The dilapidated Lupinewood mansion is perched atop a winding hill in Greenfield, Massachusetts, overlooking the Connecticut River Valley. Once the lavish estate of the wealthy Peabody family, today Lupinewood exists as a collective of artists, organizers, educators, and health-care providers who are majority trans and queer—all living and working to establish a mutually supportive space for members and transient guests. They collaborate on art and share living spaces, income, food, knowledge, and intertwining intimate relationships, while always prioritizing their core tenets of sanctuary, convergence, and confrontation.

The 6,000-square-foot home and its 4.02 acres of land, which exists on colonized Pocumtuc territory, is a complicated haven for its eight members. Though the collective has existed in some form or another for about seven years, they didn’t truly have a safe and productive home until January 2017, when the group finally moved into Lupinewood.

To learn more about Lupinewood, we asked the collective what existing at Lupinewood means to them, and what they believe is possible at this place.

Cea Wiley of Lupinewood. Photo by Caleb Cole

Cea Wiley

Because I’m an herbalist, Lupinewood is a wild paradox for me. It’s a former robber baron’s mansion reclaimed by queer radical artists and organizers; the land, once manicured to perfection, has been reclaimed by plants growing any way they please; the inground swimming pool is getting swallowed by vines. It’s a fairy tale—it’s Robin Hood! Yet, here I am, a white person “owning” and living in structures erected on land stolen by white colonizers through genocide. As I pull weeds out of the gardens here, I think of the ways in which I am an invader myself.

I am starting a low-cost apothecary at Lupinewood, and want to develop a community clinic from it, with the aim of providing alternative health care to low-income folks. I’m setting up a medicinal garden, from which I can source medicine for the clinic, as well as for the street medic and medic trainer work to support front-line struggles. I want Lupinewood’s colonized land to materially combat the corrosion of capitalism on people’s bodies. I want it overrun with at-risk and endangered plants, plants that can be supportive of a complex and generative ecosystem. Additionally, I hope to use this place to host conferences and convergences with other radical health-care workers, using them to deepen the discourse around what it means to live within paradoxes, even as we fight them.

Aurora Rainer of Lupinewood. Photo by Caleb Cole

Aurora Rainer

There’s a long tradition of queers building alternative families and domestic structures. Many folks have had to: their biological families cut them loose, over and over; the domestic models they were handed couldn’t fit them. So many queer people have needed, historically, to be artists. They’ve needed to craft realities for themselves, their friends, and their partners.

I see myself as humbly continuing this tradition through Lupinewood. I am a painter by trade and have a painting studio here, where I make art about queer love and how trans-femininity lives in my white settler body. I take care of the beehives and I apprentice as an

herbalist, tending the food, medicine, and pollinator gardens here. I also help oversee our collective kitchen, keeping track of bulk orders and supply needs, trying to ensure there’s enough soup and tea for whoever’s catching a cold or working overtime. All of these projects are about queer, radical homemaking to me. They’re about crafting a reality in which my partners and friends can thrive, despite the obstacles the dominant culture gives them.

As a femme who grew up believing I could not occupy a feminine position, it’s deeply cathartic to engage directly in this feminized labor. And as a woman committed to social struggle, it is deeply healing, and deeply political, to imagine ways this labor can happen outside the oppressive frameworks in which capitalism has always placed femme labor.

Alyssa Kai of Lupinewood. Photo by Caleb Cole

Alyssa Kai

From a fascist right emboldened by Trump to the waves of evictions in the wake of the Ghost Ship fire, collective spaces of sanctuary, cultural production, and political action are under attack and more important than ever to defend and grow. I came up in such spaces, moving through the constellations of DIY living and performance venues on tour with one

musical project or another, stepping into the lush worlds generated by the activity they housed. For me and countless others, DIY spaces are exceptional places of experimentation that generate microcultures resilient to the challenges of political conflict, and provide points of refuge for people whose identities are under constant attack.

Since we moved in on New Year’s Eve, Lupinewood has quickly become a node for networks of queer and politicized projects circulating around the continent. We have an agency here that many collective spaces don’t have the luxury of wielding: agency over the safety of the space, over the ways it gets used and built out, over the reliability of a future here. Because of this, Lupinewood feels poised to be a particularly powerful and long-running space as both a safe haven for embattled people and a flywheel for the folks and projects that pass through here, whether for a day or a year. And as stewards of this place, we have made a collective commitment to each other: that we will work to keep it that way, in perpetuity.

