Illustrating Portsmouth

Sasha and Sperry Are Gone

2008-04-11T09:08:00.010-04:00

Sasha Davidson was a freelance art director who lived with his partner, writer Ralph Sperry, on Langdon Steet, just off Islington. Sperry had been ill with cancer for a long time and died a year ago on April 6th, 2007. Sasha, who also lost his father this past winter, died suddenly of the flu on March 18th. They had been minor characters around Portsmouth since the late 1970s at least and I'd guess they were about 60 or 65 years old when they died.

The two of them were avid collectors of art and antiques and oddites, and their taste in food and drink was just as exotic. Every visit or dinner made you feel like you had washed up at some time-passed-by sahib's club in a forgotten third world colonial outpost. They'd traveled to Brazil and the Seychelles (and probably much more that I don't know of), and Sasha had a business renting Jamaican vacation properties. Their home and menus and conversations were peppered with tidbits from far-away places. Their house was dark and mysterious, dense with exotic furniture, huge potted ferns blocking half the light, Art Nouveau and Deco accessories at every turn. Big original Pearlstein nudes on the walls. A full set of Manhattan glass, ashtrays from the Normandy, some bizarre little dolls from who knows where (but I wouldn't have been surprised to have seen pins sticking out of them). A pristine set of those cocktail tumblers whose female figures lost their clothes when filled with liquid. They had hundreds of glass Xmas ornaments -- three Xmas trees' worth -- that they would proudly show off each holiday season. Their backyard garden was just as beautifully exotic: a small stone terrace surrounded by dozens of rare hosta, all closed off from the outside world by towering dense greenery.

I met Sasha shortly after I moved here in 1980. At the time I was at 159 Middle with several housemates, (and Sasha and Sperry, as it turned out, lived across the street then). Sasha and Dan Fickett had an ad agency, The Penhallow Group, at the corner of Penhallow and Daniel Streets. Tom Walsh and some others worked there, too, and were maybe partners, I don't recall. Anyway, I walked in, a totally naive kid with a shiny new portfolio. They were nice enough to look it over, and they all were generous with advice and encouragement for years afterward.

One of my earlier pen and ink drawings was of their building in fact. Here it is. (I included this one in the 1987 Portsmouth History Calendar.)

In the late 1970s, Sasha had helped Marjan Frank design the Cafe Petronella, which became a hangout for the oh-so-hip in the early 1980s. Here is a drawing I did of that place, and it was in the same calendar, too.

Sperry became locally minorly famous for his 1981 science fiction novel Status Quotient: The Carrier, and worked for years at Winebaum's News. He wrote columns for local papers, and made a habit of collecting all sorts of items he found on the sidewalks while walking around town.

I can't say that I knew them well, but we kept in touch every few months with a phone call or visit. I'm not really the right guy to write a proper history of those two -- they have friends who were closer and knew them better -- but they were an important part of my life and they gave this town some character and I'm sorry they are gone.

re:Ports. Magazine

2008-04-10T08:54:00.008-04:00

In late 1980 or early 1981, when I was living at 159 Middle Street (here is another post about interesting goings-on there), Phillip Augusta and I began working up ideas for what, after a few trial starts, became re:Ports. Arts and Entertainment Magazine. We began on the dining room table at 159 Middle Street, then got an office at 10 Commercial Alley, then a bigger office on State Street. We published every week for four years and sold it to a publishing company in Dover. Phillip and I took turns as editor and art director: for a month or two he was one and I the other, then we'd switch off. Hardest work I ever did but great fun.

The image above is a cover of the magazine, featuring a panel from one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic books. The two guys who invented the series lived in Dover, and one day one of them, either Eastman or Laird, I don't remember which, walked into the re:Ports. office when I was art director and whipped out some art and said, "Hey we do this comic you want to use any of it in your magazine?" I remember the art was fabulous and I could have picked any of a number of great images. So that's where this cover came from. They gave us signed copies of their first comic, and if I had known it was going soon be worth a bazillion bucks I wouldn't have let spraymount get all over it. I don't know what happened to Eastman and Laird, except that TMNTs took off and I hope they are living happily ever after.

