Over 200 rooms, from oceanfront doubles to luxury Ocean Suites and new Loft rooms! Plus two outdoor & two indoor pools, Sun and Surf oceanfront dining, poolside café, fitness center, WiFi, and more. Also new this year – an expanded outdoor pool, whirlpool spa, and children’s wading pool & WetDek fountain play area!
For casual but cool dining anytime, try the Sun and Surf. The best, most complete oceanfront vacation value in New England keeps getting better.
Located on beautiful Long Sands Beach, in view of famous Nubble Lighthouse. Minutes to golf, tennis, boating and the Kittery Outlets.
Ask about our 3 day/2 night Staycation Getaway Packages! For reservations & availability, call 207-363-5112
resort to anything less?
• Serving seaside breakfast, lunch and dinner
• Your favorite cocktails
• Eat in, or take out
• Entertainment and beachfront deck
Enjoy creative takes on fresh New England seafood and more! On the beach, across from The Anchorage Inn. 363-2961
Ask about our catering and wedding packages!
BAY
GUIDED KAYAK TOURS IN FREEPORT
Daytime, sunset, evening, women’s-only, and fall foliage tours available for just $59.
September
Join us saturday, september 18th and view works from over 100 artists and artisans. breathe in the fall air, delight at the visual experience, sample local foods from maine producers, hear great live music and enJoy delectable refreshments. admission is free and music is all day.
Mobile! check out our mobile site including lodging, restaurants, events, coupons and more!
don’t miss our third friday art walk events
Be sure to explore Freeport’s galleries, studios and stores August 20th during our Third Friday Art Walk. Participating galleries and stores will stay open until midnight, so come support our local artists, artisans and merchants. For more information, visit our events website at www.freeportevents.com.
Auction
editorial Colin W. Sargent, editor & Publisher
Widgery Wharf
The Crooked Mile Cafe
18" × 24" oil on canvas
Sensuous “Presences”
If you discover a painting in your attic with strikingly remote human figures in it, don’t throw it away. It might be a Fairfield Porter (1907-1975).
Bill Barton
24” x 24” oil on canvas
Bruce Habowski
Featuring original works of fine art, photography, and limitededition prints by regional and local artists.
Featuring original works of fine art, photography, and limitededition prints by regional and local artists.
372 Fore Street
372 Fore Street Portland, Maine 04101 207 874-8084 www.forestreetgallery.com
Portland, Maine 04101 (207) 874-8084 www.forestreetgallery.com
As Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes writes, “There was always an awkwardness to Porter’s treatment of the human body–a Yankee stiffness, the opposite of [Pierre] Bonnard’s sensuous fluency. The figures in his paintings are never not in the right place, but his work didn’t show much feel for the movement or the solid presence of the body, and it always preferred sociability to any hint of sensuality–a trait also shared by [Maine painter Alex] Katz. He never painted a nude. What he connected to best was landscape, houses, interiors. There, the reticence he brought to the scrutiny of other people melted away. Not that the landscapes are more ‘expressive’; they just radiate more freedom, and a fuller sense of Porter’s desire to find concrete shapes that spoke on their own: presences. ‘The presence in a painting,’ he once wrote, ‘is like the presence a child feels and recognizes in things and the way they relate, like a doorknob, the slant of a roof or its flatness, or the personality of a tool. Art does not succeed by compelling you to like it, but by making you feel this presence in it. Is someone there? This someone can be impersonal.’”
And there it is–the collective spareness of Maine’s scalar universe, where we’re thrilled by the murmur of gulls we can’t see in the fog, the stillness of a September night, the otherworldliness of flapping laundry, the celebrity of a stone. It’s part of what I love about living here–our black humor and shyness and the extraordinary “reticence” of our personal distances. I wonder, is our beautiful state actually staring at us, whispering you can’t get here from there?
This sort of magic is quite in vogue, by the way. The impersonal, personal Maine of Porter’s The Table on the Porch, no doubt painted at his longtime family retreat on Great Spruce Head Island in Penobscot Bay, sold this year for $326,500 at Sotheby’s New York, topping pre-auction estimates of $100,000 to $150,000. Not quite so verbose nine years earlier, Porter had decocted the essence of his stillness to The Porch, which coincidentally brought $554,500 at Sotheby’s in recent months, besting estimates of $250,000 to $350,000. Who knows how much he’d have fetched if he’d edited it down to just Porch? For a list of sensational Porter auction results, visit Online Extras at portlandmonthly.com.
Rhonda
From left: Porter’s The Table on the Porch (1971, oil on masonite, 19 x 24 in.); The Porch (1962, casein on canvas, 28.5 x 30.5 in.) depicts the exterior view of the two-story Porter family home on Great Spruce Head Island.
Michelle Susan Twomey, Amber Cronin, Betsy Caron, Jesse Groening, Rachel S. Barkin, Taryn Bruette
SubScriptionS to subscribe please send your address and a check for $39 (1 yr.), $55 (2 yrs.), or $65 (3 yrs.) to Portland Magazine 165 State Street Portland, ME 04101 or subscribe online at www.portlandmagazine.com
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n e wsstand cover d ate: September 2010, published in au gust 2010, vol. 25, no. 6, copyright 2010. Portland Magazine is mailed at third class mail rates in portland, me 04101 (iSSn: 10731857). opinions expressed in articles are those of authors and do not represent editorial positions of Portland Magazine letters to the editor are wel come and will be treated as uncon d itionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes and as subject to Portland Magazine’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially. responsible only for that portion of any advertisement which is printed incorrectly. advertisers are responsible for copyrights of materials they submit. nothing in this issue may be reprinted in whole or in part without written permission from the publishers. Submissions welcome, but we take no responsibility for unsolicited materials.
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Portland Magazine is the winner of NewsStand Resource’s maggie Zine cover contests for four consecutive years; Portland Magazine is the winner of eighteen Graphic Design USA’s 2007, 2008, and 2009 american graphic design awards for excellence in publication design.
Sargent
’tender love
Phenomenal article [“Glass Acts,” July/August 2010]. What a great slice of Portland! April Powell, Kennebunk
I’ve been such a great fan of Portland Magazine for quite some time. I love its edgy yet totally “Maine” feel. I especially enjoyed Tatum Thistle on the front cover! She’s great!
Julie True Kingsley, South Portland
It’s been crazy! A woman visiting from Oklahoma came into the restaurant one night and asked for autographs from me and Ben [Ben Row, “Shakespeare Mashup,” July/ August 2010].
As told to us by our July/August 2010 cover girl, Tatum Thistle
dear Portland Magazine
I ♥ U!
Carson Kressley, New York City
[See our cover interview, “The Beautiful & Tanned,” May 2010]
assigning Molly
I will be using this article [“Chasing Molly,” Summerguide 2010] in my women’s studies courses for the University of Maine. I’ve seen [Irene] Bedard in Smoke Signals and several other films. She is a fantastic actress. Thanks for this wonderful piece on her most recent project.
Rhea Côté Robbins, Brewer
lofty inspirations
Your magazine has started something! As
a result of reading your article titled “Sex & the Wilderness” [October 2009], my friend, Holly Hamilton, caretaker of the Katahdin Lake Wilderness Camps, and myself, artist and owner of North Light Gallery, decided that–contrary to the implication that women had just discovered forays into the wilderness–indeed they had been coming to this region for at least a century…
History has borne us out–with the help of David Little and John Neff’s research–and a reenactment of women climbing in period 1890s dress [took place] over the summer solstice this year. Five women, myself and Holly included, plus Rachel Story, Donna Gordon, and Barbara Bentley, president of Friends of Baxter State Park, [made] this daunting effort in long skirts, frilly blouses, and big hats…[Happily,] Pamola [was] with us!
Marsha Donahue, Millinocket
[For our coverage on the hike, see page 29.]
Close enCounters of the first wife?
I read that Dan was married three times, but most of his life and time seem to have been spent with his first wife, Maggie…Were they close [after the marriage]?
Randal Coon, Shreveport, Louisiana
nightmare ClownsCape
Regarding iconic commercial signs in Maine [“Save Our Signs,” April 2010]…
Years ago, when my grandparents were still alive and residing in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, my parents would pack my sisters and me into the car and drive to Saint John, New Brunswick, where we’d catch the Princess of Acadia and cross the Bay of Fundy to Digby for two weeks of familial fun in the Canadian Maritimes.
On the way home, reentering the U.S. from St. Stephen, NB, into Calais, it wasn’t too far across the border before we were greeted by a billboard festooned with the visage of a clown–the kind that gave rise to many a child’s nightmare–bearing the caption, “Circus Time Popcorn. It’s Wicked Good!” The memory of that sign still haunts me to this day.
Mike Spinney, Townsend, Massachusetts
We think you should sue for damages. For all we know, this clown might have planted the seed for Stephen King’s It.–Ed
• Programs for children between the ages of six weeks and six years old
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Programs for children between the ages of six weeks to 6 year olds. Full and part time programs.
Loving, nurturing Montessori Certified Teachers, 1st Aid and CPR certified.
• Loving, nurturing Montessori teachers certified in first-aid and CPR
Brand new, state of the art school with enticing Montessori materials.
• Brand new, state-of-the-art school with enticing Montessori materials
209 Western Ave., South Portland 1/2 mile from I-295 207.518.9573
209 Western Ave. So. Portland 1/2 mile from #295 518-9573
September 20 – December 19 Featuring landscapes close to home and far away, showing
Devour the poetry of annie Finch with your ears, not your eyes. The prolific author’s 2003 collection of poems, Calendars, has been released as an audio CD, with Celtic harp accompaniment. “The music helps the listener slow down and focus better on the poems,” says Finch. $16.95, tupelopress.org
Wall Candy
The opulent, barnacle-like, post-minimalist sculptures by richard Van Buren of Perry are on display at the tides Institute through September 19. “These works are fueled and influenced by…light, movement, color, form, sound, and smell that are part of the ingredients I respond to in [Maine’s] landscape,” says Van Buren of his Fundy Series. His works are available for purchase through the aucocisco Gallery. tidesinstitute.org
Impera FREE
Not even Gloucester antiques dealer Roger Pheulpin is certain of what it is, but it is incendiary. “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” says Pheulpin of this 1.75-pound cast-iron pinecone…lighter? “It may have been a perpetual
Poco Moonshine 18" x 14" x 11"
Hear Good,Feel
Good
Sarah lee Guthrie (daughter of arlo and granddaughter of Woody) and husband Johnny Irion belted tunes on August 14 to raise money for Ever after Mustang rescue
Jackie Kim, concert producer, says [at press time], “we’ve sold over 100 advance tickets [$15] and expect about 300 people to attend.”
Check out Guthrie and Irion’s upcoming CD, Bright Examples, to be released October 16, 2010. sarahleeandjohnny.com
To learn more about the mustangs at Ever After, read “Maine’s Misfits” [Winterguide 2005] at portlandmonthly.com.
If only I could find a real golf pro to teach me here, at this driving range! Give your follow-through a smile (instead of your golf balls) with lessons from PGA pro Jack Kelly at Tee ‘N Tee Golfland, Westbrook. $50 for a 30-minute tune-up. 797-2831
cigar lighter used at a men’s club or camp.” Or just maybe, Col. Mustard, it’s the murder weapon. Pinecone Lighter, rogerpheulpin@aol.com
15,000 visitors climbed the whitewashed towers of Maine’s lighthouses during the first annual Open Lighthouse Day. This year, you too can seek the light, with 25 of the state’s 64 iconic beacons open to the public September 18. lighthouseday.com
$250
will have you flying high with your sweetie. Take in ravishing aerial views of Maine’s raw, northwestern terrain;
savor a hearty dinner for two at a remote, lakeside lodge; and perhaps seize the intimate moment by popping an important question. “It’s definitely not something people get to do every day,” says pilot Keith Deschambeault. acadianseaplanes.com
207.846.1176 720 US Route One Yarmouth, Maine info@meredithstationery.com tues - fri 10 - 5 sat 10 - 1 www.meredithstationery.com
13Art Walk
I
“I wonder if the artist intended this to look like the street patterns of Portland…See this curved line that kind of branches off the straight one? It reminds me of how Free Street comes off Congress by the museum.” “This one reminds me of a quilt.”
II
“Oh my God! Did they, like, break those on purpose?”
“Ummmmmm…yeah.” –Installation of broken glass
III
“What’s Sedona [California] like?” “It’s just like Monhegan Island.”
IV
VIII
“The Gumby art is great!”
IX
“With that surly look you keep giving me, people are going to think you’re my lesbian lover.”
X
“Oh look–a clam! It’s so Maine, and it kinda looks like a photograph.”
“It kinda looks like something else!” –Couple looking at Georgia O’Keefe piece.
XI
“I lived for a long time in the Caribbean, and that’s why there’s so much blue in my paintings [of the ocean in Maine].”
XII
“I’m trying to decide if this is art or not…”
“It really is eye candy.”
“Do you have bugs?” (Horrified look from gallery owner) “I mean, pictures of insects!”
V
“This one is corrugated or white foam cardboard…no, it’s chloroplast.”
VI
“At least the Hoppers are good.” –Said while looking at a Stuart Davis painting
VII
“I noticed the buttons first…and then I noticed the
–At a performance in Congress Square
XIII
“I never realized just how many art museums and galleries there are in Portland!”
Days 1 to 7
Read this issue of Portland Magazine cover-to-cover.
Croon your favorite karaoke tune in the very spot Edward Hopper got his inspiration for Chop Suey (Wednesdays, Empire Dine and Dance). Page 39
Attend a First Friday Art Walk and make use of phrases like “i’m surprised no one’s mentioned that the iconicity of the negative space endangers the devious simplicity of the distinctive formal juxtapositions.” generate your own nonsensical erudite quotes at pixmaven.com. Page 20
Days 8 to 14
Heat up a hearty bowl of Morrison’s Lobster stew (morrisonsmaine.com) and settle in for a claw-raising episode of Deadliest Catch (Discovery Channel, Tuesdays, 9 p.m. EsT). Stew, page 47; show, page 33
Take a pottery class, make a pot, and use it to serve take-out chop suey (portlandpottery.com). Page 31
Day 15
Do a Welliver paint-by-number, put it in an expensive frame, and hang it on your living room wall. Page 35
Climb saddleback Mountain dressed as Batman (complete with mask and cape), telling tourists you’re on a mission to protect them from rabid, indigenous cougars. Page 29
Days 16 to 23
stake a claim on a corner in your home, dub it the “Me nook,” fill it with your favorite things, and feel free to create shamelessly awful art. Page 37
Convince an employee at Clarks Pond Cinemagic to give you a black beret as a souvenir. Page 41
Days 24 to 29
Hop a ferry to Chebeague island inn and loudly proclaim to be a new York food critic on a national quest for the best cornmeal-batter-fried protein on a stick. Then devour several Lobster Corn Dogs. Page 51
strap on a pair of rollerblades, grab a hockey stick, and terrify passing BMW drivers with your slap shot practice. Page 55
Day 30
Congratulations! You’ve successfully completed Creative Boot Camp. Final task: get started on the next issue of Portland Magazine!
