Boston Common - 2014 - Issue 3 - Summer by Niche Media Holdings, LLC

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I R R E S I S T I B LY B E A U T I F U L S K I N

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F ront Runners Louis Armstrong wowed the crowd at Castle Hill on July 8, 1955.

Hip Cats on the Lawn I

n 1955, jazz usually lurked in dark grottoes of the night, but on July 8 it sashayed into the sunshine when Louis Armstrong headlined the first outdoor jazz concert at Castle Hill on the Crane Estate. Since 1951 Castle Hill had hosted classical and opera concerts on its Grand Allée, the spectacular lawn rolling down to the ocean, and the genteel string quartets fit right in with the Downton Abbey vibe of the estate. The Louis Armstrong show kicked off a series of jazz concerts at Castle Hill that continued until 1969, and they brought more than swinging new sounds to the estate. “I was with a cute guy the night of the Duke Ellington show, so I really enjoyed that one a lot,” recalls M.L. Scudder, who lived nearby and attended many of the concerts. Indeed, the jazz series attracted a bigger, younger, more diverse audience, and the famously congenial Louis Armstrong was the perfect ambassador to win over any skeptics in the community. “He could really charm the bark off the trees,” Scudder recalls. “And of course he could blow that trumpet like you wouldn’t believe.” Armstrong’s concert drew an audience of more than 5,000, and over the years some of the biggest stars in jazz performed at Castle Hill, including Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nina Simone. Almost six decades later, the concert tradition is still going strong. Every Thursday this summer, from July 10 to August 28, guests will roll out their picnic blankets for an evening of music—even some big-band jazz on August 7—for a taste of the sounds that helped put the historic estate on the pop-music map. 290 Argilla Road, Ipswich, 978-356-4351; thetrustees.org BC

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY GORDON PARKS/TIME LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES

IN 1955 LOUIS ARMSTRONG BROUGHT THE SWINGING SOUNDS OF JAZZ TO CASTLE HILL FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME. BY JENNIFER DEMERITT

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Summer 2014

48 Chakra-Thon

Brogan and Goldie, K-I-S-S-I-N-G in a tree (pose).

6 Front Runners 20 From the Editor-in-Chief 22 From the Publisher 24 ...Without Whom This Issue Would Not Have Been Possible 29 Invited 40 The List

People 44 A Breath of Hope and Healing Take an inside look at the personal story behind the political success of Boston’s new mayor.

48 Chakra-Thon 50 “I’m Here Because of the People.” Nantucket’s “Mahon About Town” divulges his favorite places to socialize and unwind.

54 Crossing Lines The Reny family heals itself and others with one of the most successful funds for Boston Marathon bombing survivors and beyond.

10 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

PHOTOGRAPHY BY IAN TRAVIS BARNARD

What happens when a hardbody meets a yogi? Love and fitness for all.

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Summer 2014

68 On the Rocks

Refined dining awaits at Natalie’s in Maine.

Culture Company One launches into a new theatrical stratosphere with Astro Boy and the God of Comics, while Shakespeare on the Common gives Twelfth Night a modern vibe.

64 Shapes of Summer The season brings “The Contemporary Figure” inside the Dedee Shattuck Gallery, plus yoga and movies outside on the lawn.

66 All Hands on Deck Larry Lannan’s handcrafted Lightship Boston model is ready to sail.

Taste 68 On the Rocks Relais & Châteaux refinement lands on the rugged coast of Maine at the new restaurant Natalie’s at Camden Harbor Inn.

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70 There’s Something About Mary Boston bartenders raid the spice closet to deliver the ultimate Bloody Mary.

72 Aww Shucks New England’s hipster oyster expert shells out where he goes for the freshest bite of seafood.

74 In Tune Over breakfast at Eastern Standard, the masterminds of the annual Boston Pops on Nantucket concert plan this year’s show.

Treasures 78 The Heat Is On Sinesia Karol turns up the sizzle factor in Boston with her Brazil-inspired swimwear collection.

80 Air Force One Massachusetts-based sunglass brand Randolph Engineering launches its new Flash collection.

82 Close to Midnight Vineyard Haven’s Midnight Farm delivers the goods for island hipsters and their homes.

84 Style Spotlight Italian luxury lingerie brand La Perla celebrates six decades in the business; and casual-chic fashion brand Madewell returns to its Massachusetts roots.

86 Cut from the (Sail) Cloth Portland’s Beth Shissler chases the high seas and big business with Sea Bags.

88 For Art’s Sake A host of elite watch brands support the arts, a cause that’s dear to Boston’s heart.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RUSSELL FRENCH

60 Off-Kilter and Out of Bounds

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Summer 2014

90 Life to the Max

Discover the kaleidoscope life of legendary artist Peter Max.

Features 90 Life to the Max Artist Peter Max has captured everyone from the Beatles to the Dalai Lama in his cosmic style. Boston Common discovers the colorful stories—and the man—behind the masterpieces.

94 Summering with New England’s Dashing Dynasties From Jamestown to Edgartown, Kennebunk to Cape Cod, these Bostonians soak up the sun with their own spirited culture, history, and glamour. Photography by Eric Levin

102 The Great American Artists’ Colony The famed MacDowell Colony has groomed some of the country’s most seminal artists—writers, musicians, painters, photographers—and gifted them the time to perfect their craft. Boston Common takes you inside.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF GALE

By Alex Halberstadt and Michael Chabon

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94 Dashing Dynasties

Summer 2014

These Bostonians show us how to summer in style.

Haute Property 112 A Grande Dame Finds New Life 114 From the Inside Out Boston design experts are transforming the backyard into a seamless extension of the home.

116 The A3 Adventure The 2015 Audi A3 offers a lesson in audacity for proper Bostonians.

Cocktails taste better at these waterside lounges all over New England.

122 Play Break out of your comfort zone with these extreme summer sports.

124 Relax Find inner peace at New England’s outdoor meditation and yoga spots.

The Guide

Parting Shot

119 Italian Renaissance

128 Sink or Swim

Valentino’s Newbury Street boutique reopens with a luxe new look.

120 Imbibe

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

Don’t get burned by the wrong beach in Massachusetts.

ON THE COVER: Peter Max Artwork by Peter Max, 2014

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC LEVIN

Brewster’s venerable Ocean Edge Resort unveils a $40 million renovation.

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LISA PIERPONT Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor JENNIFER DEMERITT Senior Art Director FRYDA LIDOR Photo Editor SETH OLENICK Associate Editor JESSICA LANIEWSKI Entertainment and Bookings Editor JULIET IZON Fashion Editor FAYE POWER Copy Editor NICOLE LANCTOT Research Editor AVA WILLIAMS

GLEN KELLEY Publisher Account Director SHANNON PASTUSZAK Account Executive JANELLE DRISCOLL Director of Event Marketing AMY FISCHER Sales Assistant EMILY BURDETT

NICHE MEDIA HOLDINGS, LLC Senior Vice President and Editorial Director MANDI NORWOOD Vice President of Creative and Fashion ANN SONG Creative Director NICOLE A. WOLFSON NADBOY Executive Fashion Director SAMANTHA YANKS

ART AND PHOTO

Associate Art Directors ANASTASIA TSIOUTAS CASALIGGI, ALLISON FLEMING, ADRIANA GARCIA, JUAN PARRA, JESSICA SARRO Senior Designer NATALI SUASNAVAS Designers GIL FONTIMAYOR, SARAH LITZ Photo Director LISA ROSENTHAL BADER Photo Editors KATHERINE HAUSENBAUER-KOSTER, JODIE LOVE, JENNIFER PAGAN, REBECCA SAHN Photo Producer KIMBERLY RIORDAN Senior Staff Photographer JEFFREY CRAWFORD Senior Digital Imaging Specialist JEFFREY SPITERY Digital Imaging Specialist JEREMY DEVERATURDA Digital Imaging Assistant HTET SAN

FASHION

Senior Fashion Editor LAUREN FINNEY Associate Fashion Editor ALEXANDRIA GEISLER Fashion Assistants CONNOR CHILDERS, LISA FERRANDINO

COPY AND RESEARCH

Copy and Research Manager WENDIE PECHARSKY Copy Editors DAVID FAIRHURST, DALENE ROVENSTINE, JULIA STEINER Research Editors LESLIE ALEXANDER, JUDY DEYOUNG, MURAT OZTASKIN

EDITORIAL OPERATIONS

Director of Editorial Operations DEBORAH L. MARTIN Director of Editorial Relations MATTHEW STEWART Editorial Assistant CHRISTINA CLEMENTE Online Executive Editor CAITLIN ROHAN Online Editors ANNA BEN YEHUDA, TRICIA CARR Senior Managing Editors DANINE ALATI, KEN RIVADENEIRA, JILL SIERACKI Managing Editors KAREN ROSE, JOHN VILANOVA Shelter and Design Editor SUE HOSTETLER Timepiece Editor ROBERTA NAAS

ADVERTISING SALES

Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing NORMAN M. MILLER Account Directors SUSAN ABRAMS, MICHELE ADDISON, TIFFANY CAREY, CLAIRE CARLIN, KATHLEEN FLEMING, KAREN LEVINE, MEREDITH MERRILL, NORMA MONTALVO, ELIZABETH MOORE, GRACE NAPOLITANO, JEFFREY NICHOLSON, DEBORAH O’BRIEN, VALERIE ROBLES Account Executives SUSANA ARAGON, JUDSON BARDWELL, MICHELLE CHALA, THOMAS CHILLEMI, MORGAN CLIFFORD, ALICIA DRY, VINCE DUROCHER, DINA FRIEDMAN, SARAH HECKLER, VICTORIA HENRY, CATHERINE KUCHAR, FENDY MESY, MARISA RANDALL, MARY RUEGG, LAUREN SHAPIRO, JIM SMITH, CAROLINE SNECKENBERG, JACKIE VAN METER, JESSICA ZIVKOVITCH, GABRIELLA ZURROW National Sales Coordinator HOWARD COSTA Sales Support and Development EMMA BEHRINGER, ANA BLAGOJEVIC, CRISTINA CABIELLES, BRITTANY CORBETT, JAMIE HILDEBRANDT, DARA HIRSH, KELSEY MARRUJO, MICHELLE MASS, NICHOLE MAURER, RUE MCBRIDE, STEPHEN OSTROWSKI, ELENA SENDOLO, ALEXANDRA WINTER

MARKETING, PROMOTIONS, AND PUBLIC RELATIONS

Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations LANA BERNSTEIN Vice President of Integrated Marketing EMILY MCLINTOCK Director of Integrated Marketing ROBIN KEARSE Integrated Marketing Manager JIMMY KONTOMANOLIS Director of Creative Services SCOTT ROBSON Promotions Art Designers DANIELLE MORRIS, CARLY RUSSELL Event Marketing Directors HALEE HARCZYNSKI, MELINDA JAGGER, LAURA MULLEN, JOANNA TUCKER, KIMMY WILSON Event Marketing Managers ANTHONY ANGELICO, CHRISTIAMILDA CORREA, MONIKA KOWALCZYK, CRISTINA PARRA Event Marketing Coordinator BROOKE BIDDLE Event Marketing Assistant SHANA KAUFMAN

ADVERTISING PRODUCTION

Vice President of Manufacturing MARIA BLONDEAUX Director of Positioning and Planning SALLY LYON Positioning and Planning Manager TARA MCCRILLIS Assistant Production Director PAUL HUNTSBERRY Production Manager BLUE UYEDA Production Artists ALISHA DAVIS, MARISSA MAHERAS Distribution Manager MATT HEMMERLING Fulfillment Manager DORIS HOLLIFIELD Traffic Supervisor ESTEE WRIGHT Traffic Coordinators JEANNE GLEESON, MALLORIE SOMMERS Circulation Research Specialist CHAD HARWOOD

FINANCE

Controller DANIELLE BIXLER Finance Directors AUDREY CADY, LISA VASSEUR-MODICA Advertising Business Manager RICHARD YONG Director of Credit and Collections CHRISTOPHER BEST Senior Credit and Collections Analyst MYRNA ROSADO Senior Billing Coordinator CHARLES CAGLE Senior Accountant LILY WU Junior Accountants PONNIE FITZPATRICK, NEIL SHAH, NATASHA WARREN

ADMINISTRATION, DIGITAL, AND OPERATIONS

Director of Operations MICHAEL CAPACE Director of Human Resources STEPHANIE MITCHELL Executive Assistant ARLENE GONZALEZ Digital Media Developer MICHAEL KWAN Digital Producer ANTHONY PEARSON Facilities Coordinator JOUBERT GUILLAUME Chief Technology Officer JESSE TAYLOR Desktop Administrators ZACHARY CUMMO, EDGAR ROCHE

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

J.P. ANDERSON (Michigan Avenue), SPENCER BECK (Los Angeles Confidential), ANDREA BENNETT (Vegas), KATHY BLACKWELL (Austin Way), KRISTIN DETTERLINE (Philadelphia Style), ERIN LENTZ (Aspen Peak), CATHERINE SABINO (Gotham), JARED SHAPIRO (Ocean Drive), ELIZABETH E. THORP (Capitol File), SAMANTHA YANKS (Hamptons)

PUBLISHERS

JOHN M. COLABELLI (Philadelphia Style), LOUIS F. DELONE (Austin Way), ALEXANDRA HALPERIN (Aspen Peak), DEBRA HALPERT (Hamptons), SUZY JACOBS (Capitol File), COURTLAND LANTAFF (Ocean Drive), ALISON MILLER (Los Angeles Confidential), KATHERINE NICHOLLS (Gotham), DAN USLAN (Michigan Avenue), JOSEF VANN (Vegas)

President and Chief Operating Officer KATHERINE NICHOLLS Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer JOHN P. KUSHNIR Chairman and Director of Photography JEFF GALE Copyright 2014 by Niche Media Holdings, LLC. All rights reserved. Boston Common magazine is published six times per year. Reproduction without permission of the publisher is prohibited. The publisher and editors are not responsible for unsolicited material and it will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication subject to Boston Common magazine’s right to edit. Return postage must accompany all manuscripts, photographs, and drawings. To order a subscription, please call 866-891-3144. For customer service, please inquire at bostoncommon@pubservice.com. To distribute Boston Common at your business, please e-mail magazinerequest@nichemedia.net. Boston Common magazine is published by Niche Media Holdings, LLC (Founder, Jason Binn), a company of The Greenspun Corporation. BOSTON COMMON: 745 Boylston Street, Suite 401, Boston, MA 02116 T: 617-266-3390 F: 617-266-3722 NICHE MEDIA HOLDINGS: 100 Church Street, Seventh Floor, New York, NY 10007 T: 646-835-5200 F: 212-780-0003 THE GREENSPUN CORPORATION: 2275 Corporate Circle, Suite 300, Henderson, NV 89074 T: 702-259-4023 F: 702-383-1089

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

At a Barneys breakfast with creative ambassador-at-large Simon Doonan to benefit Perkins school for the blind.

Board chair Gerry Frank and I at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum’s Party for the Park.

LEFT:

With Pulitzer Prize–winning author Michael Chabon at a recent benefit for the MacDowell Colony. BELOW: With Midnight Farm co-owners Tamara Weiss and singer/songwriter Carly Simon and photographer Eric Levin.

region in the US. One of the world’s tallest sand castles was built in South Casco, Maine. More than two million kids go to summer camp in New England. Coincidence? I think not. Summer is serious business in these Yankee parts. We worship every ray of sunshine, laugh in the face of jellyfish, and gladly swallow sand-laced fries beachside. I’ve been known to permit—nay, invite—mosquitoes in my home. Summer: Bring. It. On. You’ll surely be inspired by how five sets of New Englanders—from 20-something bon vivants to an entrepreneurial yachtsman to private island-goers—choose to spend their summer. The key word being “choose.” Some opt for nightly dinner parties, others prefer solitude; a few dress like cover stars, while the rest wait all year to flop around in cutoffs. It’s all good—hot, even. Heat aside, shades of pink, green, and white have dominated the Boston Common magazine social scene recently, beginning with a grand soirée on the emerald lawn of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum called Party for the Follow me on Facebook at Park; the Hot Pink Party, at the facebook.com/boston-common and on InterContinental with special bostoncommon-magazine.com. guest Jon Bon Jovi, to raise funds for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation; and the many exquisite white blouses at Anne Fontaine’s grand opening at The Heritage on the Garden. The art scene blossomed in the city, too, as the Institute of Contemporary Art dared guests to rip up the dance floor at Party on the Harbor, while the Massachusetts College of Art and Design challenged all of us to take a walk on the wild side at its fashion show, complete with astro-jumpsuits and tartan bombers. On that note, we shall no longer talk of body-covering things; here’s to straw hats, string bikinis, and your best summer ever. May all of your sun-kissed dreams come true.

LISA PIERPONT

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MELISSA OSTROW (GERRY FRANK); MICHAEL BLANCHARD (DOONAN); JOSHUA LAVINE PHOTOGRAPHY (BANNED IN BOSTON)

Some hard facts: New Englanders eat more ice cream in the summer than people in any other

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FROM THE PUBLISHER

At Grill 23 with Nancy and Michael Bean for the Preview Party for the Nantucket Wine Festival.

ABOVE: At the Saks Fifth Avenue men’s designer clothing and sneaker runway show with Newbury Street salon owner Pini Swissa. LEFT: At Clarke Distribution’s Mad Men–themed Designer Appreciation Night with Tom Clarke and Kellie Levandowski.

Boston has always pledged a passionate commitment to the arts, from the Impressionists at the MFA to cutting-edge work at the ICA. And at Boston Common, art is proudly front and center with this issue’s collectible cover, created just for us by revered pop artist Peter Max. His sunny rendition of Boston reminds us how vibrant our city truly is. And while it can be difficult to slow down and enjoy our surroundings, this issue is dedicated to doing just that—taking in New England, one glorious sunset at a time. It has been a season for celebrating, and we’ve been joined by friends at events all over town. We launched into spring fashion with a men’s designer clothing and sneaker runway show at Saks Fifth Avenue, where I picked up a few fashion tips for warmer weather (like denim on denim, believe it or not). In May, I helped Follow me on Facebook at judge Clarke Distribution’s facebook.com/boston-common and on Sub-Zero Pitch Off competition for bostoncommon-magazine.com. the best sales presentation. With so many great candidates, it was hard to choose a winner. Boston Common kicked off summer in style as the media partner for the Nantucket Wine Festival, where many of the magazine’s friends came together for a weekend of wine tastings and dinners. I was excited to see Bon Jovi play an intimate acoustic concert at the Hot Pink Party to benefit The Breast Cancer Research Foundation at the InterContinental Boston. And it meant a lot to me for Boston Common to once again support the Best Buddies Challenge: Hyannis Port and the meaningful work the organization does. In June, I attempted to display my inner Jack Nicklaus at the National Kidney Foundation Golf Classic tournament at the Boston Golf Club. Needless to say, I will continue practicing my swing. We hope that you enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed putting it together, and that you’ll continue to follow us throughout the summer at bostoncommon-magazine.com, on Twitter, and on Instagram.

GLEN KELLEY

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MELISSA OSTROW (LOEWS); MICHAEL BLANCHARD (SAKS); SCOTT ERB AND GLENN PERRY (CLARKE DISTRIBUTION)

With Jonathan Tisch, chairman of Loews Hotels, and Robert Kraft at the opening of Precinct Kitchen + Bar at the new Loews Boston Hotel.

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...WITHOUT WHOM THIS ISSUE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE SUMMER 2014

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Alex Halberstadt Alex Halberstadt’s feature writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Saveur, and elsewhere. He’s the author of Lonely Avenue, about the rock ’n’ roll songwriter Doc Pomus, and Young Heroes of the Soviet Union, a family memoir, forthcoming from Random House. He was nominated for a James Beard Award for profile writing in 2013 and 2014, and he teaches at the New School’s Eugene Lang College and New York University. In this issue: Halberstadt takes an inside look at the famed MacDowell Colony. What makes MacDowell so important to the larger artistic community? “In a society where we tend to be ambivalent about public funding for the arts, MacDowell provides not only the space and solitude artists need to be productive, but also much-needed validation. Coming to MacDowell is like the world saying you weren’t crazy for not going to dental school.” What is your favorite MacDowell memory? “Forming a band with fellow colonists and singing Webb Pierce’s ‘There Stands the Glass’ in front of two Pulitzer Prize– winning composers.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JONATHAN BLESSING (HALBERSTADT); JOSHUA SIMPSON (COCUZZO)

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Michael Chabon Michael Chabon is a novelist, essayist, and screenwriter whose works include the Pulitzer Prize– winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Telegraph Avenue, and the Hugo and Nebula Award– winning The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (all of them written in part at the MacDowell Colony). He is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters, and was named Chairman of the Board of Directors of the MacDowell Colony in 2010. In this issue: Chabon recounts a recent 10-day stay at MacDowell, where he grappled with his muse and discovered that the colony’s tagline “freedom to create” has a deeper meaning than he’d realized.

Robert Cocuzzo Robert Cocuzzo is the editor of N Magazine on Nantucket. Before becoming a professional writer, Cocuzzo was a US Coast Guard–certified fishing captain. He’s currently working on his first book, about a legendary skier from Bedford, Massachusetts. In this issue: Cocuzzo writes about beach etiquette for Parting Shot. What are you looking forward to on Nantucket this summer?

“Another fun season exploring the endlessly entertaining stories this wonderful island community produces. Beyond that, catching waves on my stand-up paddleboard—or trying to, anyway.” What’s your favorite beach? “Madaket Beach on Nantucket, where I can watch the fishing fleets head out.”

Heather McGrath Photographer Heather McGrath grew up in her grandparents’ hardware store 20 miles south of Boston and never let go of their entrepreneurial spirit. She studied at CalArts and the New England School of Photography, then apprenticed under legendary action photographer Art Brewer in Los Angeles. She now has her own studio in the South End. In this issue: McGrath captures the Reny family for Spirit of Generosity. What touched you about the Reny family? “They are four courageous, resilient people. They seemed so happy that they are all here together, making a difference despite what has happened to them.” What do you enjoy about photographing people? “I like shooting people in a raw, honest moment. I’d rather be a fly on the wall and shoot documentary style.”

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Invit ed

THE MONTH’S PRESTIGIOUS EVENTS AND SMARTEST PARTIES

Charity by Design DESIGNER REED KRAKOFF RETURNS TO BOSTON FOR A GOOD CAUSE.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL BLANCHARD

t was a homecoming of sorts when Saks Fifth Avenue Boston hosted Connecticut-born fashion designer Reed Krakoff for a day of meetings with private clients and an evening kickoff party for The Breast Cancer Research Foundation’s Hot Pink Party on April 2.

Reed Krakoff and Gretchen Pace

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

INVITED

Simone Winston Printed bags and accessories from Reed Krakoff’s Spring/ Summer 2014 collection.

Sharon Shane and Myra Biblowit Trudi Pugatch and Nathaniel Koslof

Bianca Duenas

Linda Holliday

Madeleine Capino and Melissa Epstein

Alyssa Romano and Elisha Daniels

More than 150 guests browsed handbags, shoes, clothing, and accessories from the Reed Krakoff boutique within the store as models posed in apparel from the designer’s Spring 2014 collection. Ten percent of proceeds from the evening went to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Krakoff’s mother, Sandy Krakoff—a Boston philanthropist and founding chair of the BCRF Hot Pink Party—was in attendance. The designer spent the evening chatting with guests including Karen Hale, Linda Holliday, and Linda Waintrup.

