‘The most-used playground in all of the Town of Barnstable’
CENTERVILLE — Over the course of the past few months, workers with the Barnstable Department of Public Works have been putting their carpentry skills to use, making improvements to the Centerville Recreation Building.
The historic building at 524 Main St. has hardwood floors throughout, which will all be refurbished, tall ceilings and huge windows. Patti Machado, the town’s recreation director, also pointed out the new, gray wainscoting along the entrance hallway walls, which continues throughout the large open rooms and into the newly redesigned bathrooms.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” asked Machado of the classic-looking gray wall décor. “It not only looks nice, but the wainscoting will help with long-term maintenance.”
Brand-new doors have recently been installed, as well as new floor tiles in the public restrooms.
The multifunctional building gets an upgrade
“They also made all new covers for the radiators,” Machado said, pointing out the streamlined covers, painted in the same gray.
The work is being funded through the town’s capital improvement budget and Community Preservation Act funds, with some additional funding from the Centerville Historical Society.
The multifunctional building is host to a Summer Leisure Program for students going into first through fifth grade. The program, which runs for eight weeks, features activities such as arts and crafts, games and outings such as mini golf and bowling. The building can also be rented out for use as a venue.
During the annual Centerville Christmas Stroll, one room has been traditionally used by balloon twisters who make balloon animals for kids. Historically, the building was used as a post office and an elementary school.
Historic painting will be restored
The inside of the building sprawls from one historic room to the next. Upstairs houses perhaps the biggest surprise, a still intact mural of two fishermen out on the sea. The mural was painted in 1935 by Vernon Coleman (1946-1978), a prominent artist of the day who taught art in the Barnstable Public Schools before retiring in the mid-1960s.
With the help of the Community Preservation Committee and the Centerville Historical Society, the historic painting will be restored, Machado said.
But improvements don’t stop with the building itself. There are big plans for the playground.
The playground outside the Centerville Recreation Building will be replaced with one that is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Marina Davalos/Barnstable Patriot)
Playground plans
“This is the most-used playground in all of the town of Barnstable,” Machado said of the playground outside.
The playground hustles and bustles with kids on swings, sliding down the slide and running around, creating childhood memories, especially during the Summer Leisure Program.
“It looks intact, but it’s no longer up to code,” Machado said, looking from the building’s parking lot to the playground. She cites an out-of-code handicap ramp, tires that kids climb on that over time fill up with water or collect bees’ nests, and a slide that broke and had to be removed. Tops on wooden pilings need to be rounded so kids can’t climb up on them.
Machado said earlier this month Town Architect Mark Marinaccio went before the CPC to request funding for improvements to the playground.
“The new improvements will have to meet guidelines as set by the (Americans with Disabilities Act),” Machado said.
The existing playground will be demolished, and the ground will be raised 3 feet to make the space compliant. Machado said that over $800,000 in funds were approved by the CPC for the project, which next goes before the Town Council to be voted on. If approved, the project will be put out to bid.
“If all goes well, I would bet that by the end of the summer we’d be able to start,” Machado said. “It all should fall in line — we’ll finish the building, so the kids will be in there for the summer program, and we want the kids to have a playground for the summer, then it can be demolished and built anew.”
In the decades to come, fuel stops at gas stations may be a thing of the past.
In September 2020, the State of California passed an executive order to ban the sale of internal combustion passenger vehicles and light trucks by 2035. In January of 2021, Massachusetts followed California to become the second state to ban sales of gas-powered vehicles by 2035, part of a broader plan to reduce emissions by 2050, as outlined in the Massachusetts 2050 Decarbonization Roadmap at www.mass.gov.
It’s a lot to think about. Over time, the use of electric vehicles (EVs), by lowering carbon emissions, will change not just our environmental landscape but our cultural landscape as well.
David Anthony, Barnstable’s Chief Procurement Officer, said making the switch to EVs will result in new ways of thinking for both drivers and town services.
“There’s a different mindset for drivers of electric vehicles,” Anthony said. “If you drive a vehicle that has a 200-mile range, you have to plan your travel around that limitation and/or find a charging station in a convenient spot.”
Six years ago, as part of a state grant, Barnstable installed EV charging stations at Town Hall, the North Street Hyannis parking lot and Barnstable High School. ChargePoint charging stations have since been popping up all over town. Plans are in the works to install even more at Cape Cod Gateway Airport in 2022. The town is currently considering how it can place new charging stations in the many public lots around town, Anthony said.
When it comes to making the switch to EVs, Anthony said, the average consumer may not know what’s available around town for charging stations, and this alone can affect how seriously they are considering buying the new technology.
Not to mention, what kind of cars are out there? How much do they cost? We talked with Boston area EV expert Steve Birkett to find out more.
Emerging selection
Birkett loved his first EV – a 2012 Chevy Volt – so much, he’s become somewhat of an EV crusader. A UK native, he’s lived in Boston for five years and is on his second EV, a 2020 Chevy Bolt. He’s an EV specialist for findthebestcarprice.com.
Brace for sticker shock. “The sticker price for an EV can be $5,000 to $10,000 more than its gas equivalent,” Birkett said, although EV models introduced this year are more likely to be very close in price to gas models.
There are incentives, such as the federal government’s tax credit of up to $7,500 for EV models (except for manufacturers Tesla and GM, which Birkett said have used up their allocation). Birkett also said Massachusetts offers a $2,500 rebate for a qualifying purchase or lease. Find out more at: www.greenenergyconsumers.org.
“Over the life of the vehicle, you could save thousands of dollars, “Birkett said. “You’re looking at $9 or $10 to charge up an EV for up to 250-300 miles, as opposed to $20-$25 at the gas station,” he said.
A lot of L2 charging is either free or similarly priced akin to domestic electricity ($0.15 to $0.20 per kWh). Some L2 stations require use of an app or RFID card from the network (like ChargePoint, the most common in Massachusetts).
On Birkett’s YouTube channel, Plug and Play EV, he compares and contrasts three EVs currently on the market from the big-name carmakers. Here are a few of his highlights.
The Nissan Ariya crossover builds on the success of Nissan’s Leaf, the world’s first mass-produced EV of the modern era. Aiming for 300+ miles on a single charge and 130 kilowatts fast charging, Ariya is expected to enter the market at around $40,000.
Just under $40,000, the Volkswagen id-4 has 250 miles of range and three years of free, fast charging on the Electrify America network.
With a style based on the iconic Mustang, the Ford Mustang Mach-E crossover boasts a range of up to 305 miles and DC fast-charging of up to 150 kilowatts.
Compare and contrast with the Chevy Bolt, the first all-electric model to surpass the 200+ miles of range, for less than $40,000. Bolt has been a slow-but-steady seller since its launch in 2016 and now delivers 259 miles on a single charge. Birkett added that GM has just announced that both the 2022 Bolt and Bolt EUV will be priced below $35,000.
EV expenses also depend on how much you drive, as well as the cost of your home electricity, Birkett said. Home charging usually requires a dedicated station with a 220-240-volt outlet, around the same as the plug for your washer or dryer. Power is delivered at around 6 or 7 kilowatts, which is good for a full, overnight charge. Can a car be charged with a regular home outlet? It could take days, Birkett said, as standard outlets of 110-120 volts deliver power at around 1 kilowatt per hour.
Most commercial or municipal charging stations use the 220-240-volt chargers, which run on an alternating current (AC), while some commercial ones use a fast-charging direct current (DC) that can charge a car up to 80% in 30-40 minutes. Fast chargers are harder on a battery and more expensive than charging more slowly, so most drivers typically only use them when they’re on lengthy trips. The EVgo network offers fast and Level 2 charging stations to charge the Nissan LEAF, Chevy Bolt, Tesla Model S/3/X/Y, BMW, Kia Niro, Audi, Jaguar or other EVs.
