Merrimack Valley Magazine

City of Newburyport Provides Update on Plum Island Erosion

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By: Jordan Mayblum

Mayor Donna Holaday reports that the City of Newburyport is responding to acute erosion issues on Plum Island today.

Due to ongoing erosion caused by recent high tides and severe storms, Reservation Terrace has suffered adverse impacts that have compromised the integrity of the roadway and water lines. City officials have been in communication with affected residents about temporary measures now underway to ensure continued water service in the area.

The City of Newburyport is also undertaking additional emergency mitigation measures to prevent further issues that leaders anticipate due to higher-than-usual high tides in the coming days.

“Erosion has long been a concern on Plum Island and today we face an exigent threat to the delivery of public services and the safety of our residents,” Mayor Holaday said. “We are actively working to reduce the immediate challenges posed by expected tides and are eager to begin work to conduct long-overdue dredging that will hopefully serve as a longer-term solution.”

Why Paint?

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Artist Richard Burke Jones and his never-ending quest to explore his native Newburyport

The year was 1968.

Inspired after seeing his roommate’s paintings on a dorm wall, Richard Burke Jones took his first art course at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester. It was a revelation. This Newburyport High graduate began visiting museums and copying works of the masters. When it was time for him to attend graduate school, he enrolled at Tufts University, which then had a partnership with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

He would soon discover, however, that his most important lessons in creativity would be found outside academia. “I really didn’t learn anything until I started working with some older artists,” Burke says. The people he refers to were associated with The Guild of Boston Artists, founded in the early part of the 20th century to promote representational painting and sculpture. His believes his true education in drawing began when he met and studied with painter Robert Cormier, the guild’s president for many years.

 

Burke’s early focus was on watercolors. This medium gave him the experience to prepare for the slower process of oil painting. “The wonderful thing about watercolors,” he says, “is you could do a gazillion of them. If you don’t like them, you could throw them away.”

Left: The artist, at home in the studio. Top Right: Burke’s painting of his oldest daughter, Elizabeth. Along with landscapes, Burke also paints portraits, particularly of his family. Bottom Right: The Grog in Newburyport at sunset.

Over the decades, Burke has done many things with his life, but his obsession with painting never waned. He now works as the city clerk for the town of Newburyport. Despite the demands of his position, and devotion to his wife and three daughters, he produces one painting a week, sometimes two. He likes it this way. He once got to the point that he was almost painting full time and realized he didn’t like it. “You get a little dry with the ideas and you find ways to waste time,” Jones says, “whereas if you have limited time, you’re very efficient.”  

The demand for his paintings is high. “When I do an oil sketch, I post it and it sells,” he says. He primarily uses his website and Facebook page, but has also sold his work at local galleries and pop-up shops.

Lately he’s been focusing on outdoor scenes, including images of people skating and fishing. In particular, the sights of parents and grandparents spending more time with their families than was possible before COVID-19 proved to be heartwarming in the face of so many difficulties brought on by the pandemic. 

In these paintings, he isn’t shy about including details such as graffiti-covered Jersey barriers, which complicate any overly romanticized view of the world around him. “I don’t know how many more paintings I have left in me,” he says. “I’m not going to be remembered as the next Rembrandt or Norman Rockwell, but I’m a witness to things that happened here.” As an example, he shows me a recent painting in which I spot masks on the pedestrians outside Newburyport’s city hall on a vibrant spring day. It seemed the sort of subtle detail common to his paintings and suggestive of whatever hidden drive keeps him at the easel year after year, finding new ways to imagine the place he has always called home.    

To see more of his work, visit RichardBurkeJones.com, where you’ll find galleries and an online store that sells tote bags, pillows and greeting cards decorated with images from his paintings.

The Joy Nest

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“I love things that transport me to a different time and place,” says Caroline Jolliffe, the owner of Newburyport’s newest, and possibly coolest, restaurant. “The Joy Nest reminds me of my experience in Thailand.”

Jolliffe, who lived in Thailand for more than two years in the early 1990s, is no stranger to the hospitality business. For the last nine years she has been the owner of Brown Sugar by the Sea, a popular Newburyport restaurant that also serves Thai cuisine. But, she says, the two establishments are very different.

“Brown Sugar is more about Thai comfort food, the dishes that everyone expects at a Thai restaurant,” she says. “The Joy Nest’s menu was inspired by Thai street food.” 

Another inspiration for The Joy Nest was Jolliffe’s love of beautiful things, which is hard to miss when you walk into the restaurant. Sophisticated yet earthy and comfortable, The Joy Nest’s speakeasy-inspired decor emits a cozy, jazzy vibe meant to evoke a simpler, more joyful time. It’s an atmosphere that makes you want to put on your best suit, even if it’s a bit wrinkled from your last night out.

According to Jolliffe, the restaurant, which opened this past Valentine’s Day in the space formerly occupied by Glenn’s Food & Libations at the Tannery Historic Marketplace, has been very well received in spite of the pandemic. “Everyone is starved for fun and excitement,” she says.

