Cartooning as medicine? Walker Mettling certainly thinks it can be. The Providence, Rhode Island-based artist believes cartooning has curative powers.

Mettling is the driving force behind the Providence Comics Consortium, a loosely knit collaborative that hosts free cartooning classes in the city’s public library and also publishers the work of children and adult cartoonists. After the 2016 U.S. election, a parent got in touch with Mettling to vent her frustrations about the election of Donald Trump. “Her kid was an artist and was freaked out and was not sure if the family would have to leave the country,” Mettling recalls. His salve? An assignment that would transfer those fears onto paper.

The result of the post-election assignment, Mettling says, was an arresting mishmash of cartoons. “One of them showed Trump’s head on a deer surrounded by hunters. It took this kid’s feelings of powerlessness and projected that through symbols,” Mettling says. “It flipped the power dynamic that way.”

Mettling has worked this same principle in his own life. He remembers that when he had the flu and was groggy from Nyquil, he would use a large brush and cover a large sheet in what he called “blobs.” This series of “Blob Revelations” was not merely therapeutic; it became a series of poster art that was showcased for a while at Providence’s White Electric Coffee.

Blob Revelations #1 (excerpt). Photo courtesy of the artist.

It seems that many of Mettling’s projects have their genesis in serendipity. In 2008, Mettling hosted a series of story events for kids and loosely published a couple of books tied to these events. The Providence public library took notice. When they were looking to broaden their programming for children, they recruited Walker to launch classes that taught comics and cartooning, a project that cannonballed into the Providence Comics Consortium.

The city’s Ada Books often hosts the artists and showcases their work. When a pipe burst at the store and many books got wet, Mettling and friends took some of the old Providence Sunday Journals and hung them out to dry. The large-format medium was the basis for another series, the Providence Sunday Wipeout, where kids used a larger canvas for their creations.

Walker Mettling, PCC Showcase. Photo courtesy of the artist.

In addition to work for the PCC, Mettling is a recipient of a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts for his work and a 2017 Artist Fellow at The Rhode Island School of Design. While his own personal projects have been cooking, he says he remains consistently blown away by the cartooning skills in the children he teaches. Case in point: a girl used the library’s special collections on whaling artifacts to create a mangia-inspired script where all the animal characters had scrimshaw teeth.

PCC Giant Book of Visionary Sketchbook Games (excerpt). Photo courtesy of the artist.

“One of the ways these classes have shaken out is that there are a lot of generative improv elements in play,” Mettling says. How so? Teams of kids work in groups and comics are being created in the moment according to different individual interpretations of a common thread. “It’s very cathartic like that,” he adds.

Walker Mettling–cartoonist
Providence, Rhode Island
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Photos courtesy of Walker Mettling

The post Cartooning as Catharsis appeared first on Take Magazine.

A stone’s throw from the trendy bars and restaurants of Providence’s west side, on an unassuming block dominated by body shops, parking lots, and mill condos, sits a retail showroom. Barbed wire surrounds the building—a relic from previous owners—but eagle-eyed shoppers will spot the House of Cach logo on the building’s tufted front door. Beneath it, a description: “A Concept-Driven Jewelry/Accessory Retail Studio.”
Inside, buddhas, butterflies, and bullet casings cohabitate with preserved flowers, starfish, and cicadas.

The accessories company creates wild designs—which they describe as “wearable art”—for daring customers. Bold photos line the walls; a studded jockstrap/fur vest combo hangs only a few feet away from delicate pearl wedding headbands and large editorial pieces from a collection inspired by beetles and other bugs.

Company cofounder Alexa Cach (pronounced “cash”) was born and educated in Switzerland, but has called Providence home since 2002. Though she has always been compelled to create, she began her career in business, launching several production companies that showcased the work of other creative people: GWAND, a fashion week in Switzerland that lured the likes of Vivienne Westwood and Raf Simons; and later Pet Fashion Week, a New York trade show and runway event targeting high-end pet owners. (It sounds strange now, but this was peak Paris Hilton era.)

House of Cach founders photo by Ian Barnard

“It finally got to a point that my desire to build things outweighed the fear,” Cach says about her current venture, which she and cofounder Molly Northern launched seven years ago. Both knew immediately that they wanted House of Cach to exist outside the fast-paced fashion world. “As a small company, we can’t pump out several brand-new collections each year,” she admits. “By doing what we do, we’re not creating throwaway pieces that lose value as soon as next season comes along.”

On Alena: Silver spike flower crown, $1,300; white rose chestplate, $1,500; on Dylan: Gold flower choker (worn as headpiece), $675; gold flowing flower headpiece (worn as neckpiece), $1,275. Photo by Ian Barnard

House of Cach is conceptual, not trend driven. Cach thinks of each line as a large art installation, one that inspires pieces that incorporate the wearer into the project’s larger whole. #projectbug, for instance, was a multi-artist effort with pieces made from preserved insects. Large masks and headpieces were designed and showcased in elaborate photo shoots, and, eventually, smaller brooches and necklaces were made from real cicadas and beetles. It remains their most popular line.

But bugs? “I’m interested in the duality of emotion that insects provide,” she explains. “A single bug seems delicate and fragile, until it lands on you.”

Rondelle hair band, $79; crystal drop earrings, $110; crystal shard neckpiece, $275. Photo by Ian Barnard

Cach and Northern base a lot of designs on vintage metal components, many of which they’ve collected together over the years. “I can usually find just about anything,” says Northern, who designs individual pieces and sources all raw materials for the company. She’s secretive about her sourcing, but says that the company currently houses a large inventory of materials that are employed for custom pieces.

HoC has begun courting the bridal market, a seemingly incongruous creative jump. But brides had already been seeking out their designs, and the company enjoys the challenge of custom work, particularly for adventurous clients. (They once made a pair of bullet cartridge earrings for a three-year-old flower girl.)

To that end, the company launched a ready-to-wear bridal line in July, with headpieces and neck-pieces that incorporate freshwater pearls, real starfish, and orchids preserved in full bloom. Each element is part of a small capsule collection, one that can be modified and customized to fit the desires of each bride. Select New England stylists will carry each capsule—from tiaras and combs to necklaces and earrings—offering an unusual opportunity to mix and match.

Lucite earrings, $98; crystal shard, $275. Photo by Ian Barnard

As the bridal line expands, the artsier projects will also continue. “To offset the sweetness of the bridal line,” Cach says, “I want to do a body of work dealing with animal bones.”

A winking disclaimer on the company’s website perhaps best explains their philosophy: “Wearing House of Cach expresses an inner rebel and is not for everyone.”

Need more cach? Here’s a subscriber-only gallery of outtakes from our House of Cach fashion shoot.

House of Cach–custom jewelry
Providence, Rhode Island
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Top image: Large cicada necklace (worn as headpiece), $178; crystal drop earrings, $110; black hematite and onyx cuff, $98. Photo by Ian Barnard.

The post Cach Out appeared first on Take Magazine.

An art and design collective founded by Matt Muller, Levi Bedall, and Augie Lehrecke, Pneuhaus began creating pneumatic architectural installations in 2014. The idea came about through a collaboration with a group at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) who wanted to create an interdisciplinary, mobile gallery space for students to gather, display their work, and host events.

Fabric Prism No. 2, photo courtesy of Pneuhaus

“After making one and inflating it for the first time,” recalls Bedall, who, along with Lehrecke, was then an undergrad in furniture design at RISD, “we were so excited about the energy and engagement people brought to the space that we decided to focus on making more inflatables for our thesis.” The team soon discovered huge potential for innovation in the medium.

Pneumatic Masonry, photo courtesy of Pneuhaus

Recent works include Pneumatic Masonry, an ongoing exploration of semipermanent inflatable construction; Camera Obscura, a modern take on traditional pinhole image projection; and 40 Foot Dome, an empty void that can be used for video art, music, dance performances, and more. Because they’re packable, the inflatables can be transported and rented easily for a wide variety of events.

