Just up the road in New Bedford is a treasure trove of visual arts: watercolors, carvings, oil paintings, and photographs, primarily depicting a place and time when the city of New Bedford was the whaling capital of the world – the 19th century.

On July 11 in the 21st century at the Mattapoisett Free Public Library, the New Bedford Free Public Library curator of art, Janice Hodson, pulled back the veil of time and shared her library’s art wonders for all to see.

Public libraries have long been seen as a place for ‘the people’ to go and learn, share information, and expand their interior horizons. Hodson believes that free libraries can also fill a special role in communities where fee-based museums hold works of art. At the public library, viewing art is free.

Beginning in late 1800s, when the New Bedford Library was subscription-based and did not have a permanent home, through 1910, when New Bedford’s Free Public Library finally had a secure location, the directors were on a mission to give the average person, in addition to books to read, the opportunity to view art freely.

From Hodson’s viewpoint, it was the second director of the library, George Tripp, who had the vision of a New Bedford library as a place for art in need of recognition. Tripp’s nearly four-decade tenure gave him plenty of time to collect important pieces and to inspire philanthropy through developing important relationships with the well-heeled of the area.

Hodson said, in the library’s recent past, there was a 10-year period when it was unable to display many of the pieces in its collection. The position of curator was not filled. It is Hodson’s joy to be filling that role and sharing the art collection with the people, free of charge.

And what a collection it is.

Between June and October, the library has on display John J. Audubon’s groundbreaking massive book Birds of America. This grand work of art is the seminal study of wild birds that set the tone for all future ornithological depictions.

The library’s copy was donated in 1866 by whaling merchant James Arnold. The library’s press release on the exhibit describes it as “four volumes of John James Audubon’s first edition double elephant folio of the Birds of America.”

Published in 1827, the over 400 pages of engravings showing birds in a naturalized environment became a top seller – in spite of the pages being an astounding 39 by 26 inches, known as “elephant paper.” Hodson said of Audubon, “He wanted to show the birds life size.”

Audubon’s artistic styling was the first time birds were shown by a scientist in dynamic settings: feeding, nesting, flying, and fighting.

“He generates emotions in many prints,” Hodson said.

As Hodson displayed Audubon’s rendition of the Carolina parrot, the only parrot native to North America, she smiled and told the audience, “You can hear the noise!”

Before Audubon, scientific drawings of birds were flat – one-dimensional and academic. Audubon believed that to fully understand the birds, one had to have a narrative and that narrative could be captured in the image. While he included text that described the subjects in terms other ornithologists would appreciate, the engravings were something the layperson could understand.

The Birds of America made Audubon rich by the standards of the day, Hodson confirmed. Each edition sold for $1,000. A princely sum indeed, and there must have been some princes of industry and commerce in New Bedford, as forty subscriptions were sold in this city alone.

Throughout the New Bedford Free Public Library, displayed high upon its aging walls, are pieces done by artists who lived in and around New Bedford throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, many of whom were students or teachers at the former Swain School of Design now part of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Nearly all lived in and around New Bedford.

Hodson’s presentation in Mattapoisett included images of paintings by William Allen Wall’s 1853 “Birth of Whaling,” which shows a whaling boat being launched as well as Clifford Ashley’s 1905 Sunbeam Series, which was used in his pieces published in Harper’s Weekly. These works showed the savagery and horror of working and living on a whaling ship infested with rats and roaches. And there is Clement Swift’s “The Spar from 1879,” which was shown in the Paris Salon and was purchased by the library for $750 in 1910.

And there they were, in New Bedford on July 12, the day after Hodson’s presentation – works of art resting along walls where library patrons sat below working at computers seemingly unaware that overhead a masterpiece longed to be acknowledged.

While many of the paintings have themes reminiscent of whaling activities and waterfront scenes, there are others from the Hudson River School that show the grandeur of mountains and rolling splendor of open fields.

Especially charmingis the expressionistic piece titled “The Dancing Lesson,” a large vertical canvas painted in 1915 by one of only a handful of female artists whose works grace the library’s collection, Margaret Serena Peirce. It is a piece that has strong, classically executed lines that students of the Boston School are known for using. Peirce was a student there and with her clever use of soft tones has achieved a balance between impressionistic brushwork and more traditional painting techniques.

And then there are the arts and crafts.

Turn the corner on the library’s second floor and there you’ll find an enormous solid piece of wood with a three-dimensional carving done by Leander Plummer in 1908 titled “Bluefish.” The fish is the central theme of the piece. Articulated to give movement to its posture, the fish seems as real as any swimming in Buzzards Bay today.

During her talk, Hodson gave a brief nod to what she described as a “small but impressive Japanese collection.” She said there was work still to be done on discovering how these pieces were acquired and from where. Such is the life of a curator of art.

To learn more about the New Bedford Free Public Library art collection and current exhibit visit www.newbedford-ma.gov/library or you may call Janice Hodson at 508-979-1787 to ask about the gallery’s hours.

By Marilou Newell

Colleen Oakes and Renee Buteyne were only 12 when they met in junior high at Old Rochester Regional. The two girls spoke for the first time after Buteyne (formerly Bussenger) watched as a girl at school asked to borrow Oakes’ lip gloss “and she intentionally jammed her finger in it and ruined it,” said Oakes, now 29 and living in Aspen, Colorado. The girls looked at each other in disbelief, laughed it off, and bonded over the adolescent act of unkindness.

