On any given afternoon, one of three sounds can be heard coming from Mitzi Pratt’s Aquinnah bookbinding studio: the dull squeak of a 19th century press, sheers clipping through paper, or the piercing bang of a weighty backing hammer.
Shelly Davis bought her loom, a four harness Nilus Leclerc, in 1975. It weighs more than she does, and it arrived in pieces with a guidebook called “Weaving: A Fantastic Hobby.”
Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert - nothing heavy but on the classical side - and Thomas Hart Benton, painter, and author, plays them all on his harmonica. He’s got a special scheme, which he himself devised, for transposing the music into a complicated harmonica score.
He was walking along the state road with his wife up in West Tisbury. He carried a suitcase, and, although he did not actually wiggle his thumb, he looked hopefully back at the car.
His name is Manuel Tolegian of New York city, artist and former student of Thomas H. Benton, summer resident of Chilmark. When he was picked up by the Gazette reporter, he looked slightly warm but grateful, animated and eager. He has a thin, aesthetic face and long, slender hands.
When Margot Datz began painting the walls of the children’s room at the Edgartown Public Library last fall, she expected the work to take three or four months at most.
In his basement office in Chilmark, Edward Grazda has stacks of boxes labeled by the places he’s photographed over an acclaimed career behind the lens of a Leica. Afghanistan. Peru. The American Southwest. New York city.