Kongress Street

2008-04-10T07:33:00.006-04:00

This was one of the earliest drawings I did of Portsmouth, in 1979 or 1980, as maybe you can tell by that car in the foreground. Heck, it was one of my earliest big pen and ink drawings. I was selling prints of it locally, but it was never a big hit.

In about 1982 or so, while I was publishing re:Ports. Magazine (with Phillip Augusta), just for fun I did a quick sketch for the cover with King Kong up there. I shamelessly cribbed him from an old movie poster, and added an FB-111 in his grasp, because at the time people were talking about closing the local Pease Air Force base, (out of which flew FB-111s) and re:Ports. was a weekly that had commentary on local events. See this illustration I did of Pease's entrance.

The magazine cover was a big hit so I did a proper drawing and made a print and it sold very well. For the print I put a female figure into his hand, instead of the airplane, figuring it would have more general appeal. This print was the first of my Famous Monsters of Portsmouth series, which includes the Piscatasquid and a giant lobster attacking Wentworth-by-the-Sea. Those prints have been hanging in Ceres Bakery -- yes, in the bathrooms, but hey -- since the mid-1980's. Which gives me some kind of claim on the longest running art show in town. See all three of them at my website here.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2008-04-09T07:40:00.006-04:00

Here's the image from a card I sent out for Valentine's Day 2007. Yeah, I know it's not Valentine's Day today; I just ran across this in my files and decided to put it up here. And the repair-guy-on-the-steeple subject goes with the previous post.

As of right now, the North Church steeple is bright and white and clean-looking. But a couple years ago it was in serious need of repair and paint. The rust and stains and peeling paint gave the thing some interesting character. But cleanliness is next to godliness. Is the purpose of the steeple to point the way to heaven? Or maybe it's a kind of lightning rod for spiritual energy, drawing down holiness into the church. Other, non-Christian religions have steeples too, right? Mosques have minarets. So maybe steeples/minarets are a human thing, rather than a Christian thing.

New Year's Card 2008

2008-04-04T09:36:00.009-04:00

I sent this image out as a New Year's Card for 2008: "Time to take down the lights." I did the pen and ink drawing about 15 years ago or so when the steeple was being worked on.

New Hampshire Colonial State House

2006-04-28T10:09:00.001-04:00

The old State House used to stand in the middle of Market Square, twenty or thirty feet in front of the front of the North Church. In this view, the church really would have been visible just to the left of the State House, and would have blocked some of the view of it. The State House was built in the 1750s and 1760s, and removed in 1836. About one-third of it is now in numbered pieces somewhere, being preserved with hopes that the structure can be eventually rebuilt. A good reference for more information on the State House (and indeed for Portsmouth architectural history in general) is Richard Candee's book "Building Portsmouth" (Portsmouth Advocates, 1992).

In 1988, Paul Gosselin, who is a principal of Salmon Falls Architecture and for whom I do the occasional rendering of proposed designs, approached me about drawing what the old State House used to look like. He had been Portsmouth's architectural historian, or something like that, and was working with Jim Garvin, architectural historian for New Hampshire, to try to get the thing rebuilt. Paul studied the remains of the building and drew up some plans and gave them to me and I drew up the building.

I did the drawing with black Prismacolor pencil on tracing vellum. As I look at it now, I am strongly underwhelmed by those midget elm trees, looking here an awful lot like mutant brocolli stalks. Stately American elms were once common along the streets of Portsmouth and New England in general, and would have been much taller than the ones I showed here. We used to have a line of them in front of my house where I grew up in Hampton, NH. Elms are typical features of drawings, paintings and photos of historic New England, but are now largely gone due to Dutch Elm disease. I am proud of how the horse and cart look in front of the Athenaeum, and the way the sky works. I recall having to do a bit of research to try to get the clothes on the figures approximately correct, and to understand what a typical horse cart of the times would have looked like.

Back when I first did this drawing, Paul Gosselin and his restoration group were unsure about the cupola on the top. Their best guess at the time was that it would have been similar to the one on Boston's Old State House, so that's what I drew in. We decided to leave it a bit dim and faded, however, thinking that such a tactic might indicate our uncertainty about its form. Here is what that original drawing looked like:

A couple years ago, in 2004, Nancy Carmer, who worked for the city of Portsmouth, called and said she wanted to use this image for a plaque that was going to be put up in Market Square. But, she said, the design of the cupola had been further researched (I am not sure exactly by whom) and so I changed the drawing to reflect the new design. You can now go to Market Square and see the plaque. Look Look here in the Portsmouth Herald for an article about the plaque's dedication. If you are interested in seeing more of the old State House, there is a recent wooden model of the building, very nicely built and detailed, that was in City Hall a couple years ago. It might be there still.

