Category: Art & Theater

Sculpture symposium returns to Nashua

Most art exhibitions focus on already completed works, but the City of Nashua is unique in hosting an event that’s about watching art come to life, from raw materials to finished pieces. The Nashua International Sculpture Symposium (NISS) happens for three weeks in May in and around a converted mill building.

Every spring, four sculptors from around the world are invited to participate. This year’s include Valerie Funk, who lives and works in Berlin, Germany, Danaë LeBlond-Joris from France, South Korean native Yunmi Lee, who’s exhibited in Italy as well as her home country, and U.S.-born Casey Schachner, who teaches art at Georgia Southern University.

Now in its 18th year, the event hews to a motto of “art as everyday living,” with a legacy of 52 different public art works in Nashua’s downtown, schools, parks, neighborhoods and walking trails. And it’s truly community-wide; the visiting artists are housed by area families and supported by local businesses and organizations.

NISS President Gail Moriarty is a metalsmith who first got involved by hosting the symposium in a building next to the Picker. In 2016 she and her partner purchased the Pine Street location and launched Picker Artists’ and Design Studio. Moving the symposium there made sense, both practically and aesthetically.

The location and layout of the studio lent it to showcasing the evolution of public art, Moriarty said by phone recently.

“It’s a busy street, and we have sculptors working. It’s a long mill building, so they work on the side of the building right next to the streets; everybody can see them,” she said, adding, “It’s a public, community-driven event.”

While there are only four host families, others get involved by hosting meals with the sculptors. People sign up for lunch or dinner, and bring enough for themselves and the artists. Their reward is a lot of one-on-one time to learn about the work and where the creators come from.

“You sit and enjoy your meal with them, which is private time that you get to spend with these international sculptors; it’s pretty popular,” Moriarty continued. “We love it because we show them the room, we set them up, we close the door, and they have that whole time with the sculptors. No one else is bugging them.”

While the people of Nashua love the event, Moriarty said it’s the sculptors themselves who are the biggest fans. “These are professionals, who travel the world doing sculpture symposiums,” who are more than happy to receive living expenses and a stipend at NISS. “I get requests all year long — when’s it happening, can I apply?”

Moriarty recalled going to breakfast with a sculptor after an installation. Upon learning what most at her level in the art world regularly earn for their work, she asked her why she wanted to come to NISS.

“‘Because of the people, because of your respect for us guys and the way everybody talks about you; all we hear is great things, how much fun it is and how the people are so cool … we just needed to be a part of it,’” Moriarty recalled being told. “They come from Israel and Ukraine and Iran, all these places, and then they go back home to what is going on in their country. But here they had three weeks of fun, and tons of food and lots of people and hugs.”

This year’s theme is “In The Making,” chosen for the unfolding nature of NISS.

“You never know what you’re going to get,” Moriarty said. “The sculptors … can do whatever they want, and it’s different every single day, different every single year. It’s very unique. To watch these people take these big pieces of stone and cull them into something that’s beautiful in just three weeks is just extraordinary.”

18th Annual Nashua International Sculpture Symposium
When: May 8 through May 31
Where: The Picker Artists’ Studios, 3 Pine St., Nashua
Opening ceremony May 8 at 5:30 p.m., closing ceremony May 31 at 1 p.m. (begins at Picker and moves around the city)

Featured photo: Clockwise from top left, sculptors Casey Schachner, Danaë LeBlond-Joris, Yunmi Lee and Valerie Funk (Courtesy photos).

Area stores participate in annual event

On May 4, 2002, Free Comic Book Day was launched to coincide with the premiere of the initial movie in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. The choice seemed fated when the play on words “May the Fourth be with you” gained popularity a few years later among Star Wars fans, around the time Disney acquired the franchise.

At the inaugural event, more than two million Spider-man, Star Wars, Tomb Raider and Justice League comics were given away. This year, there are 38 official titles, including Post Malone’s debut comic book and one based on the hit Netflix series Black Mirror. Ten different New Hampshire locations are participating.