Looking to the future, Bedall says the collective plans to “continue pushing the boundaries of inflatable spaces,” and also hopes to expand the scale of objects made—with furniture and toys on one end and more permanent buildings on the other. “We are very fortunate to be in a position where our work kind of advertises itself,” he says.

Visitors inside the RGBubble experience color in a whole new light. | Photo courtesy of Pneuhaus

Pneuhaus–Collective
Providence, Rhode Island
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Top image: Fabric Prism No. 2, Pneuhaus. Photo courtesy of Pneuhaus

The post The Pneu Craze appeared first on Take Magazine.

America proclaims itself the land of the free, but imprisons more people than every other country in the world. That profound hypocrisy unfolds in Freedom Project, a multimedia physical theater work from Providence, Rhode Island-based Everett Company. The show brings together personal stories culled from research and interviews, athletic choreography, and evocative imagery in an intimate examination of the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States.

Freedom Project represents a natural progression for Everett, which provides free after-school theater and dance programs for low income youth in Providence and often responds to social issues in its work. “We were seeing firsthand the effects of mass incarceration on communities of color and low income communities locally,” says Aaron Jungels, co-executive/artistic director. “So many of our students had family members who were incarcerated, so many former students had been incarcerated, even former company members had ended up incarcerated.”

Jungels says Everett aims to “bring many perspectives together” while “centering [the work] in the community that is most impacted” by mass incarceration. At the outset of the project, the company asked itself, “How can performance most effectively contribute to a movement to end mass incarceration?” As a company Everett members improvise in the creative process, videotaping everything and returning to what resonates emotionally. Composition then involves pulling pieces together that speak to each other. “It’s a little bit like creating a puzzle without having the outlines,” Jungels says. “The outlines are forming as you’re building it.”

Grace Face, Freedom Project, Everett Company

Freedom Project features projections of interview subjects among its varied media, providing a chance for unfiltered testimonials from formerly incarcerated individuals that can be juxtaposed to reinforce or enhance their resonance. “Things like that are powerful when you hear it from the voice of the person themselves, not translated through an actor,” Jungels says.

Jungels hopes that audiences leave both outraged at a system unnecessarily brutalizing so many people and energized to make an impact rather than be complacent. “This is going to be the first time we perform [the piece] since the election,” he says. “Our previous run of it was last summer.” He explains how the subject matter “has been resonating differently” in the face of the most overtly white supremacist administration in the last several years. “It was there, but it was harder to convince people that it was there. There wasn’t really an acceptance that a lot of the power structures in this country are racist basically.”

Aaron Jungels, Freedom Project, Everett Company

This summer Everett took Freedom Project to The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard, Trinity Rep in Providence, and Kō Festival in Amherst, Massachusetts. “When we went to Trinity, we were reaching an audience that doesn’t probably normally see this kind of theater, and may be challenged by the political perspectives in it,” Jungels says. “That’s what I really feel is where we can have the most impact.”

Performing around New England, considered an ostensibly progressive area, has been important for breaking down some stereotypes about mass incarceration, an issue that has steadily worsened around the country in the last four decades. “People always tend to think of this as an urban issue,” Jungels says. “But it turns out it impacts rural communities strongly, too. Obviously the statistics are worse when you look at the South, but New England is not without its issues. We here in Rhode Island have a voter ID law, and we’re supposed to be one of the bluest states in the country. And yet no one even thought to challenge it or thought to connect it to these other issues.”

Christopher Johnson, Freedom Project, image by Justine Bevilacqua

Everett will perform Freedom Project at the SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine on Friday, September 8th and Saturday, September 9th at 7:30 p.m. That weekend they’ll hold workshops with Maine Inside Out, an organization that uses theater to help formerly incarcerated youth unpack the issues they face upon release. The piece will then travel to New England Youth Theatre in Brattleboro in association with Vermont Performance Lab on Friday, September 15th and Saturday, September 16th at 7:00 p.m.

Jungels emphasizes Freedom Project’s intentions to address the sobering issue of mass incarceration with emotional complexity. “There’s a lot of humor. There’s a lot of beauty. It’s not going to be a dreary, hopeless experience,” he says. “It’s going to be something where I think people are going to come away uplifted. They’re going to come away energized. And I think they’re going to come away feeling hopeful that change is possible.”

