4 resources

• Oral history interview with Dennis Pinette, 2005 Aug. 30-Sept. 1
  
  An interview of Dennis Pinette conducted 2005 Aug. 30 and Sept. 1, by Susan C. Larsen, art historian, for the Archives of American Art, at the artist's home and studio, in Belfast, Me. Pinette discusses his childhood in Williamstown, Mass., and Morristown, N.J., and his early fascination with industrial scenes and railroad sightings; his family and artistic bloodline from his maternal grandparents, Harold and Frances McMennamin; his education at Mount Greylock Regional High School in Williamstown; his first influential art teacher, John D. Maziarz; his secondary education at Hartford Art School where he studied with Rudolph Zallinger; his first job out of college for a picture framer in West Hartford, Conn., while at the same time continuing to paint at night; his marriage to Megan Pinette (née Smith) in 1975, and how they first met; the couple's easel-backed picture frame business in Westerly, R.I., in the early 1980s, which they gave up to move to Maine and paint; their move to Belfast, Me., in the summer of 1983, when they bought the house in which they still live; the Artfellows art cooperative, started in Belfast in 1980; his shift back to realism from abstraction in the early 1980s; his wanderings in and around industrial parks in Maine, including the Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Wiscasset, to find inspiration for his canvases; his total refusal of the idea that his paintings have social or political messages to convey; his continuing fascination with the visceral quality of industrial scenes; his artistic influences, including American artists of the early twentieth century, such as Edward Hopper, John Sloan, William Glackens, Charles Sheeler, and Charles Burchfield, as well as later American artists such as Agnes Martin and Jackson Pollock; the influence and inspiration of Maine's varied landscape; his preferences for working, especially plein-air painting during the spring and fall; and his most recent series of works, which focus on fire and on water. Pinette also recalls Vito Acconci, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Brown, Stewart Henderson, Richard Norton, Yvonne Jacquette, Alex Katz, Linden Frederick, Stephen Pasterhoff, Neil Welliver, Dudley Zopp, and others.
• Annie Proulx correspondence with Joel Connaroe - Finding Aid
  
  Comprises typescript, manuscript, email and post-card correspondence between author Annie Proulx and Joel Connaroe, author of books and essays about American poetry and fiction, editor of Six American Poets, and president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation from 1985 to 2002 ; with 143 color photographs.
• The Annie Proulx Papers - Finding Aid
  
  The archive comprises material related to the publication of four short-story collections written and/ or composed by Proulx during this period, as well as uncollected short stories; material related to the composition and publication of four novels published between 1992 and 2002; material related to the composition of nonfiction articles, essays, and books, including freelance magazine work done by Proulx in the 1980’s and several “how-to” gardening and cooking publications; four academic theses completed by Proulx while she was a history student at the University of Vermont and George Williams University; a holograph journal begun by Proulx on 1976, and concluded on March 18, 1977, while she was living in the North Kingdom of Vermont (restricted until after the death of the author); book reviews, public remarks, interviews, book proposals, and a small section of poetry written by Annie Proulx. The archive also includes some born-digital drafts of works and correspondence, and her sketchbooks and watercolors of landscapes and people.\n Also contains Proulx’s extensive research files, which include maps and guides organized by region, project files with articles organized by subject, and hundreds of research photographs, many organized by place. Other photographs in the archive include portraits of Annie Proulx, photographs of literary events, and photographs from Proulx’s childhood and of family and friends.\n Also includes a large collection of artwork by Proulx’s mother, painter and amateur naturalist Lois Nellie Gill Proulx, and her estate papers, as well as a collection of genealogical and property records retained by Proulx.\n The archive is rich in both incoming and outgoing correspondence, and includes letters to and from writers and friends; agents and publishers; translators, and readers. In many cases, Proulx retained copies of her outgoing personal and business letters. Correspondence from fans of “Brokeback Mountain” is restricted for the life of the author, as is Proulx’s Vermont journal.
• Wicker/LaVake family collection
  
  This collection consists primarily of Conrad Wilson's genealogical research notes and ancestry charts for the Wicker and LaVake (or Levesque) families. Included with these materials is also research pertaining to several other related families, including the Wilson, Pearson, Haskell, Foster, Knowlton, Holman, Washburn, Johnson, Parker, Winslow, Robbins, and Lear families, among others. A copy of an unpublished memoir written by Conrad Wilson provides some additional Wilson family history alongside his life story. Also included are a number of letters from the family of Augusta (French) and Cassius Wicker, 1841-1903. The bulk of this correspondence was written by Augusta "Gussie" Carroll (French) Wicker to her husband Cassius "Cash" Milton Wicker between 1868 and her death in 1889. Other materials further represent Augusta Wicker, including a smaller number of letters written to her parents, 1856-1888, and estate documents, 1889-1903. After Augusta Wicker's death, there are other letters written to Cassius Wicker from his three young children, Henry Halladay Wicker (1876-1894), Lucy Southworth Wicker (1879-1943), and Cyrus French Wicker (1882-1968). Earlier letters from Augusta had included notes from the children and financial guardianship of Wicker's daughter, Lucy Southworth Wicker, is addressed in the estate papers. Other Wicker family members represented in this collection of correspondence include several residents of New Haven and North Ferrisburgh, Vermont. Among these are letters of: Cassius Wicker's parents, Maria Delight (Halladay) and Cyrus Washburn Wicker; his uncle, Charles Haskell Wicker (1816-1888); his cousins George (1847-1885) and Emma (Wood) Wicker (1855-1941); and other another cousin, Charles S. Wicker (1861-1915), also of Niagara Falls, New York.