunter and warrior known for her bravery; and Jeanne or Jean Bonnet (1849–1876), who was arrested multiple times for wearing men’s clothing and led a shoplifting gang of ex-prostitutes.

Katherina Hetzeldorfer (c. 1477), who was convicted of passing as a man (including the use of a phallic “instrument”) and sentenced to drown. By Ria Brodell

Brodell spent countless days combing the queer aisles of libraries, learning to search primary sources for archaic terms such as “female husbands.” Just like the stories found on holy cards, the histories that accompany each image can be funny, sad, grotesque, or inspiring.

Though the first 25 heroes have been immortalized in a book, Brodell continues to search for more—now investigating stories from underrepresented parts of the world, such as the Middle East, China, and India. “I want to find people from these regions that are difficult,” explains Brodell, “and I’m still really excited by all these stories. Each story is new, each process is new—so it keeps you going.”

Ria Brodell – artist
Boston, MA
Website
Facebook
Instagram

Top images by Ria Brodell; courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, from the Davis Museum at Wellesley College permanent collection
Right: Clara aka “Big Ben” c. 1926 United States | gouache on paper, 11 x 7 inches, 2014
Left: Captain Wright c. 1834 England | gouache on paper, 11 x 7 inches, 2016

The post Quick Takes: Rebel Angels appeared first on Take Magazine.

Klausland: The Life and Work of Klaus Postler, by Eileen Claveloux with Meghan Piercy, tells the story of this relatively unknown New England collage artist through personal essays that depict a man full of joyful generosity and intense focus. Claveloux, Postler’s longtime partner and an artist in her own right, wrote the following tributes for the book.

On January 6, 2013, Klaus Postler died very suddenly in his studio in Conway, Massachusetts, at the age of 61.

An artist who worked diligently and devotedly throughout his life, he spent the last five and a half years in Holyoke, Massachusetts, with me. Before that Klaus had lived in New York City, and for many years before that he resided in Westmoreland, New Hampshire, and the Brattleboro, Vermont, area.

Klaus left many friends and family members who still cannot comprehend how such a powerful life force could have slipped away so quickly.

Klaus in his studio in Romania, summer of 2007. Photo courtesy of Small Batch Books.

Born in 1951 in Yonkers, New York, Klaus grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut, where the family moved when he was six. Fairfield was a relatively rural place in the 1950s and ’60s, and Klaus roamed free with his siblings and friends. That freedom and constant interaction with the natural world informed his artwork for the rest of his life. He was also a child of his time, exposed to a great deal of commercial images, both still and moving. Klaus was a vast repository of the most obscure jingles and sound bites imaginable, able to pull out appropriate and inappropriate bits at will for any and every occasion.

Although Klaus exhibited his work internationally, and kept Mail Art correspondences with people around the world, his work is not well known. This book is meant to introduce the life and work of Klaus Postler to a larger audience. It is also intended to bring together some of the work he left behind for those who loved and treasured Klaus and his art.

Untitled, mixed media, 18 × 24 in. Photo courtesy of Small Batch Books.

Klaus was a consummate artist. He constantly drew, scribbled, collaged, and wrote. He told me that he had to draw continually in school—it was the only way he could concentrate. He had ADHD with dyslexia, and drawing and making art focused him so that the hours flew by without his realizing it. When he died, he left almost 35 years’ worth of sketchbooks, filling a good-sized bookcase along with more in boxes. They span the ’70s to the end of his life in January 2013. The sketchbooks include everything—detailed accountings of his finances, dreams, life events, cut-out pieces from everywhere and anywhere that caught his attention. There are drawings, copies of drawings, collages, copies of collages, notes on exhibitions and art he’d seen, lists of galleries to apply to, letters and Mail Art from friends and strangers, receipts and musings. He also stored pieces he planned to use for Mail Art, often the covers to be glued onto large manilla envelopes. The books, all shapes and sizes, were also his way of organizing and filing things he might need, including addresses and phone numbers. They are not in a true chronological order; one might span a few years and have a kind of theme, finances, or dreams, but not necessarily exclusively. I’ve helped him try to find some important paper or phone number that was stored in a notebook, both of us going through decades of books to try to find the desired item. There was a kind of order to them, but not order in a way that most people would understand or be able to tolerate. Klaus’s books are a wonderful reflection of the alive and vividly imaginative brain that drove him.

