Picture this: rabbit-skin glue simmering in a Massachusetts studio, its Renaissance-era scent mingling with gold leaf and hot solder, as Brian Lies builds a 14th-century Italian portrait ground for a single spread in Cat Nap. What begins as a kitten's cozy nap on a couch spirals into a dream-chase leaping across centuries—Egyptian reliefs in plaster, illuminated manuscripts on goatskin parchment, vivid stained-glass panels—all handcrafted by Lies in their historic techniques.

Oereishi Aeoma is a poet, storyteller, and performer whose work explores the meeting point of intuition, creativity, and community. Rejecting rigid labels, he approaches art as a living practice—one rooted in presence, emotion, and the courage of honest expression. In a region often known for its reserve, Aeoma has quietly gathered an attentive audience across New England through live readings and storytelling performances. "I can feel when something shifts in the room,"  he

Elin Johansonn at The Living Room Collective. Photo credit Mark Amudson On Loss, Hands, and the Return of Community Some creations begin with inspiration.Others begin with absence. During the pandemic, many of the quiet structures that once held women together—pregnancy groups, craft circles, spaces of shared learning—simply vanished. Not dramatically, but quietly. They were there one moment, and gone the next. For Elin, who had recently moved to Barrington and was expectin

On Origins and Awareness There are moments when politics stops feeling like a civic exercise and begins to resemble something colder—more mechanical, less human. The machinery continues to move, yet the warmth seems to have drained from the room. John Houle noticed that change from inside the machine. Long before he became a novelist, he worked campaigns across Rhode Island’s political landscape: council races, mayoral contests, statewide ambitions. He learned the rhythms of

Teloneio, Kardamilli, Greece. Fully restored with local materials and using building techniques long lost in the centuries. Photo: Julia Klimi We almost went to New York. Snow intervened — as snow does — and instead of sitting inside a lecture hall at New York Tech School of Architecture & Design, we listened from home as architect Eleni Tsigarida from ETSI Architects spoke about failing thrust lines, invisible cracks, and why demolition is never neutral. When Notre Dame burn

Milena Pagan runs two restaurants in Providence and Boston. She spends twenty to thirty hours a week on pastries alone. She composts. She starts her own seeds. She makes scratch-made sweet plantain waffles in a culture that has already decided what sweet plantain waffles are worth — and charges accordingly anyway. When we asked her what she was building, she didn't hesitate. Not a restaurant, she said. Not a farm, not a community, though it is perhaps all of those things. I t

Jayne Babine steaming her handwoven commission — one of the limited works now hanging at Newport Harbor Island Resort, made to be touched. The incident happened on an ordinary afternoon in Warren. A banner outside a building. A husband who noticed it. A woman who had nothing to lose by stopping. Jayne knew nothing about weaving when she walked into the Handkerchief Factory. She signed up for a two-hour class, made a kitchen towel on a floor loom, and understood immediately th

What if symptoms aren't problems to silence, but messages asking for attention? Dr. Chrysanthi Kazantzis (Dr. Kaz) approach to naturopathic medicine begins with listening—to the body's quiet signals, to the wisdom of ancient traditions, to the interconnected systems that conventional medicine often treats in isolation. From her practice in Rhode Island, she offers gentle, consistent support: small daily shifts in eating, breathing, resting. Not force, but partnership. Not pre

Daniel Penengo doesn't want to build you a garden. He wants to teach you to let the garden build itself—season by season, through patience and perspective, until the outer landscape mirrors the inner one and you're no longer fighting nature but moving with it. Born in Montevideo and raised tending his father's prize-winning roses on Long Island, Daniel now cultivates a 5,000-square-foot neighborhood farm in Barrington called Little Uruguay. His philosophy: the outer landscape

Julie Gerstenblatt's Daughters of Nantucket is a captivating story of the biographies of 3 distinct women at Nantucket mid-nineteen century. Meeting Julie Gerstenblatt was an extremely pleasant experience: her warm countenance is as reassuring as is powerful - it came as no surprise from a writer who took enormous risks with her debut novel. Julie's resolution to write historical fiction for the first time, to create the voice of a woman of color as a white writer, and bring