Pease Air Force Base Entrance

2006-03-24T09:01:00.000-05:00

Editor Dan Wise asked me to do the cover illustration for Business New Hampshire magazine's July 1989 issue on Pease's makeover from a SAC base to a industrial/office park. It's done with markers and colored pencils, a style I use for architectural renderings (see this page of my website for more in that technique). This style has been made very popular by Michael Doyle's book "Color Drawing", which is recommended for anyone who wants to learn a very accessible rendering technique.

Pease's entrance was far more interesting when it was an air base than afterwards. This drawing shows the handsome little guard house that was there, and also one of several airplanes that were parked, museum fashion, out on the lawn. A rather sinister reference to the purpose of the place was visible in the mushroom cloud insignia for one of the military units stationed there (just barely visible on the sign in this drawing). Here you can see a much better view of that insignia and also photos of Pease's military history. Here is more history on a page which also includes a bomb's eye view of the base from about two miles up.

Atkinson Street, Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth, New Hampshire

2006-03-23T14:44:00.000-05:00

Here's the view looking northwest up Atkinson Street, from Strawbery Banke out to State Street way in the distance. Those two tiny figures in the distance are about in the spot from which my drawing of the Thomas Bailey Aldrich house was made. This drawing is done in broad-stroke pencil, a style popular among architects in the early 1900's and popularized in drawing technique books by Ernest Watson and Ted Kautsky (both excellent and highly recommended). You sharpen your pencils to a wide, flat point, and lay down a single layer of graphite. Broad stroke purists insist that you should never go back over a mark once you have made it, and that you always use the same pressure on the pencil, varying the darkness of the mark by using a different grade pencil, not by pressing harder. (Limited edition prints of this image are available directly from me.)

In the left center of this view is the William Pitt Tavern, site of interesting goings-on during the time of the Revolutionary War, and which Strawbery Banke has restored. It is also part of Portsmouth's Black Heritage Trail. Strawbery Banke Museum is one of the cultural institutions that makes Portsmouth a great town. It is very popular among tourists and school field trips, but somewhat less so, I would say, among the local citizenry, who, IMHO, seem to take it for granted.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich House, Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth, New Hampshire

2006-03-22T17:41:00.001-05:00

I did this drawing in ink with a crowquill pen (which can be messy, but gives interesting thick or thin lines, depending on how hard you press) for a Pontine Movement Theatre marketing piece when I was on the Board of Directors there in about 1990 or so. It shows the view across Atkinson and Court streets to a house where Thomas Bailey Aldrich lived for a few years as a kid, and which Strawbery Banke has restored as a memorial.

It was in the street in front of this building where Tommy Dale saved me from being beaten up. In the early 1980's in Portsmouth there were several instances in which small groups of young men would assault individual guys who were walking down the street. Jan Frank, brother of Marjan who ran the Petronella, was assaulted this way, and subsequently announced that he was heading back to NYC, where it was safer. One of my old housemates at 159 Middle Street, Michael McCarthy, suffered the same fate right around the corner from the police station, which was then on Penhallow Street. After being assaulted he had run to the station, but the police apparently showed little interest in either heading out to catch the perps or comforting Michael. I was home when he arrived, in torn clothes and tears, furious at his double humiliation.

One night about 11pm in, roughly, 1982, I was walking with a female friend down Court Street toward the river. A small car full of people drove past and then pulled over behind us as we kept walking. Four or five young men got out and came up to us. I at first thought they needed our help, but, no, they began acting beligerently. I remember one of them, the largest and loudest, had his shirt off, and another one announced, "This is going to be fun, I wish I brought my numchucks."

I do recall telling my friend to keep moving, and she did; the guys didn't show any interest in her. They got around me in a circle, and I remember her walking away. I've never been in a real fight my whole life, and I just stood there pretty clueless. As they say, it looked like curtains for our hero. But just then a car drove up Court Street and stopped and out jumped Tommy Dale: "You OK, Bill?"

