Wheeler Mansion to host haunted house

By DOMENIC POLI

You’ve possibly known a haunted house to be held in a school or an armory. But how about one inside a 15,000-square-foot Gilded Age brick mansion built for a sewing machine millionaire’s wife and eventually owned by a Masonic sisterhood called the...

Listening with his camera: The late photographer Don Hunstein captured a golden age of music 

By STEVE PFARRER

It’s arguably one of the most iconic album covers of all time, certainly in the folk and pop world: a young Bob Dylan, on the cusp of stardom, walks down a slushy street in Greenwich Village in New York City, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched...

A second wind: Peter Knapp tackles life changes and crises through his art

By STEVE PFARRER

Back when he was a student in the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the late 1960s/early 1970s, Peter Knapp imagined he might have a career as an artist. He studied woodcuts, drawing and painting and, after graduating in 1972, had a studio for...

Finding joy in art: New exhibit at Augusta Savage Gallery celebrates the Black community

By STEVE PFARRER

Like millions upon millions of people across the world, Eesha Suntai was horrified by the murder in May 2020 of George Floyd, who died after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes...

Photographer Terri Cappucci salvages glass-plate negatives from another era

By DIANE BRONCACCIO

In February 2020, documentary photographer and photo preservationist Terri Sevene Cappucci of Turners Falls was winnowing down decades of photographic materials in her scrupulously clean studio when she was offered about 4,000 glass-plate negatives...

Burn, scrape and shape: Dugout canoe to be built at Pocumtuck Festival

By ANITA FRITZ

The first step to creating a mishoon, or dugout canoe, is to find the right tree.That’s exactly what organizers of the 6th annual Pocumtuck Homelands Festival have done, and the weekend celebration will highlight a traditional mishoon of the...

Where no band has gone before

Being in a band is often described as similar to being in a marriage. It’s a comparison that makes sense because, like a marriage, keeping a band together can be quite challenging.That’s why, when you hear of a band celebrating its 50th anniversary,...

Leverett man puts artistic spin on nature’s wonders

By MELINA BOURDEAU

As majestic as the feathered creatures they depict, Leverett resident Macaylla Silver’s paintings draw the viewer to stare into the eyes of birds.Since 2015, Silver has watched, photographed and painted various breeds of birds, with each painting...

One-of-a-kind glass planets keep trade fresh for glass artist Josh Simpson

By DIANE BRONCACCIO

In 1981, glass artist Josh Simpson threw a few teaspoons of cobalt, copper, silver and zinc into a crucible of molten glass, and came out with an explosion of swirling reds, blues and greens that closely resembled a NASA photograph of the Crab Nebula,...

Elvis tribute artist returns to Greenfield

By SHERYL HUNTER

When is Elvis coming back to Greenfield?    That’s a question I’ve heard more than once from readers of this column, and they aren’t referring to dead Elvis sightings in the area. Instead, they are wondering about Greenfield native Travis LeDoyt who...

Sounds Local: Paula Cole returns to her roots

By SHERYL HUNTER

In the mid ’90s songs like “Where Have all the Cowboys Gone?” and “I Don’t Want to Wait” sent singer-songwriter Paula Cole soaring to the top of the charts. Both songs are off her 1996 album, “This Fire,” a work that garnered seven Grammy nominations,...

Guatemalan art in Turners

The culture of the Americans is being celebrated in Turners Falls and Greenfield this month during an event on migration.“Migration — Connecting through Art and Culture of the Americas” started with Indigenous Peoples Day in Turners Falls on Oct....

Tap dance finds home in Library of Congress

By JENNA CARERI

Tap dance finds home in Library of Congress- Tap dance isn’t just for show anymore. Now it has found a home in the Library of Congress.Constance Valis Hill, a Five College professor of dance at Hampshire College in Amherst and an accomplished tapper and dance historian, recently donated a...