Galleries
Abbe Museum, 26 Mount Desert Street, Bar Harbor. Ongoing: “Layers of Time;” “Sieur de Mont;” and “Online Wabanaki Timeline.” 288-3519 abbemuseum.org Addison Woolley Gallery at Studio 203A, 132 Washington Avenue, Portland. Jim Kelley and Karen
–Cassandra Mia Donatelli (Class of 2005)
Catherine McAuley Alum, honors University of Rochester sophomore, studying Computer Science and Biology
–Justin Nicolas Donatelli (Class of 2009)
Cheverus High School sophomore, with high honors
COASTAL DISCOVERY CRUISES
2- to 2½-hour cruises
Puffins/Nature • Lighthouses
Bushold, photography and mixed media, openings September 2 and 3, exhibit to September 25. 450-8499 addisonwoolley.com
art Gallery at UnE, Westbrook College Campus, University of New England, 716 Stevens Avenue, Portland. The Art of Drawing, through September 8; the Ninth Annual Sculpture Garden Invitational, to October 31; and Exteriors/Interiors: Architectural Landscapes Inside and Out, Historical and Contemporary, from September 20 to December 19. 221-4490 une.edu/artgallery
atrium art Gallery, USM, Lewiston. Altering Matters: New Work by Maine Members of the Surface Design Association International, September 6- November 30; reception, Sept. 10. 753-6500 usm.maine.edu
aucocisco Gallery, 89 Exchange Street, Portland. Works by Robert Hamilton in September followed by Dozier Bell, October, and Gail Spaien, November. Openings on First Fridays. 775-2222 aucocisco.com
Center for Maine Contemporary art, 162 Russell Avenue, Rockport. Will Barnet, Master Printmaker: Selections from Five Decades; Dozier Bell: Mementa: Paintings, Drawings, Photographs; Yvonne Jacquette: Aerials: Paintings, Prints, pastels; and Nate Aldrich and Zach Poff: Sound Installation to September 28. 236-2875 cmcanow.org
Fore Street Gallery, 372 Fore Street, Portland. Gallery group show includes Paul Black, Sylvia Dyer, Claudette Gamache, and Stan Moeller. 874-8084 forestreetgallery.com
Galeyrie Fine art, 190 U.S. Route 1, Falmouth. Gallery artists show, new offerings from the Osher Map Collection and Falmouth Historical Society. Presentation of the 1932 Illustrated Map of Maine by Berta and Elmer Hader. 781-3555 galeyrie.com
Greenhut Galleries, 146 Middle Street, Portland. Jon Ember, to October 2; Jeff Bye, reception October 7, to October 30. 772-2693 greenhutgalleries.com
Institute of Contemporary art at Maine College of Art, 522 Congress Street, Portland. Mind-bending with the Mundane, to October 17. 775-3052 meca.edu
Maine Maritime Museum, 243 Washington Street, Bath. Current exhibits include ten acres of galleries and exhibits on 25 acres of waterfront, and “Heavy Metal, The Revolution Evolution in Marine Propulsion,” to November 8. 443-1316 mainemaritimemuseum.org
portland Museum of art, 7 Congress Square, Portland. American Moderns: Masterworks on paper from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 1910-1959, to September 12; Anna Hepler: Makeshirt, to October 17; John Haberle: American Master of Illusion, September 18 to December 12; Debating Modern Photography: The Triumph of Group f/64, September 30 to December 5; and Movies at the Museum, ongoing Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. 775-6148 portlandmuseum.com, moviesatthemuseum.org
University of Maine Museum of art, 40 Harlow Street, Bangor. Ceremonies of Mud: New Paintings by Alfredo Gisholt; Both Sides of the Camera: Photographs from the Collection of Judith Ellis Glickman; and Cloudscapes: A Selection from the
State Theatre, 181 State Street, Portland. Grand reopening with My Morning Jacket, October 15; open house with Portland Music Foundation, six local bands play 1 p.m.-9 p.m., October 17; Josh Ritter and The Royal City Band with The Low Anthem, October 22; Guster, October 27; Michael Franti and Spearhead, November 6; and Steven Wright, November 11. (800) 745-3000 statetheatre.com
Permanent Collection, to September 18. 561-3350 umma.umaine.edu
Whitney Art Works, 492 Congress Street, Portland. Tanja Hollander, Gary Green , David Caras: New Photographs, to September 25; I’m Just Sayin/I know Right? Adriane Herman, Jeff Badger, Cliff Baldwin, Megan O’Connell, October 1 to November 20, 780-0700 whitneyartworks.com
theater
Belfast Maskers, 43 Front Street, Belfast. Deathtrap September 30-October 3 and 7-10. 338-9668 belfastmaskerstheater.com
Gaslight Theater, City Hall, 1 Winthrop, Hallowell. Born Yesterday September 3-5 and 9-11; My Three Angels November 12-14 and 18-20. 626-3698 gaslighttheater.org
Lakewood Theater, 76 Theater Road, Madison. Who’s Under Where September 9-12 and 15-18. 474-7176 lakewoodtheater.org
Ogunquit Playhouse, 10 Maine Street, Ogunquit. Monty Python’s Spamalot to September 11; Chicago September 15-October 24. 646-5511 ogunquitplayhouse.org
Penobscot Theatre Company, 131 Main Street, Bangor. Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps September 8-26. 942-3333 penobscottheatre.org
Portland Stage Company, 25 Forest Avenue, Portland. Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps September 28-October 24; Last Gas November 2-21. 774-0465 portlandstage.com
Theater at Monmouth, 795 Main Street, Monmouth. The Pirates of Penzance September 23October 3. 933-9999 theateratmonmouth.org
music
Franco American Heritage Center, 46 Cedar Street, Lewiston. Muse of Fire, September 11. 6892000 francoamericanheritage.org
One Longfellow Square, 181 State Street, Port-
land. The Portland Jazz Orchestra, September 16; Mary Flower, September 20; Mike & Ruthy CD Release, September 24; Mark Olson, September 27; A Special Acoustic Evening with Zach Deputy, September 30; Julie Downs, October 1; Miss Tess and the Bon Ton Parade with Over a Cardboard Sea, October 2; and Kris Delmhorst and Jeffrey Foucault, October 9. 761-1757 onelongfellowsquare.com
Portland String Quartet, Portland. String quartet workshop series for adult amateur string players, September 26 to October 1 at the Newagen Seaside Inn. 893-4990 portlandstringquartet.com
Port City Music Hall, 504 Congress Street, Portland. Fountains of Wayne, October 14; Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, October 29. 899-4990 portcitymusichall.com
Acadia’s Oktoberfest and Food Festival, Smuggler’s Den Campground, Southwest Harbor. Meet Maine brew masters, sample wine and food, entertainment, craft booths. October 9. 244-9264 acadiachamber.com
Apple Pumpkin Festival, Livermore Falls. Music, craft displays, kids’ activities. September 25. 897-6755 applepumpkinfestival.org
Camden International Film Festival, Camden, Rockport, and Rockland. Films, filmmaker roundtable. September 30-October 3. 617-817-5376 camdenfilmfest.org
Capriccio Art Celebration, Ogunquit. Town-wide festival of art, music, poetry, museum exhibits, and architecture. September 6-19. 646-2939 ogunquit.org
Chalk on the Walk, Biddeford. Chalk art, kids’ activities, craft fair, music. September 25.
Bringing Out The Best
450-6233 heartofbiddeford.org
Clinton lions Fair, Clinton. Midway, livestock, Maine Dairy Princess competition, fireworks. September 9-12. 426-8013 clintonlionsfair.com
Common Ground Country Fair, Unity. Organic food vendors and demonstrations, workshops, crafts, livestock, agricultural products, live entertainment. September 24-26. 568-4142 mofga.org
Cumberland County Fair, Cumberland. Harness racing, livestock, rides, pumpkin and squash weigh-in. September 26-October 2. 829-5531 cumberlandfair.com
downeast Sea Kayaking Symposium, Bar Harbor. Courses from introductory to expert for kayak and canoe, BCU training and assessment, rolling courses. September 10-13. 669-2338 carpediemkayaking.com
Harvest Fest and Chowder Cook-off, Bethel. Chowder from area restaurants, apple pie contest, hikes, guided and self-guided bike rides, apple picking, canoeing, and kayaking. September 18. 824-2282 bethelmaine.com
Harvest on the Harbor, Portland. Over 140 food artisans, wineries, breweries, distilleries, epicurean purveyors, and Maine-made products featured at this ultimate food and wine experience. Tastings, live music, demonstrations by nationally acclaimed cookbook authors. October 21-23. 772-4994 harvestontheharbor.com
Harvestfest, York. Craft and wares marketplace, fireworks, ox roast, bean hole baked beans. October 16-17. 363-4422 maineoktoberfest.org
Museum of Human Beings, Colin W. Sargent reads from his novel about Sacagawea’s son: Kennebunk Free Library, September 24 at 11 a.m., 985-2173. museumofhumanbeings.com
punkinfiddle, Wells. Celebration of National Estuaries Day: live music, kids’ activities, artisan demonstrations. September 25. 646-4521 punkinfiddle.org
York art association art in the park, Moulton Park, York Harbor. Juried art show. September 11. 363-4049 yorkartassociation.com
–Compiled by Diane Hudson
2010-11 season
Call
or
NatioNal Broadway tour: “Fiddler on the rooF”
January 22, 2011 • 2 & 7 pm
Merrill Auditorium, Portland
Balé Folclórico da Bahia
January 19, 2011 • 7:30 pm
Merrill Auditorium, Portland
liza Minnelli iN CoNCert
September 29, 2010 • 7:30 pm
Merrill Auditorium, Portland
Visit
Kronos Quartet
November 4, 2010 • 7:30 pm
Merrill Auditorium, Portland
aN eveNiNg with Bill cosBy
october 16, 2010 • 5 & 8 pm
Merrill Auditorium, Portland
Blue Man Group
February 4, 2011 • 8 pm
February 5, 2011 • 2 & 8 pm
February 6, 2011 • 1 pm
Merrill Auditorium, Portland
streB extreMe action: “raw”
october 27, 2010 • 7 pm
Merrill Auditorium, Portland
epicurean auction BeneFit
September 21, 2010 • 5:30 pm
Merrill Auditorium, Portland
hot cluB oF
san Francisco: “SileNt SurrealiSm”
November 16, 2010 • 7:30 pm
Hannaford Hall, USM, Portland
When in Naples
You needn’t trek to Casablanca to sip mysterious beverages in the shade of giant palm fronds. The 16-foot trees garnishing the outdoor porches at Rick’s Café in Naples may not be natives (“This summer we brought in three from Massachusetts at around $300 each,” says Rick’s owner Ryan Munster), but, hey–tourism is all about suspension of disbelief. “We get strange comments all the time, mostly from people who’ve never seen them before.” But tragic is their fate at first frost: “We throw them out back, and they die.” rickscafenaples.com
Ah! Wilderness
We know women have been enjoying the wilderness for centuries–some just prefer doing it in designer duds, with a glass of wine in hand [“Sex & the Wilderness,” October 2009]. But a few female readers took our satire seriously, inspiring a June day hike up Mt. Katahdin in Victorian-era garb. “To us, the article implied women are just now going into the wilderness, when actually they have been doing it [for thousands of years] and climbing mountains since 1849. We decided it was time for a re-enactment,” says Marsha Donahue, one of the organizers. Sometimes misinterpretation has its merits.
Moose Tracks Moose Tracks
On July 1, a local moose decides to take a day trip to Portland. His urban agenda includes a leisurely stroll through Deering Oaks Park, a refreshing dip in the pond, lunch at Brea Lu Café on Forest Ave., a somber visit to Evergreen Cemetery, and a nightcap in Sagamore Village. And how does our antlered friend navigate the busy city traffic? “I can’t tell you if he went down a main drag or not–it’s not like we had a GPS [tracking device] on the moose,” says a rep from City Hall.
Forget biofuel–the next petroleum alternative may be Mentos and Coke Zero, thanks to the maniacal minds of Maine duo Fritz Grobe and Steven Voltz, who created a sugar-guzzling “rocket car.” Famous passengers include David Letterman, who “traveled 361 feet,” says Grobe. eepybird.com
Queer Eye for the ‘Straight’ Skyline
Better Red Than Dead
According to UCLA’s Williams Center, Portland is the nation’s third “gayest” city–and not in the Prozac-popping sense. Surprised? Don’t be–our diversity extends well beyond social politics. We’re a spectrum of racial and ethnic diversity, too, and always have been. So why the “snowwhite” reputation? “We’re perceived as being a rural state,” says Susie Bock, director of the Sampson Center for Diversity at UMaine. Rural we may be, but homogenous we have never been! library.usm.maine.edu/specialcollections/jbscenter.html
“Forty years in the business, and this is only the second time I’ve seen pigmentation like this,” says Ben Alfiero, owner of Harbor Fish Market. Rare, indeed, but orange you interested in how it might taste? “We’ll probably end up giving her to the Department of Marine Resources so they can research her and keep her alive.” maine.gov/dmr
verge
For two meCA ceramicists, getting down and dirty with clay is a radically different process.
by karen e . hofreiter
Artist Kari Radasch has a beef with the word “whimsical.”
“Just whatever you do, could you please not use it to describe my work?” she asks. And while an argument could be made for freedom of subjective interpretation, in the case of Radasch’s ceramic pots, plates, and tea cups, to suggest an element of whimsy is to dismiss their deliberate sensibilities. Just as flip is to pigeonhole artist Patti Sandberg’s ceramic animal sculptures as “sweetly grotesque.” While they undeniably possess elements of both extremes, to use an oxymoron descriptor is to imply a process more intentional and left-brained than Sandberg’s.
Conscious or subconscious, deliberate or unintentional, thoughtful or instinctual, quietly evocative or brazenly emotional–both MECA graduates share a love for the same malleable medium, though they use their hands to shape ceramic art on far opposite ends of the creative spectrum.
Patti Sandberg (‘02), now a MECA faculty member and ceramic technician, works from “a place inside me. Sometimes I’m not sure exactly where it comes from…I know the pieces are personal and derived from feelings I experience. I do feel my work is completely emotionally driven.” Her anthropomorphic figures are raw, uncensored, and indulgent, with a free-spirited playfulness and unselfconscious display of emotion, aspects linked to Sandberg’s “deep connection to my childhood and extremely vivid imagination.”
