Award winning movie director and writer Henry Chaisson was scouring New England in 2024 to find art for his next film, “Recluse,” which he filmed in Massachusetts last November. He was born in Newton, Massachusetts and is known for “Servant” (2019), “Antlers” (2021) and the script of “Diary of a Murderer.” His latest, “Recluse,” was filmed at the Hawthorn Hill Estate in Lancaster, Massachusetts. This 1914 mansion served as the Maharishi Ayurveda Health Center that was once famously visited by Beatle George Harrison and was later used for scenes in the movie “Little Women.” “Recluse” is neither a meditation retreat nor about a close and loving family. Chaison described the film as, “a fusion of gothic ghost tale and revenge thriller, a modern fable about family secrets.” He hopes to present it at the 2025 Toronto Film Festival and release it after that. Chaisson sought art throughout … [Read more...] about BRINGING ART TO HOLLYWOOD

All my life, I have disagreed with Henry David Thoreau who thought it wasn’t “worthwhile to [travel] around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.” The joy of travel has been in my blood since I was a child when our family summer vacation was a trip to visit our Canadian family. Our favorite stops included the gorges in Ithaca, the Thousand Islands, and Niagara Falls, especially when they were lit up with rainbow colors at night. Each of these places were natural works of art, although at the time I didn’t think of it that way. They were simply beautiful. When I was older, I realized that Mark Twain, who said that travel was “fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,” was right. He also suggested that it “would be well if an excursion could be got up every year and the system regularly inaugurated.” I agreed wholeheartedly, so, in my early 20s, I took my first solo trip to … [Read more...] about ART AND TRAVEL