Faye S. Wolfe

Jeff Kern ’79
Painter
In a former paper mill in Thorndike, Massachusetts, Jeff Kern pounded thousands of nails in his 2,100-square-foot studio loft. The process of bringing each nail flush with the nineteenth-century floorboards, trodden down by generations of workers, took months, and quantities of physical stamina, patience, and resolve. The focus required by the task turned it into a Zen exercise of sorts.

Being a painter is not so very different from setting nails. Kern’s detailed oil paintings are created brushstroke by brushstroke. (Sometimes he uses a magnifying glass to see what he’s doing.) And keeping himself afloat financially has a similar step-by-step quality: teach a class, do some carpentry work, sell a painting. “You take what comes your way,” he says.

A self-described jack-of-all-trades, Kern studied printmaking, a craft that built on his love of drawing, at UMass Amherst. Now he makes a modest income from teaching art classes three times a week. His students find their way to him by word of mouth, some traveling 45 minutes each way.

Many keep coming year after year, says Kern, “because they want to do paintings like mine.” Kern creates realistic canvases done in oils, his preferred medium, one not quickly or easily mastered. There is “good chemistry among the members of the group,” says Kern. Noting that the life of an artist can be solitary, teaching is good, he says, because “it keeps me connected to the world.” And it puts food on the table.

To afford his loft, Kern works with the landlord on renovating the mill, a sizeable granite structure with brick additions. Over the years, Kern has winterproofed the many windows and evicted pigeons—carefully caught and released—from the attic. He has also worked steadily to make the loft, a room with a 13-foot-high ceiling, more functional and aesthetically pleasing. To make a gallery within the loft, he recently installed elaborately carved wood paneling that he pried out of a deconsecrated local church. The paneling forms the backdrop for his landscapes, trompe l’oeil still lifes, and winsome portraits of chickens posed in gold-leafed Renaissance tableaux.

Kern has been represented by R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton since 1991 and is having a solo show there this spring. From time to time he even finds someone willing to sponsor him. One sponsor helped him to travel last summer to Newfoundland, a place that exerts a powerful pull on him. As Kern acknowledges, “Patrons come and go,” so he also does portraits of people, pets, and houses and sometimes lands a major commission. Not too long ago, he executed a panoramic rendering of the Northampton Oxbow for someone’s new house for $3,000. It’s not the first time that an artist has portrayed that picturesque loop of the Connecticut River: In 1836, Thomas Cole, of the Hudson River School, did a magnificent oil of the Oxbow. Now recognized as a foremost American painter, in his lifetime Cole worried about sales, cultivated patrons, and went through periods where his finances were stretched as taut as his canvases. Some things never change.

Jeff Kern Exhibit

Opens May 9, 2008

R. Michelson Galleries

132 Main Street, Northampton

413-586-3964; www.rmichelson.com

 

---

Valerie Martin ’74G
Writer

With eight novels, three collections of short stories, and a nonfiction book about Saint Francis to her name, Valerie Martin has an impressive publishing record. Yet for much of her career, she’s made a living not by writing but by teaching writing, at Loyola University in New Orleans, the University of New Orleans, Sarah Lawrence College, UMass Amherst, and other schools.

Her first job out of college was working in her native New Orleans, in the welfare department. After getting her MFA in English from UMass Amherst, she went back to her old job, working on her first novel at night, early in the morning, and in between interviews with food stamp applicants.

“I had a little folder,” she remembers, where she’d tuck the manuscript away. “I used to be able to write anytime, anywhere…Now I’m more of a prima donna; I need my special place, my special pen.”

“It took one year to write,” she adds, “one year to find an agent, one year for her to find an editor who wanted to publish it, and one year for the publisher to turn it into a book. That was the fast track, as these things go.” Set in Motion was published in 1978.

She continued writing as her life got more crowded. “I was teaching four sections of freshman comp, I had a four-year-old daughter, and I was divorced,” she recalls. “I think about how I was able to do so much writing. I guess I didn’t sleep as much I do now.”

Martin’s stamina was tested by “up and down times,” like the seven-year stretch where she didn’t sell a book. But she seldom considered quitting.

“There was one time when I was not making enough money, and I thought I might give up and open a restaurant—a wine bar,” she says. “The bank was amazingly willing to give me a loan, and I got a liquor license, which, it being New Orleans, was a story all in itself. I think it would have been quite profitable, but then I was able to sell my third book, and I was offered a teaching job at Mount Holyoke College.”

That was in the late eighties; in 1990, “the movie thing happened,” as she puts it. Starring Julia Roberts and John Malkovich, Mary Reilly was based on Martin’s novel of the same name about a young servant girl in the household of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Proceeds from selling the movie rights in hand, Martin gave up a tenure-track position—for the second time—and moved to Italy for almost three years.

“I had very little involvement with the film’s production, which I think was wise,” she says, “I’ve heard too many horror stories about books being made into movies. Once I finish a book, I don’t look back.”