Fun fact: some EVs connect to WiFi, so we can monitor our usage.
Access is key
Noting that transportation is the second-largest generator of carbon emissions after energy production, Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce CEO Wendy Northcross said the region’s climate action plan is still so new, there is no position or policy statement yet. She said that studies suggest more retailers are eager to install charging stations, as people will come to charge up and shop.
“The success for EVs to be highly desirable will be an effective and broad array of charging stations available,” Northcross said.
She said the Cape Cod Chamber, along with the Cape Cod Commission, is in the beginning stages of shaping the region’s plan.
“We’ve participated in focus groups to engage businesses in commenting and sharing their ideas,” Northcross said.
Marina Davalos is a freelance writer who lives in Cotuit.
The Cape has a new school choice for parents of preschool-aged children: Mass Audubon Long Pasture’s Nature Preschool Explorer Program, a concept currently in its second year of a two-year pilot program …
Barnstable Patriot, July 19, 2019 The Cape Cod Maritime Museum has launched three new exhibits, including a real-time restoration project that visitors are invited to follow.
“All three of these exhibits are important for different reasons,” says executive director Liz Rabideau. “The surfboat restoration is a real-time restoration project, whose goal is not only to complete our collection of historic Cape Cod wood boats but to also engage the community in the intricate process of restoration. The public is invited to come and see the progress, to ask questions and even to volunteer to help.”
“In addition, we have our new History of Navigation exhibit and an exhibit of the Pilgrims’ journey prior to setting across the Atlantic to the New World,” says Rabideau.
Surfboats – 24-foot wave-faring rowboats – crashed through stormy waters and saved the lives of shipwrecked souls along the outer Cape in the early 1900s. In their 53-year history, only two surfboat rescues ended in crew casualties.
The surfboats were stationed at 13 lifesaving stations along the outer Cape in the early to mid-20th century. One such boat, a 24-ft. Race Point surfboat built in 1944, was gifted to the museum years ago. The iconic boat sat on the museum’s front lawn, a symbol of the Cape’s maritime history, and museum personnel have decide it’s time to restore her.
The Surfboat Restoration exhibit is a real-time restoration project. Throughout the summer, visitors may view the surfboat during the various stages of her restoration and witness first-hand the process of wooden boat restoration over an estimated two-year period.
The second exhibition connects the dots between stick charts, sextants and Nantucket astronomer Maria Mitchell (1818-1889)—all of which play a part in the History of Navigation from 1200 BC. The show chronicles navigation from the ancient Polynesians up until present-day GPS, taking visitors on a journey through time.
As a teen, Mitchell was trusted by sailors to do their navigational computations for their long whaling journeys. She also discovered a comet in 1847.
Explore topics such as longitude and latitude and principles of celestial navigation. Learn the workings of 20th-century electronic equipment, such as a Radio Direction Finder (RDF), Loran and GPS. The real-time Automatic Identification System (AIS) even tracks vessels from the museum right in Hyannis Harbor.
Explore topics such as longitude and latitude and principles of celestial navigation. Learn the workings of 20th-century electronic equipment, such as a Radio Direction Finder (RDF), Loran and GPS. The real-time Automatic Identification System (AIS) even tracks vessels from the museum right in Hyannis Harbor.
Finally, get to know The Pilgrims: Before They Were Here, which is Phase One of the museum’s 400-year anniversary of the Mayflower exhibit.
Before They Were Here chronicles the life of the Pilgrims from 1606 to before their departure for the New World in 1620. Learn in-depth about the circumstances which made them leave England for Holland, and why they finally decided they must set sail for the New World.
The Pilgrims: Before They Were Here will be on display through April 2020.
Museum hours are seven days a week, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Admission, $10; students, seniors and veterans, $8; active military, free. Visit www.capecodmaritimemuseum.org for more information.