Hope, Sandra, Helen, and Sophie Krakoff

Joanne DiFrancesco

Steve and Michael DiFillippo

Lynn Kortenhaus, Rebecca Knight, and Ciara Hunt

Bob Ernst Anne Lower

Barbara Lootz and Richard Armstrong

30 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL BLANCHARD

Charity by Design

A Warm Welcome

Boston Common was thrilled to raise a glass to Lisa Pierpont at the Ritz-Carlton’s Avery Bar for her accomplishments as the magazine’s new editor-in-chief. An intimate reception filled with beautiful bites, such as local artisanal cheeses and hot mushroom flatbread crafted by head chef Andrew Yeo, made it a night to remember. Lisa and the Boston Common team were joined by Steve DiFillippo, Bob Ernst, Barbara Lootz, and Richard Armstrong. Brian and Sherri Kelly

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Guests enjoyed a fashion show of vintage costumes.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL BLANCHARD (50 AND COUNTING); MELISSA OSTROW (DANCING IN THE PARK)

Even the food celebrated the balletâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 50th anniversary.

Brittany Summer and Matt Gregory Ayrten Rodriguez and Whitney Jensen

50 and Counting

Sarah Mars

Fifty never looked so good as Boston Ballet celebrated its anniversary with a fashion show of vintage costumes, a seated dinner, and a performance by Karole Armitage. More than 450 guests, including Alison Quirk, Lisa and Tom Blumenthal, and Belinda and Henri Termeer, enjoyed an evening hosted by news anchor Tanya Rivero.

Daniel and Jessica Schmitz

Sabi Varga and Lisa Blumenthal

Frank Amelia and Stephen Labuda

Stephanie Rossi Picca, Jerome Picca, and Charlotte Riggs

Dancing in the Park Jane Stewart danced with an LED Hula-Hoop at the post-auction dance party. Barbara Lee and Dan Mathieu

Dancing shoes were de rigueur as more than 400 philanthropists, art enthusiasts, and patrons shimmied late into the evening at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s annual Party for the Park gala, held at the museum on May 3. Guests started the evening with a reception and a sneak peek of two 2015 Audi models. After a rousing live auction, where guests bid on items such as original artwork and international travel packages, they enjoyed a seated dinner courtesy of Max Ultimate Food.

Kate Gilbert at the post-auction dance party.

Ali and Betty Riaz

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

Emily Evans and Nicolas Kane with the 2015 Audi A8

Susan Flahive and Dave Lamere

Beth Terrana and Jamie Jaffee

INVITED Simon Doonan

There were dreses aplenty for the social season ahead. Henrietta Conrad

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL BLANCHARD (BARNEY’S); MATT TEUTEN (SILVER CELEBRATION)

Tomoko Ogura

Breakfast at Barneys

Elena Matlack

A group of nearly 40 lucky fashionistas attended a private breakfast and shopping event on April 3 at Barneys New York at Copley Place to support the Perkins school. Guests were treated to a presentation by Barneys New York creative ambassador Simon Doonan and fashion director Tomoko Ogura, who both helped shoppers select pieces from the latest collections. Barneys New York donated $15,000 in proceeds from the event to the Perkins organization, which educates students who are blind or deaf-blind.

The latest summer accessories were on display.

Jill Radsken

Abby Glovsky, Megan Hastings, Elizabeth Nolan, Robin Kern, and Sarah Glovsky

Ren Blake, Barbara Copeman, and Tina Chiz

Greg Sweeney, Bianca de la Garza, and Bill Emery

Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams

A Silver Celebration Michael Kelley, Ricardo Rodriguez, and Barry DeCosta

It started with a trip to Mexico City, where Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams met the city’s hottest DJ duo, Tom & Collins. Gold and Williams knew they had to fly the music-spinners to Boston to be the star entertainment for their furniture brand’s 25th anniversary party at their Boston Signature Store on April 25. The event, which was attended by 700 people, raised more than $7,500 for the Pine Street Inn. The night included a raffle with lucky winners bringing home a $5,000 Mitchell Gold shopping spree, framed photography, and pieces of furniture. Guests enjoyed cocktails and wine, an elaborate food spread catered by Max Ultimate Food, and an amazing cake replica of the company’s iconic Too Sexy Sadie Chair.

The popular Too Sexy Sadie Chair was reproduced in cake form.

Shea Gomez, Anthony Masters, Dagny Blomster, and Jon Allen

DJ duo Tom & Collins

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

INVITED

Michael Masso, Martha Coakley, Ron Druker, and John Hall

Richard Friedman and Tommy Amaker Ray Magliozzi and Bill Achtmeyer

Patrick Lyons, Mark White, and Sonia Chang-Diaz

Banned in Boston

Lisa Schmid Alvord and Matt Siegel

This year’s Banned in Boston started with dizzying fun when Governor Deval Patrick took his wife, Diane, for a spin onstage at the House of Blues. KISS 108’s morning radio host Matt Siegel served as emcee for the one-night-only musical comedy revue, which raised more than $600,000 for the nationally acclaimed violence prevention program Urban Improv. This year’s lineup included Aerosmith rocker Tom Hamilton (who participates in Banned in Boston every year), Jenny Johnson, Attorney General Martha Coakley, candidate for governor Charlie Baker, WGBH’s Emily Rooney, Harvard Men’s Basketball Coach Tommy Amaker, and the COO of the Boston Red Sox, Sam Kennedy. The audience and performers enjoyed a reception at The Lansdowne Pub before the event and a rollicking post-show bash in the Foundation Room.

A yellow submarine floated in the Clarke waterfall basin.

Tom Clarke and Jean Verbridge

Peace and Love accessories kept everyone in a groovy mood.

Cheryl and David Andreozzi Julie Sabbagh, Sean Clarke, Heather Kahler, and Christian Sanchez

34 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

A Fab Affair

Bell bottoms, love beads, and daisy headbands replaced three-piece suits and proper skirts for some 300 architects and designers who showed up at Clarke Distribution’s official Sub-Zero and Wolf Showroom and Test Kitchen for the company’s Designer Appreciation Night. In the Clarke Amphitheater, guests watched a video clip of Ed Sullivan from his iconic TV show in the ’60s introducing “those lads from London.” The night topped off with a Beatles tribute band launching into the classic hit “She Loves You.” Burke and Ann Cheney

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOSHUA LAVINE (BANNED); SCOTT ERB AND GLENN PERRY (A FAB AFFAIR)

Tom Hamilton, Julia Van Daam, Deval Patrick, and Susan Cohen

INVITED Ethan Koh and Sinesia Karol

Sketches for a new bag.

Pramy Yadav and Ashley Bernon

A bright pink Ethan K bag. Paula Garcia

Clasp options for Ethan K bags.

Into the Wild

Janet Wu

The natives were restless to meet handbag designer Ethan Koh at a reception hosted by Saks Fifth Avenue Boston and Sinesia Karol. Koh met with private clients earlier in the day in the Fifth Avenue Club to discuss bespoke pieces and Ethan K’s new Wizard of the Secret Garden collection, which features beautiful bags in an array of colors, clasped with bejeweled hedgehogs, bumblebees, and ducks. Guests, including Ashley Bernon, Pramy Yadav, and Janet Wu, browsed the new collection and mingled with Koh.

Kevin Bright

Jed Lowrie

Rimma Gluzman and Stacey Lucchino

Wyc Grousbeck and Steve Pagliuca

On the Job Corinne Grousbeck

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LISA RICHOV (INTO THE WILD); MICHAEL BLANCHARD (ON THE JOB)

Dave and Helene Power

Andrea Brooks and Suhail Kwatra

Jadine Greenaway and Alexandra McGuigan

It was a funk-filled evening of 1970s music when The Family Stone pumped up the dance floor at the The Perkins Possibilities Gala on May 1. Six hundred guests gathered at the Perkins school for the blind’s Watertown campus, where they raised more than $1.6 million for Perkins’s global mission to educate blind and deaf-blind students. Corinne Grousbeck, the Perkins board chair-elect, cochaired the gala with local philanthropist Bill Schawbel and Friends producer and Emerson College professor Kevin Bright. Dave Power, a business strategist and parent of a Perkins graduate, made his first appearance as the organization’s new CEO and president. A wise-cracking Lenny Clarke ran the live auction, and Wyc Grousbeck unveiled the pioneering Perkins-Business Partnership to take aim at a high jobless rate among adults who are blind.

George Regan and Emily Rooney

JoJo and Deb White

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

Marlo Fogelman, Denise Leyhe, and Jeryl Oristaglio

21st Century Shakespeare Ashley Wisneski, Joanna HumphreyFlynn, and Kelly Boullet Kerry Healey and Kerry O’Malley

William Shakespeare went street style when the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company held its annual gala at the Mandarin Oriental on April 5. Themed “The Streets of NYC 1985,” the event featured graffiti artists in action, a Warholian photo booth, original music, and lively theatrical performances. Cochaired by Kelly Boullet and Sam Mazzarelli, the benefit drew roughly 300 guests to support the company’s free summer performances of Shakespeare on the Common, as well as its education and enrichment programs for youth and students throughout Greater Boston.

Local artist Percy Fortini-Wright creating a live graffiti portrait of William Shakespeare. Al-Wadhah Al-Adawi

Amber D’Amelio

Lisa Tung and Jennifer Harrington

William Grote and Courtney Lewis

Wes and Ashley Karger

Paul and Pamela Karger

Mark Andrus and Melissa Choi Robert Beal, Portia Harcus, and Dawn Barrett

Bidding War Jerome Urvoy and Marc Wurbel

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

Bid cards were held high on April 12 when the Massachusetts College of Art and Design held its 25th Annual Benefit Art Auction. The event was held in the campus’s Bakalar and Paine Galleries and featured more than 300 contemporary artworks by national and international artists, including Andy Warhol and Esteban Vicente. The MassArt Auction drew a crowd of more than 650 art collectors and enthusiasts, including Pamela and Paul Karger and Patrick and Kristina Lyons. The event raised more than $740,000 for scholarships and academic support.

Shawn Kravetz, Clare Villari, and Jill Kravetz

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ABBOT IMAGING PHOTOGRAPHY BY MELISSA OSTROW

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Patrick Ahearn, Kimberly McCaslin, and Steve Barnes

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Drew Lawton and Liz Brunner

Stephanie Stewart and Christian McGowan

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It was one big group hug when Mayor Martin J. Walsh took to the stage with two beneficiaries of Make-A-Wish during the organizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s annual gala on April 12. More than 500 guests attended the fundraiser to support wishes for children with life-threatening medical conditions. The event, hosted by Make-A-Wish Massachusetts and Rhode Island, was held at the InterContinental Boston and showcased performances and heartfelt speeches by area wish children and their families. TV personality Liz Brunner emceed the event, and Linda Groves was presented with the Community Spirit Award for her dedication to the organization. The gala raised approximately $950,000.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh with wish recipients Sammuel Galette and Frederick Hunter.

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Patrick Chung, Joe Vellano, and Ryan Allen

Threads for a Cause

James Brown and Dan Cronin

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF TATIANA BLANCO PHOTOGRAPH BY TK; ILLUSTRATION BY TK

Adam Hunt

Two hometown heroes were honored at Mr. Sid’s men’s clothing boutique in Newton Center for its magazine launch party to benefit the Lt. Walsh–FF Kennedy Memorial Fund. More than 150 guests attended the event, hoping to make a difference for the two fallen heroes’ families. The evening included a wine tasting by Adventures in Wines and a fashion show with spring and summer formal and informal looks worn by Newton firemen. Throughout the night guests such as NFL football players Patrick Chung, Joe Vellano, and Ryan Allen joined the cause, which raised nearly $6,000 through raffle proceeds and sales.

Heidi and David Reservitz Allison and Barry Braunstein

Ed Hunter

Stuart Segel, Hugh Little, Peter Leone, and Barry Segel

T he List summer 2014

Scott Shucher

Joe Bezzone

Jeannine Clarke

Scott Schneider

Katherine A. Gulotta

John Werner

Paul Karger

Robert Puchniak

Scott Geraghty

Katy Perry

Susan Earabino

Alexa Harnett

Diane Carlson

Mark Morganelli

Alison Quirk

Jeffrey Hartmann

Andy Levine

Brant Binder

Paul Dias

Brad Paisley

TJ Keighley

JoJo Gutfarb

Timothy P. Kirwan

Tom Cantone

Matthew Hughes

Jonae BarnesÂ

Charlene Love

Kyla Moore

Dianna Bauer

Ulrik Juul Christensen

Mitchell Grossinger Etess

Allen Potts

Jill Linville

Thomas Resor

Holly Finigan

George Galinsky

Chris Sanchez

Chris Karlson

Joanne DiFrancesco

Samuel Brewer

Erin Duggan Lynch

Shawn W. Kravetz

Tyler Pyburn

Michael Phillips

Jesse Weiss

Bruce Bozsum

Nick Resor

Keith Urban

David W. Townsend

Lisa Richov

Chad Pessini

JP Faiella

Butch Stearns

Nikki Dinari

Sean M. Mullen

Ray Pineault

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEN RICHARDSON AND JARED KUZIA

Mayor Martin Walsh on the pier at LoPresti Park. He started his political career as a union officer with the Laborers Local 223.

Superlatives PEOPLE, CULTURE, TASTE, TREASURES

VIEW FROM THE TOP

A Breath of Hope and Healing THERE’S A NEW MAYOR IN TOWN, AND BOSTON COMMON TAKES AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE PERSONAL STORY—INCLUDING BOOZE, BULLETS, AND BROTHERHOOD—BEHIND THE POLITICAL FORCE KNOWN AS MAYOR MARTIN J. WALSH. BY BRIAN WRIGHT O’CONNOR PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEN RICHARDSON

n the rituals of Dorchester life, nothing beats a funeral mass for a prince “Poverty. That’s the root of the underperformance and the achievement of politics. On an unseasonably warm January morning, ward bosses gap in our educational system.” Born to Galway immigrants, Walsh, 47, grew up in a union household and downtown power brokers gathered to pay respects to Robert H. Quinn, the former state attorney general and Massachusetts House with his father and uncles swapping political stories around the kitchen speaker. As the dons of Beacon Hill and City Hall exited Blessed Mother table. “Marty always loved politics, always loved talking about it,” says his Teresa Parish, blinking in the winter sun, Martin J. Walsh, looking more mother, Mary J. Walsh, sitting in her parlor with the gust of Connemara in like a funeral attendant than the newly minted mayor of Boston, stood by her accent. “He learned how much it could do for people. He first said he wanted to run for mayor when he was 13. Imagine that?” the open door of the hearse. But Walsh barely made it to 10. At age seven, he was diagnosed with a rare His head slightly bowed, the mayor solemnly received a hosanna of “howahyahs” and handshakes while offering reassuring words of his own. cancer. The doctors gave him six months. Relatives from Ireland flew in to Walsh, who had taken the seat in the legislature once held by the beloved see him walk alone up the aisle at a special Christmas service that was as Quinn, grew up on nearby Taft Street. His eyes scanned the crowd pour- much a wake as a first communion. His red hair fell out. He missed school and ing out of the church, which is still known as St. Margaret’s among the was held back a grade. But he survived—the miracle child of St. Margaret’s. Walsh was an indifferent high school student, just getting by and having a faithful who never accepted the renaming of the parish for the canonized nun. His inauguration had taken place 11 days before, but this was a com- few pops with the boys before taking a brief stab at college. He joined the ing-out of a different kind. The themes that echoed throughout his speech family trade with the lads of Laborers Local 223. By then, his drinking had that day—of second chances, courage, redemption, and hope—took shape progressed from beery nights to blackouts. He had more responsibility at work, promoted from hauling Sheetrock to serving as the in the streets, playgrounds, and union halls of this blueunion’s benefits officer, but the booze threatened to bring collar neighborhood. it all crashing down. At age 22, after a long night at the Over the coming months, the same themes will be bars, he was struck in the leg by a bullet fired by the invoked again and again as the plain-spoken mayor angry loser of a brawl with one of his drinking pals. He draws from his own “Boston Strong” story—beating hit bottom not long after, awaking disoriented on a cancer, alcohol, and a bullet—to console a city still Sunday afternoon, his life in thrall to ethyl alcohol. grieving over the marathon bombings and to comfort Tearfully, he sought help and checked into rehab. His the families of firefighters killed in a Back Bay blaze. last drink was on April 23, 1995. Recovery, a process of Walsh instinctively identifies with the underdog. Asked —MARY J. WALSH continued on page 46 about his highest priority at the moment, he answers,

“He first said he wanted to run for mayor when he was 13. Imagine that?”

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

VIEW FROM THE TOP Inaugurated in January, Mayor Martin Walsh looks out over Faneuil Hall from his office.

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

WORDS TO LIVE BY Mayor Walsh talks about Boston and politics, kicking back and character. *Legacy “I want Boston’s economy to be global. I want Boston to be the high-tech capital in the United States. And I want our public schools to be world-class.”

*Boston’s Greatest Strength “In light of what happened last year at the marathon, no one can deter us from wanting to be successful, and Boston has a tremendous heart.”

*Favorite Pastimes “I like going to dinner with [my girlfriend] Lorrie and just hanging out. I like puttering around the yard. Hydrangeas—I love them. They remind me of the Cape.”

*Toughest Political Decision “The death penalty. I voted against it. I was a state rep for about four months, and I spoke to a lot of people. I prayed on it. I ultimately voted against it and knew that I had made the right decision.”

*Popping the Question to the “First Girlfriend” “I’m not going to pop it in a magazine, I can tell you that!”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JARED WICKERHAM/GETTY IMAGES (OPENING DAY)

continued from page 45 self-renewal through helping others, is an ongoing commitment, whether in the halls of Alcoholics Anonymous, in policies to help the dispossessed, or in words of comfort to the broken-hearted. “He’s so effective in the role of comforter-in-chief because he’s been there,” says State Representative Tom Calter, who used to share an office with Walsh. “He knows what it’s like to face despair and loss.” After returning from rehab, Walsh rose to become president of the local. In 1997, he won a special election to the Massachusetts House. He soon moved up in the union ranks as well, taking the helm of the powerful Boston Building Trades Council while earning a degree at Boston College. When Mayor Thomas Menino decided to leave City Hall, Walsh jumped into the crowded race. Pundits predicted his ties to labor would turn voters off. He laughed at their stories. “Labor built the city, industry built the city,” he says. “And now as mayor, my relationships with organized labor come in handy because I understand being on both sides of the aisle.” During the race, Boston saw something new: the rise of the recovery community as a political force. “When they needed me,” says Walsh of the people he helped, “I tried to be there for them. And when I needed them, they were there for me.” The outpouring of support from ex-drunks and former druggies—and its impact on voters—was unexpected. So was the way he consolidated support from African American, Latino, and other minority rivals after his first-place primary finish over John Connolly, a Harvard-educated city councilor. Both candidates sounded like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when taking on the police department for failing to make the force reflect the diversity of the city. But it was Walsh, the white Dorchester guy, who secured the coveted backing of City Councilor Felix Arroyo, former State Representative Charlotte Golar Richie, and neighborhood development guru John Barros, to beat Connolly in communities of color by a margin that won him the election. Walsh’s final election victory brought the Irish back into power at City Hall. But it’s not a return to business as usual. He lives in a tidy apartment close to the woman he calls “the love of my life,” Lorrie Higgins. But the city will have to get used to more than just a “first girlfriend.” Walsh is a labor guy who negotiates comfortably with megamillion-dollar developers and a staunch Catholic who faced down religious conservatives to back gay marriage. He supports teachers unions and helped to start a charter school. He just says no to pot dispensaries and yes to Uber taxi service—offending and pleasing constituencies without regard for predictability. Walsh, drawing on the power of believing again in belief itself, says he’ll do what’s best for the ABOVE: Mayor Walsh city in spite of the naysayers threw the first pitch on opening day in and skeptics. “The word Fenway Park this April. can’t—I just don’t like it,” he RIGHT: A handpainted sign made by volunteer says. “Anything can be done. Renee Zych for Walsh’s Anything is possible.” BC mayoral campaign.

DYNAMIC DUO Goldie and Brogan Graham’s yin-yang approach to fitness is shaping up Bostonians.

Chakra-Thon WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A HARDBODY MEETS A YOGI? LOVE AND FITNESS FOR ALL. BY LISA PIERPONT

rogan’s favorite words: Rad. Epic. Move. Goldie’s favorite words: Peace. Zen. Stretch. For kicks, he sprints through gnarly woods and brands himself with a fresh tattoo. She, alternatively, wraps her leg around her head and whispers a new mantra. And yet, Brogan and Goldie Graham are madly, crazy in love—and Boston fitness junkies are reaping the benefits of this couple’s talents. On August 24 at 2 PM sharp, the duo Smoothie heaven: will host More Movement—a turbo-charged, one-time-only, “Boloco’s Jimmy personality-packed athletic adventure through the streets Carter for ice of Boston. The event—which begins in Dewey Square with cream, peanut Brogan leading a jog, escalates into a zany obstacle race, and butter, and all culminates with Goldie leading a DJ-powered yoga session in the love. It’s amazing.”—BG a mystery location—is exclusive to Boston Common readers. Healthy eats: “Life The Grahams, you see, are cult heroes, each in their own Alive is a serious right. Brogan is the cofounder of The November Project, a addiction. My kick weekly free fitness crusade that started in 2011 on the steps of is The Innocent Harvard Stadium with half a dozen athletic types, and now bowl. I add greens attracts more than 300 “tribe” members in 17 cities across the and shitake mushrooms, and country, including Fortune 500 executives, suburban soccer sometimes an egg. moms, and pro athletes (“November Project is like Fight So delicious!”—GG Club, except you can talk about it,” says NHL player Andrew Ference). Goldie is a yoga instructor at Back Bay Yoga and Sweat and Soul Yoga, where some of her classes sell out weeks in advance. Her honeycomb curls and rubber-band limbs have graced the cover of more than a few yoga magazines. “Yoga Journal was a huge deal for me,” she says. Brogan is one part Jim Carrey, another part General Patton. He grew up in Goldie teaching yoga in Copley Square. He reached out to her. “I was like, it’s Madison, Wisconsin, and was recruited as a star rower at Northeastern the guy! I freaked out,” she recalls. What Brogan read was a story about University, where he majored in theater. He planned his career, which has Goldie’s rapid-fire ascent to yoga stardom. While the Minnesota-born Goldie included working as Northeastern University’s men’s crew assistant coach was on the road to becoming a doctor, she stumbled into a hot yoga class to and now as a marketing manager for New Balance, based on one criterion: “I ease her pre-med stress, and all notions of IV drips and surgical gloves went could never be chained to a desk.” out the window. “It just felt right.” So does creating one-of-a-kind, sell-out Goldie saw Brogan running four years ago. “I went home and journaled events with her husband, Brogan. Buy your Boston Common ticket now! Visit that I had seen my husband.” Two years later, Brogan spotted a picture of bostoncommon-magazine.com/events for details. BC

48 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

PHOTOGRAPHY BY IAN TRAVIS BARNARD

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Longtime Nantucket resident Gene Mahon used to own a house near Pocomo Point, which he calls “a walk down memory lane.”