In 2003, her novel Property was published. “They said it was my ‘breakout book’”—the one that would make her a star. She says wryly, “I have had several breakouts—I’m like a rash.”

Property won England’s prestigious Orange Prize. Gaining an audience in Britain was as financially significant as the award of 30,000 pounds. Since then, she explains, “I have been able to get two contracts and sell my books in two places.”

She’s also been able to drop teaching and spend time on things like researching Croatia, the homeland of some of the characters in her new novel, Trespass.

“It’s a complex book; it has more than one story being told in it,” Martin says. “It’s about a family—that’s a bit of a departure for me. In the past, a lot of my characters have been outsiders. It’s also the most political book I’ve ever written. It was a very new thing to do, a bit difficult….I’ve never been so close to the passions of my characters before.”

To promote Trespass, Martin traveled from her home in New York State to major cities such as New Orleans, Toronto, and Washington, D.C.—and to Hadley, Massachusetts. “When I was young, I thought book tours sounded great, living in hotel rooms and all, but I found that I really don’t like being in hotel rooms that much. You can’t open a window. I’m allergic to the carpets. Food is always a problem,” she explains cheerfully.

Stuffy hotel stays aside, most of the time Martin can keep “the personal and the business sides of writing separate,” she says. This separation is philosophical as well as practical.
“Getting a bigger audience is desirable,” she acknowledges, “but I don’t write principally because I want to make a living from it, and I don’t write principally because I want my books to sell a lot. I would do it if I didn’t make a living from it.”

She does have some financial goals, though. The small town where she lives is home to lots of deer. “You have to garden under nets or build a six-foot fence,” she says. “I’m hoping the next book I write will allow me to buy the fence I want.”

---

 

 

Aaron Lyons ’99
Actor
Aaron Lyons has been an office temp, a landscaper, and a cook; he has worked as a massage therapist, cared for children, and tended elephants. Elephants? “I was raised in the circus,” he admits. “Ringling Brothers. Both my parents worked there.”

Lyons has also directed plays and led acting workshops. His record as a working actor is impressive—parts in some 76 plays since 1989—but he estimates, “Sixty percent of the work I do is to make ends meet, mostly backstage gigs.”

There’s a bright side to that work, aside from the paychecks. “If a character works at a coffee shop or on a horse ranch, I can say, ‘Okay, I’ve done that, I know how that works.’ It’s one less thing I need to research,” says Lyons. “The foundation of any character I portray, though, comes from my need to know why people do what they do. Exploring the reasons is what I love most.”

For Lyons, an acting career was never a question. “It was the first thing I did that didn’t bore me. It’s something that you can constantly be improving on. When I worked in an office?”—his voice and an eyebrow go up—“there was one way to do things. But acting … there are hundreds of ways.”

Last fall, in the theater piece Voices from Chernobyl, Lyons played Arkady Fillin, a survivor of the nuclear plant explosion and meltdown in the Ukraine 21 years ago. As Fillin, Lyons described the aftermath: “We were handed shovels. We buried houses, wells, trees. We buried earth. We buried the forest.”

“The stakes were immediately high,” Lyons says of the part, “partly because of the subject matter, but also because it’s a biographical role. And there’s the question of how to respect the seriousness but also the storytelling aspect of the piece.”

But before you can play the part, you have to get the part. Lyons knows the drill. “You have to be businesslike about it, go to auditions all the time. And you can’t let rejection get to you.”

For the past year and a half, he’s been going after film work in Los Angeles, where he lives. Moving from the stage to the screen requires an agent, a manager, and a different mindset.

“Onstage I’ve played an 80-year-old, the romantic lead, the best friend, the good guy, the villain… I can do all that, but in film it’s about looks first, then acting,” Lyons explains. “If they want someone who’s a foot taller and has blue eyes, I won’t get the part, no matter what my experience is.”

The hazel-eyed actor figures his best shot at film or TV work is bad-guy roles. “If I relax my face,” he says, letting his mouth sag and pulling his eyebrows down, “I look angry.” (He does.) “When I do that, people look at me and say, ‘Aaron’s pissed,’ even if I’m not; I’m just thinking.”

To help his chances, Lyons is doing his homework, talking to directors and going on sets. One example: “I had a bit part in West Wing. After I was done, I asked if I could hang around and watch.”

Says Lyons, “Film is an intimate medium. You’re much more exposed. With theater you’re more aware of your surroundings, your shoelace being untied, the lighting, can you be heard? If you screw up onstage, you have to fix it right there. In film, it’s a lot about you and your scene partner. When you’re making a film, they tell you, ‘Don’t be so big.’ It’s more focused work.”

Last fall, a friend’s wedding brought him back to the East Coast, and he came to campus to talk to theater students. Before the workshop he was asked, What will you say to these aspiring actors?

“You’re screwed!” he said with a big laugh. “Get out now! Learn computers; we’re all going to be replaced by cartoons!” When the time came, though, he showed how much he believes in his vocation, staying an extra hour or so to answer questions. Even if acting doesn’t always put food on the table, he says, “No other job can feed me like acting does.”