Scene: Busy coffeeshop just after dusk. Location: Northampton, MA. In walks a bedraggled, white-bearded, black coffee-swilling, grump-meister named Tom Pappalardo. His laptop is scratched, stickered, and held together with a clamp. He looks like Liam Neeson about to do someone some very serious damage. “I used to be a semi-professional curmudgeon,” he says, “but now it’s more of a persona. I think I’m actually much nicer than I used to be.”

Pappalardo, an Easthampton, MA-based graphic designer, musician, and longtime comic book artist (Everything You Didn’t Ask For, 2014), has written, designed, and, through his new press, Object Publishing, self-published One More Cup of Coffee (2016), an observational compendium of his visits to coffee shops throughout Western Massachusetts. The book really doesn’t have anything to do with coffee, except insofar it’s the liquid folks gather around to talk life, death, and pretty much everything else in between. Tom visits these spots, gets himself a cup of their darkest coffee, sets his back to the wall and just listens. The locales range from classic New England coffee shops like Shelburne Falls Coffee Roasters, to supermarkets (Trader Joe’s), to the most ubiquitous of middle-America coffee sellers like Dunkin’ Donuts and a Starbucks inside Barnes and Noble.

“It came about as a way for me to get out of the house,” Pappalardo explains. “I made a list of places, some of which I’d been a regular at for years, then others – hey how come I don’t go there?” He developed a following writing weekly Facebook updates of his observations, which became about 90% of the book, “though,” he promises, “the book is much better edited.” The book’s subtitle, “In Which the Author Barely Talks About the Coffee” was by design. “A lot of the Facebook fans thought they were café reviews. I’ve lived in the area for 20 years, I knew a lot of the owners. I wanted it to be clear that this wasn’t an extended Yelp review.”

Instead, Pappalardo reviewed the customers inside the shops, telling their stories through his story, which is most often full of rage at the base foolishness of our entire culture. With lines like “I’m trying to be less of an asshole,” it’s clear that Pappalardo enjoys being a character in his own book. It also allows him to offer up some wickedly brutal assessments of the most mundane or overwrought conversations.

Behind Pappalardo’s umbrage is the sense that we’ve lost touch with being, and feeling, part of a larger community. “Even folks our age or older are blindered and not mindful of what’s going on around them,” he says.” A big part of this book was a mindfulness exercise. I’m going to a place just to observe. I try to make it as funny as I can, because that’s the genre I work in.”

Tom Pappalardo | Photo by David Nielsen

Though it seems the antithesis of his old-school coffee shop haunting, Pappalardo also made One More Cup of Coffee available on Kindle, a move that strips it of its design, physicality, and character. It’s a sign of the times, one he acknowledges with a wince. “I’m more interested in the object  of the book,” Pappalardo explains. “I just wanted to make a nice book. It’s the same with albums vs MP3s. I’m certainly from that era where I remember growing up and buying a cassette at the mall. You’d sit and listen to it and read along with all the lyrics. You build a connection to the album. I’m also a graphic designer; you can’t have an album without a cover. So yeah, to me this is the closest I get to art, whereas the Kindle version is the raw data. If someone wants to consume that, that’s fine—I’m not going to stop them. But the book is way cooler.”

Follow Tom Pappalardo on-line, on Instagram, and multiple Facebook pages:
personal | graphic design | writing & things, etc.

Illustration by Tom Pappalardo

The post Sit. Sip. Scrutinize. Scribble. appeared first on Take Magazine.

Past Take Magazine subjects and New England-based artists Lauren Fensterstock, Anna Hepler, and Roberto Lugo are among the 46 recipients of the prestigious United States Artists (USA) 2016 fellows. A panel of experts in music, theater, visual art, dance, and literature have the difficult task of choosing the winners, but they’ve once again risen to the occasion. In addition to being recognized and nominated by their peers in their respective artistic arenas, they are each awarded an ‘unrestricted’ financial reward of $50,000.

Blind Spot, 2015 | Photo by Mike Fleming

“By supporting American artists, USA is supporting creativity, free expression, and a strong diverse culture. Our Fellows cross all ages, ethnicities, and stages in their careers,” said United States Artists Interim President & CEO Sunny Fischer. “Each has a unique artistic voice that expands the creative environment of the United States. It is an honor to support these artists, contribute to their financial security, and to facilitate future works. We are encouraging the best of what American artists can achieve.”