WHETHER A SOCIAL BUTTERFLY OR WALLFLOWER, “MAHON ABOUT TOWN” EDITOR GENE MAHON HAS A PLACE FOR EVERYONE ON NANTUCKET. BY JENNIFER DEMERITT

50 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

those people meet.” Here he divulges his favorite places to keep those connections going strong. “CISCO BREWERS basically started as a bunch of guys that got together and said, ‘Let’s make some beer.’ There’s just so much of the ’70s there that it’s ridiculous. One of the things about the ’70s I loved is that it was color-blind and class-blind, every kind of blind. Everyone was the same. If you were 20 years old in the Opera House restaurant, sitting next to Senator Kennedy, he wasn’t treated any better. So it’s the same kind of thing out in this place. It’s all kinds of people, from every walk of life, dogs, kids…. I love going out there to reconnect with what drew me here. “All summer I spend four or five nights a week out photographing parties. Then I spend all day putting together a newsletter, so I’m writing and editing—I’m inside my head. But in my mind the best photographers are the best entertainers, because the idea is to boss people around just enough to get them to group together, but also continued on page 52

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CARY HAZELGROVE/NANTUCKET STOCK (MAHON); EORINGEL (POCOMO POINT)

“I’m Here T Because of the People.”

he name of his newsletter, “Mahon About Town,” says it all: Gene Mahon is tapped into everyone and everything that’s happening on Nantucket. These days he’s best known for his newsletter documenting the island’s summer party scene, but this year-round resident’s roots go much deeper. Since moving to Nantucket in 1970, he’s owned a slew of businesses, including The Camera Shop (still around today, with a new owner), the legendary Roadhouse club (“It had all the magic of Nantucket rolled into that place,” he recalls), a local television station that eventually became Plum TV, plus the island’s first video store, first copy shop, and first outdoor flea market. Mahon’s MO for all of them? “What’s this island missing?” he’d ask, then figure out how to fill that need. Today, when he’s not shutterbugging at parties, he keeps busy as a board member of the Nantucket Arts Council and a few other local organizations, and as president of the public access channel Nantucket Community Television. “I’m a connector,” Mahon says. “That’s what gets me high: knowing I’m making people happy and helping

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Mahon loves hiking at Sanford Farm (ABOVE), and often unwinds before a night taking party photos with a drink at Galley Beach (RIGHT). For a ’70s flashback, he heads to Cisco Brewers (FAR RIGHT) for craft beer and a groovy attitude.

continued from page 50 crack a joke so that they’re already laughing and smiling, and you’ve got the picture. The place that really helps me move between those two lives is GALLEY BEACH. It’s right on the Nantucket Sound, so it’s not ocean-type waves but quiet, lapping waves. Around six o’clock in the middle of the summer, you can find me sitting inside at the bar, staring out at the most amazing view, having a drink and thinking, OK, now I’m ready to go take pictures of people. “The place I go if I don’t want to run into anyone at all is POCOMO POINT. I used to have a house on the beach there. It’s about a two-mile walk from the beach to the house. That’s a trip down memory lane; every time I take that walk I remember all the good times I had. Number two is the SANFORD FARM. It’s got to be hundreds of acres. It’s not exactly pristine—it would have a lot of sticker bushes and not a lot of places to walk—but all the vegetation is native. It’s just a really great walk. Anytime. “I’m here because of the people. If the people weren’t so creative and so passionate about the things they do, I would have left a long time ago. So I enjoy the restaurants where you’re going to end up meeting interesting people. That’s the real life of this island. I was talking to a woman the other night at THE PROPRIETORS who has

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worked in education for 25 years. She’s retired now, but she is offering that experience to the island’s public school system. I told her, as president of Nantucket Community Television, that we were about to set up a TV studio in the high school for students, and she had many ideas for that. That’s a normal Friday night out. “LOLA 41 is probably the most social bar on the island. Wherever you sit, you can see everybody else in the bar. A few years ago, in early March, I sat down by a woman I didn’t recognize. I asked her, ‘What brought you to Nantucket?’ She said that when she was younger, she had danced for the Eglevsky Ballet, which had a residency here for the summer, and she had dreamed of living here ever since. I said, ‘Well, I have photographs of you,’ as I had photographed the ballet. Her name was Lynne Bolton, and she told me of her involvement in theater production in New York and at Yale. A few months later, I ran into a friend who ran the island’s Shakespeare company. She told me she needed someone to run the company, and I set her up with Lynne, who got the job. Lynne immersed herself in the local theater scene, and in 2012 she brought a new professional company here called White Heron Theatre. She tells me that without our chance meeting, the new theater company would not have happened.” BC

IN HIS GENES Gene Mahon shares the places that keep him connected. Cisco Brewers “There’s just so much of the ’70s there that it’s ridiculous.” 5 Bartlett Farm Road, 508-325-5929; ciscobrewers.com Pocomo Point “Every time I take that walk, I remember all the good times.” Just west of the head of the harbor Sanford Farm “It’s just a really beautiful walk. Anytime.” 115 Madaket Road; nantucketconservation.org The Proprietors “I enjoy the restaurants where you’re going to meet interesting people.” 9 India St., 508-228-7477; proprietorsnantucket.com Lola 41 “Wherever you sit, you can see everybody else in the bar.” 15 S. Beach St., 508-325-4001; lola41.com

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF MASSACHUSETTS OFFICE OF TRAVEL AND TOURISM (SANDFORD FARM); GENE MAHON (GALLEY BEACH); KATIE KAIZER (CISCO BREWERS)

NATIVE

SPIRIT OF GENEROSITY

LEFT:

Danielle, Steven, Gillian, and Audrey Epstein Reny survived the Boston Marathon bombings last year. BELOW: The Reny family representing Team Stepping Strong.

THE RENY FAMILY HEALS ITSELF AND OTHERS WITH ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL RESEARCH FUNDS FOR BOSTON MARATHON SURVIVORS AND BEYOND. BY LISA PIERPONT

o walk into the Reny townhouse is an elegant reminder of what hard work, an excellent education, and a strong upbringing can do. Carefully chosen art lines the walls of the four-story home. Tasteful bouquets of purple roses, fuchsia hydrangea, and white orchids punctuate the rooms. Framed black-and-white family photographs dot the shelves, arranged just so. This is the home that Steven and Audrey Epstein Reny built. It is warm. It is loving. It is perfect. It is where their 19-year-old daughter, Gillian, dreamed of becoming a ballerina; where their older daughter, Danielle, now 21, applied to Harvard College, and where she received the acceptance letter. It is where Steven and Audrey imagined growing old together—the natural evolution after sharing their youth together. They met at Weston High School—he a junior, she a sophomore. “We were high school sweethearts,” Steven says. “We went to my junior prom together, and since then we’ve been a couple.” Audrey continues, “People wonder, Is that how it really happened? But it really is. We fell in love and followed each other through college and our first jobs.” They both graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and landed positions at Bain & Company. Steven went on to be the president of his family’s manufacturing company, while Audrey joined her family’s real estate development

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group. No matter how busy work was, they both prioritized spending time with their beloved daughters. Life, as they say, was good.

THE DAY IT ALL CHANGED For Gillian, it happened in slow motion. Screams. Pain. Red. Her legs. The legs she danced upon at the Boston Ballet school and onstage. Her dad, Steven, next to her… then down. Pavement. Smoke. Thunder ripping through his ears. Her mom, Audrey—her wrist hurts, but she’s looking for Gillian, for Steven, for Danielle, who is a block away from the finish line. Running in the Boston Marathon. Sprinting. Trembling. Falling. Where is her family? She knows they were waiting for her by the finish line. In 12 seconds, life was no longer good. Gillian was rushed to Brigham and Women’s Hospital. At 4 PM, Dr. Eric G. Halvorson, a plastic surgeon, saw Gillian for the first time. It was one hour after the bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, in what would be the worst terrorist attack on Boston soil. Gillian was unconscious on a gurney, draped with steel-blue sheets. “All I could see were her legs,” Dr. Halvorson says. “I could tell that both were severely continued on page 56

PHOTOGRAPHY BY HEATHER MCGRATH (FAMILY AT HOME); COURTESY OF THE STEPPING STRONG FUND (FINISH LINE)

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SPIRIT OF GENEROSITY RIGHT: Gillian Reny recovering at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. BELOW: Her sister, Danielle, ran in the marathon last year.

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“Both of Gillian’s legs were severely injured, and one might not have been able to be saved.” —DR. ERIC G. HALVORSON FIRST STEPS One, two, three, plié. Hold the barre. Two, two, three, relevé. Three, two, three, plié. It was tedious—God, so tedious to Gillian, but making it at the Boston Ballet school had meant being disciplined, being tough. For three weeks at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Center, as Gillian learned to put weight on her legs, practiced bending her knees—fighting each time not to faint from the pain—she remembered her 7-year-old self training at the ballet barre. She remembered how she ignored her feet throbbing inside her pink satin toe shoes. It’s in your head, she would repeat to herself. Every dancer feels this, but the excellent ones manage it. Audrey and Steven Reny knew their daughter was strong, but they never could have predicted the kind of resilience required of her now. They had cheered in the audience when Gillian twirled onstage for seven years in the Boston Ballet’s Nutcracker. Now they held their breath each time she grasped the hospital’s metal bars to take a step. “It was a fine line between pushing yourself and pushing yourself too much,” Gillian says of her recovery. “I was so focused on wanting to get out of the hospital as soon as I could. I was pushing myself to make the most out of it.” In between therapy sessions, as Gillian was healing, the Renys started to talk about giving back to the doctors and staff who had saved their daughter. In February, the Reny family launched the Gillian Reny Stepping Strong Fund at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, raising money for cutting-edge research and innovation for limb salvage, reconstruction, and regeneration. continued on page 58

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF THE RENY FAMILY (GILLIAN); MARATHON FOTO (DANIELLE)

continued from page 54 injured, and one might not be able to be saved.” Audrey and Steven described their daughter to him. “They told me she was a dancer, that she was supposed to go to the University of Pennsylvania as a freshman in the fall, that she had a bright future ahead of her.” Dr. Halvorson got right to it. The vascular system, tissues, bones, and nerves all had to be assessed—and fast. Along with Dr. Halvorson, a team of other doctors was assigned to Gillian in a multidisciplinary approach. Gillian’s legs had been sliced by a six-inch piece of the wall of the pressure-cooker bomb. It had shredded through her right leg and embedded into her left calf. After 24 hours and two surgeries, it was time for Dr. Halvorson to report to Audrey and Steven. Their daughter’s legs would be saved. “It was a miracle that all the major nerves were intact,” Dr. Halvorson says. Miracles are funny things. Timing, luck, science, even love, it could be argued, are all part of the mysterious potion. Dr. Halvorson isn’t one to utter the word lightly, nor is he one to downplay the life-and-death, limb-or-no-limb outcomes that doctors come to bear. A graduate of the medical school at Duke University School of Medicine, he had seen worse than the Boston Marathon bombings. Back in 2003, he was working as the chief trauma resident at Rhode Island Hospital on the night of the fire at the Station nightclub. One hundred people perished in the blaze, and more than 200 were injured. “As far as casualties go, that was a much bigger event,” he says. “It left a mark and informed me about what types of systems and approaches work best in times of trauma.” When he came to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2013, he recognized a thoughtful staff, a multidisciplinary system, and a depth of expertise that ranked the hospital as one of the best, not just on the Northeast corridor but in the world. Did that help save Gillian’s legs? “There’s no question,” Dr. Halvorson says. But there was a long journey ahead for Gillian and her family. One of their toughest challenges was adapting from being a fiercely private clan to being thrust into the spotlight in an international news story. “We were in the midst of something that was a public phenomenon,” Audrey says. “We literally heard from every person that we’ve ever known in our entire life.” And people they had never met. “We had so many requests for interviews,” she says. The family declined all of them. “That wasn’t the priority for us at all,” Steven says. “It was about Gillian and the doctors, and our immediate family.” “[Audrey and Steven] were there around the clock,” Dr. Halvorson says. “They had to be dragged away just to be evaluated—I mean, Steven ruptured both of his eardrums in the attack, and Audrey had multiple shrapnel injuries.” As a doctor trained to manage trauma, Halvorson was struck by how the family handled what clearly was the worst event of their lives. “I could tell when I first met them that they were successful, smart, and private,” he says. “This sort of trauma could break them. It could make anybody in any circumstance fall apart.”

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SPIRIT OF GENEROSITY

As part of Team Stepping Strong, Reny family members joined hands as they crossed the finish line of this year’s marathon.

Charity Regist er OPPORTUNITIES TO GIVE.

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continued from page 56 “We were so indebted to what they had done,” Audrey says. “That was really the genesis behind the fund and our decision to be more public with our experience.” In the first three months, the fund raised a staggering $3.3 million. On July 16, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Renys will host the Stepping Strong Grand Rounds, a reception that will include presentations and discussions with Dr. Mitchel Harris and Dr. Halvorson, among others, and will serve as the kick-off event for the Stepping Strong Young Innovator Awards, which will provide two $100,000 grants a year to innovators creating state-of-the-art inventions to treat trauma. Giving back feels right, Audrey says, and going public as a family to help others feels even more right. “The work of the fund is something that gives meaning to what we have been through. It enables us to take what happened to us and do something that is going to help a lot of people. It has shifted from being about us to being something that embraced a broader community.” Steven, Audrey, and Danielle ran in this year’s Boston Marathon. They were joined by doctors and supporters of the Gillian Reny Stepping Strong Fund. As they approached the finish line, they held each other’s hands in front of hundreds of cheering spectators. After they crossed, they held their hands higher. BC

What: Stepping Strong Grand Rounds PM

Where: Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 75 Francis St. Cost: Free, but donations are accepted RSVP: Call Amy Erickson at 617-424-4317 or e-mail aberickson@partners.org.

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When: July 12, 8:30 PM Where: Tanglewood, 297 West St., Lenox

COMMUNITY BOATING BOSTON, INC.

What: Join event chair Adam Schepp for family fun at Community Boating’s 4th of July SAILabration Fundraiser, featuring a cookout and a waterfront view of the fireworks. Proceeds support Junior Program scholarships, which are granted to low-income children to reduce the cost of the sailing program to as low as $1 for the summer. Last year’s event raised $100,000. community-boating.org When: July 4, 4 PM Where: Community Boating Boathouse, 21 David G. Mugar Way

INSIGHT When: Wednesday, July 16, 6–7

What: Andris Nelsons will make his first Tanglewood appearance as BSO Music Director Designate when he hosts an evening of dinner and performances at the Tanglewood Gala. The Boston Symphony Orchestra and other acclaimed performers will present excerpts from several operas, followed by a post-concert celebration. Cochairs Jane and Robert J. Mayer, MD, expect to surpass the $340,000 raised at last year’s event. Proceeds support the orchestra’s centurylong commitment to bringing music, art, and education to Boston. bso.org

DANA-FARBER CANCER INSTITUTE

What: At the 35th annual Pan-Mass Challenge, cyclists from across the country will traverse the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to raise money for cancer research. In 2013, this event generated $39 million for the Jimmy Fund, marking the largest amount

ever raised by a single athletic philanthropic event. The iconic bike-a-thon passes through 46 cities, and riders can choose from 12 routes ranging from 25 to 190 miles. At press time, more than 5,800 cyclists were already registered to support the 2014 fundraising goal of $40 million. pmc.org When: August 2–3 Where: Various starting locations in Sturbridge, Wellesley, and Bourne

NATIONAL MS SOCIETY OF GREATER NEW ENGLAND

What: Tee up for a good cause at the Link Up for MS Golf Event. The afternoon begins with a luncheon and is followed by a golf tournament, awards dinner, and silent auction to benefit the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. The fourplayer Bramble tournament is open to men and women with or without a handicap. Hole-in-one prizes include a new Ford Fusion and a 15-foot boat. Last year the event raised nearly $75,000 to help raise awareness about MS and support cutting-edge research to inhibit the disease. stjude.org When: August 18, 11:30 AM Where: Ipswich Country Club, 148 Country Club Way, Ipswich

VOICES OF HOPE

What: The annual Barbara Byrd Memorial Voices of Hope Golf Classic promises a great tournament at a scenic country club. Dinner and an awards reception follow the golf game, hosted by Rich Meservey, Brendon Lynch, and Art Certosimo. In 2013, Voices of Hope donated $60,000 to the Henri and Belinda Termeer Center for Targeted Therapies at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, and a large portion of that donation was raised at the Golf Classic. voicesofhopeboston.org When: July 12, 11 AM Where: Far Corner Golf Club, 5 Barker Road, Boxford

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See why the nation’s most successful go North to New Hampshire New Hampshire is more than just quaint cottages "On Golden Pond". Head North and discover why Heads of Corporations and Heads of State come to Wolfeboro, and its surrounding towns, to enjoy their exquisite Waterfront and Farm/Equine Estates at prices far south of what you would expect anywhere. Enjoy the breathtaking beauty of The Lakes Region, The White Mountains and the 44,000 acre Lake Winnipesaukee. CNBC ranked NH with the “highest quality of life”--and for good reason. Your dollar goes much further, We will become a Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Office, July 2014 PO Box 510, 22. South Main Street, Wolfeboro New Hampshire 03894

and is closer to home. Spencer-Hughes Home Services provides Concierge services that allow you to come and go at your leisure. Let us take care of everything else, from airport pickups, to filling the fridge, handling maintenance issues, and anything important for you to have done. The purpose is for you to spend 100% of your time enjoying your time here with your family and guests. Contact Bob Hughes at Bob.Hughes@SpencerHughes.com or call 603-569-5000 to have all your property needs taken care.

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HOTTEST TICKET

Clark Young and Karen O’Connell in Washington DC’s Studio Theatre 2ndStage production of Astro Boy and the God of Comics, which Company One presents in Boston this summer.

Off-Kilter and Out of Bounds? Thank You. I

f there are boundaries in theater, Company One has crossed pretty much all of them. For its production of Tennessee Williams’s steamy one-act drama Green Eyes, the Boston theater company seated audiences in a tiny room at the Ames Hotel while a half-dressed couple tussled across the sheets and patrons’ laps. To present The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, it built a regulation-size wrestling ring as the platform for the provocative morality play about America’s consumerist appetite and racial intolerance. And earlier this year, it staged Annie Baker’s three-hour drama The Flick about three employees at a Worcester County movie theater—with their existential woes expressed in between long, naturalistic stretches absent of dialogue. Just weeks after Company One’s acclaimed production closed, the play earned Baker a Pulitzer Prize for drama. “The last couple

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of seasons we’ve adopted an internal motto about staging shows that feel impossible for a company of our size to do,” says Company One’s artistic director, Shawn LaCount. “Generally speaking, we find a lot of success in rising to the challenge.” In residence at the Boston Center for the Arts, the company is celebrating its 15th anniversary season. Its history is rich. Many of its shows are the darling of critics, and the small troupe has racked up an impressive array of awards, including more than 20 Elliot Norton and Independent Reviewers of New England awards, a first-of-its-kind grant by the American Theatre Wing, and spots on a number of year-end top-10 lists. Equally impressive is Company One’s ability to survive on a precariously thin budget while staying at the continued on page 62

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LUCIANA STECCONI

COMPANY ONE LAUNCHES ITS AUDIENCE INTO A NEW THEATRICAL STRATOSPHERE WITH ASTRO BOY AND THE GOD OF COMICS. BY JARED BOWEN

We have deeply rooted philanthropic and cultural partnerships in each community and support the organizations that work to strengthen each city.

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NIGHT MOVES

FROM TOP: The Boston cast of Astro Boy and the God of Comics sits in front of drawings made live during a performance; the production’s anime-style poster.

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continued from page 60 leading edge of theater. It nurtured the early work of Lydia Diamond, Kirsten Greenidge, and Gina Gionfriddo—some of today’s most notable playwrights, who all passed through Company One before seeing their work produced nationally. “For a long time, American theater was caught in a place of convention,” LaCount says. “Company One looks to program plays that focus a spotlight on people who are generally considered ‘other.’” This summer the company again stretches its lim.org its—this time with Astro Boy and the God of Comics. www .Com pany One Written by Japanese playwright Natsu Onoda Power, the show chronicles famed illustrator Osamu Tezuka’s creation of the beloved anime hero Astro Boy. A wide-eyed, lifelike robot with a perpetual smile, Astro Boy was conceived by Tezuka in a post – World War II Japan. Although born well after the comic’s initial publication in 1952, Power tapped into her own nostalgia for the character to write the —NATSU ONODA play. She had binge-read Tezuka’s comic books as a POWER child and even met him once during a school visit. “[The play] is a larger story about how artists use creativity to process historical trauma and violence, and to transform them,” she explains. Astro Boy is the embodiment of that. “He’s just so incredibly cute… and I think that has something to do with his positive energy,” Power surmises. “He’s a wise child, and he is altruistic.” The show, which The Washington Post named “one of the top three best theater experiences in 2012,” is an interactive production incorporating projections, film, puppetry, and live drawing. For the past year the cast has taken master classes with Power to create drawings on giant, eight-foot-tall pieces of paper as part of their performance. Power, who is also directing the show, says she cast actors who were illustrators or were capable of learning how to draw. “The drawing doesn’t exist on its own,” she explains. “Our scene about World War II portrays people drawing with charcoal, and as they draw they get messy with it. As the drawing starts to form, people die. It becomes something about death and war… and trying to make do in the time of trauma and chaos.” Once again, the stage is set for Company One to break new theatrical ground. July 18–August 16, Boston Center for the Arts, Plaza Theater, 539 Tremont St., 617-292-7110; companyone.org BC

“It’s about how artists use creativity to process trauma.”

Steven Maler readily admits he was out of his element when he stumbled into the dreamscape that inspired his newest work as artistic director of the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. Late at night last December, Maler was walking the streets of Miami’s Wynwood district during the city’s famed Art Basel fair. By day, Wynwood is home to a slew of galleries and museums. But by night, it’s rife with dark corners, pulsating dance parties, and international creatures of the night. “It’s a countercultural celebration unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere in the world,” he says. “There was something about that expression, that slight sense of danger, that made me wonder, Am I going to be mugged or end up at the best party of my life?” It also occurred to him that the vibe was much like that of Illyria, the enchanted coastal setting for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which Maler will stage on Boston Common July 23 through August 10. “It’s a surreal dream vision,” he says. One of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies, Twelfth Night is about unrequited love and mistaken intentions, although it doesn’t begin that way. “Twelfth Night has this blanket of loss and mourning and longing,” Maler says while rattling off five deaths that occur near the beginning of the play. “It’s about embracing the challenges that life throws your way and moving toward celebration.” Maler often takes inspiration from current events, and he pointedly staged the Bard’s tough, class-war drama Coriolanus during the last presidential election year. This year, he says, he’s been influenced by the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings. “To think about how we journey through that loss—that’s what this play is about.” So on the Common, look for the lighthearted, the sensual, and the peculiar that Maler found in Miami. The set design will even evoke some of the murals found in the Wynwood district—all for a play that Maler holds in epic esteem. Twelfth Night, he offers, “is Shakespeare’s greatest comedy and perhaps his greatest play.” July 23–August 10, Boston Common; commshakes.org

Shakespeare on the Common lights up Boston this summer. 62

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN MAXWELL (SHAKESPEARE); COURTESY OF COMPANY ONE (BOSTON CAST)

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night hits a modern vibe on the Boston Common’s moonlit stage.