Yet there’s a disturbing, subtle darkness veiling her figures–think of an adult shadow slowly creeping over a child playing on the floor, or a nursery interrupted by (yikes) smokers. “My imagination has stayed with me, but it’s been altered by growing up.” It’s with that aesthetic distance and search for the reclamation of emotional freedom and innocence that she forms the basis for her work. “I use animals as representations for my sculptures…because of their honesty, their connection to the world around them [through instinct and impulse], and their competitiveness to survive. By using animals as my subjects, I hope to draw a parallel connection between ‘us’ as viewers and another ‘us’ as humans dealing with the process of being alive and every emotion we experience as we grow up and grow old.
Patti Sandberg’s sculptures can certainly spur a bout of automatonophobia. Rabbit Girl, 2008, earthenware, 30"x 10"x 6"
Patti Sandberg’s sculptures can certainly spur a bout of automatonophobia. Rabbit Girl, 2008, earthenware, 30"x 10"x 6"
Andy
What’s the difference between a regular fairy tale and a fisherman’s fairy tale?
Captain andy Hillstrand: A regular fairy tale starts out,
“Once upon a time.” A fisherman’s fairy tale begins,
“You’re never going to [freakin’] believe this!”
Of all the hours of footage shot in a season, how many actually make it on Deadliest Catch?
Captain JoHnatHan Hillstrand: We shoot 10,000 hours each season; about 20 hours make it on the show.
Ok, so you’re in port and in a hurry for a dinner date–is there a quick antidote for crab stink? Can you tell us any homemade remedies? Lemon juice?
johnAthAn
the crew from Discovery Channel’s megahit Deadliest Catch knows how to reel us in. before they drop anchor at merrill Auditorium September 12 during their live tour, we caught up with the fearless and bawdy Hillstrand brothers.
Creature Feature
AH: Ah, but [crab stink] is the smell of money!
You crab fishermen have your superstitions–what are your faves?
AH: We’re Swedish, so we will do a left-handed Swedish turn heading out.
Johnathan, when you fished in Gloucester–did you get up here to Portland?
JH: Many times. When I owned the fishing vessel Canyon Explorer, we were in town a lot–fishing for deep-sea lobster and slime eels. I have friends here.
Jay Leno recently wisecracked, “You guys remind me of every Mainer I have ever met.” But, you’re not Mainers! What do you think he meant by that?
JH: …Hard working and honest.
What’s your craziest bycatch?
JH: We brought up a half cod, half shark one time.
AH: A ratfish.
JH: We were going to call it an “Andy-fish.” We’ve also brought up a
Scale Crab–there are only four or five on record. It’s a deep-sea crab with red and white stripes.
Sounds like half-lie, half-truth. Sometimes blue lobsters turn up in Maine traps; have any blue crabs or other interesting anomalies graced your crab pots?
JH: Rarely there will be a white king crab. You can get a light blue Opilio crab sometimes, too. Those are one in a million, though.
AH: Johnathan always says “one in a million” when he doesn’t know the true stats.
If you weren’t destined to be crab-boat captains, what do you think you’d be doing now?
AH: Astronaut.
JH: Racing something. We’ve both always loved racing cars. We used to do the quarter mile. American-Graffiti style.
A dreamy pause ensues]
JH: I had a ’55 Chevy 600hp once.
AH: 1979 GTO with a ’69 body. It did 180 mph.
The flag on your vessel Time Bandit is a Jolly Roger. What’s up with that? You guys trying to ward off evil spirits?
JH: It’s funny–a red background would mean everyone’s going to be killed; the black background means “surrender.” We definitely want the crabs to surrender!
Becky’s Diner is a waterfront landmark here in Portland. All the crews from sword boats to shrimpers and lobster boats find their way here. Any plans to make the pilgrimage for good luck? It’s like kissing the Blarney Stone. Even Taylor Swift–.
JH: We’re there! n
Catch the Hillstrand brothers and Captain Sig in Portland during their live show, “An Evening with the Captains of Deadliest Catch,” September 12 at Merrill Auditorium.. >> For more images, visit portlandmonthly.com.
Foley
Welliver’s
Travels
paintings by the maine artist who transformed birch trees into a postmodern statement are being snapped up at auctions far & wide.
Cby Sarah Cumming Ce C i l
onfronting a landscape painting by Neil Welliver (1925-2005) is a transporting experience. Five-feet square, the painting surrounds you, and reality and invention collide. The landscape presented has the immediacy of a walk in the woods. The play of shadows and light lends depth, and yet there’s a still flatness that gives it a strange beauty and elevates it to something more abstract than traditional landscape painting.
Welliver was a longtime resident of Lincolnville, and most of his images are of the Maine woods and…something more, perhaps the animus that renders them exotic and strange. He kept a cabin in the Allagash near the Canadian border, from which he ventured deep into his subject matter by canoe, snowshoe, or skis and paint studies for his large canvases by standing for hours in the icy wilderness.
He taught painting at the Yale School of Art (195565) and at University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Art (1966-1989), and there are many imitators of his style. But he is the original, and since his death, his reputation has held its ground.
From top: “The Lincoln Center commissioned Neil Welliver for the print [Birches, 1984, silkscreen, 44.5" x 35"], and the decision to commission Welliver as opposed to another artist was ultimately the decision made by first director of the Poster Program, Delmar Hendricks…I assume he or someone else at the Lincoln Center knew him personally, but the decision is usually a collaboration of ideas.” –Karen Davidson, Director of Visual Arts, Lincoln Center; Blueberries in Fissures, 1983, oil on canvas, 96" x 96"; Fall Foliage, (date uncertain), oil on canvas, 14" x 12"
In 2006, Barridoff Galleries in Portland sold Thawed Ledge for $59,250, setting the existing record for a Welliver at auction. As its title suggests, the painting shows a wintery landscape in classic Welliver outlines and contours. Unyarded Deer,
(Continued on page 64)
Was Neil Welliver a realistic structuralist or a structural realist?
Studios Dream Studios
Step inside the ultimate in artist studios and get your creative juices flowing.
by Leah Wha L e n
Bees’ Knees–Burt’s Bees philanthropist and art maven Roxanne Quimby is moving out of her dream studio space at 22 Carroll Street. Listed for $1.25 million by Tom
of Benchmark Realty, this vaulting aerie has everything in it…but you!
So you’ve finally decided to take the plunge: You’re going to set up your own studio and get serious about art. Congratulations! Before you buy or build, here are some factors to consider.
sTrucTure
Do you dream of working in marble? Make sure the floor can handle the weight of your materials. This is one reason lower Manhattan became a haven for artists: Its old factory buildings
(Continued
StudiosWeLove
Eric Hopkins (1951- ) Situated within Rockland’s coastal arts district, the bright white walls and soaring ceilings of this 5,000-square-foot former pool hall provide a gleaming backdrop for Hopkins’s art. A gallery is connected to the studio.
JoHn swan (1948- ) Overlooking the Stroudwater River, this studio barn was the former creative nook of American Impressionist Walter Griffin (1861-1935), who fell in love with the location because of its resemblance to Monet’s Japanese garden at Giverny. Swan chose the studio for its “backyard” sprinkled with water lilies, its famous
(Continued on
Landry
Note to New Yorkers: We also have a claim as a Hopper inspiration.
american Chop suey american Chop suey
by colin W. sargent
In 1927, Edward Hopper and his wife Josephine Nivison bought a used 1925 Dodge and felt a rush of freedom as they left Washington Square in New York City and headed up the coast of Maine. When they saw the village of Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth, they pulled to the side of the road and took a deep breath. It was here he and Jo, a talented artist herself and fellow student of Robert Henri, spent three consecutive summers, painting the lighthouses and–a tantalizing possibility–stumbling on his inspiration for the breakthrough urban landscape Chop Suey (1929), which up until now has been ascribed to Columbus Circle in Manhattan.
Consider the case for Portland:
ONE: Hopper was here, not in New York, during the summer of 1927, the painting’s gestation period. In fact, he and Jo were frequent visitors to Portland at night while summering at Two Lights. It’s hard to imagine they’d have avoided the new State Theatre (1927)–both were movie and theater lovers–and Eastland Park Hotel (1927), the largest hotel north of Boston, which crowned the Forest City’s theater district along our Great White Way, where the iconic restaurant Empire Chop Suey held sway with its striking incandescent sign.
(Continued on page 76)
a cinephile’s ticket to the inside scoop on local movie theaters.
PMarquee
Marks
ortland landlord and developer Joe Soley hasn’t seen a movie in at least a year, which is interesting since he owns not one but two movie theaters in Metro Portland: the late, lamented Movies on Exchange Street and Cinemagic Grand at Clarks Pond in South Portland. He also played a key role in the Maine Mall’s decision not to put in a new movie theater a few years ago.
Soley, who seems to spend much of his time running a small convenience store across the street from Movies on Exchange Street, says he doesn’t have the time to catch a flick. Soley’s grandson Dan, who works with Joe, says the last movie his grandfather saw was Precious in 2009. “He hated it,” says Dan, adding that Joe actually does like movies, just not so many of the newer ones. “He was a regular at Movies on Exchange Street and enjoys watching DVDs on a 32-inch LCD TV at home.” What’s his favorite flick? “Probably a Clint Eastwood movie.”
gained notoriety in March of 2010, when a dangerous African snake, the Gaboon Viper, was found dead in the lot behind the movie house. According to news reports, this particular serpent has the highest venom content of any snake in the world. Police believe it was dumped here by a fickle collector and died of the cold. (Apparently there was no link to the 2006 movie Snakes on a Plane.)
Soley did pay a visit to Cinemagic Grand once, to check out the projection room. “I didn’t stay to see the movie,” he says. “My kids go all the time, though.”
Dan says, “We keep a very hands-off attitude with the Cinemagic,” which is owned by the great and powerful Zyacorp Entertainment Company.
Disturbia
Zyacorp burst onto the Portland movie scene in 1998, with three stateof-the-art Cinemagic theaters: in Saco, Westbrook, and Clarks Pond. Zyacorp spared no expense transforming the shabby Hoyts movie theater at Clarks Pond shopping center (owned by Soley) into the eight-screen Cinemagic Grand (completed in 2007), with reclining, faux-leather stadium seating; all-digital projection; Dolby surround sound; three 3-D screens; and even a wine bistro in the lobby. The price for such film-watching fancies: a cool $7 million (which they make back with popcorn prices that should be criminal). Westbrook has 16 screens while Saco boasts bragging rights to Maine’s only IMAX, in addition to a full-scale restaurant, Previews.
However, all the glitz has kept away creepy idiosyncrasies. Saco
Equally disturbing are the “icky, bourgeois” antics at Clarks Pond. The wine bistro, black-beret-adorned staff, and Yamaha Disklavier grand player piano (back when it existed) seem like classy, art-house touches–until you see the indignant projectionist pressing your overpriced panini and notice some of those cute berets are actually crusty and gray with months of accumulated sweat and dandruff (are they ever laundered?). And the gleaming grand player piano? That was confiscated a while ago. “We are in the process of securing another piano,” says Zyacorp marketing director Bob Collins, sounding a little like a BP executive. So far, it hasn’t arrived. Jill Starbird, whose Portland music store loaned the original piano to Zyacorp, says it was a short-term arrangement and the piano had to be sold, but she also hopes eventually to return a piano to the theater lobby. Another eventuality: Sometimes Clarks Pond films appear on hollywood.com, but often, this luxuriant, under-attended venue goes below the radar and achieves full invisibility on this popular site. Why ask why?
Downtown DraMa
Now that Movies on Exchange Street is gone, downtown Portland has only the Nickelodeon, located on Temple Street in the Old Port. A bit dowdy by the velociraptor standards of the Cinemagic chain, the Nick’s six screens offer first-run movies along with independent films and simulcast operas. Ticket prices run a few bucks cheaper than at the glitzier rivals (take advantage of $5 Tuesdays), and impecunious patrons can get a handful of M&Ms or Mike & Ikes for a quarter.
Sarah Boggio, manager at the “Nick” for four years, has little good to say about her flashy, high-tech competitors. “I think they’re ruining the integrity of film with all that crappy digital and 3-D stuff. They call it ‘film’ for a reason.”
She’s particularly irked with Clarks Pond for its “poaching” of foreign films that, by her rights, should be screened downtown. For ex-
by peter weyl
ample, Clarks Pond was the first area theater to show this year’s Oscar-winning, Argentinian film, The Secret in their Eyes
“There’s no reason suburban audiences shouldn’t have the opportunity to see the occasional foreign or independent film,” responds Zyacorp’s Bob Collins, standing up for the rights of moviegoers who simply want to pre-dine at Applebee’s and avoid the stress of parallel parking their SUVs.
Which is not to say Boggio is immune to popular demand. “During the summer, Christmas, and Oscar seasons, when movie companies are trying to make tons of money, we’ll show as many popular movies as we can bring in.
“But for most of the year, the Nickelodeon crowd is like family. We see the same customers, except during those peak times when the crowd changes.” When asked which movies have been most popular in recent years, Boggio comes up with The Queen (2006) and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2010).
Special events at the Nick include the Jewish Film Festival, midnight showings of films
produced locally, and twice-monthly opera performances (for which they’ve purchased their one digital projector).
The Cinemagic theaters dare to go offgrid at times, too, with Sunday church services; “Dash for the Divas”; co-promotions for the Maine premiere of Sex and the City 2; a 2006 live concert featuring Taylor Swift; and marathon blood drives. While they no
morE CInEmaThEraPy
Pride’s Corner Drive-In
This 1961 time capsule was created by the Tevanian family, who runs it still. (Avie Tevanian, who grew up in Westbrook, was a top exec at Apple Computers until 2006 [“Can Westbrook’s Bold, Brainy Avie Tevanian Jr. Transform Apple Computers, Inc.?” October 1997].) When we asked the guy manning the wonderfully dated snack bar (he looks a little like John Lennon) if he’s a Tevanian, too, he quips, “You think they hand these noses out for free?”
It’s a Tevanian universe; apart from a radio station delivering sound instead of speakers, nothing’s changed here since the Sputniks
longer show Red Sox games here (imagine the indoor “wave” and muted “Sweet Caroline”), Collins is looking down the road three to five years to see “digital, 3-D coverage of NFL, NBA, and college football games.” Is the Nick considering live sports? “Not our thing,” says Boggio.