Aaron Jungels–Co-Executive/Artistic Director, Everett Company
Providence, Rhode Island
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Photography by Justine Bevilacqua, courtesy of Aaron Jungels and Everett Company

The post #TakeAction: Finding Hope in the Theater appeared first on Take Magazine.

Kevin Broccoli might be the busiest person in New England. The 33-year-old Rhode Island native writes, acts, directs, and works as artistic director of the ambitiously titled Epic Theatre Company.

“Epic is a small—very small—company that focuses on work that is story-driven,” says Broccoli. (Yes, his name is pronounced like the vegetable.) With minimal sets and barely any costume budget, Epic is about to kick off its sixth full season, one that features a whopping ten shows over ten months.

Kevin Broccoli, image courtesy of the actor

The season includes Red Speedo, Lucas Hnath’s 2013 drama about Olympic hopefuls and performance enhancing drugs. Set at an actual swimming pool, the play will be performed poolside at the Pawtucket Boys & Girls Club. Another highlight is season closer Wolf Hall, based on Hilary Mantel’s historical epic, which will be staged in a large warehouse with a cast of 35 actors.

“People are disillusioned with theatre right now,” Broccoli says. “People like Netflix. I can’t blame them, I like Netflix too.” That’s why he selects plays that will make people sit up and pay attention, plays he hopes will provoke strong reactions.

Broccoli also acts and writes, in addition to working days in his hometown public library. “I usually start writing at midnight and go until 3 a.m. I revise during the day, but I write late at night. If a first draft takes longer than a week I’m not going to finish it.” Epic just wrapped up a world premiere run of Dorothy, Rose, Sophia and Blanche, a comedy about four women who wake up to find themselves cast in a reboot of The Golden Girls. “People thought we were just doing scenes from The Golden Girls,” he says.

Broccoli’s summer has been dominated by a legal kerfuffle related to another of his plays. James Franco and Me is a two-man show where a character named Kevin Broccoli meets the actor James Franco in a hospital waiting room as Broccoli’s father lies dying nearby. It premiered last fall in a predictably quirky way: Broccoli played himself and a different actor played Franco every night.

James Franco and Me was successful enough that it a second staging was scheduled in New York, now with two actors playing Broccoli and two others playing Franco. “We planned a three-performance run, and it was all good to go until the venue got a cease-and-desist letter from Franco’s lawyers,” Broccoli says. The venue bailed, so Broccoli wrote a strongly worded press release. Within days, the news was featured everywhere from Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly to People.com and the New York Times.

The biggest surprise to Broccoli is that the letter didn’t come earlier. “We did the show 30 times in Rhode Island,” he says. “They didn’t care; they thought it didn’t matter. Judging by the letter, they only cared because we were bringing it to New York.”

Broccoli says he reached out to Franco’s agent, publicist, and even an ex-girlfriend, but hasn’t yet reached the actor himself. How could Franco, a RISD graduate, disapprove of the show when so much of his own work mines the same material?

Earlier this month Broccoli performed a reworked, redacted version of the show in Rhode Island for one night only. _______ and Me removed all references to the actor. “Who knows,” Broccoli said before the altered show debuted. “It might be funnier that way.”

Kevin Broccoli–actor/writer/artistic director, Epic Theatre Company
Providence, Rhode Island
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Top image from Dorothy, Rose, Sophia and Blanche, image courtesy of Kevin Broccoli

The post Watch Your Broccoli appeared first on Take Magazine.

If you can imagine a world that manages to creep you out while being simultaneously outrageously adorable, then you’ve landed smack in the middle of Mimi Chrzanowski’s brain—a mythical land of cleaner-shrimp dentists, post-death anxiety, and Mother’s Day in hell. Like her work, she possesses an air of absolute magic and a dark force of weird. “Mimi is a national treasure,” says artist and friend J.R. Uretsky. “Her work is fresh and unassuming. A mixture of joy and play with a touch of queer rage. Mimi’s gifs and comics make me want to keep making art in the wake of an uninspired political landscape. She’s a real gift.”

