Category: Art & Theater

Concord Arts Market wraps Arts in the Park season

The other day someone asked Jessica Livingston if she planned weddings. “Absolutely not,” was her smiling reply. However, as leader of the Concord Arts Market, Livingston achieves something close to it when, before each event, she maps out where a gathering of art vendors will share space.

It’s something she’ll do Oct. 10 in Rollins Park, at the season-ending Arts in the Park.

“I know all of the artists, but they don’t necessarily know each other; I know who’d be a good fit,” she said recently. “Sometimes I’ll do the layout and I’ll be like, ‘Oh, I bet they’re going to really hit it off.’ Then I look forward to the end when I find out that they became best friends.”

Livingston took the reins at Concord Arts Market in the fall of 2024, after years of selling there.

Like any good reception planner, Livingston juggles more than personalities. Setup times are staggered, so morning doesn’t become a traffic jam. She also ensures soap makers aren’t in direct sunlight, and that older vendors have a shorter walk to their booth.

“I enjoy doing it,” she said, adding, “Sometimes it’s challenging.”

Though not all the crafty wares are handmade, everything must be created by vendors in some way, from pottery to digital art. Livingston tries to book diverse vendors and plan for contingencies. When, say, several potters sign up, she makes sure their styles differ and they’re spaced apart.

Liz McBride of Elm Art, Livingston’s elementary school art teacher and always Mrs. McBride, is known for goddess mugs shaped like a woman’s body. McBride also makes earrings from clay scraps. In a similar vein, Emerson Street Pottery offers feminist pieces. “They’re a little irreverent but really popular,” Livingston said.

Danbury Woodworking will offer handmade wine bottle holders and seasonally appropriate wooden pumpkins. At an early market his booth neighbor, a maker of wooden jewelry, became one of his customers. Freddie’s Toy Box has feline toys and a cat with an Instagram account (@fred.e.meowcury) lounging on the merch table.

Some pairings have become fixtures.

Livingston points to Saad Hindal, an Iraqi-born painter whose whimsical scenes of Concord have made him a local icon, and painter Jeff Newman.

“I always put them next to each other, because they have such good synergy,” she said. “They’ll do paintings of each other … it just creates a nice little energy for the market.”

It’s connections like that, more than any single moment, that are most satisfying for Livingston. “Friendships and the opportunity to be part of a community that people love,” she said, adding she does love the work. “It’s not a bad day if you have to sit out in a sunny park all afternoon on a Saturday. There are worse jobs.”

As someone who began as a vendor, Livingston makes a point of bringing new artists into the fold. First-timers get their initial booth free, and newbies frequently end up nearby.

“At my first market, I had no idea what I was doing,” she recalled. “So I usually put them next to me so that I can help them out throughout the day.”

Music and charity are also part of the final market. Celtic band Cara will play, and the New Hampshire Immigrant Mutual Aid Fund will sell donated handmade goods to raise money for legal help for immigrants facing court dates. Livingston will also collect food and snack donations to distribute where they’re needed.

Finally, a group of South End neighbors who treat Rollins Park as a sanctuary will lead a session on putting a garden to bed and saving seeds for flowers to feed bees and butterflies when spring comes. The group had struggled to get permission to gather in the park, so Livingston invited them to join the market under its existing permits.

The market runs rain or shine, mostly. Her first solo Arts in the Park in 2025 was beset by flooding downpours, and Livingston nearly threw in the towel. She powered through, though, also learning to respect genuine weather threats like high winds or lightning. “Knock on wood, it’s going to be beautiful,” she said.

Arts in the Park
When: Saturday, Oct. 10, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Where: Rollins Park, Concord (parking at 33 Bow St.)
More: concordartsmarket.org

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Pepe Mar makes his New England debut at the Currier

When Pepe Mar toured the Currier Museum of Art’s galleries last summer, he was looking out for a spark. He found it inside a piece with two tiny cabinet-like doors from the museum’s collection, the 33rd work from Dream Houses, Louise Nevelson’s series of roughly 37 human-sized wooden sculptures.

