New Bedford Journal

11 October 2009

 

New Bedford’s Artists

 

New Bedford is teeming with visual artists of every kind – painters, sculptors, artists who work in fabric or mixed media.  You have to know where to look, or at least keep your eyes open.  Several days before New Bedford’s weekend of Open Studios, I decided to visit one studio at 88 Hatch Street in the north end.  Except when I got to this area of old brick mill buildings and walked across the parking lot in front of Number 90, set way back from the street, and looked left, there was nothing but a wall of windows that appeared to open only to dark, unoccupied remains.  Nothing indicated an ‘88’, or any entrance at all.  Other than construction going on behind, nothing but brick until you hit Joseph Aboud at the corner of Belleville.  But I looked again, and found an old freight elevator that deposited me on the 3rd floor overlooking the Acushnet River, where a Nancy Alexander designs unique handbags from collages of Cuban cigar box papers and other antique ephemera.  Her first handbags were gifts for family, but when her pieces became so popular at the New Orleans Jazz Fest, she was convinced she could make this into a business.  This conclusion, however, was reached at the same time as the life changing events of Hurricane Katrina.  Nancy had lived with her husband Neil (photographer and filmmaker) and her two children, Maya and Calder, on Tchoupitoulas in New Orleans’ warehouse district for 29 years.  After Katrina, the family relocated to the south coast of Massachusetts where Nancy recreated herself and Blue Maya Designs was born.

 

Talk about 6 degrees of separation.  Nancy and Neil have close friends on the other corner of South Prieur and General Pershing in Broadmoor where my friends, Jean Dumestre, founder of Tipitina’s and former mayor Moon Landrieu live.  Mark would be filming the annual boucherie of my friend, accordion-maker, and National Heritage Award winner Mark Savoy, where families come together smoke meats, make boudin, play music, and swap stories.   Buddy has especially enjoyed the Savoy boucheries out in Eunice.

 

We interrupt this story for an important announcement.  Last Sunday afternoon, Thom Ferreira, I and Rev. William Bradbury of Grace Episcopal Church were present as more than 25 rifles, handguns, and shotguns came off the streets as part of the Inter-Church Council’s gun turn-in. 

 

Back to New Bedford’s artists . . . I must be drawn to mill buildings, because at 21 Cove in the south end, Joyce Shutter creates the most amazing fiber sculptures.  Each sculpture, Joyce says, “is an incarnation of a breath but contains enough interplay of elements to convey the essence and balance of the whole.”  The materials she uses are temporal, transitory, once alive – handmade paper and organic found objects, which imbue the work itself with its own mortality.  Joyce showed me how she mixes paper and fiber into a pulp that shrinks and dries into a lacy, organic skin strong enough to bend steel.  One piece in particular is striking – it consists of two parallel curving shapes with barbs and spikes pointed at each other but also bound together by connecting rods – perhaps symbolizing, Joyce says, the complexity of her relationship with her sister.

 

At No. 1 Wamsutta on the waterfront, a young African American woman under the name Sassé – Wanda Hubbard – makes exotic glass beads into jewelry using a special torch and glass rods imported from Italy.

 

New Bedford is blessed with an intense and creative life that exists just below the surface of its more mundane activities.  I shamelessly encourage every member of this congregation, if you have not already done so – I’m sure many have – to become familiar with these wonderful artists and to support their work as you are able.  New Bedford will grow and flourish with their creativity in its midst. 

 

This is my New Bedford Journal for October 11th, 2009.