The Joy Nest’s stylish interior is dominated by bird imagery, most notably the large pink peacock created by a local artist. “Even last February, before the pandemic, I felt like we were in a dark place,” Jolliffe says. “Peacocks are elegant, flashy and positive. I felt like Newburyport needed a place with a little more pizzazz.”

Bar area at The Joy Nest

 

 

Although The Joy Nest’s menu was inspired by street food, the plates coming out of its kitchen are anything but. Jolliffe and her staff have reimagined dishes like moo ping, street-style pork skewers served with a chili-vinegar dipping sauce, giving them a stylish aesthetic, something she hopes will make people want to try menu items not often found locally.

Craft cocktails, which Jolliffe describes as being mostly “gin-forward,” are another key ingredient in The Joy Nest’s happiness elixir. One of Jolliffe’s personal favorites is “The Nest,” a combination of gin, Lillet Blanc, Cointreau and lemon finished with a splash of absinthe. “People like experimenting with different cocktails depending on their mood,” she says. “Sometimes they’ll order the same drink all night, and other times they’ll mix it up.”

And let’s not forget the jazz. Jolliffe has been booking live musicians to play in The Joy Nest’s upstairs lounge since mid-April. 

Jolliffe’s post-pandemic plans include more tables and adding dishes to the menu that are inspired by cuisine from other Asian countries. “I’d love to get more people in here,” she says.

Over and above everything else, Jolliffe says it’s important to her that The Joy Nest’s customers come away with a sense of the Thai culture’s legendary hospitality and love for food. 

“The Thais’ level of love for food is different than ours — almost like the Italians’,” she says. “When you go to someone’s house in Thailand, the first thing they ask is, ‘Have you eaten yet?’ Even if you say no, you still get something, even if it’s just some fruit or a glass of orange juice. It’s one of the most appealing parts of their culture. I want people to feel like we are happy they are here and that we want to feed them.”  

Jolliffe recently appeared on our podcast, The 495. Click below for the full interview:

 

 

The Joy Nest
Newburyport, Mass.
(978) 572-1615
TheJoyNestRestaurant.com

Healing the Divide

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Newburyport Art Gallery Owner Uses Art for Activism

Have you ever wished you could do something, no matter how small, to make a difference? If so, you are in good company. Making a difference has been a lifelong wish of Newburyport art gallery owner and community activist Paula Estey. Estey, however, has never thought small. “I was born on fire,” she says. From the age of 4, “I was driven.” And that drive continues today. 

“When I see the urgency of a crisis, I think being a spiritual person, a mother and community organizer means I have to act.”

When Estey opened the Paula Estey Gallery at 3 Harris St. in 2014, it was to showcase the work of regional, national and international artists. That effort continues, but today Estey paints her role with a broader brush. She aims to create an attitude of hope and resilience while delivering “beautiful art as a comfort to our community.” This spring, the gallery, now known as the PEG Center for Art & Activism, will welcome another mission: “Lost and Found: Healing What Divides.” 

 

Not surprisingly, Estey has drawn on the pandemic and divisive events of the last four years to hone and refine her mission for healing. 

But it all started back in 2016, when she first felt a need for changes in the areas of human rights, social justice and the environment.  To help activate these changes, she enlisted the help of a small group of women. From this group, the Women in Action Huddle of Greater Newburyport was born in 2017 and now boasts more than 350 members on its Facebook page.

The “Huddlers” have marched, rallied, written letters, made phone calls, collected money, and put together packets and gift bags for families and seniors in need. They also helped facilitate two community art projects, with over 200 participants, and the art was displayed in Estey’s gallery windows. In addition, these volunteers partnered with Friends of Newburyport Trees to plant, water and maintain an “Indigenous Edible Avenue” in the March’s Hill section of the Clipper City Rail Trail. There, walkers can sample such delicious local fruits as rose hips and blueberries in the warmer months of the year. 

 

Estey says 2020 was a benchmark year that taught her she needed to do inner work on herself, not just in the outer world. The killing of George Floyd opened her eyes. 

“Once awakened, there is no going back to sleep,” Estey says. “As I become aware of the deep white privilege I have lived, every part of me wants to change. It is a long process.”

The work ahead fills her with excitement, she says, “We are being drawn into a bigger playing field.”Her specific dreams for the future? To bring more people of color to the art community, provide group exhibitions of “international voices in the expression of healing,” and initiate community art projects that include Lawrence and North Andover as well as Newburyport.

But her highest goal for the next five years? A public mural “dedicated to Newburyport and healing” over the outside doorway to the children’s room at the Newburyport Public Library.

“It’s a big ask,” she says. “But the team on board is a stunning mix of badass women, entrepreneurs and corporate leaders.”  

Paula Estey Gallery
Newburyport, Mass.
(978) 376-4746
PaulaEsteyGallery.com

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