Ceres Street From The Water, or, Is There Something Strangely Fascinating About This Image?

This view is from the middle bridge (the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge) over the Piscataqua, looking back at Portsmouth from the Maine side. Phillip Augusta, who was my partner in re:Ports. Magazine at the time, (1981) had taken some nice photos from this angle, and I used them as reference material. I moved the North Church steeple over to the right to balance things out. From this angle in real life it's actually over above the tugboats.

At time I drew this, I had been reading a lot about "subliminal perception," and how advertising photos and illustrations were alleged to have disturbing images of sex and death embedded in them to subconsciously stimulate consumers. Things like skulls and sexual organs hidden in the ice cubes. (I have actually found some of these in magazine ads, but I don't know if they affect viewer's behavior.)

So, doing this drawing, I thought it would be cool to put some four-letter words in the sky, and see if maybe people became strangely fascinated by the image. I imagined people staring at it on the wall, saying, "I don't know what it is, but there is just something about this drawing that really gets me!"

So, how is it working? Are you strangely fascinated? At the time I was drawing it I was so worried that people would actually really notice the words that I kept covering them up more and more. So they are pretty much obscured. If you click on the image above, it will come up bigger.

Here's something that you will be able to notice. The clouds form eyes, nose, and mouth, slanting down and to the right. With the steeple going right into the mouth. At the time, I thought a skull face hidden in the sky would be oh-so diabolically devious. Turns out, it is remarkably similar to the now famous mask from the movie Scream, which came out 15 years later.

This image has been hanging on the wall over a booth in Rosa's Restaurant for about 20 years. I wonder if it affects patrons' dining experiences?

The Clam Hut, Badger's Island

The Clam Hut was located on Rt 1 on Badger's Island, right at the north end of the Memorial Bridge from Portsmouth. It was added to Chase's Market sometime between the late 1960s and early 1980s (sources vary). Badger's Island is in the middle of the Piscataqua River, and is crossed by Rt. 1, which comes over the Memorial Bridge from downtown Portsmouth. The Memorial Bridge, by the way, is currently under consideration for demolition, and is at the center of a bit of controversy. It is on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's list of endangered historic places. Lots of locals, including me, don't want to see it go.

The Clam Hut, which was for a while owned by Bob Schultze, was sometimes known as "Bob's Clam Hut," but should not be confused with the much more famous Bob's Clam Hut a couple miles further north, also on Rt. 1, in the Kittery Malls. The Clam Hut and Chase's Market were replaced by condos and a marina in the late 1980s.

I lived on Badger's Island at the time, and used to pass by the Clam Hut every day. That's my friend Joscelyn sitting on the fence. As I recall, I traded the drawing to Clam Hut owners Bob and Becky for several hundred dollars in food credit. And ate a lot of take out that summer. I've always felt this pen and ink drawing was a great composition and nice feeling of sunlight on the building. This image appeared in the 1990 Portsmouth History Calendar.

Sasha and Sperry Are Gone

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.