At least twice a week, Inaho’s owner/chef Yuji Watanabe makes an early morning trip to Boston’s fish markets—where he shops for the freshest local seafood. He’ll purchase a whole salmon, tuna or whitefish to serve in the restaurant that night. “He’s a fanatic about freshness,” says his wife, Alda Watanabe. “If it’s not in season, it just doesn’t taste right.”
The Watanabes opened Inaho on April 28, 1989, originally on Main Street in Hyannis. Alda says that while sushi was embraced by some, it was a difficult start. “People were like, ‘Raw fish? No thank you,’” laughs Alda. She says that when they moved their restaurant to Yarmouth Port in 1992, people would say, “You’re crazy, opening a Japanese restaurant in little Yarmouth Port!”
The Watanabes met in 1988 in Newport, Rhode Island, where Yuji was a sushi chef. “I’d gone out for sushi and he was the one who made my food,” Alda says fondly. Before then, Yuji had been a sushi chef in New York City for more than 10 years. Originally from Miyagi Prefecture, about 100 miles north of Tokyo, Yuji has done his share of traveling, including, in his 20s, bicycling around Australia for a year. After he and Alda met, they decided to quit their jobs—his as a sushi chef in Newport, hers at a car dealership—move to Cape Cod and open a Japanese restaurant. Alda says it took a couple of years to build a clientele. But little by little, people would try sushi.
Today, Inaho flourishes, with a waiting list for a table nearly every night. It’s been a family affair. The Watanabes have two sons—Hayato, now 26 and studying to be a lawyer at the University of Michigan; and Hiroto, 20, a pre-med student at Tufts University. They grew up with Inaho. “For them, there was school and a lot of Inaho time.” It was tough work, Alda says. “Sometimes we’d work six days a week throughout the year. We’d be lucky to squeeze in the beach for 15 minutes.”
According to Alda, one of the most popular dinner items, is scallops and lemon. A whole lemon or lime is hollowed out and cut in half. Scallops are mixed in spicy mayo sauce with roe and placed inside the hollowed-out lemon cup. For appetizers, customers love the eggplant with sweet, hot miso on top. “It bubbles up and it’s served piping hot,” says Alda, adding that traditionally Japanese cuisine is ordered for the table, like ordering a bunch of appetizers and sharing. “We bring it out as it’s made, so it’s not just sitting around.”
Popular sushi rolls are the dragon rolls—orange, red or double dragon. The Sophia roll has a seafood mix topped with sliced maguro and crispy fried onions with a spicy garlic ponzu sauce. Another customer favorite is shrimp and veggie tempura. The word Inaho means “ear of rice.” Alda explains: “Each kernel, as it bends over, and it’s heavy, means a good harvest, abundance. If there’s no rice in the house, you can’t do anything.”
What would compel the Emperor of Japan, visiting the United States to shore up post-war relations between the two countries, to include a side trip to Woods Hole? Pretty much the same thing that brings visitors from all over the world to Woods Hole: science.
During a two-week trip to the U.S. in 1975 with his wife, Empress Nagako, Emperor Hirohito of Japan made a short detour to this Falmouth village to visit the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL).
“His being in Woods Hole was a tribute to science,” says M. Patricia Morse, professor emerita of biology at the University of Washington and co-founder of the E.S. Morse Institute at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories. A native of Woods Hole, Morse was biology professor at Northeastern University at the time, and was present at MBL when the emperor visited. “It was well known in marine biological communities that the emperor was active in marine biology,” Morse adds. He was an expert on hydroids, small creatures related to jellyfish and corals—a passion that stemmed from time spent during his childhood at his family’s imperial resort in Japan’s Sagami Bay, according to Hirohito’s obituary in The New York Times on January 7, 1989. The emperor wrote several scientific papers, including Some Hydrozoans of the Bonin Islands (1974) and Five Hydroid Species from the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea (1977).