Lauren Fensterstock | Forays and Follies, 2015 | Drexel University | Photo Constance Mensh

The Fellowships allow artists to use the unrestricted funds for whatever they need most, and so to take risks and push their careers forward. Although we’ll assume they’ll use some of it to attend the big party in Chicago celebrating all of the recipients. The 2016 USA Fellows will be celebrated at USA’s annual Artist Assembly in March 2017.

We’re so happy for all the artists on this list. Grants like these make it possible for artists to do their important work that ultimately builds creative communities that benefits all of us.

Steve Paxton and Vivian Beer – we’re looking forward to meeting you! Talk soon!

Top image Kenek Photography | Courtesy of the Wexler Gallery

The post United States Artists name their list of 2016 Fellows appeared first on Take Magazine.

I was moving like a monsoon through a forest. I was thinking about where I saw myself in two thousand years . . . And where I saw myself was a tiny subspace ripple sliding through the corridors with a plastic horse in my hand. – Bianca Stone, Poetry Comics from the Book of Hours

Bianca Stone was born and raised in Vermont. She is the granddaughter of American poet, Ruth Stone; the daughter of fiction writer, Abigail Stone; and she herself is a poet, visual artist, and Chair of the Ruth Stone Foundation.

A proud descendent of a strong line of women, it makes sense that Stone would want to work hard to preserve the history and creative vigor of her family. “I moved to New York City for graduate school, and lived there for almost 10 years. I’ve just moved back so that I can work full time on the Ruth Stone Foundation,” said Stone. “My husband and I loved Brooklyn so much, but we knew if we were really going to make our dream happen with the foundation, we would have to be here putting everything into it.”

Being raised by a single mother, Stone spent a lot of time with her grandmother growing up.

“She encouraged me to constantly write, as did my mother,” said Stone.

After her grandmother’s death in 2011, Stone was appointed trustee of her estate along with Poet Laureate of Vermont, Chard deNiord, and Nora Swan. Together they have founded The Ruth Stone Foundation at the site of her home in Goshen, VT.

Page from I am Full of Mythos by Bianca Stone

“We’ve just started a new project called The Ruth Stone House Reader, which features chapbook-length collections of poetry from Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Jennifer Tamayo, Cathy Linh Che, and Carolina Ebeid,” Stone says.

Established in 2013, The Foundation serves to fulfill Ruth Stone’s wish that her physical and literary estate would be used for the furthering of poetry and the creative arts. It was created not only to nurture contemporary poetry and art in its many forms, but also to cultivate and celebrate the works and legacy of the poet herself.

Stone says, “as a yearly anthology, the Reader looks to Ruth Stone’s legacy of supporting her community and offers each author a residency in Vermont. Taking on a range of voices, styles, and subjects, the collection highlights the boldness and complexity of poetry in the early 21st century. This is writing that embraces those who offer care and confronts those who don’t. This is writing that spans narrative meditation, intertextual performance, and lyrical bravado. This is poetry that will challenge and engross you.”

When she’s not working with the Ruth Stone Foundation, Stone is publishing books of poetry and poetry comics on her own. She is the author of the poetry collections Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Tin House/Octopus Books, 2014), Poetry Comics from the Book of Hours (Pleiades Books, 2016), and multiple chapbooks.

“I’ve always been a visual artist as well as a writer, but it wasn’t until graduate school at NYU that I had to opportunity to work with Anne Carson and Matthew Rohrer that I heard the term ‘poetry comics’ and I leapt on the chance to start experimenting on deliberately combining text and image in the form of poetry,” said Stone.

She is also a contributing artist for a special edition of Anne Carson‘s Antigonick, and along with her husband, the poet Ben Pease, Stone co-edits the small poetry press Monk Books.

“Currently I’m working on my new book of poetry,” shares Stone. “I’m about the have a baby so I’m trying to get the first draft done before she comes!”

With the newest Stone daughter on her way, we can’t help but wonder…will she be a writer too?

For more information on Bianca Stone please visit her Website for a deeper exploration of her work. 

All images courtesy Bianca Stone

The post The Daughters Stone appeared first on Take Magazine.