Brattleboro Bling

A southern Vermont town becomes a retail destination for all sorts of jewelry — an art form of universal appeal — from handcrafted original designs to antiques

By Joyce Marcel

Last August, when goldsmith and platinumsmith David Walter opened his elegant retail showroom on Main Street, a concept that had been flying under the radar for a significant amount of time became unavoidable: Brattleboro has become a jewelry hub.

Diamonds may be the town’s best friend, but the quality — and variety — of jewelry in Brattleboro is remarkable. There are diamonds galore, of course, both in contemporary styles and sparkling out of antique estate jewelry. There are precious stones and pearls imported from all over the world and turned into jewelry by experienced Brattleboro jewelers. Then there are unique, handcrafted pieces — works of art — made by local artists.

“There’s a buzz on Brattleboro,” said Suzanne Corsano, co-owner of Gallery in the Woods. “There should be, shouldn’t there? People come in here and say, ‘What’s going on here? What’s this place about?’ I hear a lot of, ‘I’m going to move here.’ And some of the people who live here now are some of those people. And they’re always shopping.”

Customers might live locally, but many drive in from New York and from all over New England. And they don’t fit one easy profile.

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The author’s father, R. Lewis Teague, at work in his Vermont studio in 1959. (Hanson Carroll)

Artists as Vermonters, Vermonters as artists

Growing up in the state in ’50s and ’60s, a third-generation artist saw the inspiration and isolation that Vermont had on her father, a painter. In the intervening years, the environment here has become much more appealing for artists. And artists, in turn, have stimulated the economy and helped create a community.

By Allison Teague

What really is Vermont’s cultural landscape? Is the arts part of it? How are the arts supported, and what role do they play? How is our Vermont economy sustained by the arts?

Or is it?

What does it mean to be an artist in Vermont?

For the four winners of the Vermont Arts Council’s Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts — all from Windham County — art is connected to place.

Four artists — all from Windham County — received the 2012 Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, a prize issued annually by the Vermont Arts Council. All were honored on Dec. 10 at a gala ceremony at the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro. We caught up with three of the four winners in mid-January.

Life as a poem put to paper

Verandah Porche and her literary friends moved to an abandoned farm in Guilford in 1968 to create what would become a legendary commune. And she wanted her life to be a poem.

Porche, 67, has just published a new collection of poems, Sudden Eden, an autobiography in verse. As she has lived a rich life filled with family, friends, farming, lovers and farewells — good birthing, good food, good conversation, good lovemaking, good pies and good politics — the reading is rich as well.

Jay Craven's new model of filmmaking

On-time, under budget, and revolutionary.

Though he’s still putting the finishing touches on his latest independent film, “Northern Borders,“ director Jay Craven can already say those three things about it.

Due for release on schedule, with early to mid-April screenings planned in Brattleboro, and elsewhere, “Northern Borders” is based on a novel by Northeast Kingdom author Howard Frank Mosher and stars Academy Award nominees Bruce Dern and Genevieve Bujold. It was budgeted to cost $500,000, and Craven estimates it’ll come in a little bit below that.

Now for the revolutionary part. In order to bring the film in at $500,000, far below the $2 million his other independent feature films have cost, Craven created a unique collaboration between his non-profit arts organization Kingdom County Productions and Marlboro College, which turned the production of the film into college coursework involving 34 students from a dozen colleges including Marlboro, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Boston University, Smith College, George Washington, Connecticut College, Wheaton, Vassar, Cornell, Champlain College and the University of Connecticut.

Stephen Hannock

By Joyce Marcel

Stephen Hannock’s paintings combine landscape with stories — as if there were any landscapes without stories.  Lovely and alive, the paintings flow with rivers and glow with flares of light.

“Decoding meaning is one of the great pleasures of viewing art by Stephen Hannock,” said Brattleboro Museum and Art Center curator Mara Williams. “Each work is exquisitely rendered, suffused with light, palpably beautiful. Each is a thorny, funny, erudite, self-referential riff on living as a contemporary artist.”

Hannock is an art world rock star who hangs out with real rock stars. He is one of an elite group of painters with a waiting list of patrons who want to buy his work. His paintings hang, in among other places, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

He is represented by the prestigious Marlborough Gallery in New York. The musician Sting, who collects his work, is an old friend and collaborator. His friends are a Who’s Who of the art world. He has seven pages in Wikipedia.

