This New England

Now at the Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, Mass.:

Morning Glories, Edo period (1615-1868), early 19th century, by Suzuki Kiitsu (Japanese, 1796-1858) One of a pair of six-panel folding screens: ink, color and gold on gilded paper, 5 ft. 10 3/16 x 12 ft. 5 1/2 in. each The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Seymour Fund, 1954 Image (c) The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Japan's climate spans from the semi-tropical to the very cold. It's remarkably like New England's -- with some areas getting hurricanes and blizzards in the same year.

Northern Japan, with its brilliant fall foliage, reminds some people of Maine or New Hampshire, if you forget about the volcanoes.

My father, in Hokkaido at the end of World War II, thought it smelled like Vermont. But then, Japan bears a similar geographical relationship to Asia as New England's to North America -- and so the same sort of weather battles between air from the arctic and air from the tropics on the eastern side of a vast land mass.

Anyway, here are the museum's notes on the latest show:

Seasonal change and depictions of the natural world have formed a core in the repertoire of Japanese artists throughout the ages.

The exhibition Through the Seasons: Japanese Art in Nature at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute brings together traditional screens and scrolls and displays them with contemporary ceramics, each work emphasizing the inspirational role of nature in Japanese art. Drawn from both public institutions and private collections, many of these works have never before been exhibited.

Through the Seasons is on view in the critically acclaimed Stone Hill Center, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando. The building takes advantage of the Clark's dramatic natural setting on 140 acres. The large gallery windows allow visitors to view the surrounding landscape and enjoy the unique experience of art in nature that defines the experience of the Clark.

Through the Seasons is on view through Oct. 18.

Also on view at the Clark is Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence. This Clark exclusive exhibition features Georgia O'Keeffe's early works with those of modernist Arthur Dove, whom she credited as having the most significant role in the formation of her abstract works. Dove/O'Keeffe runs through Sept. 7.

The Clark is at 225 South St. in Williamstown. The galleries are open daily, 10 am to 5 pm, in July and August (closed Mondays, September through June. Admission June 1 through Oct. 31 is $12.50 for adults, free for children 18 and younger, members, and students with valid ID. For more information, call 413-458-2303 or visit clarkart.edu.

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(After a total of 38 hours in the air in a four-day period, I am back, sore and spacey, from nonprofit organization work in Kenya. It was about as cold there as it has been here. Indeed, there were the same sort of jokes about global warming.)

With all the gloom and doom, it's good to get some historical perspective, such as from a Massachusetts state economist, Elliot Winer. Mr. Winer, who has long compiled the Department of Workforce Development's monthly unemployment report, told the Boston Herald that he has been through five recessions in his 39-year career. (So have I in my 39-year career.)

Today's roughly 8 percent rate is still small beer compared to the state's 12.2 percent in 1975. But then, Mr. Winer, 63, is retiring and so perhaps has a less anxious view of things than many younger people.

I myself think the presence of super higher education and research and a great work ethic will keep Massachusetts more prosperous than most states for a long time to come. And the state is pretty good at reinventing itself, whatever happens.

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For a lovely Vermont book, get Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding and the Art of Making Cheese (Scribner, 256 pages, $24), by Brad Kessler. It's about raising goats and making cheese with his wife on a farm in tiny Sandgate. You learn about the current and historic practices of goat farming (or is it herding?), and weird habits of the animals. It turns out to be fascinating, and goes back to Ancient Greece.

(You might also think of the books of the late Noel Perrin, another city slicker turned Vermont farmer/writer -- First Person Rural, etc.)

Mr. Kessler sure can write. Consider:
"Wind rakes the trees. Clouds float shadows through the grass. We enter the woods and the goats eat ash, birch and maple. This evening, I'll milk the does back in the barn and when the sun goes down I'll make an aged cheese from their milk called a tomme. Months from now when snow covers the mountains, I'll open that tomme and find this day again inside its rind: the aromatic grass, the leaves, this wind."
Make you especially happy to be a New Englander.

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With a relentlessly cold and wet June that moved a ways into July, I wonder if the recession will be enough to thwart the pent-up desire to go to the beach or mountains and spend money. There are plenty of reminders of how bad it's been, such as much of the Maine coast being closed to clamming because of a very bad red tide probably connected to the cold, wet weather.

I'm always astonished, by the way, how popular southern Maine's lovely beaches are. The water is unswimmably cold and even the air, with an easterly wind, can be chilling. And yet the state has had considerable success in marketing them over the years and recently even had a conference on how to do more of it.

Economists say that Maine's sand beaches (most of which are in the south and some of which are blindingly white when the sun makes a cameo appearance) bring about $500 million into the state each year and employ some 8,000. That's big enough for scientists to worry that global warming (where?!) and the resulting rising sea level could imperil the beach economy.

But then, the state likes to call itself "Vacationland" and tourism is the biggest industry. A triumph of scenery over weather. New England weather can be the most glorious in the world, but such joys are usually measured out by the Almighty in teaspoons.

 Tags  Brad Kessler Clark Art Institute Eliot Winer Goat Song Maine beaches Suzuki Kiitsu

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