Years passed since that encounter with the mean girl who launched the two on their journey in life as friends. Sometime that journey was a figurative one – two friends, both at UMass Amherst sharing a dorm room, their dreams, their plans … More recently, though, their journey as friends became a literal excursion as the two set out together from Portland, Oregon, and made their way home to Tri-Town peddling 3,624 miles on their bicycles during a two-month, two-week-long trip across the country.

It was something Buteyne wanted to do since she was around 20, she said. And now in 2018, suddenly Buteyne was about to turn 30.

“I think I realized that a decade had gone by and I hadn’t done it,” said Buteyne. I better get that done, she figured, “Otherwise, that dream is going to get further and further away.

“Something kind of clicked,” she said.

Buteyne was never really a biker, she admits. She had never done any long tours or overnights or anything longer than a daytrip. It was just one of those things Buteyne had always wanted to do, said Oakes, “And some day she was going to do it.” Buteyne decided that time would be this year and asked Oakes to join her.

“I wasn’t sure,” Oakes admitted. “I was out in Colorado: I wasn’t sure if the timing was right.” But then, just like that, it was suddenly the right time when the Tesla store she worked at closed down and, suddenly, Oakes was a free woman.

The two women, both facing another new decade of life together, chose the cross-country bike trip as their way to say goodbye to their twenties while pedaling into their thirties. After all, Oakes said, “My dad did it back in the 70s and he still has the stories.”

Oakes’ father is Jeff Oakes of Marion, an active advocate for the Marion Bike Path and a member of the Open Space Acquisition Commission.

The trip began on May 2, leading the two friends across the map, stopping along the way to visit friends and family in various states and checking off bucket list destinations along the way, like Yellowstone National Park, for example.

“We would sort of hit these hubs that were important to us … then try to get there by a certain time,” said Oakes.

But it wasn’t so much the places that left the impression on the two women along the way; it was the people they met and the acts of kindness they encountered from strangers all over the country.

“People are just way kinder to you than you can imagine,” said Buteyne. “When you show up on a bike like that it’s sort of like a red flag that you’re in need of something … and people want to give that so openly.”

Some people would simply leave money on the counter to buy the women’s meals, others would offer hot showers or a place to sleep. Some had simply experienced travelling on a bike long-distance or had kids who did and just wanted to pay it forward, so-to-speak.

“Real generosity from strangers, which I feel like is always a surprise,” said Buteyne.

People along the way made a lasting impact of them, said Oakes, recalling a funny outcome to a rather unpleasant experience.

“One night we ended up sleeping in a tent behind someone’s trailer in a really, really small town in Wyoming,” Oakes recalled. “It was, hands down, the worst dinner we had ever had in our entire lives.” Uncooked meat served by angry waitresses, said Oakes – “And you knew that nothing was clean in there, but it was the only place open so we knew we had to.”

Then a nice man with no teeth offered up a spot for their tent for a night that Oakes said ended up being one of the most memorable, fun nights of the trip.

“It’s some tough living in some of these places out west, but they’re the most generous people we met,” Oakes said.

Clearly, this part of the two friends’ journey was a lifetime away from that moment a mean girl and her finger globbed with Oakes’ new lip-gloss brought them together. And a trip like this one requires a companion with a good sense of humor and the ability to laugh it off, just like they did when they were 12, because the two had their moments in between Portland and Rochester, Buteyne recalled.

“Renee was the one who would push us through, and if I saw Renee struggling, I’d push her,” said Oakes.

“I don’t think I could’ve done it without her and her strength and also her humor,” said Buteyne. “You have to have someone to laugh about and Colleen was the perfect companion throughout the whole thing. It just sealed the deal on how much I love her.

“You see how strong somebody is,” Buteyne continued. “If my cup was empty she just had a little more to fill mine and hers.”

All she had to do was look at Buteyne and know what she was thinking by the end of the trip, said Oakes, like that time they climbed 3,000 feet in elevation in one day as they crossed the Continental Divide. Buteyne’s family had sent them off with some homemade brownies and at one point Oakes looked to Buteyne who was clearly stressed and said, “Here. Eat this entire brownie right now.

“Slowly she came back to life and we were just laughing on a chocolate high,” said Oakes. “It’s just those little things. We can read each other and turn it around.”

The two are certain the trip has changed them for the better. After all, they did what they said they were going to do, said Buteyne, “And I just think that our words are strong and if you want to do something or you say you’re going to do it, you should do it.

“At the end of the day, that’s the stuff that makes you, being true to your word,” said Buteyne.

For Oakes, “There was never a moment when either one of us didn’t want to keep going. It wasn’t an option for us. We can pretty much get through anything and we’re a lot stronger and more capable than we probably thought.”

There’s more than just one takeaway from this journey for the two women. But as Oakes summed it up, “There’s more kind out there than there is bad, especially for two girls – people worried about us, the warnings, the cautionary tales,” said Oakes. “It’s a great country and people are really, really nice. It’s actually not so bad out there.”

Buteyne turned 30 on July 10 during her trip. The two made their way across Massachusetts, down High Street, and onto Stevens Road on Monday, July 16, where family and friends greeted them with confetti, balloons, a homemade finish line, and lots of hugs.

“I’m excited for them and so proud,” said Lisa Bussenger, Buteyne’s mother. “They’re such good people. When they say they’re going to do something, they do it.”

By Jean Perry