Azua Echevarria is an outspoken artists, maker, healer, and owner at Age Into Beauty. Working in close collaboration with her partner Toni Johnson of Rework Creative, they each use their “divine gifts and wisdom to create cool stuff that raises vibrations, elevates energy, and is something that can be used in everyday life.” Considering Echevarria’s position as an emphatic practitioner and vital voice in Hartford’s arts and culture scene, we figured she’d be perfect for our “5 Questions With” series. 

Take: Were you born in New England or are you a transplant? If born here, who was your rival town growing up?
Azua Echevarria: I was born in Boston but growing up, I went to Hartford High School. I was on the swim team and if I experienced any town competition or rivalry it was in that world. It sounds really weird but rural towns like Stonington or Farmington, and other towns that had kids who were fast swimmers. 

T: One (or a few) words to described New Englanders?
AE: I would say easily adaptable and transformative. What is very common about this region is our constant need to adapt to the seasons, political seasons, social seasons, racial seasons. I think what really helps aid in that is this constant connection we have to nature. Even in our cities we have the ability to view the seasons changing. We have different garments, accouterments, and paraphernalia that go along with each change. I think that’s how and why [New Englanders] are so easily adaptable to the many complex layers of change.

T: Who is/are your favorite New England-based artist(s)?
AE: Carlos Hernandez Chavez, Ricky Silverspoon and, of course, Mina Echevarria, Arien Wilkerson, and Toni Johnson.

T: What’s pissing you off today?
AE: It’s not really pissing me off; it’s just an area of contention. It has to do with the situation that happened recently at the University of Hartford. My daughter and her partner just graduated from there, so, in large part, my viewpoint is skewed by their experience. Seeing all this unfold and being upset about it, how it was handled, and the fact that it went on for so long and that it affected a person of color, there’s some kind of deep level of anger to the situation.

Someone who’s a close relative of mine posed the question on Facebook asking if we are vying for this level of equality and social justice, then why are we asking for this 18-year-old to be imprisoned? And it just sat with me and had me feeling a lot of different things. The question of age, compassion, understanding, and patience for this white person. In my opinion, if the tables were turned, we would not be asking that question, Why are we putting this person behind bars? It would already be the case. Today, that’s what’s sitting with me. I wouldn’t say it’s pissing me off, but it’s in that vein.

T: What is your most recent google search.
AE: Ayurveda, ways to balance my dosha.

Bonus Questions!

T: Favorite place to cry?
AE: My bathtub! It’s not really somewhere to go in New England but I guess it kind of is? Because I live here? (laughs)

T: Dogs or Cats
AE: Dogs. I love them [both], but dogs resonate more for me.

Top photo: Azua Echevarria at People’s State Forest in Barkhamsted, Connecticut | Photo by George Lee

The post Five Questions With … Azua Echevarria appeared first on Take Magazine.

We totally get why Che Anderson was named Worcester Mag’s Person of the Year in 2016. A fan of street art as an art form, the young staff assistant to Worcester’s city manager somehow managed to convince POW! WOW!, the world’s biggest mural festival, to hold its first-ever East Coast event in Wormtown. Now in its second year, POW! WOW! Worcester is putting the mid-Massachusetts city on the map as an art destination.

Take: Are you a native or transplant? If native: Who was your rival town growing up? If transplant: When did you know you were a NE’er?
Che Anderson: I am a transplant from New York City, and I knew I was a NE’er when I said ‘wicked’ unironically for the first time.

T: What one word would you use to describe New Englanders?
CA: I would describe New Englanders as prideful: of their sports teams, hometowns, chowdah, beer, and way of life.

T: What’s your favorite bizarre, historical, or quirky piece of New England trivia?
CA: Worcester is the birthplace of the Smiley Face, birth control, modern rocketry, and barbed wire!!! So random, and yet so awesome!

T: What’s the funniest thing you’ve seen while driving in New England?
CA: The bumper stickers…so…many..ridiculous…bumper stickers.

T: What’s pissing you off today?
CA: I still have never used the quadratic equation a day in my life.

The post 5 Questions with … Che Anderson appeared first on Take Magazine.

As described in our January, 2017 post, Brattleboro’s Joshua Farr has taken the Vermont lifestyle of having multiple jobs at once very seriously. In addition to being the director of the Vermont Center for Photography, Farr works for Good Bear Productions as a web designer, is in charge of event photography for the Brattleboro Art Museum, organizes Pop-Up Brattleboro, teaches at In-Sight Photography Project, and is a professional, documentary-style photographer. In his spare time (how on earth does he have any?) he also likes to repurpose old furniture. Despite having several 12-hour workdays in a row (“This is not humane self-treatment,” he admits), Farr took the time to answer some questions for Take.