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ART FULL

Shapes of Summer THE SEASON BRINGS “THE CONTEMPORARY FIGURE” INSIDE WESTPORT’S DEDEE SHATTUCK GALLERY, PLUS MOVIE NIGHTS AND YOGA OUTSIDE ON THE GRASSY LAWN. BY JARED BOWEN

hen Dedee Shattuck and her artist husband, William, moved from Manhattan to Westport, Massachusetts, in the mid-1980s, she wasn’t sure what to expect. At best she thought she’d find the sleepy enclave she left behind when she set off for design school a decade earlier. “I thought it was my mother’s cocktail set that was left around here,” she recalls. “But there were many artists, literally in the woods, that we got to know.” In the ensuing years, while also raising two sons, the Shattucks found themselves immersed in a cultural confluence of artists and professors from nearby Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and University of Massachusetts Dartmouth—all drawn to the quiet coastal town’s beaches, warm waters, and picturesque woods. Flash forward 20 years and Shattuck, a recent empty nester, opened the Dedee Shattuck Gallery in 2011, marrying her lifelong love of land and art. Initially, the gallery featured contemporary works by area artists, including Shattuck’s own husband. But in just three years the programming has expanded significantly, says lead curator Isabel Mattia. “We have such a

Cenote Azul #2 by Anne Leone, 2014.

64 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

strong creative community here,” she says. “Our mission is to foster the arts in this region and support the community while contributing to a larger, global community.” This July, the gallery presents “The Contemporary Figure,” in which three painters and two sculptors offer fresh interpretations of the human form, from the cubist to the symbolic to the surreal. The exhibition is just one reason among many to visit the gallery this summer. In the warmer months, programming expands to the gallery’s eight-acre property, which features a sculpture garden surrounded by meadows and a hardwood forest, and punctuated by a trout-filled brook. That includes Saturday morning Kripalu yoga with as many as 80 people on the front lawn, an outdoor cinema series with films projected onto the gallery’s white façade, and partnerships with local schools that lead elementary and middle-school students to discover art in the environment. “It’s a lab of curious innovation,” Shattuck says—one that’s breathtaking inside and out. “The Contemporary Figure” runs July 2–July 27, 1 Partners Lane, Westport, MA, 508-6364177; dedeeshattuckgallery.com BC

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All Hands on Deck LARRY LANNAN’S ONE-OF-A-KIND LIGHTSHIP BOSTON MODEL IS READY TO SAIL. BY JESSICA LANIEWSKI

his isn’t your run-of-the-mill boat in a bottle. Stooped over a table covered with tiny pieces of wood in his studio, Larry Lannan carefully assembles a model ship that will be displayed at his eponymous gallery in the Financial District. The Quincy-born Lannan, who was taught by his father to build and restore ship models as a 14-year-old, meticulously researches each vessel before he gets to work building replicas ranging from schooners and sloops to steamboats and yachts. The Lightship Boston, at 28 inches long, 8 inches wide, and 17 inches tall, is the only one of its kind and took nearly eight months to build. Here, Lannan talks about his lifelong love of model boat building and shares a few tricks of the trade. How do you begin building a model ship? I start with plans from the original vessel when available. These include line drawings of the hull and cabin arrangement, and precise drawings of the deck hardware and fittings. Many hours

of research are involved, and if the original vessel still exists, a site visit is warranted. After the research is complete, the hull is shaped either from a solid block of laminated boards or built with plank-on-frame construction, just as the original was. Then the individual fittings are turned in lathes, cast from pewter, or carved. How many pieces were used in this model? This question intrigued me, so I counted and found about 480 pieces in the Lightship Boston model. The model has milled brass fittings, soldered railings, and a carved, hardwood hull painted in many coats of Coast Guard red, with fine sanding in between coats. How do you choose a model to build? As a gallery owner I must consider what will sell. Here, there is always a demand for vessels with local history. Lightships also possess a great charm, similar to tugboats. People love them. Choosing the proper subject is imperative for success in this business.

Larry Lannan at work in his Financial District gallery.

What made you decide to build this particular Lightship? I have seen many models of the Nantucket Lightships over the years but never the Lightship Boston. I researched the vessel and found the plans through the US Coast Guard. Knowing I had the proper materials to build an accurate scale model, I was then able to begin the project. What intrigued you about the Lightship Boston’s history? Few vessels had such varied duties as this one. The boat acted as a Lightship off the coast of Nantucket after it was built in 1907, served naval interests during World War I, and helped the people of Boston during the Molasses Disaster of 1919, when it was docked in the harbor. ($3,595) Lannan Ship Model Gallery, 99 High St., 617-4512650; lannangallery.com BC

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRYCE VICKMARK

The Lightship Boston is modeled after a boat built in 1907 that patrolled the Nantucket Shoals.

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THIS ISSUE: DECK HOPPING

The porch at Natalie’s offers a picturesque view of the sailboats in Camden Harbor.

On the Rocks P

icture this, if you will: a purple sunset, warm zephyr winds, a fruity cocktail, and the best alfresco meal of your life, overlooking a yachtfilled harbor. This is not a fantasy. This is Natalie’s in the Camden Harbour Inn, a snazzy new Relais & Châteax property recently renovated by Dutch owners and partners Oscar Verest and Raymond Brunyanszki. With a chic bar lit by vintage crystal chandeliers and a Parisian-style dining room decked out in white linens, dark wood, and lipstick-red furniture, Natalie’s offers a delicious dose of glamour on tap. And the wraparound porch is the ultimate place to enjoy some culinary summer lovin’. Veteran mixologist Seth Knowlton hopes to first tempt guests into ordering something fresh, cold, and spirited. Some of his standout cocktails include an icy martini with truffled, blue-cheese-stuffed olives, and

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the Elder Flower Sour, with bourbon, St-Germain, lemon, and mint. They make perfect teasers for the dinner menu, a poetic interpretation of the seasons crafted by chefs Chris Long and Shelby Stevens. The couple, who are engaged, met at Coi restaurant in San Francisco and have cooked at various high-profile restaurants, including Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago (Long) and Daniel in New York (Stevens). “We offer modern, globally inspired dishes made with as many local ingredients as possible,” says Long, who grew up in Georgia. (Stevens hails from Maine.) At the height of summer, this means that 90 percent of the menu draws from the region’s bounty—fish and shellfish from area waters, paired with vegetables, greens, herbs, orchard fruits, and berries from nearby farms. Even the butter and cheese come from local dairies.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL BOWKER (PORCH)

RELAIS & CHÂTEAUX REFINEMENT LANDS ON THE RUGGED COAST OF MAINE AT THE NEW RESTAURANT NATALIE’S AT THE CAMDEN HARBOR INN. BY VICTORIA RICCARDI

LEFT:

Natalie’s offers classic New England charm and a menu of scrumptious options, including the lobster bisque soup (BELOW), which is poured tableside.

“We offer globally inspired dishes made with as many local ingredients as possible.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RUSSELL FRENCH (MENU, BISQUE); MICHAEL BOWKER (INN)

—CHRIS LONG

To satisfy different appetites, Long and Stevens offer three different prix fixe menus: a standard three-course menu, a seven-course tasting, and a five-course lobster menu. We recommend the last one, not only because lobster screams summer, but because Long has a deft hand when cooking this luxurious seafood. In 2013 Long was crowned Maine Lobster Chef of the Year for his thyme butter-poached lobster served over corn, parsnips, and mushrooms (available at Natalie’s come fall). Before your meal arrives, warm rolls appear with tiny dishes of salt seasoned with such ingredients as truffle, red wine, rosemary, and porcini. An amuse-bouche comes next, perhaps in the form of a tiny deconstructed Caesar salad. Then the show begins. A recent lobster tasting commenced with a Thai lobster asparagus salad bundle, resting upon a dollop of rhubarb ponzu. Next came a batter-fried lobster tail tucked into a steamed Chinese bun with truffle aioli and pickled fiddleheads, followed by a curried lobster bisque, and then pea-filled lobster ravioli “garnished” with the tail and claw. Champagne, a fruity rosé, and a funky RieslingChardonnay blend accompanied the tasting thanks to wine director Micah Wells, who oversees the restaurant’s 300-bottle list, which has been lauded by Wine Spectator. For future menus, Long and Stevens are experimenting with a lobster gelée terrine studded with local shellfish and seaweed, rosy slices of grilled pork tenderloin with pickled peaches and bacon foam, and a grilled striped bass in spicy tomato broth. “So often our menu is based on what comes

through our door,” says Long. “Shelby and I talk about the dish, sketch it out, and then test it.” Once perfected, owners Verest and Brunyanszki give the final nod of approval. Wells then picks out the perfect accompanying wine. As for sweets, pastry chef Jason Sturdivant spins sugar, cream, fruit, and chocolate into magical combinations, like the gossamer lemongrass parfait with fennel pollen macaroon, blueberry compote, and lemon emulsion. A veteran of Manhattan’s Michelin-starred WD-50 and Herons Restaurant in the Umstead Hotel and Spa in North Carolina—which received five stars from Forbes Travel Guide and five diamonds from AAA—Sturdivant also makes the mignardises that arrive with coffee (think coffee caramels, fruit jellies, and marshmallows). And while it’s sad to see a superb meal come to an end, you can always reserve lodgings at the inn for the night (there are 20 uniquely designed rooms). That way, you’ll get to sample Long, Stevens, and Sturdivant’s treats again the next morning at breakfast. 83 Bay View St., Camden, Maine, 207-236-7008; nataliesrestaurant.com BC

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Enjoy a seaside experience without Cape Cod traffic at Pier 6.

DECKED OUT These waterside gems offer divine food and heavenly views. New England boasts a passel of waterside dining options all summer long. The choice locations attract star chefs crafting everything from classic American cuisine to refined French fare. Here are three Boston-area standouts.

Water Street The sprawling front porch is where you want to see and be seen while enjoying a drink at Water Street, the fine-dining restaurant in the Victorian-style Harbor View Hotel in Edgartown. Executive Chef Nathan Gould makes ample use of island ingredients to create small and large plates of polished New England fare like local watercress rabbit confit salad with grapefruit and ricotta salata; slow-cooked Vineyard egg in a lock-top mason jar with house-smoked trout, trout caviar, and bitter greens; and bison tenderloin with parsley gnocchi, mushrooms, tomatoes, and thyme. Harbor View Hotel, 131 N. Water St., Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard, 508-627-7000; harbor-view.com/dining/water-street

Pier 6 Head straight to the roof deck of this newly renovated restaurant with floor-to-ceiling glass sliding doors, a mahogany bar, and breathtaking views of the Boston skyline for the ultimate seaside experience—with no Cape traffic. With Executive Chef Greg Reeves at the helm (he’s an alum of Green Street and B&G Oysters), you know you’re in able hands for lunch, brunch, or dinner. Seafood is the star of the raw bar, with standouts like pineapple-avocado shrimp ceviche, and in entrées such as the juicy hunk of grilled swordfish sauced with cool mint yogurt. 1 18th St., Charlestown, 617-337-0054; pier6boston.com Henri-Marie Situated in the newly opened Mirbeau Inn & Spa at The Pinehills, the sophisticated French restaurant Henri-Marie has a romantic outdoor patio overlooking a lush garden and lily pond fashioned after Giverny. Executive Chef Stephen Coe uses as many local ingredients as possible, including seafood, produce, meat, herbs grown on the property, and honey from a nearby beehive. For his first menu, look for such tantalizing fare as farm-raised rabbit three ways with mustard and tarragon over a summer bean and artichoke ragoût; French bouillabaisse served en papillote; and Provençal-inspired smoked lavender cheesecake with huckleberries and lavender “glass” candy. Mirbeau Inn & Spa at The Pinehills, 35 Landmark Dr., Plymouth, 877-647-2328; mirbeau.com/pinehills

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Custom-build a perfect Sunday sipper at East Coast Grill’s Bloody Mary Bar.

There’s Something About Mary BOSTON BARTENDERS RAID THE SPICE CLOSET TO DELIVER THE ULTIMATE BLOODY MARY. BY VICTORIA ABBOTT RICCARDI

pickled egg, cornbread croutons, and a dilly bean? Seems as though the Bloody Mary has made some new friends. This summer, Boston cocktail slingers mix up the Bloody Mary scene by adding in some surprises sure to hit the sweet and salty spot. “The Bloody Mary is a timeless drink that’s a part of our culture, and people want to put their own spin on it,” says Scott Shoer, master cocktail-maker at Sycamore (755 Beacon St., Newton, 617-244-4445; sycamorenewton.com). His twist has resulted in the Ghost of Mary, a sexy, rose-colored sipper mixed with citron vodka and spicy tomato water (made by straining puréed tomatoes through cheesecloth) and served with a sleek dilly-bean garnish. “We wanted a lighter drink, so we created what is basically a Bloody Mary without all the chunks.” At East Coast Grill (1271 Cambridge St., Cambridge, 617-491-6568; eastcoastgrill.net) manager Brian Kuhlen took the opposite tack when dreaming up the weekend Make-Your-Own-Bloody-Mary Bar. “It’s like gazpacho with vodka in it, and then some,” he says. You choose your booze—vodka, gin, or tequila—then select a Bloody Mary base, either straight tomato juice, house Bloody Mary mix, or Clamato. After that, pick your fixings from at least 40 different hot sauces, multiple spice mixes, house-made pickles, condiments (such as crudités or citrus wedges), and wild cards like cornbread croutons. Seth Yaffe, general manager at the South End gem The Gallows (1395 Washington St., 617-425-0200; thegallowsboston.com) turned to Asia for inspiration. “We infused gin with Szechuan peppercorns, which have a deep heat and this cool numbing effect on the tongue and lips.” He added some Bloody Mary base and a kimchi pickled egg—and the Horse Whisperer was born. “We have a lot of dishes with kimchi in them,” he says, “and now the pickling liquid won’t go to waste.” BC

PHOTOGRAPHY BY WOLLERTZ

SOUND BITES

BENEFIT FOR THE CELEBRATE MUSIC FOUNDATION 2014 Beneﬁciary: Nantucket Community Music Center

Rain or shine. Gates open both days at 10AM. Children 12 and under admitted free.

AUGUST 2 & 3, 2014 • 10AM - 4PM Tom Nevers Field, Nantucket, MA: Overlooking the Atlantic Ocean

EDWARD SHARPE AND THE MAGNETIC ZEROS GUSTER Steel Pulse | Donavon Frankenreiter Chadwick Stokes | Lukas Nelson & P.O.T.R | Ayla Brown Ben Taylor | Entrain | Freddy Clarke | AND MORE! CHUCK COLLEY | COQ AU VIN | EARTH GOT THE BLUES | ECLIFF AND THE SWINGDOGS GEORGE YOUNG | HARRISON ROACH | SONAR |YOU SCREAM I SCREAM SPECIAL DINNER PERFORMANCE BY BRUCE HORNSBY SUNDAY EVENING Saturday and Sunday evenings 6-9PM will feature a special performance including a catered, seated dinner under a tent. Saturday Headliner TBD. Separate ticket required. Space is limited to 500.

#NMF2014

www.nantucketmusicfestival.com TICKETS AVAILABLE AT:

.com • VIP & SPONSOR INFORMATION: (508) 228-0400 / info@nantucketmusicfestival.com

DINE AROUND Master shucker CJ Husk loves the briny punch of oysters on the half shell.

NAUTICAL OR NICE Seafood gets spicy at The Nautilus on Nantucket.

Aww Shucks NEW ENGLAND’S HIPSTER OYSTER EXPERT SHELLS OUT WHERE HE GOES FOR THE FRESHEST BITE OF SEAFOOD. BY JESSICA LANIEWSKI

t wasn’t a straight path, that’s for sure. CJ Husk started out as a rowing instructor in Duxbury, but after spotting oyster cages on the commute, he had to find out: What were they? Turns out they were part of the Island Creek Oyster farm, where Husk bucked rowing and started shucking. He now travels all over New England as Island Creek’s head brand ambassador. He let us in on his favorite haunts for the bivalves and other seafood finds.

Cuttyhunk Floating Raw Bar “Cuttyhunk Floating Raw Bar is owned by Seth Garfield, who farms Cuttyhunk oysters in a salt pond right on Cuttyhunk Island. If you’re lucky enough to find yourself on a boat in the area, give Seth a call and he’ll pull his boat right up to yours and outfit you with an incredible spread. My favorites are their Cuttyhunk oysters and clams on the half shell. Both pack a nice briny punch.” 508-990-1317; cuttyhunkshellfish.com

The Beachcomber “This is one of the most iconic New England beach restaurants around. It’s surrounded by a nature preserve, so you’ll be traveling for miles with nothing in sight, and then this oasis appears out of nowhere. You have to go up to the raw bar to pick out your selection, such as a bucket of steamers, peel-and-eat shrimp, or oysters. Interaction with your farmers and shuckers is everything.” 1120 Cahoon Hollow Road, Wellfleet, 508-349-6055; thebeachcomber.com

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The Oyster Company Raw Bar & Grille “I’m a sucker for a fun preparation, and what I love about this restaurant is the varied selection of styled oysters on their menu, from the traditional Rockefeller to the Bayou, made with a Cajun sausage and lemon fennel. Their native Quivet Neck oysters have a great fruit note that’s tangy and sweet at the same time.” 202 Depot St., Dennisport, 508-398-4600; theoystercompany.com

Atlantic Fish & ChopHouse “The Atlantic is a popular Island Creek hangout when we’re on Martha’s Vineyard. The space is casual but very scenic, with a gorgeous view of Edgartown’s harbor. While the restaurant is a steakhouse, they do fish impeccably well. A whole roasted fish is what I tend to look for, and they typically have two on the menu that rotate seasonally.” 2 Main St., Edgartown, 508-627-7001; atlanticmv.com BC

You never know when inspiration is going to strike. For friends Stephen Bowler, Liam Mackey, and Clinton Terry, the thunderbolt came during lunch when they were working together at The Pearl on Nantucket: They undeniably, unequivocally, unquestionably had to open their own restaurant. So they did! The trio recently launched The Nautilus, a 53-seat eatery in the former 12 Degrees East spot. The culinary program focuses on Asian, Latin American, and Spanish flavors in the form of small plates (such as the tempura East Coast oyster sushi tacos with nori wrap, sushi rice, crispy oysters, and chili barbecue sauce) and family-style dishes (think whole roast duck for four). “My family has a small farm in rural Vermont, where we produced livestock for our personal use,” says executive chef Mackey. “It taught me respect for ingredients.” Chef de cuisine Emmanuel Rojas, most recently of The Pearl and before that Momofuku Ssäm Bar in New York City, brings a deft hand with eclectic flavors to those top-quality ingredients. Bowler (a Nantucket native) is handling the nearly 200-bottle wine list while Terry, as the bar manager and lead mixologist, aims to make the best cocktails on the island. If you hear a thunderbolt or two, you now know why. 12 Cambridge St., 508-228-0301; nautilusnantucket.com Roasted whole duck with rice, herb salad, and watercress.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY IAN TRAVIS BARNARD/BOLDFACER.COM (HUSK); LISOVSKAYA NATALIA (OYSTERS); MARK RANNEY (DUCK)

BY JESSICA LANIEWSKI

PROMOTION

JOIN US

A VERY MELO WEEKEND 2014 KICKS OFF ON AUGUST 8TH, and you’re invited to take part in the festivities. The luxurious St. Regis Bahia Beach Resort, Puerto Rico is the venue for a weekend of sun, sand, golf, softball & community service. Don’t miss our 5th Anniversary of giving back to the communities of Puerto Rico - Melo style! The weekend package includes hotel accommodations and meals for two, ground transportation in Puerto Rico, access to the golf tournament, welcome dinner, celebrity softball game, exclusive parties and court dedication ceremony. WEEKEND AT A GLANCE:

SATURDAY AUGUST 9TH

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Golf Tournament

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Rain & Rum Dinner & After Party

Bahia Beach Welcome Dinner

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Bahia Beach White Party

Court Dedication

Limited spaces available. To purchase your tickets visit and enter code AVMW2014.

ON THE TOWN CLOCKWISE FROM BELOW: Margot Hartmann and Keith Lockhart chat about their shared project on Nantucket over breakfast at Eastern Standard, where they enjoyed French toast with bacon and bananas.

POPPING UP What: A chance to catch up before the start of a hectic summer. When: A mid-week breakfast meeting. Where: Eastern Standard, 528 Commonwealth Ave., 617-532-9100; easternstandard boston.com

In Tune DURING A BREAKFAST MEETING AT EASTERN STANDARD, CONDUCTOR KEITH LOCKHART AND NANTUCKET COTTAGE HOSPITAL CEO DR. MARGOT HARTMANN PLAN FOR THE AUGUST 9 BOSTON POPS CONCERT TO BENEFIT THE HOSPITAL. BY JESSICA LANIEWSKI PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRYCE VICKMARK

hat do great music and good health have in common? For Keith Lockhart and Dr. Margot Hartmann, the answer is obvious: the annual Boston Pops on Nantucket concert, when the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra entertains thousands of visitors and year-round residents for one unrivaled evening on Nantucket’s Jetties Beach. The evening is Nantucket Cottage Hospital’s biggest fundraising benefit of the year, and its proceeds are a lifeline for the small facility, which must serve a much larger population in the summer. Hartmann became CEO of the hospital in 2010, when it was losing money steadily. Now, thanks to the fundraiser and a newly launched capital campaign aimed at raising $75 million for the hospital, islanders will have stable access to quality health care year-round. Hartmann joined Lockhart for brunch at one of his favorite Boston haunts, Eastern Standard, to share French toast and discuss the seasonal similarities of their work. Margot Hartmann: This is my first time at Eastern Standard. I’ve heard the food is delicious. It makes me think of a European bistro. Do you come here often?

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Keith Lockhart: Yes, all the time. This is a great restaurant for my family because you just go down Beacon Street—we’re about a mile down. MH: It’s wonderful. I’m either sort of passing through Boston or I’m down at Mass General for meetings. This is such a treat because I usually don’t get to sit comfortably with enjoyable conversation and be served a beautiful breakfast. And, of course, I don’t mind sharing some French toast with you. KL: I love the bar here, and brunch is always great. The vibe is low-key and inviting at almost any time of day. Breakfast meetings are an opportunity for me to indulge in bottomless cups of black coffee, which are a necessity when you have three kids and work nights. MH: How do you stay healthy with such an all-consuming job and busy family life? KL: I try to stay balanced with some fresh fruit. MH: If I had my druthers, I’d be on the sand in Nantucket for the Pops with a full picnic. KL: The people who really enjoy the concert are the people on the beach. Anytime I’m in Nantucket not doing the festival, there are people saying, continued on page 76

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ON THE TOWN

continued from page 74 “We live for the Pops on Jetties Beach.” MH: Music is the best medicine. There’s something about this event that’s larger than the sum of its parts. [A fresh fruit salad with juicy slices of pineapple, melon, and strawberries is served.] MH: The Nantucket Cottage Hospital is completely different from Memorial Day to Columbus Day. KL: When Nantucket’s population triples? Quadruples? MH: The island actually goes from 10,000 to 60,000 people. It’s kind of a wild puzzle for a little hospital, because we are the only health care facility on the island, and we have to know how to manage that sudden increase. KL: Sure, you need to have the bed space and the doctors. Do you hire employees seasonally, too? Because you don’t need the same size staff all year, and it would be very expensive for the other eight or nine months. MH: That’s the challenge for us. How do you have a year-round team that’s so crackerjack that you can handle the surge in the summer and incorporate seasonal staff into the team while delivering quality care? It’s the thing that the Pops on Nantucket concert enables. [A Vermont cheddar omelet with a side of sausage, eggs Benedict with spinach, and French toast with caramelized bananas are served. The waitress tops off Lockhart’s coffee.] KL: I remember when we first came in, one of the things that was given as motivation for the Pops on Nantucket was that the hospital really did not have the response equipment necessary for the year-round population. MH: It’s amazing you remember that. We had to figure out what we should be doing and do it well. We have been an affiliate with Massachusetts General Hospital since 2007, and that is another lifeline for us. We’re trying to figure out how we can have the best of Boston medicine but without leaving the island, and that’s my challenge. Does the orchestra have a year-round staff? KL: The orchestra that you see for the Pops on Nantucket is part of the surge up. There are two orchestras within the Boston Pops; one is made up of members of the Boston Symphony, and the other, which was founded specifically for touring during the summer, is the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, which is made up of freelancers. It’s the same people year after year. MH: It’s similar for us as we surge up with certified ER docs who come in for the summer. KL: This omelet is fantastic, by the way. I think I have eaten enough to be set for the rest of the day. Are there doctors who come to the island partially as a vacation? MH: Yes, part of my job is finding board-certified ER doctors who may not otherwise be able to bring their families on a vacation to Nantucket because it would be an expensive thing. KL: So where do these people come from? MH: We’ve thought about forming a relationship with staff at a hospital that has seasonality opposite ours, like Vail in Colorado, but we’ve never quite worked that out. We tend to get people from local agencies or Bostonarea hospitals. KL: Is there anything the orchestra can do more for you or better for you in Nantucket? Keep selling tickets? Hope for no more big storms? MH: Oh yes, that would help. This event has really become legendary for islanders and visitors. KL: Some things grow exponentially, and this event is only limited by the size of the beach and the size of the population. It’s one of those calendar landmarks. Boston Pops on Nantucket is August 9 at Jetties Beach, 4 Bathing Beach Road, 508-825-8100; nantuckethospital.org. BC

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FROM TOP: Margot Hartmann and Keith Lockhart discuss how the Nantucket Cottage Hospital and the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra both deal with seasonal staff; fresh fruit and a Pom-75 cocktail round out their breakfast.