“I was like, oh my God, this is what I want the exhibition to be,” Mar said in a recent Zoom interview. “The idea of this … container with windows, some sort of vault — it had so many different things that inspired me.”

The result is what the Currier’s website describes as “a phantasmagorical world.” “Pepe Mar: Dream House” opens on Thursday, Oct. 1, with an exclusive evening reception. It’s the first New England presentation for the Mexico-born, Miami-based artist, whose assemblage work blends thrift-store finds, queer culture, science fiction and textiles.

Various Currier collection pieces will share the galleries in aesthetic conversation with Mar’s work, like a gilded rococo Ormolu clock, a Piranesi table and iridescent Tiffany glass. There will also be furniture upholstered in Mar-designed fabric. Breaking with usual protocol, guests can plop down upon these works of art.

The exhibition runs through February, and Mar imagines it as a refuge — hence the invitation to sit on his beautiful chairs.

“You have this very strong winter,” he explained. “I thought this could be somewhere people can come and congregate, hang out, visit multiple times and discover different things.”

Currier curator Anastasia Kinigopoulo had the same idea. “I knew that this was going to be a winter show, a little oasis in a very snowy time of the year,” she said during the same Zoom discussion, adding, “Who doesn’t like to sit in a chair in a museum? It’s like a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

With a background in American decorative arts, Kinigopoulo welcomed the chance to combine a modern aesthetic with centuries-old objects, pointing to the Ormolu clock as a prime example.

“There’s angels, flourishes and gold,” she said. “Everything looks like it’s moving, even though it’s not.”

A Hans Hofmann painting with pooled blocks of color provided Mar with a spark for an exhibition in Kansas City, an influence reflected in the Currier show’s striking carpet.

“It’s like you pour all this orange into the space, so [it] becomes almost like a painting,” he said. “I’m about mixing … everything is an inspiration for me.”

The collection objects also trace Mar’s own evolution. Tired of working only on paper, he began buying vases and glassware in thrift stores, drawn to shapes he spent years cutting out of decorative-arts books. For “Dream House,” he got what he called “the ultimate scavenger hunt” with a trip into the Currier’s vault in search of those same objects.

A box collage that Mar spent two years making nods to Joseph Cornell, but louder.

“With Joseph Cornell, you look into a window,” he said. “This collage is coming at you.” The plexiglass boxes that encase much of his work began as protection for fragile paper collages. Now he color-matches each box to its artwork, making it part of the design.

The biggest news is a debut. Mindful of New Hampshire’s textile history, Mar turned to the Taller Mexicano de Gobelinos in Guadalajara, which he had visited years ago. With weavers there, he translated a 2006 work from the start of his collage practice into a style that’s provisioned French monarchy for hundreds of years.

The tapestry reached his Miami studio just days before the interview. No one else has seen it, and Kinigopoulo is delighted to unveil it at the Currier. She explained that the Gobelinos process produces hues impossible any other way, blending several colors into each weft thread. “It’s like painting with fiber,” she said.

The exhibition is bilingual, and it also launches a catalog featuring essays by Kinigopoulo and Italy-based decorative arts scholar Christian Larsen. The Currier typically does this only for big shows, to help them carry on.

“Exhibitions end,” Kinigopoulo said. “Books keep that memory and that scholarship alive.”

Mar hopes newcomers leave the way young visitors did after his 15-year survey in 2023 at the Tampa Museum of Art. Many who attended that exhibition messaged him afterward. “It’s about feeling something,” he said. “I want you to enjoy that moment … feel embellished by all of it. That’s the goal.”

“Pepe Mar: Dream House” Reception
Where: Currier Museum of Art, 150 Ash St., Manchester
When: Thursday, Oct. 1, 6 p.m.
Tickets: $25, $10 for members, currier.org
Opens to the public Oct. 2, continuing Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Feb. 21, 2027.

Featured photo: Pepe Mar. Photo by Martina Tuaty.