In the summer of 2016, the Woods Hole Historical Museum hosted an exhibit celebrating the connections between Woods Hole and Japan. Coordinated by museum director Jennifer Gaines (who has since retired) and museum archivist Susan Witzell, the exhibit featured photos and documents showcasing the careers of Japanese scientists with connections to Woods Hole, and the knowledge of the ocean they shared together during the last 150 years. The exhibit included photos of Hirohito’s October 1975 visit and samples of the types of organisms he viewed while touring Woods Hole’s scientific facilities.
Emperor Hirohito uses a microscope at WHOI’s Redfield laboratory. Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Hirohito, or Emperor Showa, as he is referred to posthumously, ruled Japan during World War II. During the U.S. occupation of Japan immediately following the war, he was vilified and stripped of his divine status under Japan’s new constitution. When the imperial couple visited Falmouth, Hirohito was 74 years old, the empress, 72.
The groundwork for the 1975 trip was laid the year before when then-President Gerald Ford, who was visiting Japan, invited the emperor and empress to come to the United States. According to documents on the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library website, the Japanese people were slightly nervous about this visit. They knew that an imperial Japanese visit to the U.S. would eventually take place—and they knew it had to go off without a hitch. Relations between the former adversaries had only just reached a high point, since the end of U.S. occupation in 1952. The emperor’s only other visit to the U.S. had occurred in 1971 during a stopover in Anchorage, Alaska, when then-President Richard Nixon had flown out specifically to meet with him. This meeting was seen by the Japanese as political opportunism on Nixon’s part, according to an analysis of the visit published in the March 7, 2013, Japan Times. The 1975 visit would be symbolic of the new U.S.-Japanese relationship, and the Japanese longed to make it a success, with no politics involved, as indicated by documents on the Ford Presidential Library website.
According to news reports at the time, the emperor came to Falmouth not merely to see the world-class facilities at MBL and WHOI, but to partake in science there. As an expert on hydroids, Hirohito was aware that WHOI’s senior scientist, Dr. Howard Sanders, had discovered a new phylum of hydroids while a graduate student at Yale University.
The Japanese spent an entire year in planning the visit. The emperor’s grand chamberlain and vice grand chamberlain, key figures in the agency that oversees the imperial household’s affairs, flew out numerous times during the year, mapping out the territory and deciding what security measures to take.
Dr. Susumu Honjo, WHOI professor emeritus, remembers when he first got word that the emperor wished to visit Woods Hole. “I received a letter from the grand chamberlain!” Honjo recalls. “I showed that letter to [WHOI director] Paul Fye, and he nearly fell off his chair.” Fye asked Honjo to personally arrange the visit. “I was the middle person, between the Japanese and the American diplomats,” Honjo continues. “And I was so young, only an associate scientist at the time.” In 2003 Honjo, who is now 83, was honored by the Japanese government with the Imperial Order of the Rising Sun for his research on the transfer of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean’s interior and his efforts to strengthen Japan’s role in the international ocean science research community.
Honjo says that the vice grand chamberlain came every couple of months to prepare for the emperor’s visit. A special trip for the empress, who was active in the arts, was also planned: She would visit the Sandwich Glass Museum, the Dan’l Webster Inn, and the Falmouth Artists Guild.
On October 4, 1975, a specially marked Japan Airlines jet, around the size of a DC-10, flew into Otis Air Force base, according to former Bourne selectman and Korean War veteran Jerry Ellis, who is now 82 and lives in Sagamore. During the Korean War, Ellis’s squadron was stationed in Japan, and during a stop at one island, Ellis had the chance to see the emperor and empress, who had come to visit the American troops. “I didn’t get to take a photo though,” Ellis recalls, “because there was suddenly an alert. So when I heard the empress would be in Sandwich, I was determined to get that photo.”
