The North Central Massachusetts Development Corporation (NCMDC) recently approved a $75,000 loan to Joe Serio, owner of Native Joe’s located at 134 Main Street in Westminster adjacent to Westminster Pharmacy, also owed by Mr. Serio.
Joe purchased the old barn, built in 1825, just next to the pharmacy and renovated it to open Native Joe’s Farmstand. The farmstand offers Herrell’s premium ice cream, local produce, bedding plants, and a small retail space with garden accessories, gifts and crafts as well as a deck with outdoor seating. Native Joe’s is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends and noon to 8 p.m. weekdays. This loan helped create three jobs and assisted Joe with the cost of designing, renovating the barn and purchasing equipment. This micro loan was a referral from TD Bank. For more information on Native Joe’s Farmstand please visit them on Facebook or online at www.nativejoefarm.com.
As a microloan lender, NCMDC can provide loans to small businesses up to $150,000 for working capital, equipment, inventory, expansion and working with our banking partners to provide gap financing for the final piece of a project.
Babies love veggies! Learn how to use fresh vegetables and fruits on October 24 from 6-7 PM– whether from your local farmers market, supermarket or your garden harvest– to make fresh, healthy, homemade baby food for your little one. Join Growing Places, WIC and Maureen Dupuis of Highland Farm at the Fitchburg Public Library to learn quick and easy recipes and techniques for making your own baby food! Space is limited – sign up today! Free parking is available in the lot at the corner of Boulder Drive and Newton Place. For information about this or other Library programs call 978-829-1780 or visit our website: www.FitchburgPublicLibrary.org.
“Latest WBC creation to be available on draught throughout New England”
To celebrate the annual Westminster Cracker Festival in its hometown of Westminster, Massachusetts the brewers of Wachusett Brewing Company teamed up with Cuttyhunk Shellfish Farms and Westminster Bakers Co. to put an interesting spin on the famed Oyster Stout recipe and created what is believed to be the first ever Oyster Cracker Stout.
“Oysters and stouts are one of the most famous food and beer pairings around the world” said Christian McMahan, President of Wachusett Brewing Company. “When we started discussing what we could do for this year’s festival, the idea of taking that concept and bringing another level of creativity and brewing ingenuity to it really got the team excited. We picked up the phone, reached out to Seth Garfield and the team at Cuttyhunk and were thrilled that they joined us on the project.” McMahan concluded.
“The Westminster Oyster Cracker has become a staple in restaurants everywhere” said Westminster Cracker Festival Founder Joe Serio. “The Westminster Cracker Company was originally founded in 1828 right here in Westminster and the festival pays tribute to its history. We are thrilled that the folks at Wachusett Brewing created such a special beer to mark the occasion.” Serio concluded.
Wachusett Oyster Cracker Stout was created by adding several dozen Cuttyhunk Oysters in the shell and boiling them for 30 minutes and then removing. Then 30lbs of Westminster Oyster Crackers were added to the mash. The result is a wonderful rich, dark stout with a smooth, earthy character.
“Oyster Cracker Stout” will be released on draft September 28ta and will be made available throughout New England leading up to the Westminster Cracker Festival date of October 20ta.
The North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce is hosting the Annual North Central Massachusetts Congressional Luncheon on Friday, October 5, 2018 featuring the Honorable Jim McGovern, United States Representative for the Second Congressional District and the Honorable Niki Tsongas, United States Representative for the Third Congressional District of Massachusetts. The program, sponsored by Fitchburg State University, runs from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Great Wolf Lodge, 150 Great Wolf Drive, Fitchburg, MA.
This event will provide Chamber members the opportunity to hear directly from members of the U.S. House of Representatives regarding business issues and critical matters facing the nation. Attendees will also be afforded the unique opportunity for networking and questions with members of North Central’s federal delegation.
Currently serving his eleventh term in Congress, Congressman Jim McGovern serves as the second ranking Democrat on the powerful House Rules Committee, which sets the terms for debate and amendments on most legislation; and a member of the House Agriculture Committee. In 2014, McGovern was named Democratic Ranking Member on the House Committee on Agriculture’s Subcommittee on Nutrition. The Subcommittee’s jurisdiction includes policies and statutes relating to nutrition, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and domestic commodity distribution and consumer initiatives.
Before his election to Congress, McGovern spent 14 years working as a senior aide for the late U.S. Representative John Joseph Moakley (D-South Boston), former dean of the Massachusetts delegation and Chairman of the House Rules Committee. He was born in Worcester, the son of two successful small business owners. His two sisters are elementary school teachers in Worcester’s public school system.
McGovern earned his Bachelor of Arts (‘81) and Masters of Public Administration (‘84) degrees from The American University, working his way through college by serving as an aide in the office of U.S. Senator George McGovern (D-SD).