Sci-fi series Resonance develops in Derry

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

A few weeks ago, New London Barn Playhouse presented a four-day run of Wakeman, the first staging of a musical about a woman who presents as a man to fight in the Civil War. Audience response to the powerful work seemed to promise that it wouldn’t be the last. One imagines a future Tony acceptance speech thanking New Hampshire for giving it a chance.

An hour’s drive away in Derry, another potential Granite State creative triumph is quietly taking shape.

The unassuming exterior of StudioLab, in an industrial park near Tupelo Music Hall, masks the wizardry going on inside. It includes LED panel walls that use the same kind of technology Lucasfilm popularized for The Mandalorian, with LiDAR renderings that create photorealistic sets.

It’s where Rob Livie, an Emmy-winning veteran of corporate video and motion graphics, is building Resonance, a 1980s-set science-fiction series. Born from memories of living in the shadow of the Cold War, it’s something he’s imagined since his days as a teenager drawing comic books with apocalypse-themed mushroom clouds.

Last year, Livie launched Human Originals, a story studio and production company “dedicated to creating original worlds and characters that resonate on a deeper level,” beginning with Resonance. Livie’s leap of faith meant leaving Connection, Inc., the company he’d worked for since 2017, and setting up shop in StudioLab, with its state-of-the-art equipment.

He’d connected with the facility during his time providing services to Events United, a production company owned by Tim Messina, who operates StudioLab. When Livie pitched Messina his long-held idea, he didn’t hire him outright but offered whatever help he could: studio space, crew, and a network built over years in corporate production work.

A LiDAR-generated warehouse, with windows looking out at a gritty New York City street, opens the film. Livie has shot the first 10 minutes. “A proof of concept,” he called it. “We’re using this to try to find a champion for the project, whether that’s an executive producer, a showrunner, or an actor. Someone that helps create a snowball effect.”

That footage got a public airing at the recent Granite State Comicon, where organizer Chris Proulx urged Livie to “show people what’s being done here in New Hampshire.” The screening was followed by a live Q&A with the mostly local cast and crew. The latter is a crucial element of Resonance.

Livie is emphatic about using a Granite State cast, though some hail from the region, like the Springfield, Mass., actor on screen when the film opens. The net’s been widened when necessary. For example, James Hilliard is a California-based actor and former Connection colleague of Livie’s who also emceed the Comicon panel.

The show’s premise leans hard into Cold War-era anxiety as well as New Hampshire’s own strange corner of UFO lore. Its inciting incident is pegged to Sept. 26, 1983, the actual date a false alarm on a Soviet missile-defense system nearly triggered a retaliatory nuclear strike. It was averted only because the officer on duty didn’t believe the data.

In Resonance, that glitch becomes the moment the aliens crash to Earth. While Area 51 exists in the show’s mythology, it is used for misdirection; the actual black ops site is a fictional Area 52, located in New Hampshire. It’s a wink at the state’s own abduction lore, rooted in the 1961 Betty and Barney Hill case near Exeter.

A shelf in Livie’s office has comic books and a primitive 8mm movie camera he used to make stop-action animation as a teenager. He plans to shoot a future episode entirely on period-appropriate equipment like this, aiming for a lived-in era feel rather than pastiche. “I don’t want to yell that it’s the ’80s,” he said. “I just want to show it.”

Livie’s ambitions carry well past the screen. He’s sketched out an interactive extension of his story, with walkable, LED-enhanced sets. There’s also a theme-park vision of Resonance that’s spread across five locations in New Hampshire and tied to the show’s five alien worlds.

What’s next is the unglamorous, essential work of packaging: a finished script, a pitch deck, a show bible and an informal advisory network. There’s also a Keene-based CEO helping with the business plan and veteran line producers helping him suss out a budget, all assembled mostly over email.

It’s the stage where most independent projects quietly die for lack of know-how. Whether Resonance breaks through is an open question. But after decades spent, as Livie puts it, “adjacent to Hollywood, but not within Hollywood,” he has a 10-minute opening and a local team that believes in it, along with a story that starts, as he envisioned, close to home.

Made in New Hampshire
Follow the progress of Resonance at humanoriginals.com

Featured photo: Granite State Comicon. Courtesy photo.