Noir AlterNAtives
Portland cinephiles have a few new venues to consider these days, including Space Gallery, a funky, mixed-media art gallery on Congress Street that regularly shows indie films from a DVD projector. It has the unique distinction of owning a liquor license, so patrons can enjoy a glass of Mak-
launched. Even the snack-bar commercials are the originals. Perfect cheeseburgers. $7 adult, cash only, pets welcome. 797-3154
Evening Star Cinema
Created in 1978, Tontine Mall on Maine Street in Brunswick is the kind of ‘hippy’ place where Alex Keaton’s parents would surely have visited had Family Ties ever “jumped the shark” and shot an episode in Maine. “People call us neat, cool, and cozy,” says owner John Favreau, a local who bought and restored this landmark in 1996. “We’re on the ground level, showing firstrun films. I try to be as discriminating as I can. We show foreign films such as The Girl Who Played with Fire. We showed The Secret in Their Eyes this year, and we’ll host special events–
Tony Shalhoub and his wife came here in 2006 to debut their film Made-Up, the night after they were at Movies on Exchange Street.”
And the 1970s vibe? “I suppose that’s true. Liberal means open-minded. We show highquality, alternative films. A portion of all concession purchases goes to medical care for children injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Insider tip: “It’s gotta be the popcorn. We still use real butter and vegetable oil, which is healthier than the coconut butter the commercial places use.” 729-6796, or eveningstarcinema.com
Bridgton Twin Drive-In
The perfect car to arrive in here is Christine, because this venue is so central to Stephen King’s universe that he takes us here in Song of Susan-
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Kennebunkport Marina
going out
er’s Mark to deaden the discomfort of the folding-chair seating.
If you can forgo the popcorn, the Portland Museum of Art offers independent and foreign films on weekends through “Movies at the Museum,” curated by Steve and Judy Halpert, founders of Movies on Exchange Street. The pair has “loved movies ever since we met here in Portland,” says Judy. “When we started, there was no VCR, no TCM. We were able to do retrospectives and classics. We did Rocky Horror every year in the 1970s and ‘80s, and it was crowded every time. Showing all those foreign movies was like going out of town without having to travel. I perfected my French, my Italian, even my Urdu.”
The Halperts closed their movie house in 2008 but couldn’t bear to part with their audience completely. “We do the selection,” says Judy. “We took our 35 millimeter and 16 millimeter projectors over to the museum. It’s a great relationship.”
Lights out
In the category of might-have-beens, movie lovers quickly get testy at the mention of the muchmissed General Cinemas, once a shopper’s favorite across from Maine Mall. Whatever could
nah: “A rainy, muggy day by the lake. No Playground for the kids. Tonight we had Andy Fulcher sit the big kids while Tab & I & Owen went to the Bridgton Drive-In. Tabby thought the film (The Other Side of Midnight…from last year, actually) was a piece of shit, but I didn’t hear her begging to be taken home. As for me, I found my mind drifting off to that damn Roland guy again. This time to questions of his lost love. ‘Susan, lovely girl at the window.’ Who, pray, be she?”
The only thing scarier than the lonely-woods location and literary horror fame? “We no longer tolerate alcohol on theater property.” 7476666 (phone number a tribute to King?)
Saco Drive-In
We’re talking royalty here. Established in 1939, this is the second-oldest drive-in movie theater in the United States.* While we still miss the polar bear sculptures in front of this landmark (stolen a few years ago), this attraction is otherwise intact, hosting 500 cars. Owner Richard Roberge runs this as a labor of love: “If we don’t protect it, one day this will be an archaeological ruin, like an Incan village. People will be digging it up and trying to remember what it once was, wondering why they ever let it disappear.”
As a bargain, it’s hard to beat: $14 a car (up to three people, not counting the friend hiding in the trunk, of course). 284-1016 *The oldest is Shankweiler’s Auto Park in Orefield, Pennsylvania, est. 1934.
have caused this once-popular venue, built in 1975, to go dark, be torn down, and eventually become the ignominious site of “Fred the Rug Man” selling carpets from a trailer? Money.
South Portland planning director “Tex” Haeuser reveals the theater’s owner, General Growth Properties of Chicago (which also owned the Maine Mall), wanted to build a satellite mall, anchored by a Barnes and Noble bookstore, at the theater’s location. The plan was to build a new movie theater inside the Maine Mall.
But Joe Soley filed suit (which was eventually dismissed), claiming that increased theater parking at Maine Mall would impinge on parking at his neighboring shopping plazas. “The lawsuit blocked the new theater in time for the economy to go crazy,” Haeuser says. General Growth Properties scrapped its plan for a new theater, the Barnes and Noble project was abandoned, and the mall owner filed for bankruptcy in 2009.
As for Soley, he still casts an eye across the street to Movies on Exchange Street. Except for its missing projectors, he says the theater is ready to reopen–if anyone wants to give it a go. Any nibbles, Joe? “A few, but it’s not a very exciting time to go into business.” n
Wells Five Star Cinema
Despite ownership by Massachusetts-based Your Neighborhood Theatre, owner of 15 cinemas across New England, Wells offers local initiatives. Manager Dennis Levasseur says, “On bargain Tuesdays, everyone has a flat rate of $6. Our megastar (large popcorn and large drink) and five-star combos (large popcorn, two medium drinks) save you $1. Ten punches on our frequent moviegoer program card wins you a free movie.
“We do community benefits roughly twice a year featuring free admission in conjunction with Congdon’s Doughnuts.” And for you vampire fans? “Extraordinary situations create extraordinary shows. For Twilight Saga: Eclipse recently, we has 125 people watching it at midnight.” yourneighborhoodtheatre.com
Leavitt Fine Arts Theatre
Shaker-plain as a clam box in white clapboards, this cinamatograph on Main Street in Ogunquit has been “in continuous operation with first-run films since 1923,” according to the organization Cinema Treasures. Bloggers on the enthusiasts’ site profess their love for “its original seats and sloped, wooden floor.”
In any case, this evocative venue is straight out of Mrs. Miniver
At press time, the Leavitt was in full swing, lighting up the night during its 87th season. 646-3123, leavittheatre.com
maine course
Whether you’re a native or just passing through, you’re sure to know summer in Maine means seafood, and lots of it. Sail into Hannaford and discover all of your fresh off the boat favorites and savor summer tonight.
Summer Seafood Salad
2 cups water
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1/2 celery rib, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 garlic clove, crushed
1/2 small lemon, sliced
1/2 lb. medium shrimp, peeled, deveined
1/2 lb. sea scallops, halved
1 lb. mussels, scrubbed
1 container (6 oz.) cooked lobster meat
2 Tbsp. chopped fresh parsley
1 bag Taste of Inspirations Spring Mix
1/2 cup Taste of Inspirations Raspberry Nectar Vinaigrette
STEP 1 Combine first 5 ingredients in medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium; add shrimp, cover and cook 3 minutes. With slotted spoon, transfer shrimp to large bowl. Return liquid to boil; add scallops, cook 2 minutes, transfer with slotted spoon to bowl. Add mussels to liquid and cook covered over high heat 2 minutes or until mussels open. Transfer to a plate to cool slightly. Remove mussels from shell, add to bowl with other fish. Toss with dressing, add lobster meat and parsley. Cover and refrigerate 1 hour.
STEP 2 Arrange Spring Mix evenly on 6 serving plates. Spoon seafood mixture over greens.
Crème de la Crustacean
when it comes to something as simple as lobster stew, the debate is complicated. even so, there’s nothing more satisfying than a big, hearty bowl.
Lobster stew is the most curious of culinary icons. Everyone seems to agree it is a treasured dish of almost mythic status, beloved by generations of Mainers.
“It’s a classic,” says Chef Harding Lee Smith, who periodically offers it as a special at his Grill Room and Front Room restaurants in Portland.
“It’s the real Maine experience,” says Cal Hancock, head of Hancock Gourmet Lobster in Cundy’s Harbor, whose lobster stew won a gold medal in 2007 from the National Association of Specialty Foods. “If you live in Maine, it’s real comfort food. It’s the best thing since sliced bread.”
Trouble is, no one can agree on exactly what it is.
Some take a minimalist view. They sauté chunks of cooked lobster in butter, add it to warmed cream with salt and pepper, and serve it immediately with a dollop of butter floating on top. “I don’t think anybody can improve on that,” says George Olson, who offered a demonstration of his technique at Uncle Kippy’s, his restaurant in Lubec.
Others insist, equally fervently, that it isn’t lobster stew without paprika (which intensifies the reddish color), a good lobster stock to enhance the flavor, and perhaps some sherry, an elegant touch.
SuccuLent SimpLicity
Lydia Shire, executive chef of Blue Sky on York Beach, makes a lobster stew she claims was a favorite of President John F. Kennedy. She boils live lobsters for five minutes, removes the meat, and saves the shells. Then she cooks the shells in a Dutch oven with sherry; adds milk, cream, paprika, salt, and pepper; and refrigerates the mixture overnight to let the flavors develop. The following day, she cooks the shelled meat with butter and more sherry, adds the cream mixture, heats until warm, and serves her “JFK Lobster Stew” garnished with parsley.
By using the shells, Shire comes close to making lobster bisque, which is sometimes confused with lobster stew because both are cream-based. But bisque involves cooking the shells and then grinding them into a paste which is added to the soup, or making a roux. Bisque also can be thickened with rice, which
is strained or pureed in the final stages of preparation. The end product is thicker and redder than lobster stew.
Lobster stew, of course, isn’t really a stew, which typically involves slowcooking meat or seafood with vegetables and thickening the liquid with flour to make a gravy.
Establishing the key ingredients in lobster stew can be as controversial as debating politics or religion, and partisans feel no less passionately about their views. Chefs and home cooks alike disagree about whether lobster stew should contain onions, or garlic, or a little dry mustard, or potatoes…and the list goes on. Harding Smith makes a version with lobster tomalley and roe “to give it depth.” Cal Hancock’s award-winning stew was inspired by her grandmother–a traditional version enhanced with lobster stock, spices, and a little tomato paste. “My grandmother always said, ‘Don’t do anything to hide the taste of the lobster,’” Hancock recalls. “It’s a delicate balance.”
And a tricky one. Trying to find the perfect lobster stew can seem like the search for the Holy Grail. Is the dish too creamy or too milky? Too thick or too thin? Too simple to make or too complex? Does it have the right ratio of lobster to liquid? (The consensus seems to be 40 or 50 percent, but this is a subject of debate, too.) And should the stew be served right away or refrigerated for a while so the lobster fla-
vor infuses it more fully? The Maine Lobster Council touts about a dozen recipes with names like “Classic Maine Lobster Stew,” “Maine Lobster Stew,” “Maine Lobsterman’s Stew,” and “The Ultimate Maine Lobster Stew”–all very different, and all with their enthusiastic advocates.
TasTy Rebellions
Lawrence Klang, chef de cuisine at Natalie’s in Camden, describes himself as “kind of down” on traditional versions of lobster stew, which he finds “heavy-handed and a little boring.” He enjoys cooking Maine’s premier crustacean but prefers to make a “Thai-style lobster stew” with stewed tomatoes and shallots, white port, ginger, green curry paste, turmeric, saffron, kaffir lime leaves, and a vegetable stock with fresh carrot juice, all finished with a bit of preserved lemon. This elaborate dish is “complex but light” and showcases the talents of a professional chef, he says. “Personally, I don’t want people to come to my restaurant and pay for something that’s easy to make at home.”
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Similarly, Chef Jeff Buerhaus of Walter’s in Portland says he enjoys a fairly traditional version of lobster stew at home, but at his restaurant he likes to offer “a Caribbean and Mediterranean twist.” His lobster stew has “sweet chili, wild boar bacon, purple Peruvian potatoes, and sweet potatoes; it’s sweet, smoky, and savory,” he says. With so many potatoes, most people would call this a lobster chowder. But who’s to say?
CRaCking The Case
The origins of “authentic” lobster stew remain obscure. According to one history, lobster stew became widely popular after about 1910, when a bowl of it–intended for the servants– was accidentally sent to the table of John D. Rockefeller Sr. and his guests. There “it was rapturously received” and quickly became a family favorite. “In New York, what was good enough for John D. was good enough for the rest of society,” writes author Linda Stradley in What’s Cooking America. But clearly lobster stew was created long before then. There are recipes for it in The Boston Cooking School Cookbook of 1884 and even Robert May’s The Accomplisht Cook, published in London in 1685. In the 1685 version, May sautés chunks of cooked lobster in butter and then heats this for half an hour in a mix of claret, butter, nutmeg, and orange slices.
Some Mainers suspect it was adapted here
by budget-conscious fishermen’s wives, who laboriously picked the meat from lobster bodies and “stewed“ it in creamy milk–which was readily available–with just a few spices for a quick, easy, and economical meal. “It was a great way to use leftover lobster,” says Chef Larry Matthews of Portland’s Back Bay Grill, who recalls his grandmother made lobster stew this way. Who would have guessed the dish was headed for stardom?
Lubec is a little fishing village with around six very different restaurants. One of the few things they have in common is lobster stew on the menu.
“You have to,” says George Olson, who’s been the cook (not chef, he insists) at Uncle Kippy’s for 26 years. “If you don’t have it, people will go somewhere else.”
“I’ve tried everything, all kinds of variations,” Olson continues. “But my mother made it, and I do it the same way. The only secret is to use lobster that is fresh, really fresh. That’s what Maine is all about.” n
>> For more images and recipes, visit portlandmonthly.com.
