logo via Truro Center for the Arts at Castle HillRecommended New England course in the creative arts

Last week I thought I smelled fall in the air. Then summer came bounding back, but I can still sense fall beckoning. I was one of those kids who looked forward to the start of school every fall, the new notebooks and pens, the hint of possibilities. 

Today, the prospect of a fall continuing education class in the arts has a similar effect on me. Can’t wait to stock up at the art supply store.

Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill
Thanks to a prompt from a guest post on the KHS Facebook Page, I visited the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill online and found a number of intriguing fall workshops to consider. According to their website “…Castle Hill holds exhibitions, lectures, forums, concerts and other similar activities in order to promote social interaction among artists, craftsmen, laymen, and the community at large.” Plus they do so in a wonderful Outer Cape setting.

I have long wanted to experiment with encaustic. I worked with wax as a RISD architectural student and found it captivating. Something about its translucence, ability to change its state, and, of course, its three dimensionality appeals to me. If only I could find a way to beam myself (via a change of state) to Truro for four consecutive Thursdays this fall. Here’s hoping they offer a weekend workshop in the future.

Encaustic Workshop
Instructor: Cherie Mittenthal
Thursdays: October 21, 28, Nov. 4, 11, 1:00 – 4 pm
$225

“This course is designed to help participants learn about the various ways to work with hot wax. The basics of traditional encaustic painting will be presented, including an introduction to equipment and materials, and a thorough discussion of health and safety issues.”

Class and schedule are subject to change, so check program websites for updates.

Take a look at my continuing education posts from previous seasons to get a sense of the many quality programs operating in the region. Enroll in a workshop, demonstration, or presentation on a lark, and get your creative juices flowing.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

logo by The New York TimesHave you been following the Living Rooms series which The New York Times launched in June? It explores my favorite topic -- home: how it reflects who we were, are, and aspire to become. 

Most recently, author Elizabeth Hawes wrote in “Our Buildings, Ourselves” about her lifestyle change when she moved from an elegant Upper West Side c. 1908 apartment house to an expansive Tribeca loft, built a couple of decades earlier. In her tale of a well-heeled life, home is an opportunity to sample an alternative identity. The same could be said for another post “How the West Won Me” by author, New Yorker Winifred Gallagher about her vacation home in Dubois, Wyoming. 

In “Home for Life” author Allison Arieff writes about the impact of the recession on our perceptions of home as a place to live among a community, rather than as a real-estate investment. Her choice of home, like those of Hawes and Gallagher, offers insight into her priorities, and, ultimately, who she is too.

Sometimes the best way to get to know folks is to visit their homes. Short of that opportunity, their descriptions of their homes may be the next best thing (especially if they're authors).

Read my review of Winifred Gallagher’s House Thinking here and catch my thoughts on my home here.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

Click on this photo to see it in the KHS photo note cards/prints gallery.Generally when I feature garden tours, I focus on flower gardens and the accompanying shrubs, trees and landscape architecture that frame them. But it recently dawned on me that I’ve been leaving out a significant portion of the gardens we know and love -- those of the edible variety.

Now that I have my own idjit garden at my local community garden, in which most everything is edible (even my Mammoth Russian sunflower shown above with seeds in an early stage), I’m wishing I’d taken myself on a few edible-garden tours prior to planting. How nice it would have been to learn the various design attributes of vegetable, fruit, and herb plants from the example of others in advance.

Instead, I crowded several Sun Gold tomato seedlings into opposite corners of one, four-foot by four-foot, raised bed and then threw in a few more, for good measure, so I thought. Today, two and one-half months later, those tomatoes have crowded out the sunflower and what had been a beautiful grouping of Swiss chard and sprightly bush beans. Sure, I love the tomatoes, but now I’m the proud caretaker of a small jungle, rather than a garden.

For those interested in picking up a few pointers for next season, I suggest visiting your local community gardens. I bet a number of them are loaded with edibles and populated by gardeners happy to share their insights. If you’re local to Salem, we have three community garden locations: Winter Island, Palmer Cove and Mack Park. Take a self-guided tour. Get inspired.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

Anthropomorphizing our environment is simply second nature. We can’t help but search for faces around us, on people and objects. It’s part of what our brains do to make sense of the world. It’s a tendency surely familiar to the designer of this antique stair-enclosure. The cheerful countenance of the small building appendage brings a touch of whimsy to what would otherwise be a utilitarian basement access.  

The curved, door-head trim establishes a forehead of sorts beneath the hat of the gable. Laughing, crescent-shaped eyes carved into the vertical door boards complement the centered latch nose, while the upper strap hinges suggest eyebrows and the lower ones imply corners of a smile. The white-on-white palette of materials saves it from being too heavy handed.

It’s only human to delight in human expression (of all sorts).

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

Prompted by a recent online consulting client (yes, I now provide online design consultations; more on that later), I’ve been snapping new photos of enclosed porches. 

This one has what I’ve come to call “porchiness”, by which I mean, it still evokes its former life as an open porch.  A number of factors contribute to its porchiness. 

For one, the original porch posts and brackets are intact and stand "proud" of the porch windows and walls, as does the original balustrade.  For another, it retains the original lattice treatment below the porch floor level.

Perhaps most critical to its porchiness are expansive windows which neatly infill between the porch pilasters, roof headers and balustrade.  The lite proportions of the porch windows complement those of the double-hung windows on the main house, while accommodating larger areas of glass.  For ventilation, operable casements, with two active leafs apiece, are located in the center of the bays (except the last bay which allows for entry from the end). 

As an aside, grouping windows into threes often nicely divides bays, creating a more animated rhythm than static divisions into multiples of two.
 
The combination of ample daylight and access to refreshing breezes give this space the greatest porchiness of all. 

For more about enclosed porches, check out another design snapshot on the subject.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast