Western-Massachusetts-native-turned-fake-judge John Hodgman always says, “Specificity is the soul of narrative.” In other words, the more precise a story is, or the more unique the subject matter, the better. Through specificity of content and approach, artists can present audiences with unique characters, stories, and experiences.

The same logic applies to film festivals and the cinema they celebrate. In addition to the dozens of big film fests across the region, film junkies and industry folks alike have privileged access to niche New England film festivals in every state. Movie lovers can see everything from queer romance to cinema written, produced, starring, and directed by folks with hearing impairment. Some of these festivals are right around the corner, while others are still accepting submissions. All reveal subjects that are unique and satisfyingly specific.

AIP Film Festival
April 2 – April 8
Cinestudio
Hartford, CT

Hartford’s beautifully designed 1930s-era movie theater continues its yearly film fest for Francophiles, April in Paris, which goes beyond the French New Wave and into the realm of contemporary cinema. Prospective moviegoers have nine opportunities to see French films produced from 1982 to 2016, all of which examine the exceedingly relevant, “effects of crossing borders, from the political to the personal.”

Wicked Queer Film Festival
March 30 – April 9
Various venues
Boston, MA

Laverne Cox in Free CeCe! | Director Jac Gares, 2016

The 33rd incarnation of Boston’s film festival revealing and unpacking the queer experience through documentary, comedy, and drama will feature internationally renowned voices of the queer community and emerging artists alike. Queer film enthusiasts of all kinds have dozens of chances to see films across the city in a new neighborhood each night.

Maine Deaf Film Festival
April 28 – 29
University of Southern Maine
Portland, ME

The 15th annual Maine Deaf Film Festival is the longest-running and perhaps the only film festival of its type in the nation. Programmed and planned in collaboration with students and boasting content exclusively created by deaf folks across the region, MDFF skillfully solves some of the problems of underrepresentation of people with hearing impairments both in front of and behind the camera.

SENE Film Festival
April 25 – 29
Various venues
Rhode Island

With dozens of films ranging from experimental shorts to feature-length animated dramas, SENE provides attendees nearly endless opportunities to pick their vast or small corner of the world to explore. The Wednesday night screenings of experimental films and documentary features is both a can’t-miss evening and an excellent example of the range and specificity of topics explored throughout the festival.

New Hampshire Film Festival
October
Various venues
Portsmouth, NH

Still from All The President’s Heads | Director Adam Roffman, 2016

With the time for submissions still open, we can’t say for sure what niches the New Hampshire Film Festival will investigate. However, if last year’s programming is any indication, cinephiles will delve into some strange and specific topics. For example, All the President’s Heads, a film about a history devotee who saves two dozen, massive presidential busts from destruction after being displaced by the building of an Enterprise Rent-a-Car.

Independent Television Festival
October 11 – 17
Various Venues
Manchester, VT

Okay. . .this isn’t technically a “film festival.” However, was True Detective (the charcoal dark, riveting serialized HBO murder mystery disguised as a police procedural) a television show or more of a seven-and-a-half-hour movie split into manageable 54-minute chunks? As the line between prestige television and film blurs more each day, so will our categorizations for the sake of this list. Anyway, ITVFest still counts because it’s a moving image festival celebrating a niche part of a hulking industry, a section of the industry that often gets ignored in cinema as well; the independents.

Global Roots Film Festival
April 7 – 9
Contois Auditorium
Burlington, VT

Still from Ladies & Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen |
Directors Donald Brittain & Don Owen, 1965 | Presented by VT PBS and RETN

This niche film festival is brought to us by the Vermont International Film Foundation which also presents the yearly Vermont International Film Festival. The Global Roots Film Festival endeavors to bring Vermonters, “great films from the countries of many of the New American communities. . .to foster a greater understanding of our diverse cultures.” This year, Global Roots turns the lens towards contemporary films coming from Quebec.

Top image, still from Signature Move | Director Jennifer Reeder (2017)

The post 7 New England Niche Film Festivals You Can’t Miss appeared first on Take Magazine.

When Miketon Graton was a kid living in Auburn, New Hampshire, there were times when all he wanted was to get out of the Granite State and cut some ground of his own.

So he did.