Born in Chicago, but raised in the small town of Tomah, Wisconsin, Chrzanowski made her way to Providence, Rhode Island on a whim after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire where she studied illustration. In Providence, Chrzanowski has been a part of the Dirt Palace and AS220, both artist-run collectives committed to the unabashed and uncensored production of art across all mediums. “I have been incredibly lucky to be in a city where there are so many beautiful weirdos doing incredible work,” she says. “I have a crush on everything everyone is doing, and I feel super inspired all of the time.”

Mimi Chrzanowski, Shrimp Cleaners, pen and marker, from The Providence Sunday Wipeout #3

Chrzanowski’s first love has always been illustration. Inspired early by anime such as Pokémon and Sailor Moon, she finds drawing a natural extension of her brain. “Drawing feels so pure; it is just pen or pencil and a piece of paper,” she says. “I love watching what other people can create out of such a simple medium, building these entire weird worlds that just feel like a pure form of expression, a place where people can get out whatever they want to say.” She also engages with other mediums such as screen printing, video, and animation, but feels most at home with the flexibility of just a pen and paper.

In 2016, Chrzanowski was invited to create her own LeyLines comic, a quarterly publication co-published by Grindstone Comics and Czap Books. Made with Love in Hell is a Heironymus Bosch-inspired extravaganza set on Mother’s Day in Hell. Clad in a single burnt orange tone, the comic unleashes a cast of iconic hell imagery with a sadistic and adorable undertone featuring familiar characters from her previous comics. Writer John Seven described this work as filled with “…oogly, creepy monsters in lots of gruesome crowd scenes in which atrocities, or at least ugliness, are smashed together like sardines, only this is all cute instead of horribly nightmarish.”

Mimi Chrzanowski, LeyLines Interior

Fresh from the QTZ Zine Fest at AS220, she is currently working on a children’s illustration for Cicada Magazine, a small batch publishing company that focuses on illustrated books for adults and children. In the fall she will showing work in an exhibition at Hoof Print in Chicago. “I have been lucky enough that I can make art for a living,” she says. “I just want to live a life where I can be in nature, be at home, be at the beach, and continue to be inspired and make things that make other people happy as well.”

Mimi Chrzanowski–illustrator
Providence, Rhode Island
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Top image, two of Mimi’s Shellies, illustration courtesy of Mimi Chrzanowski

The post Made with Love in Hell appeared first on Take Magazine.

There aren’t many artists not named Dali or Chagall who have an entire building devoted to their artwork, but the South Boston headquarters of the biotech company Intarcia Therapeutics was built from the ground up to highlight the “Keys to the Cure” artwork of Rhode Island artist Kelly Milukas. Visitors to Intarcia, which neighbors Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art, are greeted by a Milukas sculpture, and the artist worked closely with architect Vincenzo Giambertone to create exhibit spaces throughout the building, including custom niches for paintings and photos, pedestals for sculpture, and even details like lighting and paint-color choices.

Milukas began her signature work featuring the iconography of keys and locks back in 2010, when representatives of the International Regenerative Medicine Foundation—which advocates for stem-cell research—approached her to collaborate on a project to connect with the public through art. The brief: use the themes of keys, locks, and mysteries to “tell the story about how the body has the ability to heal itself,” says Milukas.

Kelly Milukas, Intarcia lobby

Milukas was reluctant to take on such a large public project at first, but an unplanned hospital stay convinced her to spend the next year creating her first Keys to the Cure series, now on display at the foundation’s Wellington, Florida, headquarters. “I became so impassioned by the scientists and patients that I met,” she says.

The artwork caught the eye of Intarcia CEO Kurt Graves, who was looking to inspire both the public and company employees as the company worked to bring an innovative type-2 diabetes treatment protocol to market. Milukas literally got in on the ground floor as Intarcia was planning a move to a new home on the South Boston waterfront, and her vision resonated strongly with Intarcia: “Keys are bodies—each one is an individual person, with a torso and head—so everyone in the office is a key,” she explains.