“Anytime I’m on Nantucket people say, ‘We live for the Pops on Jetties Beach.’” —KEITH LOCKHART

Sinesia Karol in her Boston studio, where she designs swimwear inspired by her home country of Brazil.

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reasures STYLE SETTER

The Heat Is On SINESIA KAROL TURNS UP THE SIZZLE FACTOR IN BOSTON WITH HER BRAZIL-INSPIRED SWIMWEAR COLLECTION. BY JULIET IZON

djusting to the subzero climes of the Northeast challenges even the toughest of Boston transplants, but Brazilian-born designer Sinesia Karol still sees parallels with her homeland. “Although Boston is often cold, it has everything: amazing landscapes, beaches, and islands,” Karol says. You know, just like Brazil. The swimwear designer, who grew up in the beach town of Vitoria, had always harbored a passion for fashion, although it was chemistry she studied before moving to Boston in 1989. Yet growing up with a mother who handmade all of the family’s clothing and having a predilection for art, music, and architecture herself made Karol realize that her true calling lay in design—especially slinky swimwear. “I wanted to create something for my friends and me to wear to our favorite getaway spots,” she says. Karol’s eponymous swimwear line reflects both her heritage and her commitment to beauty: Brazilian artist Ana Paula Castro designs all of the fabric

art, and Karol sources top-of-the-line Lycra, chiffon, and silk for her pieces. “Some of the materials are so luxe you can’t even feel them touching your skin when you wear them. That’s quite a liberating feeling for swimwear,” she says. For the Spring/Summer line, Karol again drew inspiration from her place of birth. “My current collection features the birds of Brazil,” she shares. “We have so much flora and fauna there that it could inspire me for a lifetime!” Bostonians seem inspired by Karol’s beachfront call to action. “People might think Boston is an odd place to launch a swimwear line, but you would be surprised at the amount of support I received from the community,” she says. And though the brand is only two years old, Karol’s swimwear has already been spotted on Brazilian celebs Sabrina Sato and Carol Castro, and Victoria’s Secret model Izabel Goulart. “Word of mouth, customer service, and great quality are what made my business successful.” The Tannery, 711 Boylston St., 617-267-5500; thetannery.com BC

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOEL BENJAMIN

FROM LEFT: Marly swimsuit ($352); a mood board in Karol’s studio; Cigana Mousseline dress ($352).

“Some of the materials are so luxe you can’t even feel them touching your skin.” —SINESIA KAROL

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

LOCAL TREASURES

Concorde Rose Gold sunglasses ($169).

Air Force One

o you’re obsessed with the elite Air Force look? Relax. No need to train as a paratrooper—just pick up a pair of Randolph Engineering’s shades from its new luxury Flash Collection this summer. Fans of the company, which serves as a principal supplier of aviation flight glasses to the United States Department of Defense, include Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jon Hamm, and Tom Cruise. The sleek civilian design—57mm Concorde unisex glasses with 23k rose-gold-plated frames and secretagent-worthy AGX polycarbonate lenses—mix armed forces with fashion. The family business, which was founded in 1972 by optical industry veterans Jan Waszkiewicz and Stanley Zaleski, designs, develops, and fabricates all of their frames at the brand’s headquarters in Randolph,

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Massachusetts, where much of the process is done by hand. “We have a storied history, and being a military supplier [since 1982] with roots in aviation, it is important that our glasses be functional. We have extended that into our fashion products,” says Ekene Ofodile, Randolph’s senior vice president of sales and marketing. One of the best things about the military-grade sunglasses? “They are pretty much indestructible and have a lifetime warranty,” says Ofodile. “Our polycarbonate lenses are more scratch-resistant than other brands, and they undergo impact testing.” Translation: Your new sunglasses can withstand any tie-breaking sandy slide at the annual beach volleyball game (but you, on the other hand…). Ball and Buck, 144B Newbury St., 617-262-1776; randolphusa.com BC

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF CRAWFORD; STYLING BY TERRY LEWIS

MASSACHUSETTS-BASED SUNGLASS BRAND RANDOLPH ENGINEERING LAUNCHES ITS NEW FLASH COLLECTION. BY JESSICA LANIEWSKI

Jill Boudreau Realtor

International President’s Elite Previews Property Specialist

Cell: (617) 460-3787

The Right Broker Does Make The Difference. Expect More.™ $3,295,000 Stunning, stately and sophisticated 2007 Colonial located in coveted and ultraconvenient Weston Golf neighborhood. Tis elegant residence beautifully melds every imaginable modern amenity with the classic detail and superb crafsmanship that are the hallmark of one of Weston’s fnest builders. Privately set on nearly 2 acres of lush landscaped grounds, this home boasts a versatile, open foor plan perfect for informal living and formal entertaining. Spectacular living room with freplace and custom built-ins. Sunny gourmet Wolf kitchen ofers a generous eat-in breakfast room with inviting freside seating and fabulous butler’s pantry with ample storage. Gorgeous over-sized island with barstool seating overlooks dramatic family room with soaring ceiling and custom built-ins and verdant views of large level yard. Master suite is its own spa-like retreat. 4 additional bedrooms, fabulous fnished lower level play room and au-pair accommodation. Crestron smart-house, 3-car garage.

Email: Jill@JillBoudreau.com Jill.Boudreau@NEMoves.com 71 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02482

www.NewEnglandMoves.com | (781) 237-9090 x.330 © 2014 Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage. All Rights Reserved. Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage fully supports the principles of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act. Operated by a subsidiary of NRT LLC. Coldwell Banker® and the Coldwell Banker logo are registered service marks owned by Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. This information was supplied by Seller and/or other sources. Broker believes this information to be correct but has not verifed this information and assumes no legal responsibility for its accuracy. Buyers should investigate these issues to their own satisfaction. If your property is currently listed for sale, this is not intended as a solicitation. If your property is listed with a real estate broker, please disregard. It is not our intention to solicit the offerings of other real estate brokers. We are happy to work with them and cooperate fully.

SECRET CITY

Close to Midnight VINEYARD HAVEN’S MIDNIGHT FARM DELIVERS THE GOODS FOR ISLAND HIPSTERS AND THEIR HOMES. BY MEAGHAN AGNEW

Midnight Farm’s eclectic wares nurture “home, body, and spirit.”

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC LEVIN

here are a few summer must-dos on Martha’s Vineyard: climb the Edgartown lighthouse, grab lobster in Menemsha, and indulge in a shopping spree at Midnight Farm, the indie-chic boutique owned by Tamara Weiss with singer-songwriter Carly Simon as a partner. For more than 18 years, the Vineyard Haven hipster magnet has lured in every manner of island visitor—including celebrity regulars like Meg Ryan, Spike Lee, Diane Sawyer, and Steven Tyler—with its homey vibe and eclectic collection of seen-nowhere-else clothing and artisanal home wares. Weiss remembers the exact moment her career path made an unexpected left turn into retail. “I was living in a loft in Tribeca and had just had twins,” the former movie producer recalls. “Right after a double-decker bus spritzed its fumes on my stroller, I went home crying and said [to my husband], ‘I don’t want to live here anymore.’” Committed to a change in life and scenery, the family transplanted to a farmhouse in Chilmark. Weiss, a Hampshire College graduate and lifetime Vineyard visitor, then began

Tamara Weiss co-owns Midnight Farm with singer-songwriter Carly Simon.

“I make sure that there’s something for everyone who walks in that door.” — 

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NINA BRAMHALL (STORE); ERIC LEVIN (WEISS AND SIMON)

plotting her retail reinvention, soon zeroing in on a nondescript former hardware store behind a Stop & Shop. “It felt like a big industrial loft and that’s what I came from, so it was just the obvious home,” Weiss says. A large plate-glass window with an inimitable view of the harbor didn’t hurt, either. Sensing the need for a business partner, she then reached out to Simon, her best friend and fellow Vineyard die-hard. “I called Carly and said, ‘I’m going to open a store,’ and she said, ‘I’m in,’” Weiss remembers with a smile. As for a name, Weiss knew she wanted it to contain the word farm (“anything to get back to the dirt,” she says) and figured the lyricist could fill in the blank. “I asked her, ‘What’s your favorite word?’ Without hesitation she said, ‘midnight,’ and I said, ‘There it is.’” (Simon later wrote a children’s picture book of the same name, inspired in part by Weiss’s twin sons and Simon’s godchildren.) Midnight Farm eschews specialization, instead stocking a multifarious collection that nurtures “home, body, and spirit.” That can mean anything from Calleen Cordero leather messenger bags to Bella Notte bedding to a vintage glass chandelier—all reflecting the Vineyard’s upscale-comfort aesthetic and all sussed out during Weiss’s international buying trips and visits to New York trade shows.

Merchandise ranges from cookbooks and furniture to handmade jewelry.

“I believe in finding product that is unique, fair-trade, reclaimed, handmade, one-of-a-kind, and beautiful,” says Weiss, who names Ottotredici’s whisper-thin cashmere scarves as one of her favorite current items. And though the store regularly sees celebrity shoppers, Weiss firmly believes in retail egalitarianism. “One of the things that I spend a lot of time challenging myself to do is to make sure that there’s something for everyone who walks in the door,” Weiss says. Exhibit A: the salsa. From the day she opened, Weiss has stocked a mango-lime salsa made especially for the store. The up-front samples have made it a longtime obsession of regulars, rumored to beeline it straight from the ferry. “Every day someone comes in and asks, “Where’s the salsa?” laughs Weiss. Two years ago, Weiss moved Midnight Farm into a larger, two-story storefront on Main Street; the yawning, awning-adorned space gave her the ability to grow the furniture and men’s clothing inventories with pieces from 18 Waits and Autumn Cashmere. Weiss has also created several lounging areas for resting shoppers, sponsored trunk shows, and hosted impromptu performances (maybe even an in-store concert from Simon this summer). Midnight Farm’s online shop recently launched, finally giving seasonal visitors year-round access to her inimitable eye (not to mention that salsa). Next on the agenda: convincing the Obamas to pop in this summer (Bill and Hillary Clinton are already loyal customers), followed by buying trips to Morocco and India, two of Weiss’s longtime musts. “Next to the love I have for my customers, the hunt for new things is still what keeps me going,” Weiss says. “I hope I never lose sight of that.” 44 Main St., Vineyard Haven, 508-693-1997; midnightfarm.net BC

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

STYLE SPOTLIGHT

60 Never Looked So Good Italian lingerie brand La Perla celebrates 60 years in the business. Sophia Loren was still a knockout at 60, and so is La Perla, the other impossibly sexy Italian export. Founded in Bologna as a corsetry company, it has blossomed into a lush lifestyle brand with more than 100 boutiques worldwide. Keeping with the house’s four founding principles—artisanship, knowledge of the female form, the fusion of innovation and tradition, and a strong Italian identity—La Perla has earned legions of hopelessly devoted customers with its exquisite, lacy unmentionables. “La Perla’s 60th anniversary is a time to celebrate the brand’s unique craftsmanship and Italian heritage as the company continues to build upon these founding principles,” says Suzy Biszantz, La Perla’s CEO North America. At its Boylston Street boutique, La Perla offers Boston women an array of collections, including beachwear, sleepwear, hosiery, perfume, and ready-to-wear inspired by corsets. “La Perla is very proud of its Boston boutique, which has been part of the community for 10 years. We look forward to sharing the latest La Perla collections with our Boston customers,” says Biszantz. This summer, expect to see La Perla’s sensual Dunes bikinis and metallic pareos—or one of the brand’s formfitting one-piece swimsuits with corsetry details—on the beaches of North Shore and Nantucket. 250 Boylston St., 617-423-5709; laperla.com Dunes one-piece, La Perla ($388).

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:

Clemente sandals ($128–$148), surf stripe transport tote ($138), crisscross sightseer sandals ($59.50), island beach necklace ($28), and beach shirttail tee ($55), Madewell. INSET AND BELOW RIGHT: A sketch and model show a new look for summer.

New Bedford Born MADEWELL RETURNS TO ITS ROOTS, LAUNCHING TWO NEW BOSTON-AREA STORES. CASUAL-CHIC FASHION BRAND MADEWELL is opening two new locations in its home state of Massachusetts, one in Dedham at Legacy Place (950 Providence Hwy.) and the other in Hingham at Derby Street Shoppes (98 Derby St.). “Madewell has always felt at home in Massachusetts,” says design director Somsack Sikhounmuong. “After all, the brand was founded in New Bedford.” Indeed, Madewell started manufacturing workwear 77 years ago, and though the brand has evolved into a trendsetter with more than 75 stores nationwide, it still stays true to its roots of functionality and fit, from cozy chambray shirts to perfectly fitting dresses. “Our heritage informs the spirit of the company and the clothes,” says Sikhounmuong. “It’s a nod to authenticity.” madewell.com BC

Photo by HF Visuals

UNCOMMONLY GOOD SERVICE.

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1486 Main St. Waltham, MA 02451 781-642-0667 | www.virtualeas.com Information about the property described above was provided solely by seller(s) without verifcation by the broker(s) therefore broker(s) is/are not responsible for the accuracy of the information contained herein. Buyer should take any and all steps necessary to verify said information. Offering is subject to prior sale, price change or withdrawal without notice. ÂŠ2014 Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. Coldwell Banker is a registered trademark licensed to Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. An Equal Opportunity Employer. Equal Housing Opportunity. Owned and operated by NRT LLC.

MADE HERE

Cut from the (Sail) Cloth PORTLAND’S BETH SHISSLER CHASES THE HIGH SEAS AND BIG BUSINESS WITH SEA BAGS. BY JULIET IZON

here may be no tote more New England than one made by Sea Bags. Utilitarian with a dash of whimsy, the colorful pieces are made out of sturdy cloth that has been sourced from discontinued boat sails. Here, Mainer and CEO Beth Shissler talks about finding the raw material, what’s next for the business, and its partnership with J. Crew.

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

Medium navy anchor tote bag ($130).

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF CRAWFORD

Tell us how the company was founded. Beth Shissler: My business partner, Hannah Kubiak, started the company in 1999; her dad had the idea. As founder of the Port Canvas Company in Kennebunkport—and an avid sailor—he understands the principles of making a good bag. It started as a word-of-mouth business—probably 40 or 50 bags per year. This last year, we sold 55,000 units. It’s amazing. How are the bags made? BS: Every sail we get is different in size, weight, color, and shape. From there, it gets cut down. Our sail cutter is an artist by trade, and he is great at maximizing every square inch. Between dyeing, printing, and appliqué, we can create unique designs unlike anything else on the market. Where do the sails come from? BS: All of the sails are used before being transformed into bags; that’s what makes Sea Bags unique: The stitching, weight, and fabric are different on every one. Customers can send in their sail—on us—for a Sea Bag in exchange. We also make donations to sailing schools in exchange for sails. How did your partnership with J. Crew come about? BS: We did a collaboration with local designer Angela Adams that J. Crew took part in, and since then we’ve grown the relationship year after year. Sea Bags also supports a number of local charities and businesses. BS: Yes, we work actively with Boston Community Sailing. They recycle sails, and we give them product. We’ve also raised more than $60,000 for cancer. We work with Make-A-Wish foundation and also Sail Maine, which is a youth organization that teaches kids to sail. What’s next for the brand? BS: You’ll see us expanding into nautical lifestyle products. So soon you may see items from us for the home and tabletop. Blackstone’s of Beacon Hill, 46 Charles St., 617-227-4646; seabags.com B

More trips, more ferries, more fun.

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TIME HONORED

For Art’s Sake A HOST OF ELITE WATCH BRANDS SUPPORT THE FINE ARTS, A CAUSE THAT’S DEAR TO BOSTON’S HEART. BY ROBERTA NAAS

FROM TOP: From Montblanc, this Homage to Nicolas Rieussec watch ($11,500), which celebrates the inventor of the chronograph, is crafted in stainless steel. The mono-pusher chronograph features a skeletonized hour hand for a second time zone indication. It is made in a limited edition of 565 pieces. Copley Place, 617-267-8700; montblanc.com

From Hermès, this Dressage Chronograph ($11,200) houses a Manufacture H1925 movement, named for the year that the first Hermès chronograph appeared. 320 Boylston St., 617-482-8707; hermes.com This Movado Sapphire watch ($1,195) is crafted in yellow-gold-plated stainless steel and features a gold-toned signature dot on the dial. The Swiss watch is classic and yet current. Saks Fifth Avenue, 800 Boylston St., 617-262-8500; movado.com This Piaget Altiplano 40mm watch ($19,000) is crafted in 18k rose gold and houses the Piaget 838P ultrathin hand-wound mechanical movement. Royal Jewelers, 58 Main St., Andover, 978-475-3330; piaget.com

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF CRAWFORD; STYLING BY TERRY LEWIS

oston loves the arts, and the proof is everywhere. This season our museums, theaters, and concert halls spill into the great outdoors with signature events like Summer Arts Weekend in Copley Square, July 26 and 27, featuring Los Lobos, Arturo Sandoval, and a bevy of other performers. Some of the world’s top watch brands share this passion for the arts. Movado, for example, has commissioned world-renowned artists to create limited-edition timepieces, with a portion of proceeds going to the Movado Future Legends initiative, which nurtures artists with exceptional abilities. Similarly, Montblanc’s decades-long patronage of the arts includes support for the 24 Hour Plays, a program that challenges adventurous writers, actors, and directors to create plays in 24 hours—from concept to script to performance—with proceeds from the wildly popular shows supporting arts education in public schools. Additionally, the Montblanc Cultural Foundation, established in 1992, honors patrons of the arts in a dozen countries around the world, including the United States. Piaget is the key sponsor of the Film Independent Spirit Awards, which honor performers, writers, directors, and producers of independent movies, and Hermès supports emerging artists via the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès. Last year, the company commissioned choreographers and a composer to create a new ballet, called Time in Motion, that explores the mechanics of time and dance. For all of these watch brands, their commitment to the fine arts mirrors the dedication to design and craftsmanship that ranks their timepieces among the best in the world. For more watch features and expanded coverage go to boston common-magazine.com/watches. BC

Between fne and fashion jewelry, you’ll fnd...

18 karat gold, semi-precious stones,and diamonds...

180 Linden Street, Wellesley, MA 02482 | 781.416.1800 | www.trustyourimpulse.com

Back Bay’s Best Kept Secret

C O P L E YS Q UA R E H OT E L . C O M 4 7 H U N T I N G T O N A V E N U E , B O S T O N , M A 0 2116 617 - 5 3 6 - 9 0 0 0 • 8 0 0 - 2 2 5 - 70 6 2

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF GALE (COVER, OPPOSITE); ERIC RYAN ANDERSON (BRUSH)

Peter Max created artwork Peter Max created artwork covers for as covers for 10as Niche 10 Niche Media publications, publications, andincluding the Boston Common. The originalwill paintings original paintings be will be auctioned on Charitybuzz to auctioned on Charitybuzz benefit The to Humane Society of the benefit The Humane US. Society of the US.

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to the

MAX PETER MAX

ARTIST HAS CAPTURED EVERYONE FROM THE DALAI LAMA TO THE BEATLES IN HIS PSYCHEDELIC COSMIC STYLE. EXCLUSIVELY FOR BOSTON COMMON, HE INTERPRETS OUR HISTORIC CITY, WHILE THE HOSTS OF MSNBC’S MORNING JOE, JOE SCARBOROUGH AND MIKA BRZEZINSKI, DISCOVER THE COLORFUL STORIES—AND THE MAN—BEHIND THIS MONTH’S COVER.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF GALE (MAX, COVER); ERIC RYAN ANDERSON (PAINTBRUSH)

ne of the most prolific artists working today, Peter Max is widely known for his “cosmic style,” with creations that have been seen everywhere from the hull of Norwegian Cruise Line’s Norwegian Breakaway and a Continental Airlines Boeing 777 fuselage to the massive stages of the 1999 Woodstock music festival. His mixed-media works can be found in the collections of six past US presidents, while his art—recognizable for its energetic brushstrokes of primary colors and psychedelic panoramas of stars, planets, profiles, and icons from Lady Liberty to Marilyn Monroe—has been used to represent five Super Bowls, the World Cup, the World Series, the US Open, the Grammys, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “I’m just very happy to be in the middle of all this,” says Max of his many noteworthy accomplishments. “I’m happy to do all the painting and have all the museum shows.” Born in Berlin and raised in Shanghai, Max and his family moved around the globe, from Tibet to Israel to Paris—each destination influencing his art. Eventually, Max settled in New York, where, at age 76, he continues to produce a dizzying array of works, including this Boston Common cover, one of a collection of 10 covers created exclusively for Niche Media publications,

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

Peter Max puts the finishing touches on his cover for Boston Common.

know what I’m doing, but I know it’s going to come out great. Twenty-four seven, creativity, creativity, creativity—it’s all I do. I draw on airplanes, I draw in limousines, I draw when I wake up in the morning, and in taxicabs.” Beyond the studio, Max is a longtime vegetarian and practices yoga and meditation daily—a part of his routine for more than 40 years. He also gives freely of his time, money, and art to benefit animal charities such as The Humane Society of the US and the equine rescue organization Wild for Life Foundation. By his side in all of it is his wife of 17 years, Mary Max, whom the artist calls “one of his greatest inspirations.” “When I met her, it fueled me, and she still fuels me today, quite a few years later,” he says of his wife, whom he spotted one day while out for coffee and declared he would marry at first sight. “We donate money left and right, we have events up [in the studio] all the time, and we have six rescue animals of our own at the house.” At present, Max also has seven feature film and animation projects in the works, including one for the estate of Frank Sinatra. Here, in celebration of Max’s 50 years of commercial success and his collection of city renderings exclusively for Niche Media, the artist opens up to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski about his unparalleled career, his spirituality, philanthropy, and the famous friends who have helped influence his work.

“CREATIVITY—IT’S ALL I DO. I DRAW ON AIRPLANES, IN LIMOS, AND IN TAXICABS.”