Graton bought a van for $500 and lit out with his punk band to play gigs across parts of the U.S and Canada. “There is just something inside of me that tells me to keep going,” says the 32-year-old bearded Graton of his wanderlust spirit. “I ignore it a lot of the time, but there are times when that’s where I feel the most like myself.”

Living a rock-and-roll lifestyle is one thing; living it as an unknown artist can be problematic. Without the benefit of a steady cash flow, life on the road can be daunting.

“I thought somewhere else would be more exciting or just better,” says Graton, who now lives in the Queen City with his fiancée, Alicia Jean. “They aren’t.”

After a short stint in Florida, Graton returned to New Hampshire. He soon realized that by not removing yourself completely from the past, you can always come back home to what’s left of family and friends and, in Graton’s case, to an Irish pub called The Shaskeen in Manchester, where the next phase of his life began.

Graton’s music grew out of The Shaskeen, where for a couple years he just saddled up to the long wooden bar as a patron. Eventually, he got a job bartending at his favorite haunt, listening to the kind of music he loved: punk, country, folk, Irish murder ballads, and straight up rock and roll.

Between slinging drinks and working the soundboard, Graton steadied his craft as a musician, and eventually became part owner of the bar. He saw hundreds of bands play The Shaskeen’s famous backroom, where Miketon got to perform with some of his favorite musicians, like Tim Barry and Matt Woods. “It made want to play better, to write better, and to perform better,” he recalls.

When his band Down To The Well broke up, he did some solo work; but, as Graton admits, he was built to front a band. “Playing solo was not always a strong suit of mine,” he says. “Some of my songs needed a band.” That’s when he started putting Miketon and the Night Blinders together.

A five-piece country “garbage grass” band, Miketon and the Night Blinders can bring it home. Soulful and rhythmic, with intensity wrapped in tradition, the songs on their new CD Building a Home are a countrified folk ride, an unwavering commitment to the music.

Recorded in Manchester at Black Heart Sound, the steady landscape drumming of Lee Viathan is essential. Cameron Rapaport commands the fiddle, and Mark Williams holds it down on the banjo. The threading Mike Bastek does on the stand-up bass is seamless and true.

Although considered a country/folk act, the Night Blinders are actually rooted in punk, where Graton and his other bandmates cut their teeth with other local punk bands like Yellow Stitches and 5 Bucks. “I hold on to that passion and fury, and try to infuse it in my music,” he says about the influence Manchester has on his music.

And that passion for the music, for the community he lives in, and the sensibilities he shares with other musicians is what drives Graton in his quest to be heard. “It’s inspiring learning that there are other people like me who work hard at their craft,” he says, “and soldier forth every day. It pushes me to do the same.”

Miketon and the Night Blinders – “garbage grass” country music
Manchester, New Hampshire
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Top photo of Mike Graton by Justin Chadbourne

The post “Garbage Grass” Country Music Never Smelled So Sweet appeared first on Take Magazine.

Soo Sunny Park’s studio in Lebanon, New Hampshire, is a literal hive of activity. Along with her assistants, she is bending and snapping together the last pieces of BioLath, an installation piece which opens at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire, on February 25th. The diamond-cut metal lath is being twisted into a series of organic, cloud-like shapes whose sensual curvature isn’t just an exercise in aesthetics. The edges of the mesh are sharp, the modular sections are intentionally transparent, and the finished work, unlike classic sculpture whose form is meant to viewed at a respectable distance, is built to be walked through, seen through, the completed installation physically fragmented by both the viewer’s perspective and the light that moves through it.

Soo Sunny Park, concept model for BioLath, installation at the Currier Museum, 2017 | photo courtesy the artist

Displacement, perception, and self-awareness are central themes that move through Park’s installation art. Park emigrated to the United States at age 11, and had already begun to grapple with the central questions that would later take physical form in her adult work. “I went through an existential crisis when I was six,” she says. “I began to wonder about existence and why I can’t see my own face, my own eyes, and why I always feel like I’m looking out from the inside. How others see me, the body, is not how I’m aware of it. Then you start to ask about consciousness. Is there life after this? You question if there’s a soul. I try to think about that kind of duality when making art, and what happens in the middle.”