Take: Are you a native or transplant? If native: Who was your rival town growing up? Transplant: When did you know you were a NE’er?
Joshua Farr: Born in Maine, went to school in New Hampshire, and now living in Vermont. I always say that I’m moving west one state at a time. Considering the fact that my extended family hasn’t lived outside of Maine for many generations, I often feel like a transplant. But then I remember that both states have the same obsession with moose and maple syrup, and I suddenly feel right at home again.

Take: What one word would you use to describe New Englanders?
JF: Salty.

Take: Who are some of your favorite New England-based artists? (could be music, visual, etc.)
JF: This is a loaded question to ask a gallerist/curator! But if I had to rattle off a few, I’d probably mention folks such as my very own college photo professor Doug Prince, furniture-making mad man Johnny Swing, photographer Tanja Hollander, and of course, the uncategorizable Jonathan Gitelson.

Take: What’s the funniest thing you’ve seen while driving in New England?
JF: Brattleboro has its very own resident world-class competitive exercising enthusiast, “Real Bill Kathan,” who can frequently be seen doing speed-jumping-jacks to music on Main Street, or jogging for miles while balancing a baseball bat on his hand. He knows how to capture folks attention—without a doubt.

Take: What’s pissing you off today?
JF: The fact that Brattleboro picks up trash every OTHER week. Over the course of the time between pickups, our local rat/raccoon/feral-cat population manages to lock in coordinates for our trash shed and strew stinky trash all over our yard for me to clean up—only to come back inside for dinner smelling like a dumpster. It just makes my day. Every. Single. Time.

Top image: Joshua Farr. Photo by Bob George

The post 5 Questions With … Joshua Farr appeared first on Take Magazine.

Self-described literary wet nurse Miette Gillette is one of our belletristic crushes. Whiskey Tit publishes books no-one else will, with titles like, Kinderrinder, I, No Other, and The Man Who Can’t Die, which we can’t get enough of. When we decided to do a Five Questions With…, our series on interesting New Englanders, Miette was an immediate, must-involve choice.

Take: When did you know you were a New Englander?
Miette Gillette: Transplant from NYC. I’m still not sure I’m a New Englander, though last summer I was attempting to inseminate our sow, and couldn’t get the cap off of the bag of pig semen. I didn’t have a free hand, and the pig was getting excited, so in a pinch I used my teeth to remove the cap, and got more of a taste than I’d ever like to admit. Is that a New England thing?

T: What one word would you use to describe New Englanders?
MG: Subarued

T: Favorite New England-based artists?
MG: Yannick Murphy and Carolyn Chute are both doing vital, astonishing work in American letters. Stylistically they’re diametric opposites: the literary equivalent of working in NYC interactive agencies, then retiring to inseminate pigs in Vermont. But both women capture very thin slices of New England culture in ways that nobody else in the country is capable of.

T: What’s your favorite bizarre, historical, or quirky piece of New England trivia?
MG: There’s a law against bringing elephants into the state of Vermont. Given the current collection of beasts roaming on my land, this is a law that’s definitely looking out for my interests.

T: What’s the funniest thing you’ve seen while driving in New England?
MG: I’ve seen about all the things one might see on Vermont Driving Bingo: skunks chasing moose, naked families happily hitchhiking, ducks stopping to drop an egg. When we first moved to the area, we were renting the last house on a dead-end road. The road apparently had not always been a dead-end; a bridge had gotten washed out years prior, and the town had decided not to fix it. But GPS systems still had the road intact on their maps, and had that road marked as the fastest route from Sugarbush ski resort to Boston. Every Sunday night in the wintertime, without fail, a car would be barreling down the road and smash directly into the snow bank in front of our house. So the funniest thing many weekend skiers had probably seen in Vermont were two beleaguered city transplants, hopping out of bed at midnight often in boots and coats but nothing underneath, patiently towing them out of the snow bank and turning them around. Notice: Heed the Dead End signs!

Bonus Questions:

T: What’s pissing you off today?
MG: The same thing that’s been pissing me off pervasively since January 20.

T: Dog or cat?
MG: Well, just today the Dog gave my daughter’s favorite stuffy a rhinectomy, and the cat vomited mouse guts all over the proof of a new book I’m debuting in two weeks’ time. So, both?

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