51 Wharf restaurant & Ultra lounge Indulge in the chef’s avantgarde cuisine, w/ exceptionally creative courses, local ingredients in a from-scratch kitchen, the freshest seafood incl. local Maine lobster & a menu with savory chicken, steak & pasta. Available for private parties & events. 51 Wharf St. in Ptld’s Old Port. 51wharf.com, 774-1151 *
anthony’s Italian Kitchen, 151 Middle St., lower level, Ptld. Voted “Best in Portland” three years in a row. Pizza, pasta & sandwiches. All homemade recipes, incl. lasagna, chicken parmesan, eggplant parmesan, meatballs & Italian sausages. Variety of hot & cold sandwiches. Beer & wine. Catering available. 774-8668 *
Barnacle Billy’s, known for luxury lobster, steamed clams, large lusty drinks, barbecued chicken, homemade clam chowder & of course, the lobster roll & lobster stew. Features an extensive indoor & sundeck seating where guests can enjoy both the beauty of the harbor & the ocean beyond. Perkins Cove. barnbilly.com, 646-5575
Beale St. Barbeque Eclectic American cuisine The best hardwoodsmoked & grilled meats, poultry, fish & seafood, as well as tasty appetizers, specialty sandwiches, salads & creative daily lunch & dinner specials. Full bar w/ Maine microbrews on tap. No reservations needed, children welcome. Open all day, every day. 725 Broadway, S. Ptld. mainebbq.com, 767-0130
BiBo’s Madd apple Café is located at 23 Forest Avenue, Ptld, in the heart of the Arts District. Focusing on creative, affordable cuisine with an eclectic wine list to match, served in a bright casual atmosphere. Lunch W-F 11:30-2, brunch Sa & Su 11-2 & dinner W-Sa 5:30-close. Menus change with the local growing season. bibosportland.com, 774-9698 *
Billy’s Chowder House makes seafood dreams come true, serving the freshest seafood around, whether fried, grilled, broiled, stuffed, or over pasta. The chowders are all homemade & the lobster rolls have been featured in Bon Appétit. 216 Mile Road in Wells & surrounded by the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge. billyschowderhouse.com, 646-7558 the Black tie Market & Bistro will satisfy anyone’s craving for great food served with flair & fun. Now serving light breakfasts & lunches & everything you need to entertain at home. Made-to-order paninis & wraps, soups, home-baked desserts & fresh salads. Try our candy bar, gelato, or a great bottle of wine. Now hosting wine tastings! theblacktieco.com, 756-6230
Boda “Very Thai” kitchen & lounge. Delicious selections of Thai home-style entrees, street-vendor inspired grilled skewers & tapas & a full bar. Latenight menu served until 1 a.m. Open Tu-Su from 5 p.m.-1 a.m. 671
Congress St. in Ptld, parking avail, vegetarian options avail, no reservations. Come experience an eating culture of Thailand! 347-7557
Brea lu Cafe has been serving up breakfast & lunch for 22 years! Favorite menu choices include 12 specialty omelets, build-your-own breakfast burritos, Belgian waffles with fruit, eggs Benedict & homemade corned beef hash. Lunch features homemade chili & fresh, made-toorder sandwiches, burgers & wraps. Open daily, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. 428 Forest Avenue, Ptld. 772-9202
Bull Feeney’s Authentic Irish pub & restaurant, serving delicious scratch made sandwiches, steaks, seafood & hearty Irish fare, pouring local craft & premium imported brews as well as Maine’s most extensive selection of single malt Scotch & Irish whiskies. Live music five nights. Open 7 days, 11:30 a.m. - 1 a.m. Kitchen closes at 10 p.m. weekdays, 11 p.m. weekends. 375 Fore in the Old Port, 773-7210, bullfeeneys.com
Clementine restaurant 44 Maine St. in Brunswick. Chef-Owner Dana Robicheaw offers the culinary expertise he acquired at Johnson & Wales & other Portland fine dining establishments. Exquisite food & fine wine in a relaxed atmosphere. Join us for a multi-course tasting menu for parties of two: $45/person or $60/person with paired wines. Tu-Su 5-9 p.m. 721-9800, clementinemaine.com
diMillo’s Floating restaurant Freshest lobster, seafood, Black Angus cuts of beef, Italian fare & more. Commercial St. in the Old Port, DiMillo’s
offers fabulous water views of Ptld Harbor from every table. Famous clam or haddock chowder, lobster stew, or delicious salads. Serving from 11 a.m. Famous Lobster Roll. dimillos.com or call 772-2216.
the dogfish Bar & Grille, 128 Free St., 772-5483, and the dogfish Cafe, 953 Congress St., Ptld, 253-5400. “Great food, drink & service in a casual & unpretentious atmosphere.” The Cafe (M-Sa lunch & dinner & Su Brunch) offers a more intimate setting while the Bar & Grille (open daily at 11:30 a.m.) offers live music W-Sa nights. Real local feel, reasonable prices & great food. thedogfishcompany.com
Espo’s trattoria has been owned by the same family for over thirty years & will become your first choice for fine Italian dining. Menu items include homemade sauces, lasagna, fresh local seafood & tender steaks. Generous portion sizes are served by personable, professional staff in a family-friendly atmosphere. Lunch specials daily from 11a.m. to 3p.m. Takeout & catering are available. espostrattoria.com
Fish Bones american Grill Casual upscale restaurant offering American cuisine with a multi-national flair. Techniques include light grilling, sautéing & use of homemade food paints to further enhance our plated creations. Located in the heart of Lewiston in the historic Bates Mill complex. Dinner Tu through Sat & Su brunch. Come get hooked! fishbonesmaine.com, 333-3663 *
G & r diMillo’s Bayside 118 Preble St., Ptld. You’ll find a comfortable sports bar with excellent food! Catch the season’s most exciting games on multiple wide screen flat panel TVs. W/ homemade pasta & bread, classic appetizers, soups, sandwiches, burgers; & homemade, handtossed dough for fantastic pizza. M–Sa 11 a.m.-11.p.m., Su noon-8 p.m. grdimillos.com, 699-5959
the Good table “Honest food, honest prices.” Made-from-scratch brunch, lunch & dinner. A well-rounded menu with choices to please every palate. W/ inspired blackboard specials, the kitchen always takes advantage of locally-grown produce & seafood. Full bar with seasonal cocktails. 527 Ocean House Road on Route 77 in Cape Elizabeth. [Check for seasonal hours.] thegoodtablerestaurant.net, 799-4663
Grace A 160-year-old Methodist church. Engulfed by huge cathedral ceilings & beautiful stained-glass windows, our eclectic menu & houseinfused cocktails provide a perfect atmosphere for any occasion. Located at 15 Chestnut St., Ptld, we are open Tu–Sa evenings at 5 p.m. Reservations are recommended with ample seating at our circular 30-seat bar or in our comfortable cocktail lounge. 828-4422
the Great Impasta, long-standing restaurant located on Maine St., serves Mediterranean-inspired food with a concentration on Italian dishes. This restaurant is a favorite of both locals & those from away. Incredible, fragrant aromas from the open kitchen hit you the moment you walk through the door. Vegan & gluten-free menus available. 42 Maine St., historic Brunswick. 729-5858, thegreatimpasta.com
Great lost Bear, 540 Forest Avenue in the Woodfords area of Portland. A full bar with 70 beer taps w/ Maine & American Craft breweries & a large Belgian selection. Menu features salads, burgers, a large vegetarian selection & the best nachos & buffalo wings in town. Discover where the natives go when they’re restless! Every day 11:30 a.m.-11:30 p.m. greatlostbear.com, 772-0300
Jacqueline’s tea room & Gift Shop Authentic afternoon tea in an exquisite English setting. Over 70 of the finest quality loose-leaf teas to accompany your four-course luncheon of scones, finger sandwiches of all kinds & desserts. Great for intimate conversations & parties. 10:30 a.m.3 p.m. Tu-F & alternating weekends. 201 Main St., Freeport. Reservations only (not required for shopping). jacquelinestearoom.com, 865-2123
Jameson tavern, with a casual bar, lounge & dining room. The building is the site of the signing of the Constitution for the state of Maine when it broke away from Massachusetts. Classic preparations served in a graceful & elegant setting make this a fine retreat from frenzied outlet shopping. 115 Main St., Freeport. 865-4196 * Jp thornton’s Bar & Grille 740 Broadway, S. Ptld, offers upscale, fresh cuisine in a casual pub setting. Known in the Ptld area for having a “Cheers-like” atmosphere, locals & those who stumble across this hidden 18 monument square portland, maine 04101
Isle of Right
Chebeague Island Inn’s killer new chef is dead on.
Chef Justin Rowe has a driving passion which happens to be driving (or ferrying, in this case) patrons to Chebeague Island Inn, which has become a mustexperience food destination.
For Rowe–whose impressive resume includes stints at Fore Street, White Barn Inn, On the Marsh, and 555–it was “love at first sight” for the windswept, familyowned Inn, while it was “love at first taste” for owner Gerry Prentice. Without hesitation, she handed the kitchen over to the young chef, and it’s been a culinary love affair ever since.
Chebeague island inn, 61 south Road, Chebeague island lunch Monday–saturday, 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.; dinner daily, 5:30–9:00 p.m.; sunday brunch, 10:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m. 846-5155, chebeagueislandinn.com
Our love affair began on the breezy, hilltop veranda overlooking manicured lawns and rainbow gardens, with a majestic, sweeping view of the sea. Martinis and Manhattans in hand, we spent the first hour sighing over the incredible surroundings and scrumptious appetizers, including bleu-cheese-stuffed dates wrapped in bacon ($8) and duck tenderloin skewers with root vegetable slaw ($9). We were tempted to make a dinner of the veranda menu with an order of Lobster Corn Dogs ($12), a cheeky, uptown nod to a Coney Island staple.
We chose instead to continue to the dining room, where we began with foie gras torchon ($15). The accompanyin g Medjool d ate and walnut compote with a piece of apiary honeycomb gave foie’s traditional partner–a
glass of nectarkissed Sauternes–some serious competition.
In a moment of plebeian rebellion, my partner insisted on ordering the cheese burger ($16), despite an impressive list of enticing entrees like Island Lobster and English Pea Risotto ($30), Grilled Hanger Steak Frites ($22), and Chicken Roulade ($24). “I want to see what a class chef can do with it,” he explained. He was not disappointed. A thick, rare patty of organic Maine Black Angus beef was chin-dripping juicy and simply topped with pickled mushrooms, grilled red onion, and tangy Pineland Farms cheese curd. A stack of crisp, hearty, hand-cut fries completed the plate.
I chose the duck, a dish I find to be amateurishly prepared in most restaurants. Rowe’s version turned out to be a professional slam dunk. Tender, glossy, and almost silky, the pan-seared Long Island duck breast ($32), ordered medium rare, practically melted in my mouth. The caramelbrown breast rested on a fluffy bed of nutty black rice and rich duck reduction sauce, with bright green spears of al dente asparagus draped over top.
We ended on a resplendent note with a creamy, cardamom crème brûlée ($8) garnished with fresh Maine blueberries that burst in the mouth with a pleasant “pop.”
As for the man primarily responsible for our happily sated bellies, Rowe plans to spend the off-season on an organic farm in Tuscany, where he’ll be learning the art of making charcuterie, a skill that will no doubt be a benefit to our taste buds come next summer. n
>>For more images visit portlandmonthly.com.
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jewel of Foodie favorites can enjoy hand-cut grilled steaks, fresh seafood & house appetizers with a great selection of microbrews & specialty cocktails. 799-3100
Kon asian Bistro & Hibachi Bar Inspired by the senses. Décor & music invigorate the international essence of taking you to a different land. F–Su evening a DJ will transform the bar into an Asian night club. Experience the world-class New York chefs prepare you a fresh, succulent dish. 1140 Brighton Ave, Ptld. konasianbistro.com, 874-0000
linda Bean’s perfect Maine lobster roll is coming to Ptld! The new location on Exchange St. will include the sweetest Maine lobster with the company of a full-service bar. Using a ¼ pound of Maine lobster fresh from her own wharves & adding her special mix of herbs earns it the right to be called “Perfect.” lindabeansperfectmaine.com
lotus Chinese & Japanese restaurant, 251 U.S. Route 1, Falmouth (Falmouth Shopping Plaza). We feature full-service bar & lounge area, sushi bar, Chinese traditional food not available outside of Boston, friendly atmosphere & courteous service. 781-3453
Margaritas Mexican restaurants & Watering Hole! At 242 St. John St., Union Station Plaza, 874-6444 & 11 Brown St. near the Civic Center in Ptld, Lewiston, Augusta, Orono & Portsmouth. Always free hot chips & salsa, legendary margaritas & the house specialty, the sizzling fajita. Happy hour M-F, 4-7 p.m., free hot appetizers. 774-9398.
Maria’s ristorante, est. 1960. 337 Cumberland Ave, Ptld, one street down from Congress. Ptld’s finest Italian cuisine. Maine Sunday Telegram’s four-star restaurant. Homemade sausages & finest meatballs around, thick Veal Chops a la Maria, Zuppa De Pesce Fradiavolo, homemade gelato & Italian-style cakes. Lunch & dinner Tu-Sa, $13-$25. “Preserving the authentic Italian dining experience.” mariasrestaurant.com, 772-9232
Miss portland diner A Portland original. Visit the famous 1949 Worcester diner car serving breakfast all day & homemade diner classics. Open daily from 7am to 9pm. Beer, wine & liquor. Located at 140 Marginal Way in Ptld. missportlanddiner.com, 207-210-6673
Mousse Cafe & Bakeshop Monument Square. Breakfast & lunch all day & a weekend brunch. Casual atmosphere with a full bakery, homemade ice cream & outside dining on the patio. Favorites include huevos rancheros, eggs benedict, scones, herb focaccia paninis & award-winning turkey meatloaf sandwich. Open M-F 7 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sa 8 a.m.-3 p.m.; & Su 9 a.m.-2 p.m. One Monument Way, Ptld, 822-9955 moussecafebakeshop.com.