Soo Sunny Park, concept drawing for BioLath (detail). Installation at the Currier Museum, 2017 | Photo courtesy the artist

Park, a graduate of the Cranbrook Academy of art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, began her career as a painter. Struggling to understand the role of painting, she grew increasingly interested in sculpture, a form whose physical possibilities drew her attention. Debating the inherent differences between the two, Park took on a new project. “I poured paint on the floor and cut it to form a body,” she explains. “It was a clothing piece, but was it also a painting—or did I just create a sculpture? Now you’re inside the artwork. Now you see the world from inside of a painting, inside the sculpture. I tried to flip the kind of space that the viewer would experience so that they’re wearing the piece and looking out from a reverse perspective.”

Soo Sunny Park, Silver Linings, 2015 | Photo courtesy the artist

Park came to Hanover in 2005, having taken a professorship at Dartmouth College with the idea of making New England her home. As an installation artist used to a much more aggressive urban landscape, she was once again faced with issues of displacement. “I moved around a lot as a kid and was a bit afraid of being in a rural area. A lot of artists feel they have to be in New York, obligated to show up at certain events and see certain people. There’s not that kind of pressure here. It’s a different speed of life, and I feel focused. So being in a quieter place, especially as an installation artist, has been great.”

Soo Sunny Park | Photo by David Nielsen

Soo Sunny Park, sculptor
Lebanon, New Hampshire
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Top photo Unwoven Light, 2013 | Photo courtesy the artist

The post Stretching the Form appeared first on Take Magazine.

Amidst a troubling political climate and what seems to be an upheaval of social progress, it’s important we turn to art for expression, solace, and social advocacy. New Hampshire Institute of Art is heading in the right direction by adding a new minor in the comic arts. The harmonious coming together of the Institute’s strong illustration and creative writing departments will fuel the new minor, which will be available in the Fall 2017 semester, to build on an art form and community of storytellers as ancient as cave paintings.

NHIA student using a Cintiq pad | Photo courtesy of NHIA

Comic art is already an essential part of NHIA. Adding the new minor–which will merge relevant courses to arrange a curriculum of preexisting courses including Comics and Global Media, Graphic Novel Writing, Intro to Fiction, and Intro to Illustration—is a natural outgrowth. The facilities boast state-of-the-art technology that runs the gamut of students’ comic-making needs. Upon entering the program, each student is supplied a Macbook with Adobe Creative Suite and full access to the Institute’s digital media Cintiq lab, which houses 27 QHD Cintiq pads, a top-of-the-line technology that allows students to transform their drawings fluidly onto a digital format. A screen-printing studio and letterpress shop contribute to the needs of students to print and construct handmade books. Students will become fluent in every step of the process of comic art production, affording them the confidence they need to forge their own path in the field.

Self portrait #art #artist #blacklivesmatter #blm | Photo via Joel Christian Gill’s Instagram

This initiative was prompted by comic artist, Joel Christian Gill, among other staff members. Originally from Roanoke, VA, Gill received his MFA from Boston University and later planted roots in New Hampshire, where he has established himself as a raconteur of black history through his published works. Initially, Gill tried to share his stories through painting; but the medium of comic art, which he calls his first love, proved to be the proper stage for his artistic story-spinning. In May, 2014, Gill published Strange Fruit: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History, a collection of illustrated vignettes detailing the true stories of black heroes you never read about in your Euro-American-skewed history books. “A lot of the stories in Strange Fruit were from New England,” says Gill of his first graphic novel. “The Shame about Malaga Island, Richard Potter’s Greatest Illusion, and the Noyes Academy to name a few. There is a rich untapped vein of black history stories in New England.”

Strange Fruit vol 2 cover #wip | Photo via Joel Christian Gill’s Instagram

His subsequent works, Bass Reeves: Tales of the Talented Tenth, no.1, published in the Fall of 2014, and the recent graphic novel Bessie Stringfield: Tales of the Talented Tenth, no. 2, have cemented his role as an advocate for black history through an art form with a massive, ever-growing following.”Comics have a tendency to reach a larger group of people with a disarming quality,” explains Gill. “They work on a very symbolic level, which connects to an understanding of how we communicate.” It’s not surprising, then, that Gill considers it the perfect art form to teach on a larger scale at NHIA: “Comics are an important aspect of expression and furthers our goals fostering modes of expression for incoming students.”

