New England Roots
New England Home Magazine, Connecticut edition, April 2025. Photography by Alexandra Rowley.
Mazy Path is featured in the April edition of New England Home Magazine, the Connecticut edition! The article, "Plant Based: Burgeoning Wallpaper and Textile Company Mazy Path Looks to Nature for Inspiration," is in the magazine's In the Studio section. As a New England native (raised in Connecticut and Vermont), coverage in New England Home is a special honor for me. My deepest thanks go to New England Home Editor-in-Chief, Jenna Talbot, Features editor Nicole Polly and writer Lisa Speidel for sharing Mazy Path's story. Here’s the link to the article!
The Wood-Pile by Robert Frost (1874-1963). Illustrated by Thomas Nason (1889-1971). Spiral Press, New York, 1961. Image courtesy of the Florence Griswold Museum
Growing up in New England shaped me as an artist. The poet, Robert Frost, was an early influence. I encountered his poetry in my New Haven, Connecticut middle school, and later became familiar with the wood engravings, prints by Connecticut artist, Thomas Nason, that have illustrated many of Frost’s works. Using simple tools- wood, ink and gouges- Nason gave visual form to the farmhouses, stonewalls, and birch trees that lived within Frost’s poems. The collective work of the two men has always moved me because it evokes the spare beauty present in the vernacular architecture and natural world of my childhood.
Vermont’s 1991 bicentennial US Postal Service stamp, woodcut by Sabra Field.
Stamp based on Sabra Field’s woodcut “Windrows.” Image courtesy of Sabra Field.
In my mind, Frost and Nason’s work conjures New England when the trees are bare, the landscape referenced in Noah Kahan’s song "Stick Season" (Kahan is, for the record, a native Vermonter). But when I was in high school, I met another New England artist whose work channels the region when its tree canopies are lush and its meadows brim with abundance. During a semester program at The Mountain School, my art teacher was Sabra Field, Vermont’s renowned woodcut printmaker whose work appeared in Vermont Life Magazine, Unicef card campaigns, and on Vermont’s 1991 bicentennial US Postal Service stamp. Known for her richly colored woodcuts that explore Vermont’s pastoral landscapes, it was Field who introduced me to the art of linocut printmaking. Like Frost and Nason, Field’s artistic language is direct yet her work is filled with warmth. Even her blue-drenched snowscapes feature distant, glowing lights in churches, meeting houses, and farmhouses, reminders of community and resilience
Preparatory sketches, a book of Thomas Nason prints for inspiration, and my limited edition, linocut print, Sambucus Canadensis.
To me, if Frost and Nason are fall and winter, Field is spring and summer. These artists and New England itself, represent endless seasons of influence and inspiration. And, although I’ve lived in New York for much of my adult life, New England is ever present in my work.