One Dock Creative, contemporary, New England Cuisine & traditional Maine favorites in a relaxed setting overlooking the Kennebunk River. The menu offers “small plates” such as duck spring rolls, flatbread signature pizzas, pan-seared scallops in a maple glaze & the lobster & chipotle cheddar macaroni & cheese, proving to be fan favorites. W-Sa 6-9 p.m. 967-2621 onedock.com
Pats Pizza Old Port offers a full bar & family dining experience in the heart of Ptld’s Historic District. Pat’s offers a full menu of appetizers, entrees, desserts & of course, pizza! We also have a large selection of salads & sandwiches for lunch. Large parties welcome, please call ahead. Located at 30 Market St. patspizzaoldport.com, 699-4455
The Pepperclub is a prize-winning restaurant (“Best Vegetarian” & “Best Value” in Frommer’s Guide to New England) with creative world cuisine. Blackboard menu lists five vegetarian, three fish & three meat entrées, incl. an organic beef burger. Relaxed, affordable dining on the edge of the Old Port w/ free parking. Open nightly at 5 p.m. 78 Middle St. pepperclubrestaurant.com, 772-0531
Pier 77 & The Ramp Bar & Grill are owned & managed by Kate & Chef Peter Morency. Pier 77 has a formal dining room with stunning views of Cape Porpoise Harbor & live music each weekend, while The Ramp is more casual, with its own bar menu at hard-to-beat prices. pier77restaurant.com has all the details. 967-8500 * Pom’s Thai Taste Restaurant, Noodle House & Sushi Bar at 571 Congress St. in Ptld, 772-7999, voted “The Best of Portland ‘09” by Phoenix readers. W/ vegetarian, wheat-free, kid’s menu, made-to-order noodle soup, and $1 sushi every M & Tu. Also in S. Ptld: Pom’s Thai Restaurant at 209 Western Avenue, 347-3000, & Thai Taste Restaurant at 435 Cottage Road, 767-3599. thaitastemaine.com
The Run of the Mill brewpub is in a restored mill building on Saco Island, offering quality food at reasonable prices; 24 beers brewed in-house throughout the year are rotated through seven taps. Sample 3 oz. of all beers on tap for just $5. Wine list & full bar. Trivia Mon, Open Mic Tues & live music Thurs. 571-9648, therunofthemill.net Saeng Thai House Authentic Thai food. With an upbeat tempo & tantalizing dishes, zesty flavor awaits you. Entrees include crispy noodle pad Thai, house specialty seafood choo chee, pad Thai, ginger fish, Sushi & much more. Eat in, take out or delivery available. 267 St. John St. in Ptld, 773-8988, Saeng Thai House 2 at 921 Congress St., 780-0900. The Salt Exchange American-style tapas, local, organic & sustainable ingredients. Extensive beer & wine list. Wine tastings Wed 5-6:30 p.m. include complimentary canapés. Open for lunch T-Sa 11:30 a.m.-3:00 p.m. & dinner 5:30-9 p.m. (F-Sa, until 10 p.m.) Lounge open Tu-Sa11:30 till close. 245 Commercial St., Ptld. thesaltexchange.net, 347-5687
Stockhouse Restaurant & Sports Pub The best place to catch all of your favorite games. Fun, family-friendly atmosphere offers a game room, 21 TVs, 16 beers on tap & large party accommodations. Daily food & drink specials & a menu w/ everything from pub-style appetizers to homemade entrees. Open daily at 11 a.m. 506 Main St., Westbrook. 854-5600, thestockhouserestaurant.com
Stonyfield Cafe (formerly O’Naturals) serves natural & organic flatbread sandwiches, tossed salads, rice & noodle bowls, soups, kids’ meals, organic tart frozen yogurt & Sunday Brunch. Quick service for people on the go…but our leather couches, wireless internet & comfortable atmosphere entice you to stay. Chicken, roast beef, wild bison meatloaf, wild Alaskan salmon, many vegetarian items–something for everyone. Falmouth, 781-8889, stonyfieldcafe.com
Twenty Milk St., Ptld Regency Hotel, U.S.D.A. prime & choice steaks & the freshest seafood, combining award-winning classic American cuisine with fine wines in a warm & inviting atmosphere. W/ crab cakes with lemon shallot mayonnaise, baked escargot, charbroiled chili-lime scallops & sumptuous desserts. Dinner daily; also breakfast, lunch & brunch. Complimentary valet parking. theregency.com, 774-4200
Varano’s Italian Restaurant–food so good, you may never cook again. W/ stunning views of the coast & the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge. The best Italian food north of Boston. The menu offers signature Italian dishes & special family recipes & the comprehensive all-Italian wine list is a Wine Spectator award recipient since 2002. 60 Mile Road, Wells. varanos.com, 641-8550
Walter’s One of Maine’s most popular restaurants. Chef/owner Jeff Buerhaus is inspired by global influences. Seasonal menus are accented by creative daily specials. Extensive wine list & inventive cocktail creations complement menu offerings. M-Sa: lunch 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., dinner from 5 p.m., bar menu 2:30 p.m.-midnight. Su: brunch 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m. 2 Ptld Square. waltersportland.com, 871-9258 Wells Beach Steakhouse & T-Bone Lounge serves prime & all-natural steaks, fresh seafood & delicious salads, w/ Kobe sirloin steaks, set in a plush atmosphere. Enjoy a selection from the highly allocated new world wine list, or a signature Wells Beach martini under the starry ‘sky’ of the lounge. 73 Mile Road, Wells. wellsbeachsteakhouse.com, 646-2252 *
Yosaku, 1 Danforth St. Authentic Japanese culinary experience, designed by owner Sato Takahiro & chef Matsuyama Masahiro. Premium sushi, sashimi & rolls, incl. Yosaku, Ptld Pirates & traditional cooked Japanese cuisine for the sushi-shy. Enjoy a bento box beside a tranquil Japanese waterfall. Lunch: M-Fr11:30 a.m.-2 p.m., Sa-Su noon-3 p.m. Dinner: 5-9:30 p.m., F-Sat 5-10:30 p.m. 780-0880
*reservations recommended
Goal Goal Standard Standard the the
How so?
Stanley cup champion and former
Jimmy
umaine hockey star
Howard,
26, knows the best defense is a strong body and clear mind.
interview by amber cronin
Belated congratulations for winning the 2008 Stanley Cup and being named the Detroit Red Wings starting goalie and 2010 Rookie of the Year. What a ride! So many Mainers remember your brilliant career at the University of Maine and suddenly you’re this famous sports star, summering here in an undisclosed location? I live on Green Lake in Dedham.
How do you feel about being in the spotlight? Any funny stories about being recognized on the lake? It’s cool in a way, but I try to stay out of the spotlight as best I can. Earlier this year, my wife and I were in the grocery store, and this guy who worked there started walking up and down all the aisles. When we got to the counter he asked if I was Jimmy Howard and I told him, “No,” because I really didn’t feel like being recognized that night, but he just stood there, staring. As I took out my money clip he actually tried to see if [my card had my name on it]…We left the store in a hurry.
How did you end up in Maine?
I was born in Syracuse and grew up in Obdensberg. When I went to UMaine on my college-visit tour, it just felt right to me.
Everyone was so genuine and nice, it made me feel at home. I got a glimpse of how much of a family
(Continued on page 58)
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MAine CosMetiC Dentistry is truly something worth smiling about! Dr. Robert Beebe, an LVI graduate and one of greater Portland’s premier cosmetic dentists, offers a full range of dental services and affordable financing options. There’s no need to be self-conscious about your smile ever again. 1-800-338-5254, or mainecosmeticdentistry.com
RestoRative and aesthetic dental associates are all about giving you a roadmap to your next chapter in total dental health. A collaborative effort between you, your dentist, our supporting team and onsite lab will enable you to achieve your desired smile within your comfort zone. 773-6331 or radentalmaine.com.
dR. nancy saRgent and dR. iRina babayan are committed to delivering the very best in dental care for our patients. In support of our mission, we offer an environment that is optimized for patient comfort and convenience. Offering family, restorative, and cosmetic dentistry in a friendly atmosphere. Located on Route 1 in Falmouth. Call 781-4216, or visit foresidefamilydentistry.com.
simply Radiant offers a variety of skin care services to help correct, protect, and rejuvenate your skin, including Botox, Restylane, Radiesse, Juvéderm, Perlane, Fraxel laser treatment, laser hair removal, vein therapy, medical-grade skin care products, and more. Located at 1685 Congress Street in Portland. Call 523-5575 or visit simplyradiantmaine.com for more information.
Arthur H. Gager, D.D.S. Specialist in Periodontics
• Providing comprehensive Periodontal care since 1986
• Twenty years experience with dental implants
• Now offering FDA approved laser treatment
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• What you should expect from new hearing devices
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• What the best brand is for you • How much hearing technology
Assisted Living. Emphasis on Living.
Scott Dyer Road
Elizabeth, Maine 04107 207.799.7332 • 207.799.7334 fax www.villagecrossings.com
Village Crossings at Cape Elizabeth offers the privacy of assisted living, the amenities of a fine hotel, and the peace of mind of licensed nursing care and emergency response on a stand-by basis. Our 32-acre campus features:
• Elegant, restaurant-style dining
• Ice cream and gift shop
• Activity, craft, and game rooms
• Complimentary washers and dryers on each floor
• Beautifully landscaped courtyards and patios
• Wellness and exercise center
• Library and computer center
The Monarch Center of Saco provides total personal care support within a nurturing and loving homelike environment for those requiring full-time specialized Alzheimer’s or dementia-related care.
Special People… Require Special Care.
Located on Main Street in Saco, this residential facility allows for community integration, ensuring that social and recreational needs are met in a positive and involved way. Comfortable private apartments, three meals per day, daily housekeeping, comprehensive personal care assistance, and trained staff combine to make this safe, secure community ideal for those requiring special care. We look forward to showing you our facility and sharing the details of our unique system.
www.themonarchcenter.com
Village Crossings at Cape Elizabeth is owned and operated by Kindred Healthcare
The Monarch Center of Saco
The Goal Standard (continued from page 55)
UMaine hockey is.
Your career at UMO was impressive, with two NCAA records that still stand and a Rookie of the Year Award for Hockey East. What was playing for the Black Bears like? I had three tremendous years there [before being drafted]. It was just an all-around good experience, from living in the dorms my freshman year to the [roaring] student section at the games.
You were working toward a kinesiology degree. Any plans to finish?
I’m taking classes now through UMaine.
What about kinesiology had you hooked?
I started out as a business major, but I remember sitting in an accounting class and thinking, I can’t do this. I picked kinesiology because my dream was to be a professional athlete and I wanted to know more about the way my body works.
What’s your off-season training regimen?
Every day I get up at 8 a.m. and train with a couple of guys at the University’s hockey weight room. I do a lot of cardio and circuit training.
Being recently married, how do you find time to train and spend quality time with your wife?
She’s with me during the season in Detroit, and it’s nice to come here in the summer, because her friends and family are here.
How has your training changed over the years from your high school and U.S. National junior team U-18 days to Red Wings training?
When I was younger, it was all about trying to build muscle and bulk up, but now my training has changed because the game changed and became more fast-paced and quick. Instead of trying to bulk up, I do high repetitions with low weight to try to get lean.
Do you have any pre-game rituals or superstitions?
There are too many to list–people will probably think I’m a head case! Before a game I go off into my own little world–I listen to music that both relaxes me and pumps me up. I jump rope, warm up, stretch…or I’ll be in the hallway, kicking a soccer ball around with some of the guys.
Do you do anything special after a game?
I learned from Chris Osgood that you have
to just let it go; the game is over and done with, and there is nothing you can do about it. You might have thought you could have saved that puck, but it doesn’t matter now. You have to live in the moment; if you have an off night, just play better the next night.
Hockey East play is one thing. But how did winning the Stanley Cup feel?
It was an incredible experience…It was great to watch how much of a grind it is with guys playing injured and playing games every night.
Why do you think you’re so often compared to Tim Thomas of the Bruins?
I think it has a lot to do with the way we both do battle, never giving up on a play or wanting to let a puck slip past.
Can you tell us about putting your glove in Sidney Crosby’s face this past season?
It was more instinct than anything else… more of a reaction than thinking about it.
What’s your favorite part of living in Maine?
I love how simple everything is. In Detroit, it’s so hectic and everyone’s so go-go-go, but here, no one’s in a hurry.
That’s because we’re already here, Jimmy. What do you do during your down-time here? Any favorite restaurants? I love the Sea Dog in Bangor, and Stewman’s and Finback [Alehouse] in Bar Harbor. And during down-time I play golf at Penobscot Valley Country Club.
What is your lowest score for 18 holes this summer? Fore! n
>> For more images visit portlandmonthly.com.
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Women on the Verge of a Breakthrough (continued from page 31)
“Working three dimensionally allows me to create an almost real existence that is as present as we are. I feel that being able to walk around a piece and see every aspect of it is important to the message I want to convey. I am also in love with building with clay. It gives me the ability to manipulate the material as much as I want and bring to life its dimensions.”
While Sandberg’s work approaches an “emotional purge,” Kari Radasch’s work has a more considered carefulness. Also a MECA grad (‘97), she received her MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and currently works as a studio potter.
Her early success selling her much-demanded pots and platters was both a blessing and a curse; while she was supporting herself as a full-time artist, she was quickly losing motivation and perspective.
“My prior work was flashy, candied, luscious, droopy…and it strongly harkened to historical references. It was restraining to rely so heavily on making certain things just because people responded to them. I don’t ever want to go back to the place where ‘I’m bummed out with what I’m creating.’”
Change came while she was cutting tiles for a mosaic floor. “I was completely taken with the ‘flatness’ of the tiles, how they were two-dimensional shapes taking up three-dimensional space. That’s when I began putting appliqués on my pots and plates and cups.
“These days, my work is less ‘hit you over the head’; I’m conscious of what I put into it, so there’s more of me behind it–it’s more autobiographical.”
With precursors from Andy Warhol’s bright and clunky Wild Raspberries (during her graduate days) to Judy Chicago’s sensual and luxe The Dinner Party (which Radasch emphatically denies was an influence for her slick, earlier studio work) behind her, Radasch’s work “grew up.” It shed the excesses of youth, like a tequila-soaked freshman turned savvy, Burgundy-sipping thirty-something. “It wasn’t a popular decision with everyone; the main criticism I received was that my work was too ‘flat,’ too white, too stingy with color. But this work brings me back to my second year as a student at MECA, when we were doing
Ceramic plate with flower appliqués by Kari Radasch
very simple things. At that stage, you’re completely focused on ‘activating space.’ You’re taking a dot and finding just the right spot on the page that will make it ‘vibrate.’ That deliberateness and contemplation is a big component of my process now.”
While the emotion in Radasch’s work is not as immediate or demanding as Sandberg’s, it radiates a quiet, organized energy and soothing clarity. “With my work, you see parts of what I love, the things that make me happy…gardens of flowers, cupcakes frosted white, barrels of pickles, rainbow assortments of vegetables, candy ribbons, my daughter’s toys…” Radasch has managed to create a sense of poetic completion in that the very things she creates–mugs and plates and pots and vases–become vessels for presenting and sharing the objects of her affection. In many ways, it’s the inspiration enveloped by the inspired.
While it may seem that Sandberg and Radasch have nothing more than dusty hands and an alma mater in common, their similarities run deeper. For Sandberg, their kinship comes from being “fully committed to ceramics.” As for Radasch, “Neither of us is making the traditional ‘round and brown’ work, and in that sense we’re more alike than different.” n
>>See additional works by Kari Radasch and Patti Sandberg at kariradasch.com and pattisandberg.com. The works of both artists will be a part of the annual MECA Auction November 6.
Ceramicist Kari Radasch is right at home surrounded by her signature appliquéd mugs and tea cups.
market watch
Welliver’s Travels (continued from page 35)
eight-foot square, sold for $40,630 in 2008 at Doyle New York and is the painting with the second-highest price paid. Barridoff Galleries sold the third-highest-priced Welliver, $40,250 for Thaw at Pond Pass, in 1998.
“Neil’s work is really accessible to everyone, which doesn’t mean he’s simple,” says Rob Elowitch of Barridoff Galleries, adding that Welliver had a strong sense of abstract design. “That’s a good thing in terms of value.”
Harold Porcher, a vice president at Doyle New York auctioneers and director of the Modern & Contemporary Art division, notes that to break into a higher tier as an artist one must expand on the dialogue of “What is art?”