In the year to come, Gill plans on completing Strange Fruit, Volume II, which he says will provide additional meaning to the stories in Volume I. “My work will continue to ask questions that I’ve always been asking,” he says. “I will be moving forward with these ideas about what it all means now that we’ve had a black president. Strange Fruit, Volume II will be about why the stories are important, rather than just telling the stories.”

NHIA students working in screen printing studio | Photo courtesy of NHIA

Joel Christian Gill – comic artist and educator
Manchester, New Hampshire
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NHIA – New Hampshire Institute of Art
Manchester, New Hampshire
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Top photo courtesy NHIA

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2016 was a huge year for furniture designer Vivian Beer of Manchester, New Hampshire. In addition to countless features and exhibitions for her fine art furniture, Vivan received a fellowship from United States Artists and—get this—WON a Chopped-esque reality show for furniture designers hosted by Ellen Degeneres. Not even the fraught election of Donald Trump, with his demagogic, explicitly misogynistic rhetoric, could slow her down.

Vivian Beer at work | Photo courtesy of the artist

Ellen’s Design Challenge is a competitive reality show where contestants race against the clock and each other to complete furniture design challenges. The finalists of the show get a cash prize and the unique honor of designing the furniture in the Ellen Degeneres Show green room. Beer describes the experience as both wildly stressful and a furniture maker’s fantasy, “If you strip away the stress of the timeline,” she says, “it’s actually every artists and designers dream to be given a giant shop, a person to help you, all the materials you want and all you have to do is make something awesome.”

With a self-described “sexy industrial” style, Beer’s work is gorgeous-yet-functional fine art. The sleek, long lines of her shiny benches and the staunch stance of her high-seated chairs really speak to the “sexy industrial” label, simultaneously playful and sturdy. It’s this blend of individuality, craft and function that not only won her Ellen’s Design Show, but also made her an obvious choice for one of the select few artists acknowledged by the United States Artists fellowship.

Cleo from the Anchored Candy series. Film by @glassandgear in #theANNEX #vivianbeer #interiordesign #metalworking #bench #contemporarydesign #ellendesignonhgtv

A video posted by Vivian Beer (@vivian_beer) on Nov 21, 2016 at 8:53pm PST

Like many other creatives, Beer and her team at the studio were upset after hearing the news of Donald Trump gaining enough electoral college votes to become president. The ethnocentric, socially conservative, anti-immigrant policies the President-elect threatened to implement to get into office is particularly concerning to them, since the artist is married to a Mexican woman and runs a bi-cultural translation operation.

Today, Beer remains aggressively optimistic, choosing to acknowledge the gains we’ve made as a society instead of throwing her hands up, “I feel like very few great things have ever been built out of fear–and a lot of really great things have been built out of hope and confidence and belief. I certainly don’t make work that is political in an overt way, but I truly believe that making things is the polar opposite of destroying things.” With her recent appointment to the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, we can count on Vivian Beer to use her optimism and social understanding to create positive opportunities for artists working in the state of New Hampshire. 

Public bench outside Hyatt Hotel in Arlington Virginia by Vivian Beer | Photo courtesy of the artist

Beer and her team plan to continue their work through 2017, with some expansions and ideological changes. Currently, she is developing a new line of furniture that is, according to the artist, “a little more fiscally accessible, something that’s in multiples and really more engaged in the design community rather than the fine art community.” Outside of these explicit plans for more affordable furniture, Beer and her team plan to expand their space in Manchester, hopefully having a group studio where other artists like her can feel supported and be seen.

Vivian Beer in her studio with her team

Vivian Beer is a furniture maker and designer living in Manchester, New Hampshire. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 

Top photo public bench outside Hyatt Hotel in Arlington Virginia | Photo courtesy of Vivian Beer

The post Manchester’s “Sexy Industrialist” appeared first on Take Magazine.

Even if you’ve never ridden a motorcycle, you find yourself wanting to pick up this gorgeous, independent magazine on vintage-bike culture. As you leaf through enticingly photographed articles about treks through Indonesia, handmade leather boots, or an adman-turned-microdistiller, you might wonder where this bookshelf-worthy journal in your hands comes from. London? Los Angeles? Nope. Manchester, New Hampshire.

