Seven Days

A West Coast "Knitting Lady" Sets Up in Burlington (Seven Days)

Posted Wed, 02/08/2012 - 00:00 by lindsay
Originally appeared in the print version of Seven Days Feb. 8, 2012.
Maggie Pace

In her former Bay Area neighborhood, Maggie Pace was known simply as “the Knitting Lady.” Neighbors and fans of her knitting patterns, kits and yarns would drop by for sidewalk sales at her knitting store, Pick Up Sticks, or tune in to her segments on the PBS TV program “Knit and Crochet Now!” to emulate crafty know-how.

These days, Pace is a little more incognito.

She moved to Burlington in December 2010 when her husband got a job with Dealer.com. That new position went hand-in-hand with the couple’s decision to reevaluate their lives.

“Steve and I were both overwhelmed,” Pace says. “We had a clear goal in mind to simplify and reenvision what success meant to us. We wanted to have personal fulfillment in our work and refocus on family life, so Burlington felt like a great fit.”

Team Vermont Goes for Snow "Gold" at National Snow-Sculpting Tournament (Seven Days)

Posted Wed, 02/01/2012 - 14:45 by lindsay

Originally appeared in the print version of Seven Days on Feb. 1, 2012.

At first glance, the 2-foot clay model doesn’t look like much. Its diamond-shaped, gridlike exterior gives it an odd, Epcot-esque quality; inside the structure’s hollowed-out core, a puzzle piece rests on a pedestal.

“It’s called ‘Inner Piece,’” explains Burlington sculptor Michael Nedell with a self-effacing grin.

Ah, that explains everything. By the end of next week, if all goes well, this visual pun will be recreated as a 12-foot-high snow sculpture in the national snow-sculpting championships at Lake Geneva, Wis. There Nedell and his two teammates, Alex Dostie and Brooke Monte, will represent Vermont and compete for the title of best snow sculptors in the country.

This will be the team’s seventh trip to the national championships. The Vermonters took home second prize in 2005 and 2007, and have consistently ranked among the top six teams. They’ve also paid two visits to the (invitation-only) international championships in Breckinridge, Colo., in 2008 and 2011.

Nemesis Brings a 1930s Adventure Story to Stage, and Sludge Monsters to Earth (Seven Days)

Posted Wed, 01/18/2012 - 22:00 by lindsay

Originally appeared in the print version of Seven Days on Jan. 18, 2012.

The Intergalactic NemesisTheater audiences can’t help but shift to the edge of their seats when they hear these four sounds: Thump … thump … thump … creeeeeeeeeeeeeak. The combination conjures up images of castles, Igor and ominous wooden doors with deadbolts, doesn’t it?

That’s exactly what Foley, or sound-effects, artist Buzz Moran will be counting on in an upcoming performance of The Intergalactic Nemesis at Burlington’s Flynn Center for the Performing Arts. Originally a live radio play in Austin, Tex., and now a touring stage show, Nemesis is billed as a live-action graphic novel. The sci-fi story, set in 1933, features a reporter and her assistant, a mysterious librarian, and sludge monsters from the planet Zygon that are, of course, threatening planet Earth. Hence the “intergalactic nemesis.”

The show is performed with three stationary actors, one keyboard player and one Foley artist. The stage backdrop features more than 1000 hand-drawn comic-book images projected in high def.

Digitizing a Treasury of Objects at the Fleming Museum (Seven Days)

Posted Thu, 12/15/2011 - 10:03 by lindsay

Originally appeared in the print version of Seven Days on Dec. 14, 2011.

Nicola Astles, Margaret Tamulonis, Aimee Marcereau DeGalan

Janie Cohen walks through the stacks on the top floor of the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum of Art, running a finger along the shelves and pointing out favorites. Ancient Native American pottery shares a shelf with pre-Columbian artifacts, which perch next to small-scale European sculpture. Cohen, the museum’s executive director, stops to point out a tattered-looking collection of maps created by Napoleon and his troops, then continues down to the end where the paintings hang. A nearby table displays smoking apparatuses, under consideration for a winter exhibition; a row of hunting spears hangs above a drawer full of Native American beadwork.

This area of the museum — where the Fleming keeps its treasures — is generally off limits to visitors. It’s one of three on-site storage vaults, and it’s crammed with objects dating from 3500 BC to the present day. Cohen knows them all. Visitors, even regular ones, probably haven’t seen a quarter of the collection.