Jetpack Comics

When Ralph DiBernardo opened his Rochester store in the late 2000s, he was quick to participate. First, he set up a small tent in the parking lot and a few hundred people showed up. It grew to a circus tent the next year, drawing a crowd of over 1,000. These days, DiBernardo said by phone recently, it’s city-wide.

“It takes place across 2 square miles; there are 20-plus businesses, a convention hall,” he said. “It’s a mini comic-con.”

However, after last year, he decided to scale back, worn down by months of planning and out of pocket costs. Fortunately, the Rochester Opera House stepped up. They offered support through activities like a Star Wars-themed spoof of Annie, which opens the same weekend as Free Comic Book Day, and an outdoor show by Kiss tribute band Hotter Than Hell. Anthony Ejarque, Executive Producer of the Opera House, led the handoff effort. “This event has such strong community support,” he said by phone recently, adding that there are literacy events at the library, and that The DaVinci Code author Dan Brown is donating some of his children’s literature. “He’s not able to attend, but we’re excited to get him on board.”

Double Midnight Comics

Two comic book fan brothers and their best friend from high school launched Double Midnight Comics in Manchester a few months after the first Free Comic Book Day in 2002. Originally located in Maple Valley Plaza, the store moved in 2023 to The Factory on Willow Street. It has a second store in Concord, which opened in 2013.

Double Midnight always goes big on Free Comic Book Day. The store launched Granite State Comicon in 2003, and Free Comic Book Day is a smaller version of that fall event. There are movie cars, a cosplay contest, food trucks, and the event space behind the store has vendor booths, including several local creators.

“You get to see people from the region that are making comics; it’s basically a chance to meet and discover some new talents,” Chris Proulx, Double Midnight co-owner, said by phone recently. There’s also live music from The Clemenzi Crusaders, a father and son nerd rock duo. “They do things like rock up the theme from Star Wars or The Simpsons.”

Proulx boasts that everyone who attends can count on going home with a big stack of comics, and he enjoys seeing fans, both new and old, experience Free Comic Book Day.

“It’s always fun to introduce people to comic books for the first time or have somebody that might be a past reader come back and rediscover comics,” he said. “And there are people that bring their friends and family and kind of introduce them to comics. So it’s a great, fun day.”

Merrymac Games & Comics

The Merrimack store will welcome a few creator guests to this year’s event, including Perhapanauts author Craig Rousseau, who’s worked on titles such as Young Hellboy, Harley Quinn and Batman Beyond. Also appearing is Joseph Schmalke, a comics creator, writer and illustrator. Schmalke is the publisher of the Midnight Factory comic line and author of Murder Hobo, One Last Trick and Prophets of Doom.

Stairway to Heaven Comics

Also hosting local creators is Stairway to Heaven Comics in Newington. The panel includes illustrator and graphic artist Jesse Lundberg, Jake Allen, who worked on Kings and Canvas, and Jeff Lorentz, whose credits include Skin of My Teeth and My Coworker is a Vampire.

Stairway to Heaven owner Brad Gile’s favorite thing about the annual event is seeing a well-blended crowd take in the creative pulse, the excitement of graphic art and storytelling.

“We get so many different types of people in here,” he said. “Folks that typically are not as interested in comics will come in and get excited meeting talented local creators. And there are a lot of really great comics for kids. It’s exciting to see all the happy kids come in and walk away with some really cool free comics.”

Free Comic Book Day
When: Saturday, May 3
Where: Various locations
More: List of free comics at freecomicbookday.com

Double Midnight Comics – dmcomics.com
252 Willow St., Manchester, 669-9636
341 Loudon Road, Concord, 715-2683

Stairway to Heaven Comics – stairwaytoheavencomics.com
109 Gosling Road, Newington, 319-6134

Merrymac Games & Comics – merrymaconline.com
550 DW Highway, Merrimack, 420-8161

Chris’s Comic Books – chriscardscomics.com
341 S. Broadway, Salem, 898-4151
919 Lafayette Road, Seabrook, 474-2283

Jetpack Comics – jetpackcomics.com
37 N. Main St., Rochester, 330-XMEN

Newbury Comics
777 S. Willow St., Manchester, 624-2842
99 Rockingham Park Blvd., Salem, 890-1380
310 DW Highway, Nashua, 888-0720

Featured photo: Post Malone’s Big Rig Comic. Courtesy image.

The Bridges of Madison County musical in Manchester

Even though it won Tonys for Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations, The Bridges of Madison County opened on Valentine’s Day in 2014 and closed in mid-May. Dr. Alan Kaplan, the founder and artistic director for the Manchester Community Theatre Players, has an inkling about why this happened and will apply his ideas in an upcoming production of the musical.

“This is a play I’ve been interested in for many years,” he said in a recent phone interview. Kaplan has read the novel, seen the Clint Eastwood-directed movie, and watched the first staging of the show in Williamstown, Mass. He even conversed with Jason Robert Brown, who wrote the Tony-winning music and lyrics.

The story centers on a fated couple and the decisions they must make when their connection becomes undeniable.

Francesca Johnson (Susan Schott) is a beautiful Italian woman who married an American GI as World War II was ending to escape her ravaged country. Twenty years later she’s preparing for a rare stretch of solitude on her Iowa farm while her family is away at the State Fair. Her reverie is interrupted when photographer Robert Kincaid (Don LaDuke) pulls into her driveway, asking for directions to a bridge he’s shooting for a National Geographic story.

The songs are varied and evocative, as good as anything to come from Broadway. “What Do You Call a Man Like That?” is an operatic waltz that perfectly captures the reticent housewife’s growing desire, while “Another Time,” an echo sung by Robert’s former wife, has a folky, Joni Mitchell feel. Sung by Francesca’s husband Bud (Dan Arlen), “Something From a Dream” is an aching ode to a marriage that, unknown to him, may be slipping from his grasp.

Though the music is powerful, it’s the story that brings power to the show. Hovering over forbidden love is the question of what might have been. In Francesca’s case, the man she left in Italy for glamor across the sea that never materialized, and for Robert, a driven nature that left little room for human connection.

For Kaplan, it was this element that attracted him most to directing The Bridges of Madison County.

“Usually with a musical, the music carries the show; the acting should be reasonable, but the music can cover it,” he said. “This is a musical where the actors have to really be on their game, and it gave me the opportunity as a director to really pull the most out of a cast in terms of acting ability.”

One of the challenges in presenting the play is conveying a sense of place and distance. Much of the action happens during phone calls between Francesca and her husband, Bud, as she struggles with her newfound love for Robert and how it might change her future. Some critics found the Broadway staging jarring.

“All the set pieces were on stage all the time,” Kaplan recalled, and juxtaposing cast members hundreds of miles apart was another problem. “You may have a bridge in the middle of a kitchen, or a refrigerator in the middle of an outdoor scene. It was confusing.”

Outdoor scenes more easy to accomplish in a movie were harder to do theatrically. So Kaplan took cues from Eastwood and placed a big screen at the rear of the stage to project scenery. A videographer was commissioned to capture locations in Iowa, and there is footage of Naples, Italy, and the cities Francesca imagined visiting in America.

The main set, Francesca’s kitchen, is on wheels and can be moved as the action demands. It’s an elaborate production for a community theater. That’s something Kaplan tries for whenever MCTP mounts a play, but it was particularly urgent in the case of this show, one so close to his heart.

“We didn’t want to just repeat something that only had a hundred performances on Broadway and then closed after four months,” he said, “I think that the reasons for it, as I mentioned, were pretty obvious. So the hope here is that we have improved on it.”

