Arts
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes: Greenfield musician releases single and album inspired by house fire and breakup
By MARY BYRNE
On a Tuesday morning nearly five years ago, Chelsie Field, in the midst of grieving a romantic loss, returned home from work to find only the skeletal remains of her childhood home.“I knew these were two pivotal moments in my life,” said Field, 30,...
Through his own, unique lens
By JULIAN MENDOZA
Depending on who you ask, Franklin County is either a rural oasis of festivals, fairs and hidden gems or just a cluster of sleepy towns. Highlighted by his latest photo exhibit, local photographer Joe R. Parzych finds the beauty in both.Parzych, a...
The power of women’s hair: Photographer uses 19th-century technique to re-imagine female portraits
By STEVE PFARRER
Time was when Rachel Portesi did much of her photography using Polaroid film. She loved the immediacy of the image, the way each photo was different and often didn’t quite match what her eye had seen, and what she calls “the feeling of Christmas when...
Sounds Local: Two-step your blues away: Winter Cajun and Zydeco Festival spices up Hawks & Reed this Sunday afternoon
By SHERYL HUNTER
An afternoon of dancing is the perfect way to lift those post-holiday winter blahs. So if that’s what you are in need of, head to Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center in Greenfield on Sunday afternoon (Jan. 15) for the Winter Cajun and Zydeco...
Young Shakespeare Players East returns with “Twelfth Night” after long pandemic hiatus
By JULIAN MENDOZA
For the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic, members of the youth theater troupe Young Shakespeare Players East are finally back where they belong.“There is poetry that’s meant to be read and poetry that’s meant to be spoken,” said...
Sounds Local: Rock ’n’ roll from the comfort of your couch
By SHERYL HUNTER
We talk a lot about live music here in Sounds Local. But since it is January and cold out and gets dark early, you might be interested in staying in the comfort of your home.Of course that is understandable, and fortunately there are some reading and...
Wheeler Mansion to host haunted house
By DOMENIC POLI
You’ve possibly known a haunted house to be held in a school or an armory. But how about one inside a 15,000-square-foot Gilded Age brick mansion built for a sewing machine millionaire’s wife and eventually owned by a Masonic sisterhood called the...
Listening with his camera: The late photographer Don Hunstein captured a golden age of music
By STEVE PFARRER
It’s arguably one of the most iconic album covers of all time, certainly in the folk and pop world: a young Bob Dylan, on the cusp of stardom, walks down a slushy street in Greenwich Village in New York City, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched...
A second wind: Peter Knapp tackles life changes and crises through his art
By STEVE PFARRER
Back when he was a student in the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the late 1960s/early 1970s, Peter Knapp imagined he might have a career as an artist. He studied woodcuts, drawing and painting and, after graduating in 1972, had a studio for...
Finding joy in art: New exhibit at Augusta Savage Gallery celebrates the Black community
By STEVE PFARRER
Like millions upon millions of people across the world, Eesha Suntai was horrified by the murder in May 2020 of George Floyd, who died after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes...
Photographer Terri Cappucci salvages glass-plate negatives from another era
By DIANE BRONCACCIO
In February 2020, documentary photographer and photo preservationist Terri Sevene Cappucci of Turners Falls was winnowing down decades of photographic materials in her scrupulously clean studio when she was offered about 4,000 glass-plate negatives...
Burn, scrape and shape: Dugout canoe to be built at Pocumtuck Festival
By ANITA FRITZ
The first step to creating a mishoon, or dugout canoe, is to find the right tree.That’s exactly what organizers of the 6th annual Pocumtuck Homelands Festival have done, and the weekend celebration will highlight a traditional mishoon of the...
Where no band has gone before
Being in a band is often described as similar to being in a marriage. It’s a comparison that makes sense because, like a marriage, keeping a band together can be quite challenging.That’s why, when you hear of a band celebrating its 50th anniversary,...
Leverett man puts artistic spin on nature’s wonders
By MELINA BOURDEAU
As majestic as the feathered creatures they depict, Leverett resident Macaylla Silver’s paintings draw the viewer to stare into the eyes of birds.Since 2015, Silver has watched, photographed and painted various breeds of birds, with each painting...
One-of-a-kind glass planets keep trade fresh for glass artist Josh Simpson
By DIANE BRONCACCIO
In 1981, glass artist Josh Simpson threw a few teaspoons of cobalt, copper, silver and zinc into a crucible of molten glass, and came out with an explosion of swirling reds, blues and greens that closely resembled a NASA photograph of the Crab Nebula,...
Elvis tribute artist returns to Greenfield
By SHERYL HUNTER
When is Elvis coming back to Greenfield? That’s a question I’ve heard more than once from readers of this column, and they aren’t referring to dead Elvis sightings in the area. Instead, they are wondering about Greenfield native Travis LeDoyt who...
Sounds Local: Paula Cole returns to her roots
By SHERYL HUNTER
In the mid ’90s songs like “Where Have all the Cowboys Gone?” and “I Don’t Want to Wait” sent singer-songwriter Paula Cole soaring to the top of the charts. Both songs are off her 1996 album, “This Fire,” a work that garnered seven Grammy nominations,...
Guatemalan art in Turners
The culture of the Americans is being celebrated in Turners Falls and Greenfield this month during an event on migration.“Migration — Connecting through Art and Culture of the Americas” started with Indigenous Peoples Day in Turners Falls on Oct....
Tap dance finds home in Library of Congress
By JENNA CARERI
Tap dance finds home in Library of Congress- Tap dance isn’t just for show anymore. Now it has found a home in the Library of Congress.Constance Valis Hill, a Five College professor of dance at Hampshire College in Amherst and an accomplished tapper and dance historian, recently donated a...