Noel’le Longhaul of Lupinewood. Photo by Caleb Cole

Noel’le Longhaul

My personal art and tattoo practice grew out of my life as a transient younger punk, not yet having come out as trans, dissociated from where I came from and who I was. Riding trains across the country, I began tattooing elaborate, enchanted houses and landscapes on the transient and often similarly dissociated friends I met, while the literal homes and landscapes around me blurred. I was fundamentally ungrounded, and it took an immense toll on my body and spirit.

Lupinewood is an enchanted landscape. Its architecture is magical; it is thickly wooded and surrounded by wandering paths through the trees, and both the house and the land it sits on mirror the imagery in my work, sometimes uncannily. But it is also an actual place that I wake up to. It gives me the resources I need to regenerate my body so I can continue tattooing and art-making with the intensity that my practice demands.

One of the most crucial—and rare—resources it provides is a shared life with a collective of people who are my partners, friends, and artistic collaborators. The ability to move fluidly between making meals and making art together feels alchemical. It magnifies the meaning of the cultural production, turning a tattoo or a print into an artifact of a shared experience. And it turns daily routines into domestic rituals, which deepen in significance as more people stay here, cook here, receive medicine here, and use this place to ground themselves before making their next move.

beyon wren moor of Lupinewood. Photo by Caleb Cole

beyon wren moor

As a two-spirit mixed Cree and Ukrainian settler now living on occupied Pocumtuc territory, I have no rights in this place called Lupinewood. The white settler promise of “human rights” has never included me or my people, and I know the safeties and comforts promised by such rights are on the same spectrum as feelings of entitlement. For me, Lupinewood is a place of responsibility: to care for the land and the people whose ancestors feed the trees and rivers here.

In the seven months since I arrived, Lupinewood has been a site of security and healing for me, an experience that sits uneasily alongside the knowledge of desperate indigenous struggles elsewhere. Before Lupinewood, and in between living at the Unist’ot’en Camp, Standing Rock, and on other front lines across so-called british columbia, I had been collecting the words and stories of 14indigenous women and two-spirit land defenders. With the help of my longtime collaborator, I am in the process of illustrating, hand-printing, and binding their words into a book describing what land defense looks like in their 14 respective nations. When finished, we plan to sell the book as one of many efforts to support their fight.

I have spent most of my life struggling for indigenous sovereignty and the defense of land, and I intend to use Lupinewood as a point of retreat and convergence for myself and other indigenous land defenders, as well as a tool to rally resources from the relative wealth of this area for front-line struggles.

Nick Berger of Lupinewood. Photo by Caleb Cole

Nick Berger

I’m a non-binary trans artist and musician who’s been living and organizing collectively for the past decade. The punk, queer, and organizing scenes I came up in were vibrant and chaotic, full of glorious aspirations and attempts to combat the massive power structures we recognized as the source of so much violence and pain. Simultaneously, these scenes had strong tendencies toward guilt and self-negation; the people in them were constantly prioritizing action at the expense of their own well-being. We were throwing ourselves at the problems we saw, but there was no space to heal the wounds this inevitably gave us.

As I’ve watched this dynamic happen, I’ve realized that many of us have a deeply internalized sense of disposability toward our bodies and relationships. Living within the capitalist, white, cis-het patriarchy means learning to commoditize lived experiences, and though many radicals are aware of and critical of this, it runs deep. What does it mean to stay in one place, even as one’s trauma catches up to them? What does it mean to consider a set of relationships, beyond perhaps a single romantic partnership, non-disposable? At Lupinewood, I want to work toward reconnecting basic self-care and mutual aid to the labor of organizing work. I want Lupinewood to engage a broader network of collective projects that are genuinely effective politically, and genuinely trauma-informed and care-oriented.

Terran Nullius of Lupinewood. Photo by Caleb Cole

Terran Nullius

I’ve worked with immigrants and refugees for the past nine years. I coordinate a site where classes and counseling services are free to non-native English speakers. These folks create a place together that is beautiful and worthy of defending, even as this country’s political culture turns against them.

