Massachusetts and other beautiful things

I'm neck-deep in my pre-submission edits at the moment, but last week I escaped with my buds for a long weekend in Northwest Mass, where I went to college. I had fondly pictured patio grilling and guzzling Corona in a warm summer breeze, but Massachusetts had other ideas:

MassMoCA

But that's okay. The purpose of the trip wasn't really Corona, it was research. I'm setting my second book in this lush, chilly mountain valley, and I needed to remind myself what it looked like and smelled like and sounded like. Which is, like this:

Rte 43 after the rain

In between rainstorms, I found what I wanted: a house with a story. I see story in that light that's on, and in the two open casements of those dormer windows:

Williamstown house

I also saw art, literally. In the rambling 19th-century industrial buildings of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

MassMoCA

I was an English major in college, but also a late-to-the-party art history student: after a junior year in Europe exposed me to all the wonders there, I came back and took seven art classes my senior year. I love art and architecture almost as much as I love writing, and I'm damn fortunate to have a day job in a field that makes my pulse race. Just as there will never come a time when I don't love buildings, I'll never stop loving images: creating them, analyzing them, poring over their beauty and magic.

MassMoCA

And that, most of all, is what this weekend was about for me. Digging back into art, and images, and museums, because that that's where my heart is going with this second book.

detail, Piero della Francesca, Clark Institute, Williamstown MA