Klaus was fun. Always. His artwork reflects his playfulness and exuberance. It also shows his remarkably sophisticated eye and sensibility. The artwork and sketchbooks remain to attest to his development as an artist and human being, and to his dedication to his work.

Pop, 2005, mixed media, 8.75 × 12 in. Photo courtesy of Small Batch Books.

Klaus Postler – artist
Holyoke, Massachusetts
Website 

The post A Trip to Klausland appeared first on Take Magazine.

It’s early spring in Vermont, drizzly and chilly, and Nick Anger is a bit crabby about the weather. He can’t open up the doors of his workshop to use his propane-fueled forge, and that prevents him from pressing steel for his knife blades.

Anger loves to work. He often says he does nothing but sleep and make knives. He never loses the fascination with turning “an ugly little chunk of steel” into a stunning yet wholly functional object. “I really just like the constant challenge of outdoing what I’ve done before,” he says.

Anger specializes in Damascus steel. Layers of different metals turn into a flat slicing surface featuring watery waves, floral loops, or jittery lines like those on a heart monitor. He finishes them with natural-wood handles boasting their own striking motifs: black-and-white ebony, box elder burl, spalted curly birch, and flame maple.

He has recently focused on more closely marrying the intricacies of the blades with their handles. “What I’m trying to do is understand the material more, and its relation to the natural woods that I find,” he explains.

A spatula and knives made with steel ball bearings and high-nickel powder. Photo by Nick Anger

In downtown Johnson, Anger’s workshop sits behind a Main Street shop, where he hopes to avoid unexpected visitors that disturb his flow. Big, burly, and lumberjack-like, Anger has a name that may seem like a suitable moniker—though the French name is actually pronounced “on-jay.” Heavy metal music blasts while he forges, or he listens to audiobooks through headphones. (2666: A Novel, by Roberto Bolaño, was his pick in the spring.) “When I work,” he says, “I shut off from the world completely.”

His 1,900-degree forge makes a thick chunk of steel, called a billet, glow orange hot. He twists the steel in a clamp, shoves it back in the forge, then hammers it on his anvil or in a pneumatic machine that pounds it with a rhythmic thud. A 24-ton hydraulic press provides the “squeeze” to meld the molten metal with as many as 400 layers. Each type of metal has a different chemical makeup, and reacts differently to the heat—creating the striated Damascus blade. Beaten into submission, the steel gradually flattens into a slicing shape, which Anger dips into ferric chloride, revealing the invisible pattern like magic.

The fiery forge. Photo by Scott Pasfield

Then, the grinding starts. Sparks spill from the grinder as the belt meets the blade. Sanding blocks with finer and finer grit finish the polishing. Anger fits the handles over the tang and attaches them to the bolster of the blade with industrial-strength glue, then coats them with resin.

The process involves as much chemistry as creativity. Anger recently coaxed some cool-looking squiggles out of a squeeze of powdered steel and 52/100 chromium steel ball bearings. “I love the constant surprise of grinding into that billet and seeing the pattern for the first time,” he says.

What he dislikes is any commercial aspect of his work. Anger gets ornery when someone asks about buying his knives. Questions posted on his Instagram feed—“How much and how can I get it?” is a common refrain—usually go unanswered. His 80,000 enthusiastic followers include fellow knife makers who gush “super badass” and “I drool every time” over each new image.

Anger has no interest in responding to email inquiries and taking orders. Customer demands will only restrict his vision, he states. “Then I’m no longer free to do what I feel like I need to do.” However, once he connects with someone—a chef, another artist, or even an eager young apprentice who manages to track him down—he will delve deep to deliver them the perfect knife.

A curly maple saya covering an eight-inch blade. Photo by Nick Anger

Matt Jennings found Anger while following other bladesmiths on social media and hearing about him from chefs he knew from the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier. The chef and owner of Townsman in Boston and a multiyear James Beard Award nominee, Jennings was immediately drawn to Anger’s aesthetic and homegrown approach.

Jennings direct-messaged Anger and they conversed about food, people they both knew, and other non-knife topics. Then he suggested that he’d like a new tool. They discussed Jennings’s needs. “He asked me to tell him the story of where my food comes from,” says Jennings, who specializes in fresh, hyper-seasonal ingredients. “I told him I was just a fool for the ocean, a fool for the sea.”

Anger made Jennings a 10-inch chef’s knife with a maple handle that has an open crack, allowing light to shine through, where Anger embedded a scallop shell and a piece of fool’s gold. Jennings was blown away.