We moved into Lupinewood as Trump was getting elected, with his bluster about a border wall and mass deportations. As we started unpacking our boxes here, the national conversation was decidedly about displacement.

Like my classroom, Lupinewood is about the creation and defense of place.

I’m not an immigrant. I’m white, U.S.-born, and live on stolen land. My relationship to place is privileged in many respects. Even with my privileges, finding a secure place has been incredibly hard. Being trans, polyamorous, lower class, and saddled with student debt have all led to years of unsafe, unstable, and ugly living situations for me and so many of the people I’m close to.

I want Lupinewood to create a place for people who more often battle displacement. I want to make it safe and strong, with the ability to offer shelter on short notice. I want to leverage Lupinewood’s privileges into infrastructure to support those who lack it. I want to make it physically beautiful, the kind of space people without power usually cannot access. I want to build a place worthy of defense.

Andrew Huckins of Lupinewood. Photo by Caleb Cole

Andrew Huckins

I believe that architecture subtly defines the limits of what’s possible, whether one is trying to change the world, simply get out of bed in the morning, or both. I’m thinking not just of physical space, but of cultural, economic, political, and social space as well. Whether it’s a local bylaw that recognizes only heteronuclear definitions of family, or the behavioral norms enforced by one’s peers, these architectures define paths of least resistance that lead inexorably toward a broken status quo.

The seven years I’ve spent working to realize Lupinewood have been a practice in forging paths that diverge from those of least resistance, and toward making resistance part of Lupinewood’s architectural DNA. Beyond the particular acts of resistance enacted by our collective and its networks, Lupinewood is, for me, the first major step on a lifelong path of creating, growing, and defending alternatives to the well-trodden walkways this civilization has wandered down.

I see Lupinewood growing into a deep resource for the upcoming struggles that our communities face. Building a kitchen capable of cooking for large groups of people, setting up a communal wood and metal shop, creating space for political organizers and their projects—while these are some of the specific next steps that I’m excited about, I feel most moved by Lupinewood’s broader potential to support, rather than suppress, the wisdom and power of those on the receiving end of systems of abusive violence.

Lupinewood

Greenfield, Massachusetts

Website

Photos by Caleb Cole

The post Building Sanctuary appeared first on Take Magazine.

For the month of June, LGBTQIA* folks and allies across New England come together in thoughtful reflection and celebration of Pride, which highlights progress since the Stonewall Riots. While much progress has been made, it is also an important time to reflect on what work our LGBTQIA* communities need to do in order to promote inclusivity, safety, and basic civil rights in the face of a hostile political system. We at Take want to acknowledge this important month by highlighting the artists whose work engages with LGBTQIA* themes and issues, as well as the creatives who claim these sexuality, minority, and gender non-conforming identities. All the folks featured on this list enlivened our editorial by challenging normative understandings of gender, sexuality, and identity in general through their unique work.

The following stories are about all kinds artists: previously pregnant butch dykes, rural drag queens of color, cis gay Asian-Americans, trans femmes, lesbian separatists, non-binary babes, and many individuals and groups of people whose identities aren’t as easily summarized. This diversity in our editorial exists because that is the diversity of our region. Though it’s true that we live in a society that constantly works to erase and delegitimize the existence of LGBTQIA* people, we’re still finding artists and cultural leaders who boldly embrace this sometimes fraught, yet always beautiful, spectrum of existence.

While we are proud to present our highlighted list of artists we’ve covered since January 2015, we’re not so naive to think that these are the only LGBTQIA* folks we’ve featured. While some artists openly share their identities with our staff and contributors, other artists have asked us to keep their identities off the record, or choose to never disclose for privacy and safety concerns.

Take is proud to feature these artists and our team will work harder to bring you more creative voices from the LGBTQIA* community as we expand our web edition and return to print this fall.

