Hello, friends,
I was so surprised and delighted to discover, via Facebook, that one of my favorite New Yorker covers this year was done by Ashfield resident Gayle Kabaker. (The fact that this piece follows a Hampshire Life interview with New Yorker cartoonist Peter Vey is an unplanned bit of synchronicity.)
Published last month, Kabaker’s wintry cover, called “Off the Path,” features a glamorous skier and her dogs against a backdrop of evergreens and calls to mind a 1920s Vogue.
Between her illustration and Rachel Maddow posting a photo of herself ice fishing “at the Ashfield Lake House in Western Mass, the greatest place on earth,” on Twitter in January, Ashfield is starting to seem like quite the hot spot. Which is just as well, because, as Steve Pfarrer noted when I sent him an interview with Kabaker from newyorker.com, the piece described her as living in the Berkshires, as if everything west of Boston is a sort of Berkshire-y blob. (Who can forget Saul Steinberg‘s 1976 “View of the World from 9th Avenue” cover, in which beyond the Hudson River, with increasing vagueness, sit Jersey, Kansas City and Japan?)
I was eager to have Steve profile Kabaker because he’s always so good at drawing out artists, but also teaching us how to look at art in a straightforward, relatable way. He told me he first met and interviewed Kabaker about 13 years ago — not about Kabaker’s work, but that of her daughter, musician Sonya Kitchell. Talented family. Enjoy!
Yours,
Katy
klukens@gazettenet.com