At 24th Granite State Comicon, downtown’s role grows

Chris Proulx is already planning next year’s Granite State Comicon, even though this year’s doors haven’t opened yet.

“It’s a lot of work, and sometimes a lot of crazy coordinating,” Proulx, who opened Double Midnight Comics in 2003 and held the inaugural Granitecon that year as a one-room comic book show, said in a recent Zoom interview.

It’s grown into its 24th edition, happening in Manchester Sept. 18 through Sept. 20 at the DoubleTree Hotel and SNHU Arena. With next year marking the event’s 25th anniversary, Proulx is already promising “some big things.” This year’s edition leans into an idea that’s been building since the state’s biggest arena joined the fun three years ago.

“We’ve kind of been working on making Manchester the third venue,” Proulx said. “How do we keep the fun going while we can expand things?” The answer has been letting downtown businesses in on the action. What started with Diz’s throwing a themed night a few years back has grown into more after-hours programming than ever for the event.

There’s a comedy show at Harpoon Brewery (covered elsewhere in this edition), a drag night at Hop Knot, cartoon-themed karaoke at the Shaskeen and crafting at Make It Pop Studios. It’s capped by the new Dirty Shirley Pub Crawl, organized by Bookery and built around the buzzy Dungeon Crawler Carl franchise.

Organizers are also coordinating with the Amherst Street Arts Festival.

“We want our event to raise all ships,” Proulx said.

Growth brings logistical demands. As food trucks will line the hotel, organizers asked city officials about closing part of Pleasant Street. Police couldn’t shut the block down — “it’s one of the busiest times downtown,” Proulx was told — but accommodations were promised and will be a big help.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles remains an annual fixture.

Kevin Eastman, who created the comic with Peter Laird, is on a Saturday Mighty Mutanimals panel, after a Q&A with cast members from the 1990 film Kevin Clash (puppeteer for Master Splinter) and James Saito (Shredder). All weekend long in the gaming lounge, a new TMNT tabletop RPG is showcased.

Along with the half-shell heroes, there’s more homegrown talent in the spotlight this year.

Sci-fi streaming series Resonance, currently being produced at StudioLab in Derry, will debut its first 10 minutes at a panel that includes the all-local cast and crew in a Q&A. Proulx heard about the project through SNHU and urged director Rob Livie to attend GraniteCon.

“Show people what is being done here in New Hampshire,” he told him. “It’ll kind of blow your mind.”

For Livie, a television and digital media veteran who recently relocated to Manchester after he and his wife became empty nesters, it’s a dream project.

“Resonance is a story I’ve wanted to tell since I was a kid,” he wrote in an email. “An epic ’80s sci-fi adventure about five people from very different worlds who come to Earth hoping it holds the key to saving their own.”

Its central theme, he continued, “is this: ‘You are not my enemy.’” Another local effort is an indie animated series, Player vs. Trinity. A panel focuses on how the project developed from an idea to a YouTube premiere. It will offer insider guidance for anyone looking to make their own mark on the industry.

Celebrity panels this year include “Queen of the Nerds” Felicia Day and actor Lou Diamond Phillips, known for La Bamba and Young Guns. Photo ops and autographs can be booked at a price set by each guest’s team. While selfies are free, demand is intense. Last year, voice actor Roger Clark’s line grew so long that a queue system had to be built on the fly.

The weekend after GraniteCon, the national Local Comic Shop Day event happens, at Double Midnight and other locations, including Jetpack Comics in Rochester. The event, once modeled with a nod to Record Store Day and its exclusive releases, is shifting its identity toward community over collectibles, Proulx said.

“It’s more about how to get people in the shop for their first time and show off everything that we do.”

Granite State Comicon
When: Friday, Sept. 18, 3-8 p.m.; Saturday, Sept. 19, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday, Sept. 20, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Where: Downtown Manchester, including DoubleTree by Hilton (700 Elm St.) and SNHU Arena (555 Elm St.)
Tickets: $21-$157 at granitecon.com

Featured photo: Granite State Comicon. Courtesy photo.