“I don’t think Welliver does, for the most part, making his work hard to sell,” says Porcher. “But representational art is much more fashionable again, and he certainly found his niche as a figurative 20th-century painter. His pieces are instantly recognizable, which is a plus.”
Painter Dozier Bell, who studied with Welliver, questions defining his work as representational. “He studied with [Josef] Albers and was all about color relationships. It really was abstract art using the landscape as an armature,” she says.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Welliver had solo exhibitions at Marlborough Gallery, as well as solo traveling exhibitions in 1989 and 1996; Porcher feels that kind of exposure had a positive impact on Welliver’s sales. Tracking the prices paid at auction, he notes, “In 2007, it was still a sellers’ market. In looking at the records, if you sort by highest price achieved, there are the [three] that were sold in [1998], 2006, and 2008, and then the ones below that were sold 20-30 years ago, when more of his work seemed to be coming up at auction than now.”
In August, Barridoff put Fall Foliage, a 14" x 12" study, on the block for an estimated $6,000-9,000. As with his large canvases, there are no false notes, but the study is more visceral in its approach. Welliver had an elaborate painting process that began with such studies in the wild and then moved into the studio, where he’d begin by transferring a cartoon of the image to the canvas and paint from top left to bottom right, finishing with his signature there. His preliminary sketches reveal much about the man and his thinking.
“His studies have a very strong emotional relationship with the landscape,” Bell says, “and are more representational than
Pineland
photos: Rachel Bell; Jennifer Stone
the big paintings, which get more into the theoretical, abstract underpinnings.”
Welliver’s oeuvre also includes figurative works. Usually these are women caught while taking a dip in the nude in the woods. They are unsmiling and seem almost hostile. In 2008, Doyle sold a five-foot square, 1969 canvas entitled Nude for $6,875. “I was shocked by how low it went,” he says. “The Whitney has a similar one. It’s their only Welliver, which makes me think they thought it was more quintessential Welliver. The nudes are more intellectually challenging, and in my mind, they’re better paintings.”
Asked what kind of Welliver he’d invest in, Porcher says, “I’d invest in the nudes, but I tend to buy what’s powerful. The landscapes seem to hold their value, however.” n
Sarah Cumming Cecil, a principal in the interior design firm Rose Cumming (www.rosecummingdesign.com), writes frequently on art, antiques, and interior design. Her work has appeared in ARTnews, Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, Connoisseur, and The New York Times.
>> For more images visit portlandmonthly.com.
Vickie, 1970, oil on canvas, 48" x 48", was sold to Curtis Galleries in Minneapolis in a private sale for an undisclosed amount.
Thawed Ledge, 1988, oil on canvas, 60" x 60", commanded the highest price yet paid for a Welliver at auction.
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Dream Studios (continued from page 37)
locaTion, locaTion, locaTion
The Impressionists ventured to the South of
Studios We Love (continued from page 37) were built to support machinery, so they could easily handle anything an individual artist might dump on them. Here in Maine, old textile mill buildings (which every riverside town seems to have) are the perfect spot to set up a printing press or stone-cutting studio.
former inhabitant, and its abundance of nature. “If I need to know how a tree looks, I just go outside,” Swan says. “It’s all there, like a big notebook.”
Tommi Thomas (1941- ) The siren had the fortune of living and singing in a luxurious 1905 chateau, former property of the U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, located in Cumberland Foreside. “I used the second, smaller living room as my practice room. It had light coming in from all sides. It also looked out
Fortune Rock, former home and studio of Clara Fargo Thomas on Mt. Desert Island (now the Berwind estate)
France for the quality of the light. Maine may not be Provence, but we have an abundance of wonderful places at which to paint. The painting colonies on Monhegan Island take advantage of the reflective quality of the surrounding sea, as does Winslow Homer’s studio on Prouts Neck, a mere 75 feet from the shoreline. Western Maine is blessed with a plethora of lakes that give watercolors that perfect glow. Think too
to the ocean. That was where I did all my rehearsing. I had to sell the house because it was too big. [Besides], I am a New York girl at heart.”
Clara Fargo Thomas (1891-1970) The murals of this heiress and socialite were no doubt inspired by her residence and studio at Fortune Rock, a stunning 1937 house cantilevered over Somes Sound off Mount Desert Island.
may sarTon (1912–1995) This remote, seaside home in York is surrounded by gardens and a white picket fence meant to protect the late author’s most precious commodity: privacy.
ruFus PorTer (1792–1884) Who needs walls if your art work is other people’s walls? This wanderlust-inflicted painter could have quipped, “New England is my studio.”
abboTT graves (1859–1936) Kennebunkport is the location of “Westlook,” a white stucco, prairie-
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Former home and studio of singer Tommi Thomas in Cumberland Foreside
about the direction from which the light comes: A northern exposure gives a cooler and more constant light, while a southern exposure gives a warmer tone.
PersonaliTy
Do you dream of the companionship of your own Montmartre? Or do you seek the solitude of a garret? (Michael Waterman paints so furiously atop his spire above Congress Square that he once refused to see musician Natalie Merchant–even after she style studio designed in 1906 by Graves, who was clearly influenced by the architectural stylings of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Jamie Wyeth (1946- ) Nestled on the Monhegan Island coast is the small studio and summer home of Jamie Wyeth, originally built by Rockwell Kent as a home for his mother. “I’m here when the darker sides of the island begin to Robert Indiana’s home and studio–Star of Hope Lodge–sits on Vinalhaven’s Main Street.
bought two of his paintings!) Take stock of your personality before you design your studio around who want to be and where you’d like to be. If you need other artists nearby to inspire you, try finding a studio in Portland’s Arts District or Belfast’s growing arts community. Prefer to work alone? Follow the lead of summer resident William Wegman and practice your photography in the solitary splendor of the western mountains. Or find a quiet lakeside spot in Washington County, far from the madden-
come out; when the island is at its least picturesque,” Wyeth says. “What other people like about Monhegan is what I hate.”
RobeRt IndIana (1928- ) The pop star’s gray, wooden studio on Vinalhaven dates back to the Civil War era and was formerly the island’s first theater.
dozIeR bell (1957- ) “My current studio is a renovated barn behind my house in Waldoboro; we bought the house 11 years ago, partly because of the studio potential. It’s not ideal–not level, too small, and two floors–but I like its square shape, big windows, and the fact that my commute to work is about nine steps. I’m a bit of a hermit in that I like inhabiting other people’s spaces without a pressing need to make it my vision of what it ‘should’ be.”
louIs noRton (1868-1940) Murals of scenes surrounding Turbat’s Creek in Kennebunkport grace the inside walls of Norton’s small, gray-shingled studio. When his eyesight began to fail, he decided to paint directly on the walls. His studio and murals are on display at the Kennebunkport Historical Society.
CoRey danIels (1951- ) An artist and expert in Americana antiques, Daniels’s gallery and studio in Wells off Route 1 is a dark gray 1815 house with an attached building (c. 1890), both restored in a
Eric Hopkins’s airy studio in Rockland
Talking Walls
ing crowd, and set up your easel. accessibiliTy
Have you found a patron to support you in your artistic endeavors? Or a gallery owner who wants everything you can produce? Lucky you! But think about whether you want people visiting your studio whenever the urge strikes them. Some artists thrive
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AlAn BrAy (1946- ) Bray designed his attic studio during the rebuilding of his Sangerville house, which suffered a fire in 1978. “Instead of [my studio] being in a separate building, I have all the same heating and electric as the rest of the house,” he says. “It is a self-contained room, though.”
Natural Beauty
MArjorie ShAw Located in Portland on the corner of Danforth and Vaughn is the former home and studio of Harrison Bird Brown. Idexx founder David Shaw purchased the house, and after his divorce from Marjorie, an avid art collec-
(Continued on page 75)
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Alan Bray’s attic studio in Sangerville
From John Marin, who painted for a stretch in a chicken coop, to Pulitzer Prizewinning novelist Booth Tarkington, who did much of his writing in The Floats, a dilapidated boathouse on the Kennebunk River, there’s a time-honored tradition of artists holing up in rustic encampments so
showing off works in progress; others prefer to present finished work. Know which type you are, and choose accordingly.
PerFecT harmony
Of course, the best studios embody a mix of these elements. Years ago, I visited author and television presenter David Macaulay, who illustrated Neil Ard-
they can hear themselves think.
In Windham, your brush with beauty is a tiny cabin with loft on a 1.14-acre parcel of windswept white pine trees that faces 222 feet of pristine shoreline on Little Duck Pond, a hidden lake at the heart of a picturesque hill that rises 485 feet above sea level.
“This is a very private pond,” says listing agent Stephen Talbot of Keller Williams Greater Portland as he looks across the water. “As a boy, I used to deliver mail on [nearby] Highland Lake, so all of this is very familiar to me. This structure is nothing fancy–just a one-room cabin. It has power and phone, and you could use a pump to pull up water from the pond.
“Last year we offered it for $99,000, and we’ve dropped it to $79,000 this year. It looks like you’re in the middle of nowhere, but you’re nine miles out of the city of Portland. It’s got great exposure because it looks out at sunsets.”
Better still, “There may be owner financing.”
Once you’re in and sell a few paintings, there’s more good news: “There’s an already -approved building envelope here where you’re allowed to put a very large home in–say, a two-car garage with a 30-by40-foot building.”
There’s all kinds of future here. As for the present, it’s just “beauty overload”–the perfect place to enlarge upon your dreams.
“The taxes in Windham are very reasonable, estimated at $1,523.” n
John Swan’s Stroudwater studio was formerly owned by Walter Griffin, who cut unusual windows to inspire paintings with
views.
ley’s The Way Things Work, at his Rhode Island studio. Housed in a nondescript building, his top floor studio offers views of the ocean on one side and mature trees on the other. Light pours in from huge windows on three sides. Although bursting with the tools of his trade, it is not cluttered, and his beautifully detailed, finished work adorns the walls. While easily accessible to New York City or Boston (homes to his publishers and producers), it sufficiently isolates him from both. It fits him perfectly–and that’s what every artist needs. n
>>For more images visit portlandmonthly.com.
Corey Daniels Gallery
tor, she completed a stunning renovation, complete with a backyard sculpture garden.
WinsloW Homer (1836-1910) The final years of Homer’s life were spent at his Prouts Neck studio, which was designed by John Calvin Stevens. The studio is currently undergoing restoration by Portland Museum of Art.
Winslow Homer studio, Prouts Neck
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American Chop Suey (continued from page 39)
TWO: Location, location, location. John Whipple, of Whipple–Callender Architects, says, “I was the architectural consultant on a committee that reviewed applications for the city’s facade grant program. One of the applications was from Bill Umbel. He wanted to reproduce a large blade sign for his club, the Empire Dine and Dance, on 575 Congress Street, and he needed an exemption from the usual restrictions in sign size. His argument was that the original sign was huge. Scott Hanson was the city’s historical consultant. He showed up at the next meeting with a permit dated August, 1930 that he’d dug out of the city’s files and some photos of the building taken in 1924. The permit was for strengthening an existing sign that was 24-feet tall, weighed 600 pounds, and swung dangerously over the sidewalk. The photos showed a building with two bay windows and a sign with light bulbs that spelled “Chop Suey” in vertical letters. Scott opened a book to Hopper’s painting. We all agreed that if you were looking out the western-most bay window you would have seen exactly what Hopper painted.
“A few weeks later, I told my brother, a painter in Seattle, what Scott had found. He said he’d just helped with a show on Edward Hopper at Seattle Art Museum. The show’s catalog described Hopper’s New York influences at length. We contacted the curator, Patti Junker, and Scott sent her the permits, the photos, and an article by [Maine historian] Gary Libby about Chinese restaurants in Portland. She emailed back: ‘I admit I was skeptical, but after seeing the image, I am absolutely convinced. I think it was this chop-suey restaurant that he had in mind, although the picture was conceived in his studio in NYC.’”
THREE: To bay or not to bay! The site traditionally ascribed to Chop Suey–a long-lost second-floor joint on Columbus Circle above a Child’s restaurant in Manhattan–lacks the distinctive bay window in Hopper’s painting, while Portland has it. Add that to Portland’s identical distance between windows, and…
Avis Berman, who’s written about Chop Suey for Smithsonian magazine, tells us, “I certainly think there’s credence to your notion that the Maine Chinese restaurant could have sparked Hopper’s idea.”
Gail Levin, author of Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, allows, “He often com-
bined images that he saw in more than one place, so your place might have contributed to his painting even if he ate at the Columbus Circle place.”
Not that Hopper’s talking. Was it a photo or simply a mind’s-eye sketch he drew here? Jo once wrote, “Sometimes talking to Eddie is just like dropping a stone in a well, except that it doesn’t thump when it hits bottom.”
Critics point to Chop Suey as a breakthrough. There’s agreement that the seated woman in the cloche hat facing the viewer
OURS:
Empire Chop Suey, Portland (c. 1924)
nebo lodge
An Island Inn & Restaurant
www.nebolodge.com
THEIRS: Columbus Circle, Manhattan (c. 1937)
THEIRS: Columbus Circle, Manhattan (c. 1937)
This chop-suey palace above a Child’s restaurant in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle is popularly thought to be the locale for the painting, though Portland has both the sign and the bay windows.
be the locale for the painting, though Portland has both the sign and the bay windows.
is based on Jo. More fascinating, the identical diner facing her is, by many accounts, a doppelgänger, making this painting an enlightened comment on the mass-market loneliness of our 20th-century crowds. Or should we call her a “hoppelgänger”?
John Updike gets credit for the insight that “Hopper is always on the verge of telling a story.” Isn’t it wonderful to think each of us might be living out Chop Suey’s narrative in Portland today? n
>> For more images visit portlandmonthly.com.
Impressed with Portland, Hopper called us “our finest New England city,” according to Gail Levin in Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography. The Hoppers likely came here for theater outings during the summer of 1927 (the probable year of Chop Suey’s conception), and Jo must have thought of us as a haven–according to Levin, Hopper’s wife wrote in her diary about suffering a “toilet in a shed shared with lobster bait” at their ramshackle rental at Two Lights.
This chop-suey palace above a Child’s restaurant in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle is popularly thought to
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beyond the classic facade of this 1750 cape, this enclave in Falmouth is “worth $349,000 all day long.”
Interior designer Monica Dominak grabs a cup of English Breakfast tea every morning and climbs the stairs to her attached barn studio/loft to find a white square of paper on her desk. The poem is “For the Artist at the Start of Day,” by John O’Donohue. Like so many artists, Dominak can’t help but stalk beauties “between the heart and the light.”
In many ways she’s found them here, at this landmark charmer located at 141 Falmouth Road, which beckons with not one but two studios.
