Preview Magazine..the stuff of New England

Studio Mates

Sharing a studio can be tricky business. Your mate may play music you can't stand or interrupt a thoughtful morning. Other times they inspire through their own actions and work. I think me and my studio mates are going to get along just fine. I love their music! Don't worry, soon I will show you the land that inspires breath.

Ode To Talcott Range

Ode to Talcott Range, steel, fishing net, 14x14 feet, 2014. $5000.

Site-specific sculpture at Westminster School, Simsbury, CT. Opening for Alumni show is May 9, starting at 5:00. This and several other sculptures never presented before will be on view.

The artist, Nancy Winship Milliken, grew up across the valley on the Talcott Range and crossed the Farmington River everyday as she drove to Westminster School as a day student. Just like the sun glints off water at different times of the day, this site-specific sculpture captures the sunlight in the net that follows the landforms of the range. “This is my father, Johnson Winship's, favorite view from Westminster. He has always asked me to paint him a landscape painting, well, this is my version of that”. Photos by Jennifer Brainard Phillips

Steering Committee

Contemporary Pastoralism Steering Committee:

I am grateful for this supportive committee comprised of farmers, artists, writers, entrepreneurs and art historians who are guiding the vision of the Contemporary Pastoralism project.

Sarah Bliss

Sarah Bliss is an artist and filmmaker who explores the relationships between body, place, language and memory.  Her work engages both personal and social history, examining in particular the experience of religious faith and the consequences of both its demands and its absence.

http://www.SarahBlissArt.com

Rosalyn Driscoll

Rosalyn Driscoll is an artist living in Western Massachusetts whose sculptures, installations, collaborations, research and writing explore sensory, embodied perception and somatic experience. She is a core member of Sensory Sites, an international collaborative collective of artists and writers based in London. 

www.rosalyndriscoll.com

Stephen Kiernan

Stephen Kiernan is an author, musician and father who lives in Vermont. His most recent book is The Curiosity

Karen Kurczynsk

Karen Kurczynski is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her book The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn: The Avant-Garde Won't Give Up will appear with Ashgate in 2014.

http://www.umass.edu/arthist/kurczynski.htm

Nicki Robb

Nicki Robb is the Director of The Land Stewardship Program at

The Hartsbrook School, in Hadley, Massachusetts

Charlie Tipper

Charlie Tipper calls himself the idea broker. He helps manifest big dreams through ingenuity and clear insight and vision. Tipper’s specialty is redevelopment and is currently working on the Moran plant in Burlington, VT

Guest Writer, Pamela Rickenbach, from Blue Star Equiculture

Big Hearted Tex. Photo by Doug Anderson

A message from Pamela Rickenback at Blue Star Equiculture.

Tex has a job. A real job, real work in a productive partnership. He is Nancy's partner in creating art. It all sounds so simple and ordinary and that is the paradox. 

Their partnership is not simple or ordinary by any measure. They are both world travelers and experienced explorers of the heart. They both look for things that shine in an extraordinarily ordinary way. Tex cannot and will not handle intensity or hardness but he will melt and surrender to Nancy's softness. Nancy loves all the smells and mud and fluid beauty that Tex is immersed in and they celebrate it all together.

The result is something we can all experience as well. Beautiful, earthy and honest art. An art that reminds us and connects us to what we all share. The earth and all it's messy, gorgeous, life giving power. 

This is the job for Tex, that only Tex can do. A job made for him with an artist who recognizes his true nature. Nancy can and will trace Tex's steps and share them with the world and in that way they will both provide something immeasurably valuable for our lives. They will help remind us of who we are and where come from. 

This is the job that Tex has been waiting for and all we had to do was give him the space to find it. Thank you Nancy Winship Milliken for finding your way to us and him and for helping put him and his kind forever on the map of our hearts. — at Blue Star Equiculture.

Photos by Doug Anderson

human and farm animal covenant

Here is an incredibly poetic and beautifully tender film about the human and animal covenant that takes place on farms.

....When we become responsible for an animal's life, we become responsible for an animal's death....

Links:

Covenant, by Michael Mercil

Bactrian Guard

What does northern New England have in common with Central Asia? I can't wait to learn more about this double-humped sheep guard I spied while driving. Wonder if he'd be keen to collaborate?!