—PETER MAX

including Los Angeles Confidential, Ocean Drive, Philadelphia Style, Capitol File, Vegas, Gotham, Hamptons, Aspen Peak, and Michigan Avenue. The original painting will be auctioned on Charitybuzz starting this month to benefit The Humane Society of the US. “I paint and draw every day, and I loved creating this cover art for Boston Common,” says Max. “Independence Day, July 4th, has always been a special day for me. As a child growing up in Shanghai, I daydreamed about America, the land of the free, the home of the brave, and the most creative country on the planet. My cover art for Boston Common features one of our nation’s most amazing July 4th celebrations, when the Boston Pops orchestra annually hosts a music and fireworks spectacular off the Charles River Esplanade. So much creative thinking and ingenuity comes from this city and the universities lining Boston’s beautiful Charles River.” In his studio—two full-floor lofts near New York’s Lincoln Center—Max has galleries’ worth of his work: a towering portrait of the Statue of Liberty he painted on the White House lawn for President Ronald Reagan in 1981; a multicolored Baldwin piano signed by his pal Ringo Starr; rows of Lucite sculptures taken from his “Angel” series; a painted guitar originally made for Jon Bon Jovi; and portraits of everyone from Marilyn Monroe to John F. Kennedy, all done in Max’s distinctive style. “When you’re a singer and you have a really great voice, it’s not like you create a voice—it’s just there. My art is just there,” says Max. “I just put the brush on paper and I don’t even

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

BEHIND THE BRUSHSTROKES Joe and Mika: Many artists will agree that it’s a struggle to gain recognition, but to keep it for 50 years is staggering. What do you think is the key to your success? Peter Max: It’s just being present, letting creativity come through. I’m also lucky because we live in an age of media. When I was on the cover of Life magazine 45 years ago, there were only three magazines—Time, Life, and Fortune. My art got to be on two of those covers. Today there are thousands of magazines, and my work has been on 2,000 to 3,000 covers. Early in your career, you studied a lot of the old masters, from Rembrandt to Sargent. So how did you develop your cosmic style? I always used to draw, never even thinking that drawing is something you could do [as a career] once you became an adult. In China, I studied with the 6-year-old daughter of a street artist. Then in Israel, my mother hooked me up with a famous art professor from Austria. After we left Israel and moved to Paris, my mother signed me up for the classes for kids at the Louvre. And when we came to America, I found a private teacher, Frank Reilly [at the Art Students League of New York]; after high school I’d go into the city and study with him. Frank Reilly went to that school 30 years earlier, and the kid who used to sit beside him was Norman Rockwell. Then I hooked up with some people with certain art schools that were very design-oriented. For someone who studied realism, your painting style is not necessarily realist.… No, I’m kind of impressionistic. Realism gave me the skill to paint, but my eye was more into design-ery art. The Art Students League has some famous alumni, including Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly. Did you have any celebrity encounters? I once met Marilyn Monroe. Some of the students used to sit on the steps. I

sat there one day with a friend and I saw this girl walking by. I said to my friend, “It’s Marilyn Monroe,” and as she’s walking by, she turns to me and says, “I like your pants”—I had a lot of paint on my pants—and then she kept on walking. She was so stunning; all her features were just perfect.

OPPOSITE PAGE: PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC RYAN ANDERSON; THIS PAGE: COPYRIGHT PETER MAX 2014

I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS Many people will recognize your paintings of the Statue of Liberty or the “Love” series, but what do you think your most defining piece is? Painting the Statue of Liberty was a big thing because it’s an emblem; it’s the symbol for the United States of America, so it got so much attention. I’ve painted so many unbelievable people, like the Dalai Lama, John F. Kennedy—close to 800 unbelievable portraits. You’ve also painted portraits of all of the Beatles, who also just celebrated 50 years in America. Over the years, your work has been linked many times to the band—tell us more about that relationship. I met John way, way back, and I was best friends with Yoko Ono. One day I read in the paper that my little friend Yoko was going out with John. I knew John, I knew Yoko; I could have introduced them in a second. I called her up and she said, “Yeah, John tells me he knows you really well.” I used to go pick them up at the Dakota, and we’d go to Central Park. We used to walk around and talk and sing songs for years. Here in your studio, you have a colorful piano that’s signed “To Peter, Love Ringo….” I did a Baldwin piano for Ringo Starr, and he loved it. Then Baldwin called me and said, “We love it so much, we’re going to send you a piano.” Two days later they deliver it, and I roll out my paints and start painting the piano beautiful colors. Just as I’m finishing, my girl comes from the front desk and says, “Your buddy Ringo is here.” Ringo had been uptown and wanted to say thanks; instead he said, “I like yours better!” and I said, “No, Ringo, yours is the first; it’s the nicest.” He asked if I had paints and I said, “Do I have paints?” We rolled out a cart of paints, and he wrote, “To Peter, Love Ringo,” followed by a star. Was it another famous Beatle, Paul McCartney, who turned you on to vegetarianism? Paul and I became vegetarians at the same time. I’ve been a vegetarian now for over 40 years, and I’m only 38. [Laughs] I’ve had everybody up here in the studio— from Mick Jagger a couple of times to Ringo Starr to Paul McCartney—they’ve all been up here, they’re all my friends. Is it true that you have a DJ who works in your studio? Yes—Joe. He plays all good contemporary music—jazz, bebop, fusion jazz, certain rock ’n’ roll. When I start painting, the music is on and I’m just in the groove. Music inspires my whole will to paint—it fuels the creativity. You worked with George Harrison on the Integral Yoga Institute, a yoga center and ashram in New York based on the teachings of Sri Swami Satchidananda, whom you brought to America in 1966. Was it George who introduced you to the Swami?

No, George was involved with the Maharishi out of England. George and I talked about my Satchidananda and his Maharishi, and we introduced each other to the other guy. The institute teaches how to go into meditation, get your mind focused, do stretching, become a vegan—a lot of health, behavioral, and mental benefits that have changed my whole life. How did you first meet Swami Satchidananda? Conrad Rooks, who was the heir of Avon cosmetics, called me one day when I was in my early 20s, and he wanted me to come to Paris to help him with the colors on a film he was going to make. Conrad picks me up from the airport [in Paris] and we’re hanging out in the restaurant at his hotel, and then in comes the Swami—long beard, beautiful long black hair, gorgeous eyes—and Conrad introduces me to him. After spending a day with the Swami, I knew I had to bring him to New York. All my hippie buddies were taking LSD, and I was thinking, This is the man we need to be with, not this other stuff. I brought him to America and I opened yoga centers for him.

THE BEST IS YET TO COME Over your career, you’ve accomplished so much. Is there something— a goal—you have yet to achieve? I’m always being creative; that’s full-time. And I’ve been listening to music very intensely my whole life, but especially in the last 36 months because I’ve been collecting music for seven feature films and animations. I called my friends—Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Bon Jovi—everyone I knew, and I got about 175,000 to 200,000 songs on these little iPods. Everything that’s pop-y is five stars, and if it’s a great piece but a little melodic, four stars. Everything that’s four and five stars is going into the films. Out of 200,000 pieces of music, I selected about 3,000 or 4,000 that I adore. Have you ever thought about retiring? I’ve been retired since I was 20. [Laughs] Retiring is getting to do completely what you love, right? It’s not like sitting in a chair somewhere. This is a nice life—it’s creative, colors, music, and people. I love it. BC FROM LEFT:

Max sketching at one of his gallery shows in 1971 and reclining in his studio in 1969.

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

Kathy Burns and Michael Greeley playing croquet with their children.

DASHING DYNASTIES FROM JAMESTOWN TO EDGARTOWN, KENNEBUNK TO CAPE COD, THESE BOSTONIANS SOAK UP THE SUN WITH THEIR OWN SPIRITED CULTURE, HISTORY, AND GLAMOUR. BY LISA PIERPONT PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC LEVIN

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

THE FAMILY LEGACY KATHY BURNS and MICHAEL GREELEY

We could tell you where this house is, but then we’d have to kill you. Here are some hints: It’s in Maine—Kennebunk, to be specific, and on the beach. That’s all you get. Kathy Burns spent every summer on this beach while growing up, and her great-great-grandfather built the house. It is super private, and her oodles of relatives want to keep it that way. Who could blame them? This is Maine at its most pristine. Kathy, a veteran hotel acquisitions executive, credits her hospitality career for lighting up the property with just the right kind of wild parties mixed with always-time-for-a-kayak-ride family time. For her venture capitalist husband, Michael Greeley, the “Big House” became his home, too, the day they got married there. Now with a son and daughter, the couple continues the family legacy. WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT YOUR HOUSE? MG: If a house could be like Cheers, this may well

be it, although, admittedly, there have been mornings in the kitchen when I don’t necessarily know everybody’s name. DO YOU HAVE ANY ANNUAL TRADITIONS? KB: We love to put together eclectic groups of

houseguests for weekend events and dinner parties. MG: For years, we hosted a spectacular series of weekend activities for a few hundred friends, which culminated in a themed costume party. This is a house made for entertaining. WHAT ARE YOUR FONDEST MEMORIES? KB: Catching over 60 mackerel with my dad after

launching our little boat in the surf when I was 10 years old. Climbing the rocks was always special. Now I get to do that with my kids.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY TK; ILLUSTRATION BY TK

HOW DO YOU SPEND FAMILY TIME? KB: We love clam and lobster bakes on the beach.

We gather around the fire pit under the stars. WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD? KB: I want my kids to cherish the same things I

did as a kid—surfing in the cold Maine ocean and working in Kennebunkport with everyone from lobstermen to summer residents. MG: The house is incredibly grounding for our family. I want my grandchildren’s grandchildren to be able to enjoy it and share it with their friends.

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THE SIMPLE LIFE

CHRISTY and JAY CASHMAN

If you bumped into Christy and Jay Cashman at their chicken coop on Strong Island, you would probably—no, make that never—guess what their “real” life is. She is a glamorous filmmaker and actress; he is a master-of-the-universe, generalcontracting business owner and inventor—Monday through Friday, that is. Summer weekends consist of tending to the garden, hatching chicken eggs, midnight golf cart rides with their children (four between them), and a constant flow of friends. But make no mistake: This is no country farm. It’s 200 acres of woods, salt marsh, and beach, with hundreds of species of birds, room for horseback riding, and six different varieties of clams. The chicken coop is just the beginning… WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO SET UP SHOP ON STRONG ISLAND? JC: I lived on Middle Brewster Island when I was

a kid with my family for two summers. Although we were camping and roughing it, I remember those summers as the best of my youth. CC: It was obvious the minute I set foot onto the poison-ivyridden, bug-infested land that it was a special place. I loved the wild, unruly landscape. WHAT SUMMER CULTURE HAVE YOU CREATED AS A FAMILY? CC: I love that we are eating vegetables from the

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE ACTIVITIES? CC: I love my chickens. Riding the horses on the

beach… piling everyone on the pontoon boat, kayaking around the sometimes shark-infested waters, and, of course, campfires. JC: Playing beanbag, bocce ball, tuna fishing, boating to the other end of the marsh (known as the party point). DO YOU HAVE ANY SPECIAL TRADITIONS? CC: Well, we have quite a few parties, planned

and unplanned. We might wake up and it will be just Jay, the boys, and me. Then a call comes in from friends who are passing through Chatham, and we pick them up in a boat. Then another call comes in, and suddenly we have a house full of friends.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Catching a chicken on the front lawn; Jay Michael and Quinn Cashman play piggyback; bareback riding on the beach.

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF THE CASHMAN FAMILY (PIGGYBACK, BAREBACK)

garden minutes after they’ve been picked. And starting the day outside in the barn with all of the animals, and ending the day outside watching a movie on the outdoor screen in a sleeping bag. JC: The culture is welcoming to our friends. There is always a spare bed.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY TK; ILLUSTRATION BY TK

Clam digging at sunset on Strong Island.

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THE HAUTE HOSTS

KRISTINA and PATRICK LYONS If you don’t know Kristina and Patrick, you really ought to figure out a way to get on their good side. Seriously, this couple can party in an epic way. Part of it comes with the package that is Patrick Lyons, the king of Boston nightlife, whose company, The Lyons Group, has dominated Lansdowne Street for decades as well as spawning national chains such as Summer Shack, Kings Bowling, and most recently, Blazing Paddles, a ping-pong club in Fenway Park. Kristina holds court as the co-owner of Portobello Road, a hip women’s boutique in Chestnut Hill, as well as being an aspiring filmmaker. No surprise, then, that their summer house on Martha’s Vineyard routinely bursts at the seams with uproarious dinner parties, Hollywood guests, and just-one-more-swim energy. It’s in their DNA. HOW DID YOU COME TO SUMMER IN MARTHA’S VINEYARD? KL: Patrick had a little place in Oak Bluffs and

invited me for a long weekend when we started dating. It was my first time to the Vineyard, and I just fell in love. PL: I love the diversity. It’s rural and farmlike in Chilmark, bordering on honkytonk in Oak Bluffs, and everything in between. WHAT IS SPECIAL ABOUT YOUR HOUSE? KL: Our location! It’s so wild to be on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic. PL: Sometimes a house

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owns you, but we built our house so it was simple and functional. We definitely own it. WHAT ATMOSPHERE HAVE YOU CREATED? KL: Very relaxed. Very inclusive. So many kids

running around it’s like summer camp. Lots of grilling fresh fish that we pick up in Menemsha and pizza-making in our outdoor pizza oven. PL: It’s beach by day, tennis in the afternoon, and fish caught that day by a friend for dinner. AND WHEN IT’S JUST THE FOUR OF YOU… KL: The kids are in the pool, or we’re piled

together watching movies, playing poker games, or lying around on the window seats on a lazy day reading The Vineyard Gazette. DO YOU HAVE ANY TRADITIONS? KL: We have a big come-one-come-all potluck

dinner at the end of the summer. Patrick makes paella outside on the fire pit. For the Fourth of July, we go to the Edgartown parade and throw candy to the crowd. PL: We throw one big bash every summer. We invite all of our regular Vineyard crew: Larry David, Jim Belushi, the Farrelly brothers, Dick Friedman, and all of their families, and everyone else we know. WHAT WILL FUTURE SUMMERS BRING? KL: I hope it will continue to be a place where

friends and family come together. The cliff has very special mystical energy. Everybody says that.

LEFT:

Lucy, Wyatt, Patrick, and Kristina Lyons on the oceanside cliff. ABOVE: Kristina Lyons cooks for a house full of guests like Linda Greenberg.

LEFT:

Roy Schoenberg at the wheel of Latitude. BELOW: Deck-hopping into the big blue Atlantic.

THE DREAMBOAT

ROY SCHOENBERG, MD, MPH

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF ROY SCHOENBERG

We can safely say that Roy Schoenberg knows the difference between port and starboard. He didn’t in the beginning, but he does now. Good thing. He owns pretty much the farthest thing from a starter boat—a full-throttle-or-bust, 35-knot (that’s fast!), 64-foot-long Azimut yacht named Latitude. After growing up and becoming a doctor in Israel, Schoenberg came to Boston and earned a master’s degree in public health at Harvard Medical School, but switched gears to start American Well, the nation’s largest telehealth network. The workdays are intense—24/7, says Schoenberg. But after finding Latitude, his weekends are bliss: motoring to Newport, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Block Island, the Hamptons—anywhere, really, that Captain Schoenberg fancies. Land ho? No. HOW DID YOU FIND LATITUDE?

When I was in Nantucket, I saw a beautiful boat. I went to the dealers and said, “Listen, I have no clue about boating. Help me to get to the point that I can get a boat. Long story short, I am completely addicted to boating. WHAT IS SPECIAL ABOUT THE BOAT?

It’s smiling if you look at it. It has a personality. It wants to run on the ocean more than you do.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO LIVE ON THE BOAT?

One of the amazing things about boating is that it can be a completely different world from one day to another. One day, it’s you and close friends and smooth sailing to a secluded place, sitting on the flybridge, feeling the breeze. Then, on another day, it’s 35 people in bathing suits, dancing up and down and jumping in the water. The beauty is that people change when they are on a boat. This isn’t about showing your wits or knowledge or how much money you make. You can be yourself. You get liberated. WHY DON’T YOU WANT A SUMMER HOUSE INSTEAD?

Oh, there’s no comparison! The fact that the world can change around you—it’s like a moving fortress of your own. Then having people join and having other boats tie up? The social part is unbeatable. DO YOU CHANGE WHEN YOU’RE ON LATITUDE?

I feel like I’m taking off from life. I have had some of my deepest conversations with my best friends on a boat. I have made some of my biggest decisions on a boat. I probably have had the best night’s sleep on a boat.

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THE NOMADS

KIEL JAMES PATRICK and FRIENDS This summer, it’s Jamestown. Last summer was Nantucket. There was Newport and Martha’s Vineyard, too. Kiel James Patrick and his buddies have been diagnosed with rental nomad syndrome, and they’re proud of it, thank you. They are also the best-dressed tenants any landlord will ever see. Patrick is the founder of KJP, a tony collection of apparel and accessories for men and women, which, conveniently, his housemates happen to love. Even more conveniently, they are open to having Kiel regularly style them. It all makes for some mighty fine photos, which have amassed nothing less than a cult following on Instagram.

CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM: Kiel James

Patrick (in red hat) and his friends unpack at the Wetherledge mansion; perfect prepsters in the garden and on the staircase.

HOW DO YOU PICK YOUR RENTAL HOUSES EACH SUMMER?

I always seek a house that offers as much personality and charm as the people who are coming to summer in it. Quirky history, century-old furnishings, eclectic décor, gorgeous waterfront views, and of course, a ghost or two is always a must. HOW DID YOUR RENTAL TRIBE START?

A few of my friends and I decided to pool some money together and rent a beautiful old house. We made a few rules. Everyone must dress in their nicest clothes for two days. Everyone must bring a unique recipe and be responsible for making a meal arranged so nicely that Martha Stewart would be proud. We talked. We told stories. We took pictures with our parents’ old cameras. At night, we’d toast by the campfire and sing. Inside, we played old records, just the way our grandparents enjoyed life.

HOW LONG WILL THE RENTING TRIBE CONTINUE?

This has brought us all such extraordinary happiness that we hope to keep sharing as we bring more and more friends along on our trips. House rental courtesy of wetherledge.com.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIEL JAMES PATRICK (GARDEN, STAIRS)

We play board games, sports, swim, and horse around. I love cooking. I love singing. I love dancing. I love connecting.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY TK; ILLUSTRATION BY TK

WHAT OTHER COOL ACTIVITIES DO ALL OF YOU LIKE?

Kiel James Patrick (FRONT RIGHT) and his friends enjoy summer, retro-style.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOANNA ELDREDGE MORRISSEY

Food, shelter, and sweet fir-scented air are freely provided at MacDowell, says author Michael Chabon, along with silence and dizzying amounts of time.

THE GREAT AMERICAN ARTISTS’ COLONY

THE FAMED MACDOWELL COLONY HAS GROOMED SOME OF THIS COUNTRY’S MOST SEMINAL ARTISTS—WRITERS, MUSICIANS, PAINTERS, PHOTOGRAPHERS—AND GIFTED THEM THE TIME TO PERFECT THEIR CRAFT. BOSTON COMMON TAKES YOU INSIDE. NOT EVERYONE HAS HEARD OF THE MACDOWELL COLONY, the artists’ enclave nestled in the woods of Peterborough, New Hampshire, but its most famous residents have defined American arts and letters for the last century. Thornton Wilder. Leonard Bernstein. Alice Walker. More than 60 Pulitzer Prize–winning artists, plus thousands of others, have nurtured their craft in one of the colony’s secluded cabins, where they are given a private place to work and the most valuable gift for an artist—total freedom from the demands and distractions of everyday life. On August 10, the grounds will be open to celebrate Medal Day—complete with a picnic lunch—when visual artist Betye Saar will receive the 55th Edward MacDowell Medal for her outstanding contribution to the field. Here, Boston Common takes readers inside the secluded haven. First, award-winning author and five-time MacDowell fellow Alex Halberstadt gives a brief history of the colony and how it has grown from a single cabin to a unique institution that gives artists the creative sustenance they can’t find anywhere else. Then, the chairman of MacDowell’s board of directors—author Michael Chabon, who has snagged a Pulitzer himself—shares his recent experience inside one of those cabins, where art—and oh, so many other things—happen.

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WHAT STARTED AS A PRIVATE RETREAT FOR ONE COMPOSER HAS BECOME A CRUCIBLE OF INSPIRATION FOR THOUSANDS OF ARTISTS. BY ALEX HALBERSTADT

hen I first arrived in the woods of Peterborough, New Hampshire, it was December and the sun set at around 4:45, and I took my nightly walk to dinner amid biblical darkness in a state of palmtingling dread. Once, when a barn owl launched itself noisily from a branch above me, I broke into a sprint, fumbling like Cary Grant under Hitchcock’s crop duster. In truth, the walk covered just several hundred yards, but I was hardly alone among the spooked urban neurotics attempting rustic living at the MacDowell Colony. I’m happy to report that the fear of God’s creatures and the dark are about the worst of it. In fact, for many of the several hundred painters, writers, composers, and sundry creatives who come here every

year, the visit marks the first time that they have been to a place that exists solely to sustain their work. MacDowell’s first guests—sisters named Mary Mears and Helen Farnsworth Mears—took up residence there in 1907. In a society in which government funding for the arts has never been a populist notion, the colony established a new and widely imitated private model for supporting artists, perhaps the most pragmatic one to date. If some wayward sociologist decided to suss out the ideal conditions for making art, she might come up with a formula much like the one they’ve settled on in Peterborough: hours of solitude and quiet, freedom from phones and Wi-Fi (except in the library), a useful amount of remove from the more common vices, plenty of walking paths, nourishing food, and enough encouragement to keep even marginal egos productive. Colonists (admittedly a creepy term) work in 32 studios arranged in the woods cunningly, so that the view from nearly every porch creates the impression of isolation. Breakfast and dinner are communal. Blake Tewksbury, a man with the temperament of a small-town parish priest who has been at the colony for more than 30 years, arrives every morning with lunch packed into a wicker basket and sets it on your porch gingerly, making sure not to rattle the screen door. Throughout the afternoon a showy jet-black turkey or a fox may strafe across

Artist Beth Krebs created this temporary installation, called Dropped Ceiling, for the colony.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOANNA ELDREDGE MORRISSEY

A CABIN OF ONE’S OWN

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF MACDOWELL COLONY

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Thornton Wilder (SECOND FROM LEFT) wrote parts of his seminal play Our Town at MacDowell; the Alexander Studio; Alice Walker, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Color Purple, during a stay at the colony.

your field of vision. The rest, as they say, is up to you. What can I tell you about a stay at MacDowell? It can be, especially at first, intimidating. Thornton Wilder wrote parts of Our Town there; Aaron Copland composed parts of his ballet Billy the Kid behind the upright in his studio. The colony hosts scores of MacArthur fellows, Pulitzer recipients, and other people you have heard of, and sooner or later, they will end up sitting across from you at breakfast, impatient for the same tray of fruit salad. Doug Wright, who received a Pulitzer for the play I Am My Own Wife, first stayed at the colony as an up-and-coming playwright and remembers being particularly intimidated by the library, with its hardcovers inscribed by Edward Arlington Robinson and Willa Cather. “I went down to the drugstore in town and bought a handful of bodice-ripper romance paperbacks,” Wright told me. “I think one was titled The Accidental Cowboy. Then I signed them, ‘…to MacDowell, with all my gratitude and love, from Jude Deveraux,’ and put them on the shelves. It made me feel a little better.” Colonists write their names and the dates of their stay on wooden tablets hanging on the walls of their studio; because of their shape, and since many of the earliest names belong to the dead, everyone calls them tombstones. No matter which studio you’re in, you’ll spot the handwriting of a Leonard Bernstein or an Alice Walker. During my initial afternoons at MacDowell, I felt the eyes of the acclaimed looking down at me reproachfully from the tombstones. I found myself unable to write until I took them down and piled them under the bed.