Ellis’s friend, the late Bill Richardson, had property in Sandwich that abutted Otis, and Ellis got to watch the emperor’s airliner touch down while seated on the hood of his pickup truck on Richardson’s property. The white jet had been newly painted and had red markings on it, possibly the emperor’s insignia, Ellis says. “It was a beautiful plane.”
The emperor’s motorcade of eight or nine cars arrived in Woods Hole around 2 p.m., according to Don Rhoads, a Yale geology professor who was on sabbatical and staying at a friend’s house in Woods Hole. Rhoads watched the motorcade as it proceeded up Millfield Street and turned right onto School Street. He remembers it well. “My two boys were very young, and they were all wide-eyed about seeing Hirohito. His motorcade turned the corner right in front of where we were staying, and you could see his head in the car. We waved to him, and he gave us a nice wave back. It was quite a thing to see him in person.” After retiring from Yale in 1986, Rhoads started a seafloor mapping company, Marine Surveys Inc., later known as Science Applications International. He sold the company in 2000 and currently lives in Falmouth.
When the emperor and his motorcade arrived, police and security guards were stationed on the roof of the Lillie Building at MBL, while about a dozen protesters lined the lawn near the sundial across Water Street protesting Japanese whaling. Some 20 to 25 Japanese dignitaries and reporters escorted Hirohito to the welcome ceremony held in the building in his honor. An elaborate tea had been prepared for after the ceremony, but the emperor surprised everyone and said, “Let’s just get to the science,” according to Dr. Shinya Inoue, MBL professor emeritus of biology, who was present for the ceremony. Scientists scurried and quickly rearranged themselves.
“The emperor didn’t come to have tea, he came to have science!” recalls Inoue, who invented the polarized light microscope, and later, the video microscope. Inoue came to the U.S. from Japan in 1948 to attend Princeton University, and later became a U.S. citizen. In 2010, the Japanese government honored him with the Order of the Sacred Treasure, for his scientific contributions and promoting cooperative research between Japan and the United States. In September 2016, he published his autobiography, Pathways of a Cell Biologist. A resident of Falmouth, Inoue will celebrate his 96th birthday in January.
Scientists escorted the emperor to a room they’d prepared for him—a makeshift laboratory in the library catalog room. In fact, numerous concessions were made for the emperor’s visit. “I remember Howard Sanders’s lab,” Rhoads recalls with a laugh. “They were all fishermen, and they always had their poles just lined up against the wall. Well, to clean up for the visit, Sanders got all new fishing racks built for him.”
Inoue recalls that when the emperor looked through his monochromatic polarized light microscope, he asked, “How come one can see so well?” It was the only microscope of its kind at the time, patented by Nikon and American Optical, Inoue says. “I explained to him that the microscope uses a special kind of polarized light, so things show up that you can’t normally see.” Through the lens of Inoue’s microscope, the emperor got to see specimens he was familiar with through an entirely new light, and specimens he’d never even heard of. “It was a special occasion,” says Inoue.
“Dr. Inoue allowed us to see chromosomes, and the emperor was very impressed,” says Morse. Japanese newsmen, who had traveled back and forth in the months before the visit, shot photos of the occasion for publication in Japan. “It was fun to see real genuine Japanese news people in such great numbers,” adds Morse.
Meanwhile, the Sandwich Glass Museum was also teeming with Japanese reporters, as Empress Nagako arrived there in her own motorcade. According to the Sandwich Historical Society’s November 1975 newsletter, The Acorn, the empress was quiet, soft-spoken, and intensely focused on all the pieces she saw. She seemed regretful when the vice grand chamberlain gestured that it was time to go, the newsletter notes.
Ellis, still hopeful about getting a photo, arrived just in time to see the empress coming out of the museum. He watched from the green in front of the Sandwich Town Hall directly across from the museum entrance. “It was thrilling to see an empress here in little Sandwich,” he says. “There was a lot of Secret Service. I happened to have glanced up at the bell tower of the First Church of Christ, and there were two Secret Service guys up there with binoculars. I said to my friend, ‘If those guys are up there, there’s got to be more of them around that we can’t see.’” Even with the security forces, Ellis got his photo that day.