Deftly restored, her diminutive manse is a study in patina, including the letter “S” scratched in a parlor window “for Sarah, granddaughter of the original owner,” says listing agent Linda Babbitt of Keller Williams Realty. From the pumpkin pine floor boards to the massive fireplace with cast-iron oven by Jacob Kimball of Portland, layers of time here reflect like the depths of a lustrous pearl.
“Do you see these beautifully worn stairs?” Babbitt says. “She had them reinforced from beneath so she could keep those!”
Including three bedrooms and original wainscoting, it’s cozy without being cramped, safe without being secluded. “Only three families have lived here across the years.” A screen porch opens to 1.9 acres of woodsy splendor and the geometrical conundrum of “threequarters of a pond.”
Originally a honeymoon cottage, the enchanting summer studio in cedar shakes stands like a hope chest beneath tall, knobby trees. You reach its whitewashed knotty-pine
From top: 1750 cape in Falmouth has three bedrooms and one beautiful history, including an etched “S” for Sarah, granddaughter of the original owner (inset); attached studio loft is a “den of inspiration”; nestled in the trees, this backyard studio cottage is a peaceful artist’s retreat.
From top: 1750 cape in Falmouth has three bedrooms and one beautiful history, including an etched “S” granddaughter the owner (inset); studio loft is a “den of inspiration”; nestled in the trees, this backyard studio cottage is a peaceful artist’s retreat.
interior after a stroll past the grave of Scotty the cat: “long-legged ladies’ man who wandered Peaks Island.”
Not a bad place to “harvest the dark.” n
Annual taxes are $2,920. >>To read the full text of the O’Donohue poem and see additional images, visit Online Extras at portlandmonthly.com.
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THE HATCHER GROUP
BOWDOINHAM
we had words enough and time we could adequately describe this enchanting property. As it is, we can only touch on a few details and leave the rest to your imagination. Dating back to 1829, this remarkable brick farmhouse and attached barn are on 28 AC of lawn, paddock, woods, fields, gardens and what would appear to be a private park on the shore of the Kennebec River. The picture of the front of the house is deceiving. It is actually 4000 sq. ft. of beautifully restored and extended space including a magnificent sunroom, living and dining rooms, a “library”, four bedrooms, 3 ½ baths, three fireplaces and a woodstove, an in-law apartment, and an attached barn in impeccable condition, (currently occupied by a handsome horse and darling donkey). In short, it is a dream home for animals, families, aficionados of beauty and the outdoors of all ages. $735,000.
Affordable Coastal Living
Located about a mile from town, this meticulous three bedroom home offers a half bath, kitchen, sunny dining area and living all with oak flooring on first floor. Full bath with three bedrooms on the second floor. Screened-in porch and southerly facing, full walk out basement with laundry. Plenty of lawn space in the front and backyards. $229,000
Become a part of the Sprucewold community when you purchase this newly built twostory cape with drive in one car garage. Two first floor bedrooms, unfinished upstairs to finish to your desire. Enjoy the many walking paths from this quiet and sunny lot. Use as your seasonal or year round home. $249,000
HARPSWELL WATERFRONT
Elegant, 10-room shorefront home, 10 acres with extra home sites, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, gourmet kitchen with Sub-Zero drawers and refrigerator, lovely granite hearth and mantel at the living room fireplace, plaster walls, crown molding. Superb craftsmanship and amenities throughout; many built-ins and extras, large bonus room over the garage, covered mahogany decks front and back. Beautifully landscaped; mature oaks line the shorefront. Extra heated garage/greenhouse. Includes large dock, mooring and much more. $1,799,000. Call Helen Lord at (207) 729-9912 or (207) 353-6878
Lord Real Estate, LLC 177 Pleasant St. Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 729-9912 or 800-405-0959 www.lordrealestate.net
MaineProperties.com
Jordan Farm Estates
Exceptional Building Lot in the midst of private woods, fields & streams. 6 Acres abutting 10+ Acres of preserved land. Private, yet convenient! Offered at $249,900. Cumberland
Designer detailed Cape near the Gorham Golf Club. Updated kitchen with travertine backsplash, granite counters & island, remodeled master bath w/ marble, new windows, indoor spa and in-ground pool. Bright, sunny & very private! You'll be impressed! Offered at $374,900. Gorham
3 –
Cape Elizabeth Windham
Attractive 3 Bdrm, 2 Bath Cape in wonderful neighborhood. 1344 SF, 2 Car Garage & nice yard. Offered at $225,000.
Nobleboro—This is a summer paradise—two cottages, sandy beach, docks, privacy, all on the water’s edge. One cottage with 3 bedrooms, sun porch, dining area, and garage on a wooded, landscaped lot surrounded on three sides by water. Other cottage has 2 bedrooms and sits on the rocky edge of the water. Both cottages are steps from the water and have large backyards for summer activities. $850,000
Jefferson - Truly a beautiful piece of Maine–19.3 acres of land with 770' of waterfront on a quiet and peaceful pond! $324,000
open kitchen, living and dining area, a formal living and dining room, 2-car garage and a fabulous view of Damar$250,000
Waldoboro—Enjoy country living on 53+ acres in this center chimney cape with ell. 4 fire places, structually sound, updated electrical & plumbing, add your cosmetics. Situated on a knoll 400’ back from the road. Minutes from Augusta, the coast and Damariscotta Lake. $ 274,000
Windsor - This 44+/acre parcel includes 20 acres of open field. Sitting on this parcel of land is a privately located 16'x60' Maple Leaf single-wide home for you to live in while building your rural 164,000
Pittston - What a beautiful lot bordered on two sides by the Eastern River located in a real Maine rural village within walking distance of the general store. A well-maintained 1830s cape includes 2 chimneys, deck, porch, garage, with 4 acres of open backyard. $174,500
Jefferson—This is a spectacular home in Great Bay on Damariscotta Lake in Jefferson. This house has 4 bedrooms, loft, spacious walk-in closet, skylights, three-season sun room, deck with builtin gas grill, large dock, oversized garage, generator,centralairconditioning,propane fireplace, wood burning stove, stainless steelappliances,doubleovens,microwave, granite countertops, and security system. House is located on a dead end private road and is tucked away on a beautifully landscaped sunny lot complete with outdoor wet bar and fire pit. $765,000.
Jefferson—Build your home on this southwesterly facing very private lot. Enjoy 3.945 acres and 282 feet of waterfront on Clary Lake. $ 199,000
Pristine meadows running from Newbury Neck to 292' of deepwater pebble beach on Union Bay. Five exceptional acres enjoy outstanding views over cool open ocean to the mountains of Acadia. Now offered at $650,000.
OVERLOOKING MOUNTAINS, LAKE & SEA
Acadian Oak
Homesites with 12 acres held in preserve for parkland with walking paths. Unique wooded setting offering breathtaking panoramic views of scenic rural landscape and the island dotted coastal waters. A quickly vanishing opportunity… Prices starting at $65,000.
A T T HE L AKE
Surry-Toddy Pond
Five acres of land on the crystal clear fishing waters of Toddy Pond. A lovely elevated location on the eastern shore for spectacular sunsets and views of the beloved Blue Hill Mountain. Now offered at $275,000.
IN THE REACH
Little Deer Isle-Eggemoggin Reach
Thirty acres of nicely wooded land with 531' of granite shore frontage on beautiful Eggemoggin Reach, one of the best known sailing lanes on the East Coast! Enjoy constant views of sailing vessels and sea life. Small interspersed beach and deepwater moorage.
Beautifully renovated & maintained classic brick colonial offers three bedrooms, gracious master suite w/ private bath, newer kitchen, rare 2 bay attached garage & much more. Quiet, just off the cove location. $549,500 www.94bayviewdr.com
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This gracious water front estate offers panoramic city skyline & water views and a classic yet updated & modern living experience – you won’t be disappointed. A rare find this close to in-town. $1.24 www.420baxterblvd.com
“Honest. Realistic. Supportive. Tom listened, spent time educating
the comparable homes and options, and was realistic about what I could expect. His team worked diligently to articulate the key selling points of my home
Our Customer’s satisfaction is the top of our list So please visit the Harbor so we may assist!
Boothbay Harbor FRAMERS is more than just framing. Unusual, Unique and FUN... is where we are aiming!
Gallery by the Reversing Falls
Hierogl phs
In the summer of 1975 Gary Silvernail took a green dump in the woods. There were five of us kids, and we’d walked all morning. Andy, Mark, David, Gary, and me. We’d been by the Wheldon’s horses and fed them hay and a Marathon bar, and we’d gone up to where we used to have a fort made out of chicken wire and Mad magazine covers, and it looked like we were on our way to the water tower. Then this happened.
We all stopped our hike and walked back to look at it. Time stood still. There were distant sounds of traffic and people and civilization, but we were apart from that, deep in the forest, gathered, staring at what lay in the leaves. It was a moment none of us would forget.
We knew he had problems, but that was the first time it was obvious there was something deeply wrong inside Gary Silvernail. My best friend David looked down at the mint-green items, almost too massive to have come from one Silvernail, and speculated that it probably happened because Gary ate a lot of salad.
Gary was hovering nearby, hyperactive, ranting in his combination of English and gibberish, which he said was Egyptian. It sounded like gibberish. Lots of “arram”s and “mahalla”s.
Gary Silvernail claimed he knew how to read and write in Egyptian hieroglyphs, and he made a big deal out of sphinxes. He claimed to love Hitler. He claimed his dad had been the personal poacher for the president of Russia, or the premier or whatever. He claimed to own a real Nazi helmet taken off a dead German in WWII. He stuck by these stories even when his big, mean brothers weren’t around. In fact, he’d been lecturing us about hieroglyphs just minutes before he presented us with this lime-colored duker. He’d been going on and on about cats and pyramids and we’d been trying to figure out how to get rid of him. Maybe we’d make him think we were hiking to the mall but at the main road we’d run in the opposite direction and then we’d go to the water tower by ourselves.
But now Gary strutted proudly around us, bragging that yes, this was his shit, and yes, it was green, and he could lay plenty more if he wanted, and then he said some other stuff you couldn’t understand. “Mahallah rama” and
some cluck-clucks.
Andy wondered aloud if some adult had left it there–maybe Gary was just claiming this was his work. Gary angrily denied that. It was too fresh, he said. Look at it. Thinking back, I remembered Gary had been lagging behind. He’d had plenty of time to lay some cable here. It made terrible sense.
“It’s fake,” David said, but he knew it wasn’t.
“It’s food coloring,” Mark said, but it didn’t look like food coloring.
I asked Gary how the hell he’d done it. “How the hell did you do it?”
“It’s just me,” he said gleefully.
“Did it hurt?” I asked.
“I feel great!”
“What did you eat today?”
“Nothing!”
Mark poked it one last time with a branch and said, “Y’know what probably happened–he’s probably got a staph infection.” Mark wanted to be a vet, so he knew a lot about medicine.
“I wanna go,” David whined, so after another moment, we did.
We walked in silence, and I know we were all thinking about it. Gary was up ahead now, marching in exaggerated goose-steps.
“How long does it takes to learn Egyptian?” I asked Andy.
“A long time.”
“Nazz-eye,” David said, throwing a rock toward Gary.
“Nazi,” Andy corrected.
I watched Gary, who was almost to the road up there. I watched the way he dedicated himself to each upward lift of each goose-step.
“But all that stuff he says, that could be Egyptian.”
“Yeah, and I’m the Pope,” Andy snorted. Gary ran off fast, and I couldn’t see him anymore. “He said he didn’t eat salad,” I said. “He said he didn’t eat anything.”
“Hitler lies!” David yelled, and Andy and Mark laughed at that.
“I ate cereal this morning,” I said. “And orange juice, and I had a banana. What did you have?”
“Eggos. And Tang,” Andy said.
“So maybe Gary just had salad this morning. Just salad.”
“No.”
“Or nothing. Or maybe he’s dying.”
“That’s not very likely,” Andy said. Andy was the voice of reason. “He just loves to be a Nazi. He’s weird.”
“But maybe he really does know Egyptian,” I said. “Maybe his parents really are different. And do different stuff.”
“Different like what?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Bad.”
“Prove it,” David said.
“Yeah,” Andy said to me. “Prove it.”
But I didn’t have to prove it, I thought. The proof was right there on the ground.
Gary hadn’t eaten breakfast. Not like I thought of breakfast, anyway. All he ate was spinach or radioactivity, something terrible with phlegm. His house, where I’d lost a marble down the bathroom sink, where we’d played with the car dashboard, that house was a strange land now. I couldn’t even picture the inside of it–his brothers, his parents, Gary–all in there together. I couldn’t even see it in my mind. All I could see was that olive proof. It was proof that even when I’d been in that house I hadn’t seen it, really.
And if I didn’t know Gary, I didn’t know Andy, or David, or Mark.
At the road we stopped. Gary was across it, into the other woods, yelling, “Hey! I’m
Green Lantern!”
The other guys were turning up the road. “He won’t even know it,” Andy whispered. I saw Gary in the distance, his legs kicking weeds with each goose-step. “I’m Greeeeeeen Lantern! Cluck-cluck, anung.”
“Run,” Andy said without moving. Andy, David, and Mark waited. I knew them. I definitely knew those guys.
Cluck-cluck, anung. That was 100-percent Egyptian, that’s what that was. Straight from Cairo. And yes, Gary Silvernail did love Hitler. The true son of Russia’s greatest poacher loved Hitler, and somewhere in that house was a rusted steel helmet with a Russian bullet-hole in one side.
No doubt about it.
But he was not Green Lantern.
So we ran and I yelled something like “You are not Green Lantern!” and later, the wind at our backs, we spit off the top of the water tower. n
Fall Into Love!
Doug Bost is working on a collection of stories called Paper Boy He lives in New York City.
live at Five CoNCert at moNumeNt square iN portlaND, from left: 1. Clare smith, talia Kaye 2. Charles & Jen marines
equest’s 12tH aNNualCowBoY Ball at spriNg CreeK Farm iN lYmaN, from left: 1. angie Helton , sharon rose 2. Bill spencer, sarah armentrout 3. Jenna oelschlegel,
DouBle Cross voDKa eveNt at pearl iN portlaND, from left: 1. roxane Houf, melisa sawyer, Derek Beckelman 2. Jeff Johnson, Jenni Keeif, Diana arnold, Darren phinney
3. Christopher Betjemann, Caron Bryan
4. malcom loyd, eric Dexter, angela Dexter
5. Cathryn Hoyt, Colleen Davis 6. erin ovalle, Devin wilson 7. will Johnson, Diane Newman
8. Jed rathband, steve pogson, sean wilkinson, gregg ritter