Besides the initial fear of the nighttime fauna, something else happens after being surrounded by little other than trees and, if you’re lucky, a view of Mount Monadnock brooding over the pine tops. With nothing to drown them out, thoughts—and other manifestations of the inner life—get amplified. This can feel exhilarating or disconcerting; in either case, it casts the issues of art-making into stark relief. Some colonists report creative breakthroughs and periods of intense productivity. “When I come to MacDowell, I accomplish years and years of work,” said the composer and performance artist Meredith Monk. “I’ve been there during what I call the hunting and gathering stages, when I get inspired and come up with ideas, and I’ve begun dozens of projects in my studio.” During a residency, the writer Joan Acocella wrote so much of her book that the effort carried her through the rest of the manuscript; she claims to have accomplished this feat twice. Even uninspired periods seems to pass more rapidly in the New Hampshire woods, given the unprecedented amounts of time to work out problems and ready conversations with colonists who have probably endured worse. Even with a morning procrastinated away, there’s the afternoon to spend with one’s work, which after all is the reason everyone is there. That focus gives a day at MacDowell its arc. “It’s a place I can feel safe, because even though I’m alone, other people are out there, doing their thing,” said the Mexico City – based filmmaker Natalia Almada, a 2012 MacArthur recipient. Unlike its rival, Yaddo, an artists’ colony organized around a Saratoga Springs mansion and surrounded by formal gardens, MacDowell didn’t

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spring from a private fortune. It began as a farm bought by Marian wicked tongue, the board voted to limit colonists to 10 residencies, effecMacDowell after she returned home from Germany; she had gone there to tively making the Colums ineligible. The rule was quietly repealed after study piano and ended up marrying her considerably older teacher, Edward the couple passed away. Perhaps the most indelible character was the composer Louise Talma. Beginning in 1943, she MacDowell, who would be known as the first visited MacDowell a not-likely-to-be-equaled American composer to develop a reputation Lunch 41 times, working mainly in the smallest studio abroad. In the summer of 1898 he was working delivered on the property, a Hansel-and-Gretel cottage at home when Marian surprised him—she’d daily to each resident in a named Phi Beta. She was single, lived alone, had a one-room cabin built on a hillside overpicnic basket and wore an often severe expression, so no one looking Monadnock, a tranquil spot in the is a treasured tradition. at the colony had the backbone to chide her, at woods where he could work undisturbed. He least until 1994, when the new, 30-something didn’t have much time to enjoy it—he died not resident director, David Macy, took Talma long after—but in his last years he suggested to aside to say that she really couldn’t smoke at Marian that she invite artists to use the cabin. the dinner table any longer. Two years later, at He envisioned a “tiny imitation of the American Yaddo, after attending a reading and downing Academy in Rome.” a customary shot of Jack Daniels, Talma died It was left to Marian to transform Edward’s in her sleep. She left her money—exactly a millark into reality. She bought an adjacent parlion dollars—to MacDowell. cel of land, built a sawmill and a working farm People assume that artists’ colonies tend to on the property, erected dormitories and stube breeding grounds for affairs, and they are dios. From the start she envisioned a place not wrong. MacDowell has seen its share. where residents “may learn to appreciate fully When the pay phones were taken out of Colony the fundamental unity of the separated arts,” Hall, some joked that it was done in the interest stipulating that “no social distinctions shall of saving marriages. Colonists tend to look be allowed to determine the choice” of those upon these things with forbearance—chiseling invited to stay there. Not everyone was dazzled. at your masterpiece day after day can be a soliJ.P. Morgan, a supporter of Edward’s, refused tary business. And not all colony romance is to hand over a dime to finance Marian’s “damn frivolous. Novelist Jeffrey Eugenides met his fool scheme for indigent bohemians.” (These wife, the sculptor Karen Yamauchi, at days, a band of rotating colonists that plays MacDowell. The composer and drummer open-mike nights in Peterborough has adopted Bobby Previte first spoke to the novelist Morgan’s snub for its name.) Andrea Kleine on a path in the woods between Marian wasn’t easily cowed. She founded the studios Sorosis and New Jersey. Several MacDowell clubs around the country, spoke to years later, a justice of the peace married them women’s clubs and sororities, launched penny on that spot. It was snowing, Kleine wore a drives, encouraged sponsors to endow individskirt made of feathers, and Previte sang her a ual studios, and pressed famous colonists to song. “It was one of the more moving things speak on her behalf. When a freak hurricane laid I’ve seen at MacDowell,” said David Macy. waste to the grounds in 1938, former colonists “About 10 colonists were there, and afterward raised nearly $40,000 needed to make repairs. At everyone went back to work.” 50, Marian resumed a career as a concert pianist Just as crucial as the time and space—and and toured the country, giving hundreds of recit—ALEX HALBERSTADT possibly the most rarefied thing a stay at als of her husband’s music. Afterwards, standing MacDowell confers—is a particular kind of on crutches in front of the audiences, Marian made financial appeals on behalf of her institution. And it had become an encouragement. Among American artists, the lauded and discussed hapinstitution. Beginning in the 1920s, the decade when Dorothy and Dubose pen to be fortunate curiosities; the vast majority plug away in unpaid Heyward wrote the play that would become Porgy and Bess at Barnard Studio, obscurity, and only the delusional get into writing or art for money. An MacDowell colonists had amassed a raft of literary prizes, premieres, and invitation to Peterborough is one of the few certified ways your peers can museum exhibitions to attest to the good sense of Marian’s scheme. When she let you know that they’re glad the thing you made is in the world, and glad retired from the day-to-day management of the colony in 1946 (under signifi- that you stuck with it despite the many fine, sensible reasons not to. Meredith Monk told me that when she came to MacDowell, most everyone cant pressure from the board of directors) she was nearly 90. As you might imagine, a century at a retreat for artists doesn’t pass thought of her as a downtown performer. “It was the first place I felt entirely without incident. In the early 1950s, colony regulars Mary Colum accepted as a composer, which was deeply moving and important to me,” and her husband, Padraic—lifelong friends of Marian and of James Joyce— she said. Natalia Almada recalled: “When I was dropped off in precipitated what may figure as MacDowell’s sole blackballing. After Peterborough for the first time, I felt so validated to be in a place where all years of complaints about their disruptive behavior, abetted by Mary’s of these people I admired had been. I just stood there and cried.”

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOANNA ELDREDGE MORRISSEY

“WITH NOTHING TO DROWN THEM OUT, THOUGHTS GET AMPLIFIED.”

THE LEFT-HAND TATTOO WHY PULITZER PRIZE WINNER MICHAEL CHABON CREDITS THE MACDOWELL COLONY WITH GIVING HIM THE MOST VALUABLE GIFT OF ALL—FAILURE.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOANNA ELDREDGE MORRISSEY

had eleven days. Factor in the effects of jet lag, the time required at the start for settling in and at the end for packing up.... Call it ten. Ten days. It would be the shortest residency I’d ever had at the MacDowell Colony. For all I knew, ten days might be the shortest residency in Colony history. I could probably get somebody to look it up; MacDowell’s institutional memory is long and continuous, and they keep records of such things. Maybe Leonard Bernstein had dropped by for a long weekend in 1970 to put in some time on his Mass. Bernstein was a busy guy. He was also a genius, a word with many possible definitions, among them “one who is able to make the most of very little.” I was at the center of a novel I’d been writing for a year or so,

fighting my way toward the end. I only had ten days at the MacDowell Colony. I would just have to try, if I could, to make the most of them. As I drove my rented car from Logan airport up the familiar, nighttime New Hampshire highways to Peterborough—as always I would arrive, coming in from California, way too late for supper—I fell prey to all my usual MacDowell delusions. I told myself that if I put in ten days of solid work, I might just flat-out finish the damn thing. A returning fellow is often prey to this kind of wild optimism. He or she knows—or has heard—that feats of astonishing productivity are possible at MacDowell. My wife, during her second residency, began and completed the entire first draft of her novel Love and Other Impossible Pursuits in two weeks. And heck, I was much farther along than she had been! What could you not accomplish, I asked myself, in ten days at the MacDowell Colony, amid the pine and birch trees, in the burning solitude of your perfect little studio? Ten days! That would probably be enough time to finish the book and start a whole new one! I spent the first day just reading and revising. I started on page one of the manuscript, making my way through the pages I had generated over the course of the past year. I felt that I needed to reacquaint myself with my book. Though I had been working steadily on it for the past few months, putting in my regular hours at the keyboard, it felt as if I had been separated from it for a long time. I might even be tempted to employ the word “divorced.” It was not that the book and I were having problems. We got

The view from the porch of nearly every studio creates the impression of blissful solitude.

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“WHEN I COME TO MACDOWELL, I ACCOMPLISH YEARS OF WORK.” —MEREDITH MONK

along fine; most of the time, in fact, I really loved it. But after just one day at MacDowell it was clear to me that something had come between us. That something goes by many names, but so as not to overstate the case I’ll just refer to it, here, as “Life.” At this point I should probably explain that the problem the MacDowell Colony was designed to solve is the most bitter and fundamental law of an artist’s existence, namely, that the passion, enchantment, and intensity of his or her desire to write, paint, sculpt, compose, etc., is directly proportional to life’s indifference, indeed hostility, toward his or her fulfillment of that desire. Life doesn’t simply fail to give a shit whether you compose, paint, write, or sculpt: At times it seems to have sworn to do everything in its power to try to stop you. Life requires that you fill your belly, clothe your back, shelter your head. Life expects, demands, and obliges. It drops by unannounced with a spliff or a bottle of wine right when you’re sitting down to work. It enters your house through a DSL line at 20 Mbps. It sends you a boss, a classroom full of students, a physical or mental disability, a chronic illness. When it really wants to bring your work to a standstill, it sends you children. The MacDowell Colony acts as a force field against the crushing weight

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of all that indifference and hostility. Like the domed colonies that, according to the futurists of my mid-20th-century childhood, were supposed by now to populate the world’s oceans and the surfaces of the moon and Mars, MacDowell lowers a protective bubble around the artist. Food, shelter, and sweet fir-scented air are freely provided, along with silence, calm, a comfortable chair, and copious, even dizzying amounts of that fundamental stuff with which life is so terribly stingy: time. The Internet is held at bay. Drop-in visitors are forbidden. And children, one’s own and those of other people, are nowhere to be seen. By the second day I was on the ground, under the chassis of the book, caught up with wrench and wire cutters in the nasty mess that had been driving me crazy for the past month. It was a passage where I attempted to describe a prolonged, troubled episode in the life of my fictitious protagonist. At first, encountering this moment in his life, I had attempted to circumvent the difficulty by summarizing the episode briefly and moving on. This was cheating, and cowardly. It was in his extremity of despair that my hero encountered his eventual salvation. The reader needed to see it happen in order to believe in it and stick with me and my hero to the end.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOANNA ELDREDGE MORRISSEY (BISBEE, FRANZEN); COURTESY OF MACDOWELL COLONY (SINGH)

CLOCKWISE FROM BELOW: Bestselling author and Pulitzer finalist Jonathan Franzen has been a fellow at MacDowell, as have visual artist Sumakshi Singh and sculptor John Bisbee.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOANNA ELDREDGE MORRISSEY

By the time I got to MacDowell, I had made four distinct attempts to portray this Extremity of Despair, none of them complete. That second day and the three that followed—half my precious time!—went into completing that fourth and best attempt, once and for all, so that I would finally be able to move on. Moving on—that was now my goal. I knew that I would not be able to finish the book, let alone begin another (what idiot had ever entertained that idea?). I gave Extremity of Despair #3 my best shot, the way only a stay at MacDowell could allow me to do, cranking and cranking for up to ten hours a day, writing five thousand new words, shaping it and expanding it, giving it everything I had until it was done. And then, on the sixth day, I threw it away. It was all wrong. I woke up on that sixth day, the day I was supposed to move on, and saw with brutal but exhilarating clarity that though I had lavished so many words and so much time on #3, it was still, at bottom, a summary. A very long, very richly detailed, very well-phrased (if I do say so myself) summary of an episode that I must—of course, this is Writing 101—find a way to dramatize. And no sooner did I come to this realization than the correct approach—the proper, dramatic, scenic series of events— presented itself to my consciousness, appropriate as a cash gift, glinting like a flower in the morning dew. The gift, the dewy flower, of MacDowell. By four in the morning of the tenth day (technically, I suppose, of day eleven), I had written my way through this troublesome, crucial patch. I was ready, at last, to move on. “Freedom to Create” is the MacDowell Colony’s tagline, but though it’s a sincere offer, and it sounds good, it doesn’t even begin to cover the

precious gift that MacDowell has been lavishing on artists, young and old, celebrated and unknown, without restraint or stipulation, since 1907. If, as chairman of MacDowell’s Board of Directors, I were to have those words tattooed on the back of my right hand, letters inked onto the back of my left hand would read: “Time to Fail.” Failure is the great luxury of art. To risk it, court it, confront it, and ultimately triumph over or, better still, learn from it, always feels scary to an artist. If you’re in a hurry, up against a deadline, squeezing your artistic practice into a life of obligation and bread-winning, trying to balance your work schedule with all those things that life has conspired to throw at you, or just clocking your usual modest complement of daily hours, the prospect of failure can feel overwhelming. To contemplate throwing out a month’s hard work—even to admit to yourself that it ought to be thrown out— becomes possible only when you have enough time to immerse yourself so deeply in the work that you can see it, complete. You need to have enough time to risk putting the work aside, going in another direction. You need enough time to prove to yourself that your new approach, your revised plan, is going to get your project where you need it to go. In that sense, MacDowell—tranquil MacDowell in the trees!—can sometimes be less a protective bubble than a kind of seismic event, a benevolent earthquake that demolishes the dams erected by life and floods your stagnating project with untrammeled time, oceans of it, torrents of it, endless sloshing bucketfuls of time. Two months. Five weeks. Or even ten days, ten little tumblers brimming with pure, cool, clarifying time. Sometimes that’s all it takes to refresh your vision of the world, as an artist, so that you can carry on, cool and unafraid, with the beautiful business of failure. BC

Michael Chabon finds that MacDowell “can sometimes be less a protective bubble than a seismic event.”

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

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CHÂTEAU D’ESCLANS “GARRUS” ROSÉ

BASH

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NOT TO BE MISSED EVENTS • HAPPENINGS • PROMOTIONS

ANSWER THE CALL OF SUMMER

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Experience our new summer menu features in Back Bay or on the patio at Te Wharf. Come in for any two glasses of THE CALLING wine and receive the perfect complimentary pairing of a Rib Eye Carpaccio or Tuna Tartare appetizer. Grilling at home? Order PRIME steaks at shop.smithandwollensky.com.

XV BEACON HOTEL Our 1903 landmark Beaux Arts building stands at the crest of Beacon Hill in the most historic city in America. Trough its doors, Fifeen Beacon Hotel ofers distinguished and discreet personalized service. Te roof deck is the hidden gem of Beacon Hill with unparallel views from the 12th foor of the hotel overlooking Boston’s skyline and views of the Charles River. Please visit xvbeacon.com 15 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02108

Summer Hill luxury homes ofer a neighborhood of sophisticated and beautiful residences that set new standards for environmental sensitivity and technological innovation. Built by award-winning Windover Construction, these exquisite three and four bedroom homes are located in beautiful Manchester-by-the-Sea. For information or to arrange a viewing, contact J Barrett Association at 978.381.0123.

RAISING THE BAR Boston’s premier salon raises the bar with the launch of the zubar@mizu where junior stylist create haircuts from $75 and blowouts from $45. Te zubar stylist have been extensively trained by the highly acclaimed mizu senior stylist guaranteeing excellence with every snip. Call today 617.585. 6498

NORTH RIVER OUTFITTER NRO invites you to celebrate their second summer of providing Nantucket with quintessential New England sophistication. Pop in to shop your favorite brands, including DVF, Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, and Helly Hansen. Extending your stay? Join them for exclusive, weekendlong trunk shows featuring Tailor Vintage (June 28-29), Vilebrequin (July 4-6), and Duck Head (July 24-27). 2 Straight Wharf Call 508.228.4999 or visit nroco.com

NOT TO BE MISSED EVENTS • HAPPENINGS • PROMOTIONS

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ACK FRESH

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Imagine a corner of your kitchen (or bath) sporting your personal Wolf one-touch cofee system. New England’s Ofcial Sub-Zero & Wolf Showroom and Test Kitchen now ofers the chance to actually Test Drive this built-in gourmet beverage center. Save your settings for cofee, espresso, cappuccino, latte, or macchiato...mornings just got a little better.

Nantucket’s own juicing revolution brought to you by ACK Fresh, 100% raw, organic, gluten free, never HHP Pasteurized, cold pressed juice flled with as much goodness as we can ft into one bottle. Fuel for your body, mind and spirit. Find us at ackfresh.com, 27 Easy Street(next to the Steamship Authority) and at the Sustainable Nantucket Farmer’s Market on Tuesdays and Saturdays. We source Nantucket frst. Always BPA free bottling.

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With a foot in three centuries, New England Nurseries of Bedford continues to be at the forefront with seasonally appropriate selections of everything needed to enhance and enjoy home. Our professional staf is available to assist with the choice of lush, fowering annuals and perennials, the hardiest trees and shrubs, plant foods and insect control, furniture, containers, hardscape and stone benches and statuary, along with everything for creating and maintaining a water feature.

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Haute Property NEWS, STARS, AND TRENDS IN REAL ESTATE

A Grande Dame Finds New Life BREWSTER’S VENERABLE OCEAN EDGE RESORT & GOLF CLUB CELEBRATES THE PROPERTY’S HISTORY WITH A $40 MILLION RENOVATION. BY JESSICA LANIEWSKI

of Historic Places. This summer, guests will enjoy the resort’s extensive $40 million renovation, including the addition of 31 villas by the resort’s private beach. But back to the Nickerson family. Fieldstone Hall, built in 1890, quickly became the social center of high society in Brewster, welcoming local and national dignitaries (including President Grover Cleveland) for lavish parties. The family used part of the land (which is now Nickerson State Park) as private hunting grounds and kept it stocked with beer and deer. Liveried servants stood vigil, and the carriage house was the size of a substantial

The historic Nickerson Mansion, built in 1907, has become a premier resort destination.

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PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF OCEAN EDGE RESORT & GOLF CLUB

ometime in the 1880s, bank czar Samuel Nickerson stabbed the golden tip of his cane into a 48-acre plot of land in Brewster on Cape Cod. This was it. This was where he would build a home for his son, Roland. Nickerson had returned east from the windy streets of Chicago, where he made a cool fortune as the founder and president of the First National Bank of Chicago. He would build Fieldstone Hall, one of the swankiest houses in town. Over a century later, that property has transformed into the Ocean Edge Resort & Golf Club—still very swanky—which has won the AAA Four Diamond rating and a spot on the National Register

A new villa at Ocean Edge Resort offers expansive views. BELOW: Fieldstone Hall, the original home on the estate, was destroyed by a fire in 1906; it was replaced by Nickerson Mansion (BOTTOM), whose stunning architecture remains intact, including the ornate staircase.

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF OCEAN EDGE RESORT & GOLF CLUB

LEFT:

home. Tragedy struck on May 10, 1906, when the mansion caught fire and was completely destroyed. Roland died shortly after (some say of a broken heart over his beloved home), and his wife and father built a new home on the property, Nickerson Mansion, which lives on today as the Mansion at Ocean Edge. “When they rebuilt the house they were obviously worried about fire, so the place that exists today is made of reinforced fireproof stucco and steel garters,” says Sally Gunning, a local historian, author, and Nickerson family member. “The original house had these intricate shingle patterns on the exterior and a grand stone tower, while the new house was done in an English style.” The new Nickerson Mansion also boasted Italian marble fireplaces and a sweeping, hand-carved oak staircase that remains in place today. The the original billiards room (which also doubled as a roller-skating rink for the Nickersons) was decorated with wooden

“Instead of one family, now hundreds of people are enjoying it.” —SUZANNE CORCORAN busts of Shakespearean characters, which still peer down at guests today. In 1945, the Nickerson estate was sold to the Catholic Church, which used it as a seminary until Corcoran Jennison Hospitality purchased the property in 1980 and launched it as a luxury resort in 1986. “The location on Cape Cod Bay guaranteed a great vacation destination,” says Suzanne Corcoran, a vice president of Corcoran Jennison Hospitality. The historic Nickerson Mansion continues to be the focal point of the resort, and its status as a national landmark ensures that the stunning architecture of the original building remains intact, providing a gorgeous setting

for lavish weddings and conferences. Overnight accommodations in the mansion’s guest suites were constructed in wings off of the historic building, accessible by a covered walkway. Corcoran added other modern amenities, such as six swimming pools and an 18-hole Nicklaus Design golf course. Nearly 35 years later, the resort carries on the rarefied style of summering that the Nickersons so cherished, with celebrities like the late actor James Gandolfini and Dermot Mulroney seeking privacy at Ocean Edge. In recent years, Corcoran has been quietly developing nearby land, and this year the resort opens its new Presidential Bay Collection villas, which offer a new level of privacy and familyfriendly amenities. Each two- or three-bedroom villa comes with a stocked refrigerator (think gourmet ice cream and s’mores essentials) and a concierge who can help plan activities before guests arrive and throughout their stay. “With the villas we are trying to attract guests who want a quieter atmosphere and access to the town when they need it, while still being able to utilize the resort,” says Corcoran. Where the Nickersons once held elaborate picnics, Ocean Edge now offers yoga on the beach, stand-up paddleboarding on the water, a deluxe tennis center, and shuttles to Crosby Beach. The resort has added new bicycles for guests to ride on the 26-mile Cape Cod Bike and Rail Trail. “If you bike to the Wellfleet Beachcomber, we will pick you up,” says Corcoran. “We designed that for people who want a little exercise, but didn’t want to bike back to the resort after a day of enjoying themselves.” Enjoying the property, after all, is what Samuel Nickerson had in mind when he first laid eyes on the land. “This spot was a playground for the Nickersons, and the play still continues,” says Corcoran, “but instead of one family, now hundreds of people are enjoying it.” 2907 Main St., Brewster, 508-896-9000; oceanedge.com BC BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

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DÉCOR NEWS

From the Inside Out FROM MEDITATION LAWNS TO OUTDOOR TELEVISIONS, BOSTON DESIGN EXPERTS ARE TRANSFORMING THE BACKYARD INTO A SEAMLESS EXTENSION OF THE HOME. BY JESSICA LANIEWSKI

verything you need for the ultimate summer escape can be found in your own backyard. High-end sound systems, elaborate fireplaces, cutting-edge kitchens—all outdoors— create an open-air summer home. The National Association of Realtors reports that the sale of million-dollar properties is on the rise. Once they’ve invested in their dream house, luxury homeowners are willing to pay top dollar to customize it inside and out. We asked three experts to weigh in on the best and brightest trends in outdoor living.

