Artful Escapes

Gloucester, MA, and Newry, ME

I’m not an artist but I’ve been playing one with my iPhone camera recently.

Getting slightly surreal and having loads of fun in the process @theskicastle in western Maine.

Visions of Remedios Varo’s breathtaking, surreal paintings and New Mexico’s otherwordly landscapes are still dancing in my head following trips to see both last month. Perhaps that’s why I’ve recently become enamored of viewing my surroundings through an artistic lens.

There’s also the distinct possibility that the surreal nature of the real-world news cycle has driven me to seek out the shelter and comfort of beautiful places.

Remedios Varo's Exploration of the Sources of the Orinoco River (1959) and a glorious and humbling NM high desert landscape

Exhibit A: Beauport, the Sleeper-McCann House, which I had the pleasure of exploring during a recent three-hour, “Nooks at Night” tour. For the record, I must confess that my tour-group-member etiquette left something to be desired. Despite the guide telling us that she would be happy to open any and all doors, cupboards, and drawers, but not to do so ourselves, my hands disobeyed on several occasions when I simply couldn’t resist the Allure of the Unknown.

Please accept my apologies, again, Historic New England.

In 1907, Henry Davis Sleeper, a celebrity interior designer who would definitely be on HGTV if he were alive today, built a Queen Anne-style cottage overlooking Gloucester Harbor. He added on to the house and fiddled with the rooms’ designs and themes throughout the rest of his life. By the time he died in 1934, Beauport boasted 40 rooms in a delightful hodgepodge of styles. Historic New England has owned, maintained, and offered tours of the property since the early 1940s.

So many luscious shapes! So much color and light at Beauport! Such a crazed expression on that squirrel's face!

It’s impossible not to notice the interplay of color and light at Beauport, and that’s exactly how Sleeper planned it. Lingering at a display of amethyst-colored glass; gazing at hand-painted Chinese wallpaper from the 1700s that’s still manufactured today; losing yourself in the ambiance of the Colonial kitchen, a style that Sleeper popularized: to ramble around Beauport is to lose yourself in a history suffused with playfulness, beauty, and a wanton disregard for following the rules.

Maybe that’s why I found it so hard to do so myself while touring the house.

A few days later, three friends and I drove to Newry, Maine, for a writing retreat at The Ski Castle. This new construction—as in, 2022, brand spanking new—also features a heady mélange of color, light, and nature in the form of Maine woods rather than Massachusetts sea. And, while Beauport beckons you into the past, The Ski Castle invites you to melt into a peaceful and restorative present.

Okay, let me re-phrase that: you can melt into a peaceful and restorative present by sinking into the hot tub with a glass of wine/beer/whatever or into the couch cushions with a book/laptop/whatever. If you’re looking for more activity, grab your skis/snow board/whatever and head over to Sunday River or hike one of the nearby mountains. Perhaps, unlike me, you’ll even make it to the top!

You also could do what I did one morning: run spastically around the house taking pictures from every possible angle, tantalized by shapes, textures, and the play of light on the walls, woodwork, floors, and furniture. I passed a joyful few hours escaping into the beauty of my surroundings, blissfully oblivious to whatever horrors were unspooling in the sur/real world.

Whether or not you’re a “real” visual artist, or, like myself, play one occasionally, I highly encourage you to embark on an artful escape of your own, perhaps at Beauport, perhaps at The Ski Castle, perhaps under the roof of your very own home.

This is what The Ski Castle actually looks like and, trust me, whether you want to relax or play on the nearby mountains, you’ll enjoy your stay.

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Click here to book The Ski Castle.

Click here by 10/14 to book a tour of Beauport or you’ll sadly need to wait until May, 2024, when the house re-opens for the season.

But wait! If you’re all jazzed to tour a historic home or ten, keep your eyes glued to your email for the upcoming “Holly, Jolly Holidaying at Historic New England Homes” edition of Christina’s Travels.