Meditations on time, history, and myth

Norfolk woodworker Mark Burke in his shop with his walnut chair based on a design by Scottish architect/designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928).
Jennifer Almquist
Norfolk woodworker Mark Burke in his shop with his walnut chair based on a design by Scottish architect/designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928).
Three friends have joined forces to exhibit their art in a pop-up gallery exhibit in the Royal Arcanum building at Station Place in Norfolk. From Aug. 16 through Sept. 2, painter Ann Getsinger and woodworkers Mark Burke and Peter Murkett will show their furniture, painting, sculpture and objects. Kozmik Braid is the name they coined for their eclectic offering. According to the artists the name is “a riff on each other’s work, weaving utilitarian furniture with pure art.”
Norfolk woodworker Mark Burke said of their friendship, “I have collaborated with Peter on projects for probably 25 years and have always been impressed by his sense of design. He can make subtle changes that instantly make the piece more pleasing. Peter introduced me to Ann, who is well-known in the Northwest Corner and is very passionate and energized with her creativity. I am thrilled to participate in this Art and Design Pop-Up exhibition with them both.”
Burke continued, “My initiation into woodworking was out of necessity, followed by three and a half decades of accumulating tools and essential knowledge. Over time you witness many designs by others and are slowly inspired to find your own spin on things. Slowly tweaking and playing with everything that passed by, having total creative freedom within my shop.”
Burke professionally uses computers to draw plans and program electronically controlled tooling to cut wood parts. His playful spirit is given free rein in the work he has made for this show, which includes chair designs based on Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) and furnishings and objects informed by the work of architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
Burke’s pieces include lyrical music stands made of black walnut, a graphic metal light echoing Wright’s complex geometric patterns, and a minimal dining table that embodies architect Louis H. Sullivan’s 1896 design principle: Form follows function.
Burke said, “People working with wood can often choose to use figured material. I have chosen to use more subdued lumber so that it is the joinery of the shapes and the overall piece that attracts your eye.” Burke’s precision marries perfect joinery with his deep knowledge of wood. Rather than break free of technology, he has bent it to his creative vision.
Jennifer Almquist
Southfield woodworker Peter Murkett demonstrating the translucence of the thin wood wall sconce he designed.
Southfield, Massachusetts-based Murkett’s love of the simplicity of Shaker design is evident in the clean lines and functionality of his creations. Murkett cradles a perfectly formed bowl in his weathered hands and explains how the Shakers added the curved handle for hanging the water dipper on the edge of their buckets.
“I was struck by the turned form of the Shaker dipper at first sight. This handled bowl that must have been turned on a lathe in the shape of a bowler hat, with the brim mostly cut away to make the handle. The Shakers thrived in the early years of industrial development, mid-nineteenth century. They valued machines like the lathe for the efficiency they offered in reproducing shapes. But handling a Shaker dipper was a revelation: the shape begged to be cradled in the hand; they have an uncanny, tactile appeal that seems to replicate the visual appeal of Shaker design,” mused Murkett. Other examples of his work, informed also by the grace of Windsor chairs, can be found at www.newenglandmodern.com. According to Murkett, his objects and sculptures are “meditations on time, history, and myth.”
With his mystical sense of history, meaning, and a poet’s quiver, Murkett conjures up stories and subtle ironic nods to current events within his wooden objects. His skill is that of a master craftsman. One expects secret drawers and hidden messages within his dovetails.
After a lifetime making furniture to grace the homes and gardens of countless clients, Murkett will be showing his own designs. A talismanic carving, created when he was a boy of twelve, forms the soul of his offerings in this upcoming exhibit. This odd little object remains an icon to Murkett, and inspired his poem:
The Boy I Was
1.
The boy I was had a cheap set of woodcarving tools
maybe six—a gouge or two, a veining tool, others too.
The professional I later became never tossed them out
or used them again. Memento only, and good for that,
like the object that boy carved which still remains
(although the making lies buried deep, beyond reach):
a head in lightbulb shape, wide-open eyes (gouge)
a tidy mop of hair (veiner), a mustache (ditto),
no chin, all in mahogany, cleanly bored to fit snug
on the shifter tip of the family ’56 Plymouth,
the car he learned to drive.
2.
Decades later I resurrected the shifter tip
that boy carved so long ago, hardly knowing how,
the wood long separated from the car
(new in his boyhood) now a junk somewhere
or even less than that—but maybe more:
meltdown steel remade as what? a machine, a tool,
a part fit to some greater whole, used anew.
My father, bent by many years walking
now grips the shifter tip atop his cane,
the head from off the column upright at last
in the hand of my old man. I adjust my step to his,
glad we go this way together.
Painter Ann Getsinger in her studio in New Marlborough, Massachusetts.Jennifer Almquist
Ann Getsinger (anngetsinger.com) paints fantastical landscapes which include deep evening sunsets, skulls of wild animals, seashells, and natural flora and fauna. Dreamlike and evocative, her skilled oil paintings contrast human cycles with the cycles found in nature.
Getsinger said of her art, “My work is more connected to the recent offshoots of the realist tradition, for example, Jamie Wyeth as he expands on the spectrum of carefully observed work into pure abstraction all expressed within the same image. Life is both observable and unseeable, feelings come and go, stories unfold multidimensionally, and it’s all pure change. How can a human being bear this… without art?”
In the center of her studio, built in 1988 in a meadow in New Marlborough, Massachusetts, a tall window lets in the cold Northern light. A velvet drape, the color of clematis, gives her workspace the mood of a Renaissance atelier. On her tall French easel an oil painting of an enigmatic rooster in a shroud adds a surreal element. Getsinger, who is represented by galleries in Maine and nearby Housatonic, Massachusetts, will be showing new, unexpected work in this Norfolk show including an “umbilical” figurative drawing (over six feet wide) and a flying sculpture. Her weaving of the metaphorical through her work, and the aesthetic she shares with Burke and Murkett, inspired the title of their show, Kozmik Braid.
Gallery hours: 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and by appointment (413) 717-2530
Opening reception on Friday, Aug. 16, from 4 – 7 p.m.
Getsinger’s studio in New Marlborough, Massachusetts, is full of natural light and painter’s tools.Jennifer Almquist
Getsinger’s “Vortex and Orb” and more paintings will be on exhibit.Jennifer Almquist
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.