The chef has since bought three more Anger knives—including one for vegetables and a Kiritsuke-style slicer for raw fish. They perform as well or better than any other knife he has used, he confirms. They hold up under the abuse of a professional kitchen and are sharp enough to slice through a cardboard box (which he would never do) and still glide through fish flesh. All of his knife-obsessed cooks view them with envy. “[Anger] spends a lot of time sourcing materials and giving mindspace to how those materials get put together,” Jennings says. “Nick’s knives are meant to be used.”

Nick Anger in his studio. Photo by Scott Pasfield

A native of Colchester, Vermont, Anger’s first post-college career was as a mental-health worker at Laraway Youth & Family Services in Johnson. In 2007, when his college classmate and best friend, Harlan Mack, was in residency as a metal sculptor and painter at the Vermont Studio Center nearby, Anger would hang out in the shop in his free time. “He was the smartest guy in school,” Mack says. “His brain is just beautiful.” Mack taught him a little about working with metal, and Anger was hooked. Still working at Laraway, Anger began apprenticing as a blacksmith at Iron Art in Stowe. Once he had enough money saved from his job, he quit to forge full time.

Anger devours information, and will ruminate for hours with Mack about, for example, the finer points of pairing 15N20 alloy with N29 steel, his friend says. “A lot of his creativity is generated from his ability to freely associate and create a web of connections between everything,” Mack explains. “The way he picked up metal was a way of letting his mind wander.”

Anger makes 100 to 300 knives a year and, when he sells them, charges $75 to $100 per cutting inch. But he’d just as soon give away a knife to a person he likes. These days, he has branched out with the business side a bit, offering pieces through eatingtools.com and homebutcher.com, allowing those websites to handle customer interaction. His online inventory quickly sells out.

The money has never been important to Anger. Only the work matters. That’s what feeds the insatiable imagination of an artist unable to stop forging—even in bad weather.

Nick Anger – knife maker
Johnson, Vermont
Website
Facebook
Instagram 

Top image: Anger’s Damascus steel can have a wood-grain look. Photo by Scott Pasfield

The post Making the Cut appeared first on Take Magazine.

Take is always on the lookout for interesting New Englanders. Five Questions With… is a Q&A with the people we’ve found. First up? Brattleboro, Vermont resident Dan Richardson, a locally-renowned sound engineer with 35 years of experience.

We reached him on a private vintage train car somewhere in Texas, where he’s mixing sound for John Doe for Roots On The Rails. “When we get to Houston, he gets off, Jimmie Dale Gilmore gets on, and I’ll do sets with him and Dave Alvin,” Richardson says. “New musicians in New Orleans, and again in Chicago, Kansas City, and Albuquerque. It’s a nice way to spend a couple weeks.

“I’m fortunate to make absolutely no distinction between my work and my life,” Richardson says. “Somewhere along the way, I started collecting the really odd gigs. I like a challenge, and I always want to be doing something different than I did last week. I’ve done sound on boats, parade floats, and a series of moving trains. Northampton’s Young@Heart Chorus has taken me all over the world. My gigs have brought my wife Kate and our two boys to Cape Verde and Berlin. At the same time, I really cherish the local shows: Scud Mountain Boys and King Radio and The Maggies playing to 30 people in the Bay State Hotel, or the up-and-coming scenes at The Root Cellar in Greenfield, or The Stone Church in Brattleboro.”

Take: You’re originally from Milwaukee. When did you know you were a New Englander?
Dan Richardson: I’m under the impression you can’t be a New Englander if your grandparents weren’t from here. Visited 25 years ago, and it’s an obviously great place to live, so we moved.

T: Favorite New England-based artists?
DR: Gah. Kate (my wife) is an artist, as are most of my friends and my clients. I plead the 5th.

T: Favorite diner?
DR: Jake’s [in Northampton], although there’s a lot of competition in that category. The Chelsea Royal and The Porch, both in Brattleboro, are excellent.

T: What’s your favorite bizarre, historical, or quirky piece of New England trivia?
DR: My trivia tends to be neither bizarre or quirky—more stuff people want forgotten. Lord Jeff’s blankets. Vermont’s Abenaki eugenics program.

T: What’s the funniest thing you’ve seen while driving in New England?
DR: Midwesterners trying to drive in Boston. Wait, that’s me!

The post Five Questions With…Dan Richardson appeared first on Take Magazine.