Granite State native Brett Houle launched Iron & Air in 2012 after selling his email marketing company, SendLabs. The concept started out as an Instagram feed, then a Facebook page that attracted thousands of likes. Before long, Houle, editor-in-chief Adam Fitzgerald, and digital director Greg Moore were responding to their followers’ demand for a magazine dedicated to the concept they were cultivating on social media. Issues 1 through 3 were digital. With issue 4, the print publication was born.
“They want something in tangible form,” Fitzgerald says of Iron & Air’s audience. “They work with their hands. They’re craftspeople and motorsports enthusiasts. They care about where their stuff comes from, how it’s made.”

The quarterly has tapped into the international revival of “café racer” culture centered on “motorcycles that look like something out of an old Steve McQueen movie,” as Popular Mechanics recently put it. “These bikes revive the 1960s café-racer look made popular when European kids stripped down their small-displacement bikes to zip from one café hangout to another.”

“We don’t like to think of ourselves as a motorcycle magazine,” says Fitzgerald. “It’s about the motorcycle and the places it takes us—the adventures, the trips, the people you meet, the clothes you wear when you’re on the road.” Indeed, the name of the magazine came from Houle’s desire to describe his favorite things, motorcycles and mountains, in more evocative terms.

The editorial team has lit upon non-motorcycle topics that strike a chord with Iron & Air readers as the publication has “matured,” says Fitzgerald, chuckling as Moore winces over a word that is about as attractive to a biker as “minivan.” A recent feature, for example, looked at an exhibit of obscure photographs by the film director Stanley Kubrick. Issue 22, which came out this spring, is entirely devoted to the gritty romance of a 10,000-mile trip around the American West on Russian-made Ural sidecar motorbikes.

“We take advantage of the fact that we are an independent publication,” says Fitzgerald. “We push boundaries. Who’s going to stop us?

THIS PIECE FIRST APPEARED OUR JUNE/JULY 2016 PRINT ISSUE AVAILABLE HERE

Images courtesy of Iron & Air

The post Live to Ride appeared first on Take Magazine.

The internationally renowned Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, NH recently appointed a new Director and CEO, Dr. Alan Chong. Dr. Chong will be the Museum’s ninth director in 87 years; he succeeds Susan Strickler, who retired in June after 20 years in the position.

“I am truly honored to have been chosen as the Director and CEO of the Currier Museum of Art. This excellent museum has accomplished a great deal, not the least a beautiful building which ties its historic components together,” said Dr. Chong.

The Museum, which features European and American paintings; decorative arts; photographs and sculpture, includes work by Picasso; Monet; O’Keeffe, Wyeth and LeWitt. From October 1, 2016 through January 16, 2017 the Museum will showcase an exhibit Mount Washington: The Crown of New England, the first-ever museum exhibition devoted entirely to art featuring the Mount Washington region, and the first exhibit Dr. Chong will oversee in his new role.

“[The Currier Museum] is a small museum with impact – and with great potential,” said Dr. Chong. “There is a great advantage in being a nimble and creative institution that can adjust to its environment. I hope that I can help imagine a new path for the Currier Museum.”

Dr Alan Chong | Image courtesy Currier Museum

2017 is set to be a banner year for the Museum, aside from this recent change in leadership, the Museum was also awarded a $60,000 grant from Jane’s Trust, which will be used to expand its popular arts education programs. In the coming year, the Museum aims to increase access to artistic expression and arts education for underserved populations.

Dr. Chong in particular believes strongly in this mission: “We should bring the museum closer to its audience by bringing a depth of engagement with more first-time visitors and stronger support.”

Though Dr. Chong is new to the Manchester area, having relocated from Singapore where he served as the Director of the Asian Civilisations Museum and the Peranakan Museum, he is not new to the New England area. From 1999 through 2010, Dr. Chong held the position of Lia and William Poorvu Curator of the Collection at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

“Manchester is an up and coming town in a beautiful part of the world. I couldn’t be happier to be settling here: it’s cooler than Singapore and the traffic is better than Boston!” said Dr. Chong.

Dr. Chong officially began his position at the Museum on Thursday September 8th.

He concluded, “It’s my hope that the Currier Museum will be treasured by all of New England.”

Top Image Entrance to Currier Museum | ‘Origins’ sculpture by Mark di Suvero 2001-2004 | Image courtesy Currier Museum

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