Milukas’ work can be seen everywhere at Intarcia, from lobbies to hallways to offices; company officials even lead new visitors on an ad hoc art tour. “They’ve really taken it into their entire corporate culture,” says Milukas, right down to awarding a series of “Keys” awards to employees who use their talents “to unlock progress and innovation.”

Floor 13 at Intarcia, Kelly Milukas

Intarcia has commissioned Milukas to create new works for three more company buildings. “The staff tell me how happy they are to have this inspiring art to come to work to every day,” she says. Thanks to her work for the regenerative medicine foundation and Intarcia, “Now when people come into my studio they ask me whether there is any good news, which is wonderful,” she says. “I’ve loved every minute of it.”

A series of personal health challenges over the last two years has made the work even more gratifying for Milukas. “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but being in so many care levels has helped me to understand what being a patient is about and what it means to be afraid to die,” she says. “So has that informed my work? Absolutely.”

Kelly Milukas–artist
Tiverton, Rhode Island
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Photos by Marianne Lee Photography

The post The Key to her Art appeared first on Take Magazine.

Two years ago, fueled by curiosity, Adam Anderson developed an interest in sunflowers. The landscape architect, owner of the Design Under Sky Studio in Providence, Rhode Island, decided he would plant 1,000 seeds along the river in Providence and see what would happen: “Is the soil good enough? If they do grow, will maintenance crews eventually just mow them down? If they bloom, will people just pluck them out of the ground?”

Happy enough with the initial results, Anderson, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, looked across the street and noticed two vacant lots where Highway 195 used to cut through. He wondered if he could grow a field of sunflowers there and sent an unsolicited proposal to the local highway commission. The commission accepted and he launched a Kickstarter project, “10,000 Suns: Highway to Park Project” to plant 10,000 sunflower seeds over two acres, tend to the plants, and watch them grow over the season.

This year will be the second year for the public installation project, and Anderson’s plans are more ambitious. He is planting wildflowers, in addition to the sunflowers, in another patch for a “river of flowers.” The site is located in two parcels between S. Main Street/South Water Street/Wickenden Street near downtown Providence and the Providence River. Last year, drought and unexpected expenses complicated things a little, but the project saw fruition with the help of a few dedicated volunteers including Anderson’s girlfriend, Sasha Azbel. The Kickstarter project is in place again and the installation is fueled by more volunteers and donations of material such as compost from Smithfield Peat and also from the city of Providence.

Why sunflowers? In terms of botanical performance, not many other plants can go from a seed to eight feet tall in two months, given the right conditions, Anderson says. Their growth makes for a dramatic transformation. “They are this striking symbol, great pollinators, and provide a lot of food for different species,” Anderson says. “They are also bioaccumulators so they can actually suck up and process organic toxins from the ground,” which is a big deal for city lots.

Sunflowers, Anderson says, act as a symbol of possibility in landscape. The seasonal aspect of the project is also a major part in landscape architecture, he says. They give us a chance to look at open spaces as not just something waiting for development, but as public space that could be critical to a city’s infrastructure. In addition to the sunflowers, of course, Anderson has been delighted by the community involvement and the people he has met through the project. “People come by and they engage with each other,” he says. “This has been a great platform to educate people about landscape architecture, and it’s good fun.”

Adam Anderson–founder, 10,000 Suns: Highway to Park Project
Providence, Rhode Island
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Photos courtesy of Adam Anderson

The post Sunny Side Up appeared first on Take Magazine.

Years ago, when Mary Beth Meehan heard about violence being committed against Mayan Guatemalans in New Bedford, Massachusetts, she wanted to tell their story the best way she knew: through photographs. Initially her ideas were met with resistance—”people were afraid of me, they were undocumented and didn’t want to be identified”—but that project, part of which was published in the Boston Globe, further strengthened the acclaimed Providence-based photographer’s focus on portraiture as a means of telling a story.

The Brockton, Massachusetts, native then decided to train her lens on her adopted city of Providence, and the resulting series of portraits became part of a project called Seen Unseen. A few select photographs from that series, capturing Providence in its diversity, was part of a public installation in the city through July 2016.

