Natasha Stoppel’s thirst for travel and adventure seeps into her illustrative and whimsical ink drawings, watercolor pieces and wood-burned jewelry. Also known as Artist Explores the World on her blog and social media platforms, she tells small stories through her artworks of landscapes contained within animals, a collage of ink-drawn cats and cascading waterfalls painted on bamboo earrings. The places she has visited whether backpacking solo through Asia or exploring the canyons and mountains of the United States, are a part of her when she speaks. Her intense passion feeds her artwork, giving her compositions movement and life. As a New Hampshire native, Stoppel’s studio is located in Exeter’s Art Up Front Street, an inviting space for artists to practice their craft. Yet, Stoppel’s artistic roots spread further as she graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, … [Read more...] about ART IS HER WORLD AND THE WORLD IS HER ART: NATASHA STOPPEL
construction
NEW CANAAN, CONNECTICUT
A POST-MODERN DREAMSCAPE by Kristin Nord New Canaan, Connecticut - It is during the fallow months in New Canaan, when the trees are a constellation of trunks and branches, that many of the town’s modernist houses come readily into view. Boasting one of the most significant collections of such homes in the United States, New Canaan now counts 91 structures still standing from the estimated 118 that were built from 1939 through 1979. At the center of this collection are works by “The Harvard Five,” a band of architects whose only similarity, truly, was that they each studied under Walter Gropius at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Philip Johnson used his New Canaan estate as his personal archi- tectural laboratory. Marcel Breuer and one-time students Eliot Noyes, John Johansen and Landis Gores set up shop for what became an architec- tural industry. Many other … [Read more...] about NEW CANAAN, CONNECTICUT
THINKING SMALL AND LIVING LARGE
TINY HOUSES AT FULLER CRAFT by Brian Goslow Brockton, Mass. - For most of his life, Derek “Deek” Diedricksen has had an affinity for small structures. When he was 9 or 10, his father, at the time a high school woodworking teacher, gave him a copy of “Tiny Tiny Houses” by Lester Walker, an architect from Woodstock, New York. The 1987 book has become a guiding light not only for his life, but thousands of others around the world who have used it as inspiration for creating their own special miniature living spaces. More recently, they’ve become attractions at galleries and museums, including the Empty Spaces Project in Putnam, Conn., and this February, the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Mass. “The art is shelter, but also art that you can walk into that’s around you, which is pretty darn cool, I think,” Diedricksen said. “People always have this affinity for being in these … [Read more...] about THINKING SMALL AND LIVING LARGE