The empress spent about 30 minutes at the museum, according to The Acorn. From there, she was taken via limousine to The Dan’l Webster Inn for a brief rest, reports an article in The Lowell Sun on October 5, 1975. A small Japanese doll encased in glass in the lobby commemorates the visit. The empress then stopped by the Falmouth Artists Guild, and her visit there was highlighted in the art center’s recent 50-year anniversary celebration.
The emperor and empress spent a mere two hours on Cape Cod before being whisked away from Otis Air Force Base to continue on their U.S. tour. But the visit left a lasting impression on those fortunate enough to have witnessed it.
A native Cape Codder, Marina Davalos is a freelance writer who lives in Cotuit.
As an 11-year-old, Colleen Vandeventer often posed as a model for her artist grandmother’s painting class students. “I had the most difficult time trying to sit motionless for 30 minutes!” she recalls. “I’d have to pick a point on the wall and stare at it.”
Her youthful impatience notwithstanding, Vandeventer was invigorated by her grandmother’s art and fascinated to see how she critiqued her students’ work. She loved all the activity in the studio, even the pungent smell of paint.
In her teens, Vandeventer confided her desire to learn to paint to her grandmother, who arranged classes with a teacher, figuring it might be difficult for her to take lessons from a family member. She began with still lifes, and quickly fell in love with oil painting.
Her career as an artist, however, would be put on hold while she joined the work force, first as an executive secretary, then in market research. She enrolled at Stonehill College and earned a bachelor’s degree in business while working full time. When she started a family in the late 1980s and chose to stay at home with her children, she decided to return to art, and enrolled in classes at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
She threw herself into her art studies, participated in workshops and learning from mentors. She told herself if her art career didn’t develop, she could always fall back on marketing. “I gave myself five years,” she says. Then came a turning point: In 1994 a friend asked her to teach an art class a few nights per week. Additional teaching assignments followed, and she also took on framing work for other artists’ creations.
In 2001, Vandeventer opened her own working studio—Studio 5—in an old jewelry factory in North Attleborough. “It was the best thing I ever did for myself,” she says, “being able to do my own thing, and I’ve managed to elevate it into full-time work.” She has since moved her studio to Pawtucket, R.I.
The realistic features of Vandeventer’s landscapes soften as the viewer gets closer to the individual painting, a result of her loose, often feathery, brushstrokes. She gains inspiration, she says, from “the glow of a certain time of day, the mood that the atmosphere creates, or the way the light falls across an object, and the feelings evoked versus the actual subject matter.” She describes her style as “impressionistic realism,” and this also characterizes her still lifes, particularly her richly hued flowers.
Vandeventer enjoys the company of fellow artists. In 2013 she and two other painters, Susan Carey and Kathy Edmonston, opened Gallery Artrio in Hyannis, where they showcase their work as well as that of other artists. She also teaches classes and workshops out of her studio. “We need the constant exposure to others, because that’s how we learn,” Vandeventer says. “The camaraderie, impromptu critiques, and just general art discussions are motivating and a way to keep fresh.” – Marina Davalos
Colleen Vandeventer’s work can be seen at Gallery Artrio, 50 Pearl Street, Hyannis
![The Centerville Recreation Building is undergoing renovations and restoration. [Marina Davalos/Barnstable Patriot]](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2021/03/24/NBAR/d124b5ec-09c5-4bf8-9fa1-2e60d1488603-Centerville_Rec_bldg.jpg?width=660&height=495&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
![The playground outside the Centerville Recreation Building will be replaced with one that is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. [Marina Davalos/Barnstable Patriot]](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2021/03/24/NBAR/e6161d21-a00a-4503-92ea-4a7848c851da-Centerville_Rec_w_Swings.jpg?width=660&height=495&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