Wannton, SeenUnseen series,  photo by Mary Beth Meehan

Trained as a photojournalist, Meehan has moved to a slower, more interpretive form of the art over the past ten years, and now shines light on the vulnerable and overlooked, the people hidden in the shadows. Providence, she says, is interesting because it’s incredibly diverse but “you can live in your bubble and not ever really have to interact with other cultures.” She uses the continuing SeenUnseen project as a unifier, a way of shaking residents out of their comfort zones and reminding them about their common humanity through a series of striking portraits.

Rosaleen, SeenUnseen, photo by Mary Beth Meehan

Meehan is involved in the New England community, especially in Rhode Island where she teaches narrative photography at the bilingual International Charter School in Pawtucket. Meehan says teaching the children there to use the content of their own lives as subjects for their work—whether it is visiting Colombia every Christmas or accompanying a parent to the laundromat every Friday—has been a revelatory experience both for the students and her.

Meehan has come full circle back to her hometown of Brockton, which she has chronicled through a project called City of Champions. The narrative around Brockton as a drug-infested city is not the entire picture, Meehan says. “It overlooks this whole image of a rich, deep, functioning working-class community that I love,” she says. City of Champions is meant to rectify that.

Guinea-Bissau – Brockton, photo by Mary Beth Meehan

Meehan’s work has always been relevant but it feels especially so now in the middle of a politically charged landscape. “Whatever views we have that allow us to dismiss each other, to create policy around that dismissal, to attack each other and go to war with each other—if I can somehow make them more porous and maybe question those views, I can’t think of a better use of my life and work,” Meehan says, “Mine is a tiny drop in the ocean, but it’s what I have.”

Mary Beth Meehan–photojournalist
Providence, Rhode Island
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Top image Bidur, from SeenUnseen, Providence. Photos by Mary Beth Meehan

The post #TakeAction: Photo Finish appeared first on Take Magazine.

Erin Myles and Nicole Deponte like the small city feel of Providence. To them, the city has just a little more dirt under its fingernails, and, as small business owners, this is essential.

The pair recently found themselves in flux: Deponte had moved to Providence to get away from the big city feel of New York City, and Myles had left a 10-plus year career as a jewelry designer in the local costume manufacturing industry. The conversation to begin Asterluxe was an organic opportunity that fell into place while living as neighbors in the West End of Providence.

Asterluxe has had a good response since opening in October. “People are excited to have something new and special in the neighborhood, and engagement in our workshops has been growing,” says Myles. “We’d like to continue to engage more people in our neighborhood and across Rhode Island, and make Asterluxe and the West End neighborhood a destination for food and great shopping.”

The shop’s tagline, “Abode, Adornment, Atmosphere,” describes its focus on the home, the body, and the space between them. Fittingly, the boutique sells handmade, small-batch goods with a focus on women makers and wellness.

“We want Asterluxe to be a destination away from the chaos of our busy world, a place where you can feel cared for while also supporting our community of American-made makers and artists,” Deponte says. Asterluxe supports its makers in many ways, including monthly blog posts on their Maker Profile blog that introduce readers to a new artist that the shop carries.

As makers themselves, Myles and Deponte feel it’s important to educate customers about the importance of handmade and its place in our culture. “We both take immense inspiration from the stories of our makers, their daily rituals, sneak peaks into their workdays, and their catalysts to create,” says Myles. “We want to bring that inspiration to our community.”

To provide this inspiration, Asterluxe has begun hosting workshops at the boutique. The most recent workshop in a series called “Crafting for Good” focused on bookmaking and completely sold out. The workshop was hosted in collaboration with local maker Christian Roy, and all proceeds were donated to a local charity, Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island.

With an online shop set to open this summer, Asterluxe is poised for expansion beyond Providence and into the greater New England area. “Asterluxe brings together our love for our neighborhood and our goal to support makers and artists across the country,” says Deponte.

Erin Myles and Nicole Depont–owners, Asterluxe
Providence, Rhode Island
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The post Asterluxe: Abode, Adornment, Atmosphere appeared first on Take Magazine.