Massachusetts

Car Wash

Wading In

This Ain’t No Game

Comfort & Discomfort

Catastrophe in Provincetown

The Insider’s Take: Eternal Slumber Party

Come Closer

Tender, Forever

Becoming The Gold Dust Orphans

Facebook-to-Face

The Kids Are Alright

Cave and the Art of Community

Connecticut

Women of Abstraction

Gender Bender

Feminine Mystique

BL&D Interview – Arien Wilkerson

From Clay to Catastasis

Life is Gross

Sacred Stones

Crossing Equators with Arien Wilkerson

Maine

Portland’s Cherry Lemonade

Notes from an Expat: Where Are You From

Not-so-Little Women

Take Q&A: Crystal Williams—Writer, Advocate, Advisor

Slow Boat to Iceland

The Simple Power of the Cup

New Hampshire

Manchester’s “Sexy Industrialist”

Hood is Downtown…For Now

Rhode Island

Kitty Eyes & Spandex

Taken: Todd Oldham at RISD

Rachel Blumberg Sees And Hears More Than You

Hustler of Providence

Aurora Catalyzes Variety and Community in Providence

ART/Crush: J.R. Uretsky

Meet Rhode Island’s Newest City Boy

Nine Months in Drag

Vermont

The Rainbow Cattle Co.

Make Some Time for Angus McCullough

What Happened Before Homosexuals?

New England

Artists to Watch 2017

10 New England Tattooers You Need to Follow on Instagram

7 New England Niche Film Festivals You Can’t Miss

The post Take Magazine Pride Month Round-up appeared first on Take Magazine.

Professional and personal challenges aside, I knew my 2016 was bust when Bowie died. As a cultural influencer he was unparalleled; the depth to which his death had an effect on my friends was unlike anything I had experienced from the passing of any other cultural figure in my life.

2016 went on to claim many more amazing creative people. All news was just generally shitty, and the U.S. election left the entire world with a sense of unease, at best, and utter dread, at worst.

What on earth could possibly be “Best of” from a year like this?

When times seem bleak, it seems trite to say something along the lines of “Look! Good stuff happened, too!” But our work at Take is about bringing you the best of the creative communities of New England. When times are trying, it bears remembering that art rejuvenates the mind and the heart.

To that end, we looked back at all the stories we covered this year and are presenting a list comprised of our favorites, our most read, and some stories we think not enough readers had a chance to see. We hope you enjoy giving them a read, perhaps for the first time, maybe for the second or third.

As Take Magazine heads into 2017, we’re going to continue to look for stories about creative people and ideas that shape where we live, and pass them on to you. The year ahead is full of uncertainty; as our creative neighbors continue to make art and culture in response to it, we will be there to both report on, and celebrate, the extraordinary things they do.

Wishing you a very safe and Happy New Year from all of us at Take.

Michael Kusek
Publisher

Connecticut

Red Color Story Fall/Winter 2017 | Photo courtesy of American Woolen Company

Paris, Milan, London, and New York have long been the fashion capitals of the world. Now add Stafford Springs, Connecticut.

Massachusetts

Noel’le Longhaul’s unique style and approach to the centuries-old practice of tattooing transcends our narrow, worldly expectations. 

Maine

Illustration by Rob Kimmel

It doesn’t matter whether you think I look like I’m from Maine.

New Hampshire

Iron & Air

Iron & Air Magazine will quell your motorcycle-ride-through-the-mountains wanderlust when the weather don’t play.

Rhode Island

A tender glance into J.R’s world of big queer feelings, Star Trek Next Gen, and laying on the floor with Scott the cat.

Vermont

Photo by Jewellea Photography | Courtesy of the Wexler Gallery

Roberto Lugo’s pottery will blow your damn mind, mixing classic Royal Worcester forms, graffiti, and some Ghostface Killah.

Top image Nick Cave “Until” | Photo courtesy MASSMoCA / Photography by James Prinz

NICK CAVE, UNTIL, 2016
MASS MOCA, NORTH ADAMS, MA
OPEN THROUGH EARLY SEPTEMBER 2017

The post Take Magazine – Best of 2016 appeared first on Take Magazine.

I arrived at Charon Visionary Art and Tattoo, overlooking Avenue A in Turners Falls Massachusetts, with some cash and no idea what I wanted tattooed on my body (perhaps something on my chest?). Most folks would be nervous…and I certainly was. However, the moment I saw Noel’le Longhaul emerge from their curtained portion of the studio, I knew it’d be a brilliant experience.