The Bridges of Madison County
When: Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through May 4
Where: MCTP Theatre at North End Montessori School, 698 Beech St., Manchester
Tickets: $20 for adults, $18 for seniors, $10 for ages 18 and under at mctp.info

Featured photo: The Bridges of Madison County. Courtesy photo.

Book recounts the roots of Manchester Airport

By Michael Witthaus

mwitthaus@hippopress.com

Charles Lindbergh’s historic solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927 was followed by a surge of interest in aviation. This so-called “Lindbergh Boom” inspired construction of a pair of runways on what’s now Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. A hangar and administrative building were added in the 1930s, and it became an Army base as World War II approached.

Today few physical traces of this history remain. Leah Dearborn, an Associate Director at Aviation Museum of New Hampshire, set out to find and document memories of Grenier Field, as the facility came to be known. Grenier Air Base: A Beacon on the Home Front was published late last year.

Dearborn will talk about her book and take questions during an April 18 appearance at the Bookery in Manchester. In a recent phone interview she shared her motivations for writing it, along with some of the fascinating things learned during her research.

“It’s an interesting era in history, and also one that’s slipping by us very quickly,” she said. “I think part of this project was driven by the urgency of some of this history. If we don’t do something about it right now, the remaining people who can tell us about it might not be able to in the near future.”

The story begins with a humorous twist: Civic rivalry is a big reason why the airfield came to be in the first place.

“Charles Lindbergh was doing a tour across the United States, and when he got to Manchester there wasn’t an airport,” Dearborn said. “So he had to skip Manchester and go to Concord. That spurred the movement for Manchester Airport to be built; I like to call it a spite airport.”

Many of those interviewed for the book were children during the war years, and their recollections were surprising. Flying was still relatively new, and accidents were frequent. In fact, American fatalities in flight training were significantly higher than those sustained in air combat.

“By 1943, there were six fatal training accidents per day,” Dearborn said.

Many crashes happened at Grenier, she continued. “Local kids would bike out to them, just out of curiosity … and they’d pull little souvenirs off the plane. Just learning about the childhood of these local kids who spent all their time at the base or around it, watching from afar, was pretty interesting.”

The base was named for Second Lieutenant Jean Grenier, a Manchester native who crashed in Utah while scouting a flight route. He was one of many Army pilots who quickly took over commercial mail delivery following the so-called Airmail Scandal in 1934. A rapid handoff of responsibilities, coupled with a brutal winter, resulted in many flying deaths.

“This was being done mainly by pilots with very limited experience, in open cockpit aircraft, in some of the worst weather in decades,” Dearborn said. “A lot of them lost their lives in the few months that this was planned, and Jean Grenier was, unfortunately, one of those.”

As Dearborn researched her book, a group of museum volunteers were engaged in reprocessing the archives. “When they found something in their effort that might connect back to what I was doing, they would leave it on my desk,” she recalled. “I’d walk in in the morning and find this stack of paper … that was really helpful.”

Among the valuable finds was a trove of newspaper clippings spanning the war’s early years to the 1950s. “Somebody at Grenier in the military was keeping tabs on the war abroad,” Dearborn said. “Anytime a New Hampshire soldier … made the news, somebody at a desk was taking a pair of scissors and cutting these out.”

At the Bookery, Dearborn will dive into favorite Grenier memories and display some photos. However, the best moments frequently happen after her presentation.

“People come with their own stories, and sometimes that’s where I get the best leads for new writing projects,” she said. “I ended up talking to a man who fought during the Battle of the Bulge for this book, and that’s exactly how I met him. I gave a talk on the history of ballooning, and a friend of his came up at the end and said, ‘You really ought to talk to this guy, he witnessed the Hindenburg fly over New England.’ Stuff like that is pretty invaluable.”

Grenier Air Base: A Beacon on the Home Front w/ author Leah Dearborn

When: Friday, April 18, 5-7 p.m.
Where: Bookery, 844 Elm St., Manchester,
Tickets: free; reserve at bookerymht.com

Featured photo: Leah Dearborn. Courtesy photo.