The Great Hall of Springfield

By Arlene Distler

Clearly it takes a village––and town––to make a first-class art space. With the transforming of the defunct Fellows Gear Shaper Factory from an abandoned and derelict shell into the medical center-retail-art space that it is today, has taken vision, patience, and selflessness on the part of many. Springfield has done it right and done itself proud.

The opening of the new, airy, and spacious Great Hall on July 20th was a joyful occasion. In keeping with the spirit of the whole enterprise, the opening was not reserved for the arts crowd or the town leaders. It was open to the public and the public showed up. One celebrator noted there were "people from all walks," united by a desire to see their town turn around.

Brattleboro Literary Festival

By Arlene Distler

The literary arts have played an important part in Brattleboro’s history. Royall Tyler, writer of the first comedy written and produced in the New World, lived and worked in Brattleboro during the late eighteenth century. The first literary societies in the community were formed in his day, the forerunners of the reading and writing groups that abound here today. In the eighteen-nineties, Rudyard Kipling married one of its daughters and resided at Naulakha in the hills on the edge of town. He wrote several of his classic works while living in Brattleboro.

Printing has been an important part of the town's economy since early in the nineteenth century when William Fessenden brought a printing press from Cambridge, Mass. He printed the first book here in 1805. According to the Vermont Historical Magazine of 1850, "...the publishing business, more than all other causes in that day put together, enlarged and built up this village." It has been home to several important printers and book presses since: Stephen Greene Press, Griswold Printing, The Book Press, Howard Printing, and Stratford Publishing, the last two of which continue to operate today.

The Little Theatre That Could—Main Street Arts

By Joyce Marcel

Main Street Arts is a little community arts center that always thinks big. “Main Street Arts is to Saxtons River as Lincoln Center is to New York City,” it likes to say.

“It’s the heartbeat of Saxtons River,” said Kathleen J. Bryar, the chair of Main Street Arts’ audacious capital campaign. “And it’s not just for Saxtons River. It’s Grafton, Westminster West, Putney, Bellows Falls and even Walpole in New Hampshire. People come to participate from a 50-mile radius. They have this passion for Main Street Arts. It’s a very welcoming community where people who have some creative ability can find talented people of similar interests. And you don’t have to be a professional.”

On The Street...Bead Man

Beadniks, on Main Street in Brattleboro is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Family owned and operated and voted one of Vermont’s top 10 shops, it’s more than just a bead shop; it’s a museum, a pop culture emporium, and a walk on the wild side. Retro toys, old-fashioned candy, postcards, gemstones and eclectic gifts await the curious.

On Friday, Oct. 5, Beadniks will be celebrating its 20^th anniversary with live music, giveaways and lots of fun. We invited the owner, Brian Robertshaw, to tell us his story. Here it is:

Thanksgiving Weekend: On Putney, Vermont’s Artisan Trail

By Katherine P. Cox

Liz Hawkes deNiord, a painter and ceramic artist from Putney, says to expect the usual and the unusual when you visit her studio on the 34^th annual Putney Craft Tour in November. She could be talking about the tour itself, whose organizers are always striving to add something new and different to the venerable arts tour. Twenty-eight artists and craftspeople, including some new to the tour or returning after absences, will open their studios to the public Nov. 23-25.

A new feature this year is the welcome center at The Putney Inn, where visitors can stop to get maps, directions and to view the participating artists’ work, which will be on exhibit at the Inn. Weaver Dena Gartenstein Moses, an organizer who has been part of the tour for many years, says, “We have over 25 artists participating and realize that even if someone takes the whole weekend, it will be hard for them to see and do everything.”  Veteran tour-goers, she says, “often have their favorites, but we wanted to give new participants an easy way to get a sense of what is being made and shown on the different stops to help them decide how to plan their time.”

In-Sight Photography

By Steve Noble

One summer, 20 years ago, photographers Bill Ledger and John Willis saw something that bothered them. Teens in Brattleboro were just hanging out with nothing to do, and catching it from local police for loitering. Willis and Ledger decided to do something about it and put together a one-month photography class.

It proved so popular , what they started quickly expanded from a one-month class to year-round offerings, and they built a darkroom in the Brattleboro Teen Center (now Boys and Girls Club) to handle the demand.