Noel’le is a rare combination of nuanced visual artist, revelatory musician, outspoken LGBTQA* advocate, and brilliant tattooer, with a genuinely compassionate personhood and physical presence which can only be described as transcendent. At 25, Noel’le has accomplished and experienced so much, which is undoubtedly present in their tattoos and process, “…a lot of the times [the tattoos] reflect a complicated experience of fraught or difficult femininity that I engage with. They reflect my political standpoint in terms of being pieces that talk about the non-hierarchical organization of organic chaos…they also reflect the landscapes that I grew up in, and have chosen to remain in.”

Photo courtesy Noel’le’s Instagram page

Anyone tattooed in the past five decades knows how a usual session works. There’s some sort of initial consultation, the artists designs the piece, or okays a piece brought in by a client, stencils the work on the customer, then blasts the design onto their body. It’s a cordial, enjoyable and efficient process that I’ve been a part of many times. Since Noel’le did not start tattooing under the supervision of a mentor, essentially developing their skills in a vacuum, her process is much different, “Ultimately, tattooing was, for me, a ritualized process of support for people that I cared about…my body, and what I could do with my body in terms of being in service to their experience…”

Noel’le typically begins with an extended conversation about what you’re looking for, generally, during your tattooing experience. This conversation ranges from psycho-spiritual to purely aesthetic, while Noel’le intently listens and sketches throughout.  Want to build an image based on a personal narrative? Have a vague childhood memory that’s manifested itself as a set of complex motifs throughout your life? Perhaps you have a picture of some cool floral wallpaper from your grandparent’s house – tell or show Noel’le and they’ll accommodate, internalizing your viewpoints while lending their specific blend of surrealism, realism, and expert touch to the design.

Photo courtesy Noel’le’s Instagram page. Pictured, Cozette Lehman

“The conversation aspect of my process is ultimately about finding places where we actually mesh with each other…the tattoos themselves are archives of the process of finding the overlaps and the dissolves of the experiences of the people I’m working with.” After this conversation and several drafts, they draw up a final image, then sculpt a sketch of that final image onto your body. The rest of the session is freehand, based solely on the skin sketches and the final drawing made earlier in the conversation.

What makes their process unique for me, is that it’s inherently more collaborative and empathetic relative to my past experiences. Philosophically speaking, all tattooing is collaborative, unless you’re taking the stick-n-poke needle to yourself or turning the gun on your own leg. Essentially, a tattooing experience with Noel’le is notably collaborative since it’s a design created through thoughtful interaction over hours of intense engagement.

Photo courtesy Noel’le’s Instagram page.

After surveying Noel’le’s portfolio, it’s easy to identify certain themes and visual motifs such as the deep woods, smallness, negative space, and weathered body parts. Since Noel’le’s own humanity and perspective is such a central part of the design process, they can’t help but interject these themes. In addition, to some extent, these themes are partially a product of re-occurring aesthetic requests made by people who choose to tattoo with them, “I think I have one series of visual images, a visual cannon that people identify with to varying degrees. Some people say ‘I just want a landscape like how you make landscapes.’ And other people who need something way more nuanced and strange than that.” The artful accomplishment of the visual language that Noel’le has developed over time, coupled with her uniquely democratic and empathetic process leads to a full calendar of bookings. In fact, I waited nearly eight months to see them.

What’s important about Noel’le’s work, apart from the skillful renderings of ideas and physical objects into eternal bodily signposts, is her existence within the work. In addition, their process is inherently inclusive. People come to Noel’le Longhaul because they want their body to fuse with her rare artistic presence while having their perspectives included and respected. After two hours of conversation, and three hours of nearly continuous tattooing, I was lucky enough to be forever marked by an experience with them.

Got a nicer picture of this piece for @iambeyon. ♡♡♡ #loone #brighthollowtattooing #laughingloone #noellelonghaul #queerwitch #darkart #darkartists #blxckink #btattooing #qttr #transartist #blackworkerssubmission #inkstinctsubmission

A post shared by Noel'le Longhaul (@laughingloone) on Mar 14, 2016 at 4:01pm PDT

Noel’le Longhaul tattoos by appointment at Charon Art Visionary Tattoo in Turners Falls, Massachusetts. They also perform with western Massachusetts-based bands Loone, Mallory, and paper bee. Be on the look-out for a soon-to-be-published book of Noel’le’s writings, art and tattoos from Silver Sprocket Bicycle Club.  

Top photo by Nick Berger

The post Comfort & Discomfort appeared first on Take Magazine.