Tommy Dale ran the Oracle House Restaurant down at the end of Court Street, facing Prescott Park. He used to buy ads in the weekly publication I had back then, re:Ports. Arts and Entertainment Magazine. One night I filled in as dishwasher at the restaurant, but I kinda blew it; I used up all the hot water too quickly, and was not invited back.

Anyway, that night on Court Street, Tommy, who was gay and quite notorious for prowling the darker areas of town late at night, knew exactly what was going on. He walked up and the guys backed off and it was over just like that. He saved my ass, no doubt. What a guy. Tommy died of AIDS within a year or two, but don't quote me on exactly when. Housemate Michael died of the same thing, later in the '80s.

Now at the same time, there was a shady character named Gunnar who used to come over to the 159 Middle Street house where I lived and hang out. My housemates and I were suspicious that sometimes really late at night he'd sneak in through the sunporch windows, maybe sleep for the night, then sneak out again before anybody got up, but no one ever caught him at it. Gunnar usually wore a lot of black leather with studs on it. He had very short black hair, aggressive sideburns and enough strabismus to make holding a conversation awkward. He was a bouncer at The Riverside Club, and was rumored to always carry weapons. People said he had some kind of neo-Nazi leanings, but he never talked too much about anything. When confronted about his possible late night visits to the house, he never admitted anything, but he did claim, with modesty, that if it did happen to be the case that he was around our house late at night, well then we were all much safer for it. I never knew him to be anything but a nice guy. Rumor was that he had the occasional late night assignation with my housemate Janet. This speculation was especially gossip-worthy because Janet was Jewish.

Anyway, supposedly one night Gunnar was walking down the street and a gang of young tough guys thought they'd work him over. He stabbed one of them and scared the rest off. I never heard this from him, but it makes a nice story. The random assaults seemed to taper off after that. I don't know what ever happen to Gunnar.

2006-03-20T14:29:00.001-05:00

Here is a drawing of Wentworth-by-the-Sea, the large old hotel that many refer to as being in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but is actually of course in the town next door, New Castle.

I did this drawing first, without the lobster, in the early 1980s. The hotel was then still the size that you see in this drawing, and still open for business. Some friends of mine worked there and lived in the worker's rooms which were located way down at the end.

(The original black and white drawing of mine is still available for sale as a limited edition print. I did a very limited run of hand-colored versions of that print that sold out long ago. They sold well, but I got really sick of coloring the same print over and over, so I just ended the series at about 30 or so.)

In the late 1980s, when the Wentworth was closed down and most of us thought it would never reopen, I added the lobster to the original drawing and did another series of prints. (These are still available for sale. See this print and the others in the Famous Monsters of Portsmouth series on my website. [You can also see them all hanging in Ceres Bakery [in the bathrooms!] where they have been since the late 1980s, at least.] I also did a SAVE THE WENTWORTH t-shirt and there are a few of those still available, too.) The hotel is now up and running again as a Marriott, but only about a third of the building in the drawing was saved for this new incarnation.

When I was a kid in the 1960s, growing up in Hampton, New Hampshire, I had a friend down the street, and her mom used to take us to the Wentworth to swim. They had the hugest pool in the world, with a really high diving board and smaller diving boards on each side of it. Across the street at the main building was the snack bar, where we would get sandwiches with the crust cut off. There was a grass tennis court, with people dressed all in white playing tennis. And there was a practice putting green with many holes, each with its own flag.

The pool was next door to The Ship, a ship shaped building that was used for functions. Between The Ship and the marina was an old saltwater swimming pool that I never saw used. The Ship and saltwater pool have now been replaced with a building that looks like it is condominium residences. We had my high school senior prom at The Ship. Just uphill from the swimming pool was a funny little miniature golf course, built like a real golf course set in a garden with very short holes. At the prom my date and I went out there in the dark and rolled around on the grass and made out. That garden golf course is now the site of a great many residences all crammed in close together, as is most of the old grounds of the hotel. They are apparently quite sought after and expensive.

Here you'll find a photo of how the Wentworth used to look, and a novel by Sue Melanson, who knows the place a whole lot better than I do. And on publisher Peter Randall's site, you'll find Wentworth By The Sea, Life and Times of a Grand Hotel by Dennis Robinson which I believe is the best source for overall history of the place.