INDOORS MEETS OUTDOORS Jean Abouhamad, president and founder of Sea-Dar Construction in the South End (46 Waltham St., 617-423-0870; seadar.com), has seen a steady increase in clients asking for upscale outdoor lounges. “Decorative water elements, including waterfalls, ornamental pools, and splash pools are on the rise,” says Abouhamad. He points out that some clients want to turn their backyard into a place to meditate and create a peaceful ambience with soundless infinity pools or dramatic water walls. Abouhamad is also seeing outdoor Internet access and TVs becoming de

rigueur, as clients want to enjoy the same amenities outside that they do inside.

SEAMLESS SOUNDS Thanks to homeowners like these, Chris Saad of Audio Concepts (870 Commonwealth Ave., 617734-1800; audioconcepts.com) has seen a 15 percent increase in requests over the past year for outdoor sound systems. For one recent client, who wanted to outfit a 1,000-square-foot pool house, he installed a 55-inch wall-mounted flat-screen television, landscape speakers throughout the pool area, and a waterproof Wi-Fi system. Clients are also embracing high-end, off-the-shelf sound systems, like the Sonarray by Sonance SR1 System. “It features a below-ground subwoofer and eight satellite speakers placed around the perimeter of a backyard,” says Saad. “Because they are completely hidden under foliage, you hear the music without seeing ugly speakers.”

cooking in a deluxe outdoor kitchen. Clarke takes the sun into consideration when helping clients choose outside countertops, often suggesting bluestone, as it can withstand varying weather conditions. Accessories play an important role in the design and scale of an outdoor kitchen. “There is a big difference between having an outdoor grill area and having the ultimate outdoor kitchen,” says Clarke, citing factors like refrigeration, icemakers, ventilation, additional burners, counters, barstools, and a dedicated dining table. “These little accessories really transform your typical grill area to the place where everyone in your family will want to be during the spring, summer, and fall.” BC FROM LEFT: Clarke Distribution has seen classic backyard grilling areas expand to deluxe outdoor kitchens; audio systems like the Sonarray by Sonance SR1 System can deliver high-quality sound throughout a large outdoor area.

FOOD ALFRESCO For Sean Clarke, general manager of Clarke Distribution (393 Fortune Blvd., Milford, 508458-2200; clarkeliving.com), summertime means

“There’s a big difference between having a grill area and having the ultimate outdoor kitchen.” —SEAN CLARKE

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Starting at $30,795* Audi Burlington A Herb Chambers Company

62 Cambridge Street, Burlington, MA 01803 888-678-7802 *Starting MSRP for a 2015 Audi A3 1.8T Premium. Limited Availability, available for factory order. Model shown is a 2015 Audi A3 2.0T Prestige, 19” wheels (delayed availability) and Sport pkg., starting MSRP $43,945. Prices exclude taxes, title, other options and dealer fees. “Audi,” “MMI,” “quattro,” “Truth in Engineering,” all model names, and four rings logo are registered trademarks of AUDI AG. ©2014 Audi of America, Inc.

AudiBurlington.com

CARNOISSEUR

The A-List Adventure I

f the miles on a car tell a story, then the 2015 Audi A3 that rolled into my driveway barely had an opening line. Sure, I’d read its reviews—best in this, best in that—but frankly the luxury car market these days is like a game of under-10 T-ball, where everybody gets a trophy. So with only a handful of miles on it, the first chapter of this particular Audi was up to me to write. Staring at me in all its bold, aerodynamic glory, this car was just begging for an adventure. I popped the trunk and threw in a pair of boots, a backpack, a gallon of water, and a first-aid kit. Mount Washington was said to be having the most beautiful hiking in decades, and what better way to go to the highest peak east of the Mississippi than in this car from the future? The Audi’s curbside Fonzarelli factor continued as I slid into its driver’s seat: This A3 is cool, very cool. Unlike other top-of-the-liners that tack on every bell and whistle in Christmas-tree excess, the A3’s fine leather interior possesses a clean, sophisticated design that Steve Jobs would have appreciated. I turned the key (yes, the A3 still uses a key, not some remote control) and a flat screen rose from the dash to greet me. Mount Washington Weather

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BY ROBERT COCUZZO

Center was calling for rain, but there was one tiny window of sunshine. Punching the coordinates into the Audi’s GPS, the race was on. Breaking out of Boston, I galloped the A3’s 220 horses up 93 North for 145 miles before banking onto New Hampshire’s Kancamagus Highway, a real-world test course if ever there was one. I clicked the Audi’s Dynamic Steering Mode, and the A3 powered through slick hairpin turns, dramatic inclines, and the ever-looming threat of moose, bear, and other critters. The car had a guerilla grip on the road. Agile and swift, it was a samurai sword on wheels. At 2,885 feet, we broke through the tree line onto Kancamagus Pass, where purple dawn was pouring out over the horizon. No wonder Kancamagus means “the fearless one.” One hundred sixty-three miles after leaving Boston, we rolled into the parking lot at the foot of Mount Washington to bearded men unloading gear from their pick-up trucks. Their faces said it all: “What’s this city slicker doing here?” They had forgotten—just as I had before turning the key to this Audi—that every car tacks on miles, but where you spend those miles is entirely up to you. newenglandaudidealers.com BC

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF AUDI

THE 2015 AUDI A3 OFFERS A LESSON IN AUDACITY FOR PROPER BOSTONIANS.

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Photographed by Rober t Hinrichs

CHRIS H A RRINGTON A ND GLOBA L A MBASSA D OR TOM BR A DY

Visit www.bestbuddies.org to learn how to get involved. Best Buddies is a global volunteer movement that creates opportunities for one-to-one friendships, integrated employment and leadership development for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).

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Guide

EAT, DRINK, SHOP, AND UNWIND

THE VERY BEST OF imbibe: waterside cocktails play: extreme sports relax: outdoor meditation

Italian Renaissance VALENTINO’S BOSTON BOUTIQUE REOPENS WITH A LUXE NEW LOOK.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATT TEATEN

BY JESSICA LANIEWSKI

reaming of the sun-drenched piazzas and winding side streets of Italy this summer? Valentino’s newly renovated Boston boutique might ease that longing. Architect David Chipperfield and the Italian design house’s creative directors, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, designed the store to feel like an intimate palazzo. “Mr. Chipperfield has successfully translated Valentino’s iconography in a flowing, timeless manner by playing with contrasts and using minimal baroque embellishment,” says Chiuri of the 2,800-square-foot space, which carries women’s ready-to-wear, handbags, and shoes. Bostonians will be greeted in

the new store by a series of rooms outfitted in sumptuous materials including rich leathers, American walnut, and a unifying gray Venetian terrazzo border on all of the flooring. Overhead, chandeliers of optical lenses fitted into brass bezels cast a warm light over the space. The understated glamour of the décor mirrors the brand’s maison in Milan and sets the stage for this summer’s collection of Grecian and Egyptian-inspired clothing and accessories. Slip into a pair of Valentino’s embroidered kilim knit slippers (exclusive to Boston on the East Coast) and bring a hint of Mediterranean glamour to your Cape Cod getaway. 47 Newbury St., 617-578-0300; valentino.com BC

BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM

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GUIDE imbibe

Grab a cucumber mint julep from the poolside bar at Wequassett Resort and Golf Club.

Pool Tables COCKTAILS TASTE BETTER AT THESE WATERSIDE LOUNGES ALL OVER NEW ENGLAND. BY JESSICA LANIEWSKI

Bar Harbor Club The original Bar Harbor Club was built in 1930 by J.P. Morgan as a playground for his notable friends. Today it still offers refined service—to its members, as well as guests of the Harborside and West Street Hotels—at a new two-story clubhouse and adjoining pool overlooking the harbor. Enjoy the midday sun from a chaise longue with an Indian Summer, made with Bombay Sapphire, St-Germain elderflower liqueur, muddled grapefruit, and lime. 111 West St., Bar Harbor, ME, 207-288-5033; barharborclub.com

Bokx 109 Find respite from the heat this summer at the chic Bokx 109 pool and restaurant at the Hotel Indigo. Reserve one of the four spacious cabanas for the day and, between dips in the pool, sip a Watermelon Cape Codder, made with Smirnoff watermelon vodka and cranberry juice, or the Bokx punch, with Bacardi and orange, pineapple, and cherry juices. 399 Grove St., Newton, 617-4543399; newtonbokx.com

Chatham Bars Inn Snag a cushioned lounge chair or rent a cabana by the pool or private beach for the day. Quench your thirst with the Star Fish, made with Van Gogh açai-blueberry vodka, lemonade, blue Curaçao, and soda water, or the Monomoy Runner, with Cruzan light rum, Myers’s dark rum, pineapple and orange juices, and

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grenadine—delivered to your side by the cabana’s private attendant. 297 Shore Road, Chatham, 508-945-0096; chathambarsinn.com

The Colonnade Hotel It’s a whole new rooftop lounge this summer thanks to a complete redesign, including a new bar and cabanas. The heart-of-the-city location is the perfect place to enjoy cold drinks throughout the day and after work. Try the RTP White Sangria, made with Stoli Blueberi, St-Germain, Sauvignon Blanc, peach schnapps, simple syrup, and Sprite. 120 Huntington Ave., 617-4247000; colonnadehotel.com

Mohegan Sun Bask in the sun after trying your luck at the tables at this resort and casino. The indoor pool has an adjoining sun terrace, and cabanas can be rented daily. Enjoy a Mango Mojito, made with Belvedere Mango Passion vodka, lime juice, simple syrup, mint leaves, and a splash of orange juice and club soda. Every Thursday and Saturday night during the summer, Mohegan Sun hosts GLO, the region’s only nighttime pool party. 1 Mohegan Sun Blvd., Uncasville, CT, 888-226-7711; mohegansun.com

Revere Hotel Boston Common The sexy vibe at the rooftop pool

at the Revere Hotel will have you craving the spicy Frida, made with Tanteo jalapeño tequila, fresh watermelon purée, and simple syrup, or the Blueberry Vojito, with Stoli Blueberi, fresh lime juice, and soda. Grab a drink at the bar (or take advantage of chairside service) and sun yourself in one of the six cabanas or chaise longues in the 16,000-square-foot space. 200 Stuart St., 617-482-1800; reverehotel.com

Topnotch Resort Head to the Green Mountains for a day of hiking and biking, then relax by the outdoor pool at Topnotch Resort. Order the Apple Basil Punch, made with rye whiskey, local Cold Hollow apple cider, simple syrup, Vermont bitters, and basil, or the Summer Pear Mojito, with rum, pear nectar, club soda, simple syrup, and mint. 4000 Mountain Road, Stowe, VT, 802-253-8585; topnotchresort.com

Wequassett Resort and Golf Club Arrive early to stake out a seat at Wequassett’s pool, overlooking beautiful Pleasant Bay. The poolside bar LiBAYtions mixes cocktails such as a cucumber mint julep, made with cucumber simple syrup, fresh mint, and Kentucky bourbon, or the Lemon Boo Berry martini, with açai blueberry vodka, lemon, blueberries, and honey. 2173 Rte. 28, Harwich, 508-4325400; wequassett.com BC

BAR NONE Revere Hotel Boston Common resident mixologist Teodora Bakardzhieva predicts what everyone will be drinking this summer. How do you create your summer cocktail menu? We want the cocktails to feel inspired by what you might drink while sitting by a beach or on an island. What are guests looking for in a poolside cocktail? A cool, refreshing, easy-todrink beverage. We’ve created cocktails that are easy to make but don’t sacrifice taste or the art of mixology. What will guests be imbibing at the Revere this summer? This year we’re introducing fun Jell-O shots, like the Hibiscus Rum Punch and Champagne Sangria. They play off the nostalgia of childhood but are made with alcohol.

Hibiscus Rum Punch

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GUIDE play

View Maine’s coastline from a new perspective at Skydive New England.

Thrill Seekers BREAK OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE THIS SUMMER WITH THESE EXHILARATING SPORTS. BY JESSICA LANIEWSKI

Bows and arrows might be in vogue thanks to The Hunger Games, but this company has been teaching locals to aim and shoot like Katniss for years. Ace Archers takes the sport beyond summercamp level with committed instructors who work with archery enthusiasts to learn the basics of the sport and advance toward competition. New students get started by taking an introductory class held on the second and fourth Saturday of each month. 131 Morse St., Foxborough, 508-697-5647; acearchers.com

ArborTrek Soar from tree to tree high above the forest floor during a Zip Line Canopy Tour in the Green Mountains. You will hit dizzying speeds as you fly along more than 4,500 feet of zip lines, learn to land on platforms high in the treetops, and keep your balance as you cross sky bridges. Each participant is equipped with a helmet, gloves, and a safety harness that’s carefully monitored by instructors, but the exhilaration of speeding through the air is all yours. 1239 Edward Road, Jeffersonville, VT, 802-644-9300; arbortrek.com

Block Island Parasail and Watersports Channel your inner seagull as you take to the air above Block Island’s waters. You can fly solo or tandem up to 500 feet above Block Island Sound. Captain Bob Littlefield will even get you as low as the

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surface of the water before bringing you back into the boat. Old Harbor Dock, 401-864-2474; blockislandparasail.com

Old Silver Beach Water Sports If the Jetsons were beach bums, they’d be Flyboarding for sure. The cutting-edge new sport, which uses what looks like a personal jet pack strapped to your feet and rigged to hoses for water propulsion, can lift you up 10 feet above the water. Adventure seekers and celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio, are fans of this sci-fi sport. 350 Quaker Road, North Falmouth, 508-801-3329; capecodwindsurfing.com

Magic Falls Rafting Company Hold on tight as you rocket down the Kennebec River for a raft ride this summer. Choose from packages like the Weekend Upper Gorge Adventure with a barbecue on Saturday and a level three and four trip on Sunday morning, or the overnight “Out-Back” Camping Adventure with rafting, a hike to Moxie Falls (where you’ll keep an eye out for Maine wildlife), and then a raft trip of the Upper Gorge the following morning. 38 Dead River Road, West Forks, ME, 800-207-7238; magicfalls.com

Mooney Mountain Guides Take an introductory rock climbing lesson with Art Mooney,

who will teach you how to tie knots, belay, and move safely across a rock face. If you already have some experience, opt for a guided tour of Cathedral Ledge, Cannon Cliff, and Huntington’s Ravine. Try the Vertigo or Moby Grape rock climb on Cannon Cliff for a challenge that will test your skills. 638 Old Bristol Road, New Hampton, NH, 603-744-5853; mooneymountainguides.com

Skydive New England Take the ultimate leap of faith and go skydiving. Your maiden voyage will start with a 30-minute lesson on the ground to learn the basics. First-timers fly tandem with an instructor while they get used to the feeling of free-falling and opening their parachute. You’ll see New England in a whole new way as you descend over coastline and mountains. 40 Skydive Lane, Lebanon, ME, 207-339-1520; skydivenewengland.com

Trapeze School of New York The experts at this school will gear you up, teach you how to jump, and then watch you leap from a 24-foot indoor platform. Start with a traditional flying trapeze class, where you will learn how to do a knee hang with a black-flip dismount, before trying private lessons focused on silks, trampoline, and conditioning. 50 Walkers Brook Dr., Reading, 781-942-7800; boston.trapezeschool.com BC

TAKE AIM Ace Archers’ founder Tom Herrington talks about going for the gold. Which is more important in archery, strength or technique? Technique is more important at first, but since the Summer Olympics Archery games are outdoors at 70 meters, strength becomes important for elite-level archers. What’s the biggest challenge while using a bow and arrow? Learning to control your body so you can control the bow. Has the sport become more popular? We’ve had a great increase in target archery since the first Hunger Games movie, the TV show Green Arrow, and the televising of the Archery Summer Olympic Games. The biggest part has been the entry of girls into the sport, which is great!

Archery is more popular than ever thanks to The Hunger Games.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY STOKKETE (ARCHER)

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Alfresco Om FIND INNER PEACE AT AN OUTDOOR YOGA OR MEDITATION SPOT THIS SUMMER. BY KARA KEARNS

The 45-minute Labyrinth Walk can be self-guided or taken with the aid of a meditation expert. Guests travel a winding path amid lush greenery to reach the labyrinth’s center. The fresh-air journey offers a renewed sense of calm. 165 Kemble St., Lenox, MA, 413-637-4100; canyonranch.com

Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health Replenish the body and soul with a weekend at this renowned holistic retreat. Nestled in the Berkshires, Kripalu offers a variety of outdoor programs to help guests get in touch with their spirituality, and the rustic outdoor location is the ideal escape from the city. The healthy living programs include daily yoga and meditation classes, organic and gluten-free dining options, and access to the sauna, fitness room, and hiking trails. 57 Interlaken Road, Stockbridge, MA, 413-4483400; kripalu.org

Mayflower Grace Invigorate your senses with a Full Moon guided meditation at the Mayflower Grace Hotel and Spa. During the monthly full moons from May to October, a meditation guide will lead guests through the property’s idyllic garden and woodland for a relaxing nocturnal journey. 118 Woodbury Road,

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Washington, CT, 860-868-9466; gracehotels.com/mayflower

Nantucket SUP Yoga Caitlin Marcoux just launched Nantucket SUP Yoga in June and offers Fluid Sunset Meditation on Sunday evenings. The classes will meet at the Francis Street Beach, and you can bring your own paddleboard or rent one. While you float on your board, the instructors will guide you through an hour-long meditation with the soothing water as a backdrop. nantucketsupyoga.com

OMBE Integrative Health Center On the second Saturday of each month, the experts at OMBE lead community yoga and meditation classes on the lawn at Copley Square across the street. The outdoor setting creates a feeling of serenity without leaving the city. Classes are an hour and 15 minutes, and run from July through September. All levels are welcome, including children. 551 Boylston St., 617-447-2222; ombecenter.com

Radiant Yoga Boston Owner Chanel Luck leads an outdoor meditation class at Castle Island each weekend for the summer. Participants unwind with a fresh-air guided meditation, then gather together for a beachside picnic. 516 E. 2nd St., 617-765-4125; radiantyogaboston.com

Shambhala Meditation Center Shambhala teachings emphasize integrating life, work, family, and social action to lead a fuller life. The Brookline meditation center offers introductory instruction as well as open sitting classes. Try a weekend retreat for a more immersive experience. 646 Brookline Ave., 617-7341498; boston.shambhala.org

NAMASTE Kripalu holistic expert Larissa Hall Carlson helps make meditation a daily practice.

Tower Hill Botanic Garden The Contemplation in Everyday Life program is a series of meditation and relaxation classes offered in breathtaking surroundings. The goal is to help members take responsibility for their contentment, joy, and fearlessness. The outdoor classes include a combination of instruction, group discussion, and meditation exercises for all skill levels. 11 French Dr., Boylston, 508-869-6111; towerhillbg.org

Vanderbilt Grace Immerse yourself in nature on the roof deck of this luxurious Newport resort. Each summer the mansion-turned-inn offers daytime and nighttime yoga and meditation classes on the rooftop. Take in the New England ocean views while conditioning your body and relaxing your mind. 41 Mary St., Newport, RI, 401-846-6200; gracehotels.com/ vanderbilt BC

What is the best setting for meditation? It is best supported by a peaceful location with natural light and good air quality. Choose a secluded place with little distraction or interruption. How can people learn to disconnect from their busy lives in order to meditate? A thriving meditation practice doesn’t require a great amount of time, but it does require consistency. Five to 10 minutes per day is sufficient to unwind and rejuvenate a busy mind. What are the benefits of a regular practice? Mental resilience, balanced moods, enhanced focus and concentration, and an increased sense of peace.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GREGORY CHERIN (CARLSON); SOLIS IMAGES (MEDITATION)

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LIVE AMONGST ART WITH BOSTON COMMON’S COMMISSIONED PETER MAX CUSTOM COVER ONE ORIGINAL PAINTING OF THE ARTWORK IS AVAILABLE ALL NET PROCEEDS WILL BENEFIT THE HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE UNITED STATES. VISIT CHARITYBUZZ.COM/NICHEMEDIA AND PLACE YOUR BID. AUCTION OPEN JUNE 3 — AUGUST 6. The iconic artist Peter Max embraces the spirit of Boston to create a colorful cover reflecting a landscape in his vibrant, cosmic style. Through a special partnership between Boston Common and Peter Max, one one-of-a-kind, original artwork of Boston Common’s Summer cover will be auctioned on Charitybuzz to benefit The Humane Society of the United States. This unity celebrates Peter Max’s prolific contribution to the world of art spanning generations, and commemorates the 60th anniversary of The Humane Society of the United States. This special, one-of-a-kind, 20” x 24” hand-embellished work on paper was commissioned exclusively for Boston Common magazine’s Summer 2014 issue. In addition, with a $250 donation to The Humane Society of the United States, you can enjoy a limitededition 18”x 24” poster of the Summer 2014 Boston Common cover, plate signed by Peter Max.

Only 25 limited-edition posters of the special, custom-created cover art are available on: www.humanesociety.org/petermaxart

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P arting Shot Sink or Swim A GUIDE FOR BOSTONIANS ON HOW NOT TO GET BURNED BY THE WRONG BEACH IN MASSACHUSETTS. BY ROBERT COCUZZO

break free from the sand and horrifically impale someone. The truly committed will hop on the ferry and head out to Nantucket or the Vineyard, where there are beaches in every direction. Nobadeer on Nantucket is a good spot for drunken volleyball and witnessing the occasional mass arrest, while the Vineyard’s Menemsha beckons scanty swimsuits requiring double-sided tape and strategically placed pasties. But beware—stumble onto the wrong stretch of sand on either island and you might just end up seeing more skin than you bargained for. Nantucket’s nude beach is still going strong, although sometimes a bit too flabby for my liking. On all of these beaches, somewhere behind burka-like sun suits and long-visor ball caps, are children lathered in enough SPF 50 to fill in all the potholes on the Mass Pike. It’s a far cry from most of our childhoods, back when peeling sunburned skin from our bodies was a summertime activity on par with putting together a puzzle on a rainy afternoon. When I was a kid, if Channel 7’s Todd Gross called for rain come the weekend, my parents made sure to leave me in the sun a few extra minutes to get that nice, crisp finish that could keep me occupied for hours. Alas, things have changed and no doubt for the better. I just hope that children these days still relish the cold kiss of clean sheets on their salty skin and the deep satisfaction of finding the perfect beach, swimsuit bedecked or not. BC

ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL O’LEARY

is the season when Bostonians flock to the ocean like disciples to the River Jordan. Coppertone is in the air, beers are in cozies, and sick days are taken in epidemic proportions. It’s a time when all your hard-earned gym muscles finally get the attention you’ve been fantasizing about when squeezing out that last bicep curl. And for those who couldn’t find the gym, it’s also a time for elaborate costumes to disguise all that winter weight. Praise the sun gods: It’s beach time once again. As any Bostonian can tell you, not all beaches are created equal, and picking where to roll out your towel can say more about you than your driver’s license. In the stone’s throw category, the clay sand of Southie’s Carson Beach down M Street is a favorite haunt of young professionals and yuppie dog walkers who wouldn’t be caught dead in the water. Which reminds me, if there is any truth to The Departed, Carson Beach is also a good place to dump a body. Leaving the city, the Cape will forever be a Bostonian’s sandy Shangri-la. Just passing over the Sagamore Bridge (honestly, who takes the Bourne Bridge?) has been proven to lower blood pressure and increase sex drive. Once down the Cape, many head to Mayflower Beach in Dennis with its cheap Christmas tree lounge chairs, the scratchy playby-play of a Red Sox game from an old AM/FM radio, and hundreds of beach umbrellas just begging to

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