MILLBROOK — The Millbrook School’s Warner Gallery and Holbrooks Arts Center are the heart of the school’s art department. Students have the art center as a resource to learn and excel in theater, fine arts, music, dance and photography. The Warner Gallery, located in the art center, is where internationally knownartists such as Gordon Parks have had shows. On Saturday, May 5, a new show opened. “With Noble Hands: Necessity Made Beautiful” features the works of local artists through a collaboration between The Millbrook School and The Gamble House of the University of Southern California. What makes this gallery opening special is students from The Millbrook School’s art history class curated it, designed its publicity poster, wrote the didactics and gave tours.“It’s really been a process,” said Sam Jaffe, 19, an art history student. “The whole class is based around developing an understanding for the Arts and Crafts movement. Today was the culmination of all that. We have been writing didactics. So really just immersing ourselves in this and being able to center it on the Gamble House as an example of everything we have learned [is incredible]. Today we were just asked to be able to spread that knowledge.”Students of the art history class learned about the Arts and Crafts movement, which was a response to the Industrial Revolution. “It was a response to the dehumanizing effect of the Industrial Revolution,” Jaffe said. “It was really putting the art back in work. We have a quote by John Ruskin, ‘Life without industry is guilt and industry without art is brutality,’ and that’s really the basis of the whole Arts and Crafts movement and the whole class.”The show features photos of the Gamble House built by Greene & Greene, an architectural team in the late 19th century known for its craft, its closeness with materials and its working by hand. The Gamble House in Pasadena, Calif., is the only remaining intact house built by the the team out of 177 commissions, said Bill Hardy, head of the art department at The Millbrook School. The Gamble House is open to the public and everything in the house is the way it was in 1908. “We couldn’t get the Gamble House to send pieces,” Hardy said. “So we thought, how could we make this work? So we came up with this notion that we have local artisans who work with the same principles, who believe in the same integrity of material and devote themselves to their craft. So we thought, how about collecting them and putting them together and saying this idea still lives, that it didn’t die out at the turn of the 20th century, but rather is still important or more important today.”The show at the Warner Gallery has photos of the Gamble House along with works of local artisans from Millbrook, Millerton, Ancramdale, Stanfordville and West Cornwall, Conn. — all showing the parallels of work produced today with those of the Arts and Crafts movement.The art history students had a completely hands-on experience when putting the show together, Hardy said. “What they learned how to do is curate a show,” Hardy said. “But they also learned how to write to a work of art, they had to do their research and know what they were talking about and had to get it right. They can’t get it wrong when talking about someone else’s stuff. So in many ways they’re developing these methods to tell the story; it’s an incredible lesson in observing and writing.”This is the third year this course has run at The Millbrook School. Hardy and the students of the art history class have worked with foundations such as the Willem de Kooning Foundation and the Gordon Parks Foundation to put these shows together in the past. Hardy said working with the students to design a poster and seeing the process of a gallery formulate in a show has been enriching. He added it’s important to him for his students to attach the educational process to something that has an outcome, which is what students discover through this course. Jaffe will be attending Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in the fall to study music; he described what he enjoyed most about the course as a student.“The most fulfilling part to me is being able to utilize what I learned and spread that knowledge,” he said. “It’s always been really fulfilling to be able to enlighten people about things that have really inspired me.”The show “With Noble Hands” will remain at the Warner Gallery until June 12. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Sundays by appointment.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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