Congresswoman Niki Tsongas was elected to the United State House of Representatives in a 2007 special election, becoming the first woman in 25 years to serve in Congress from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She represents the Massachusetts Third District (which had previously been known as the Fifth District until 2012). Tsongas holds the same seat that was held three decades earlier by her late husband, former Congressman, U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Paul Tsongas. Her Congressional district spans across portions of Essex, Middlesex and Worcester counties.
Tsongas serves as a senior member on the prestigious House Armed Services Committee, and having previously served in a leadership position as the top Democrat on the subcommittee for Oversight and Investigations. Tsongas also serves on the Natural Resources Committee, which formulates federal policy related to domestic energy production, National Parks, and the environment. In 2015, she was named to a leadership role as the top Democrat on the Federal Lands Subcommittee. She also serves on the Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee. Recently Tsongas was elected by her peers to serve as the highest ranking Democrat on the largest HASC subcommittee, the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee.
Prior to being elected to the House of Representatives, Tsongas served as a Dean at Middlesex Community College, practiced law, and raised her three daughters all in the region she now represents.
Tsongas is not seeking re-election this year.
Make sure that you reserve your spot early to hear from our congressional delegation on the many critical issues facing the business community in Washington D.C.
Pre-registration is required and easy. Simply call the Chamber at 978.353.7600 ext. 222, email or register online at www.northcentralmass.com. The cost is $35 for members and $55 for non-members.
Leominster Credit Union is holding two free homebuyers’ seminars this fall. Mortgage seminars will be held Wednesday, October 24, 2018 at the 910 West Boylston Street, Worcester branch and Wednesday, November 7, 2018 at LCU headquarters, 18 Adams Street, Leominster. Both seminars are scheduled from 6:00pm – 7:30pm.
LCU Homebuyers Seminars will address the specific needs of most homebuyers including first time buyers, buyers moving after owning for several years, or buyers entering the market after having credit issues in the past. A team of real estate experts including a realtor, attorney and financing professionals will present the program. Topics will include: Are you ready to buy a home;Finding Your Dream Home; Obtaining Financing; y the Closing Process. Attendees will learn about the costs associated with homeownership; how your credit affects your options; making an offer and negotiating the price; the inspection process; y closing.
“The process of buying a home can be daunting. Making the right choices can help set you up for the rest of your life,” said Lydia Vazquez, Assistant Vice President, Real Estate Lending. “The seminars will help break down the entire process. Our goal is to enable the attendees to be well prepared; to have realistic expectations and to avoid costly mistakes.”
Matt Dufault, AVP Retail Lending added, “We’d like to encourage people re-entering the home-buying market after having some credit difficulties to attend. Situations such as a job loss, divorce, illness, bankruptcy or foreclosure can hurt your credit and affect your ability to buy a home. We’ve seen a number of applicants who once had excellent credit now finding themselves in the unfamiliar position of struggling to get approved for a mortgage loan due to an unusual circumstance or one-time event. This seminar will not only give you the basics of buying a home, but also the opportunity to establish a plan with one of our lenders for home ownership based on your personal situation.”
LCU has programs available for not only for first time home buyers, but for any buyer who needs help getting mortgage-ready. Borrowers may be able to qualify for a mortgage much sooner than they expected.
Seating is limited and registration is required. Register online: West Boylston Street-10.24.18 event – bit.ly/FTHB-WBS102418; Leominster-11.07.18 event – bit.ly/FTHB-LEO110718 or visit Leominstercu.com.
Leominster Credit Union announces that Lisa Zorn has been promoted to Manager of Indirect Lending. Zorn will be responsible for the management of all aspects of the Indirect Lending Department.
Zorn who has more than 15 years of experience in the financial industry, joined the Credit Union in 2015 as Indirect Lending Underwriter. Most recently Zorn worked for GFA as an Underwriter of Indirect and Direct Lending. She brings with her extensive knowledge and expertise in the lending, loan servicing and the mortgage arenas. Lisa currently resides with her family in Fitchburg, MA.
An “art tour” is a sort of voyage of discovery for art lovers. The idea is for patrons to be able to see what the arts have to offer in a particular city or region. Artists and art gallery owners come together for a day (or two) to show off the artwork being created in that area, sometimes to witness even the very act of creation itself. Such will be the exciting goings-on over the weekend of October 27 and 28 in Fitchburg, Mass., and vicinity.
“Fitchburg Open Studios” was organized by four stars of the Fitchburg art scene: gallery owner Tamar Russell Brown, pastel painter Lisa Regopoulos, and gallery owners Peter and Ann Capodagli. More than 20 artists responded to a call for artwork to be shown over the big weekend at many different sites, including the Fitchburg Art Museum and the various studios of participating artists. The 40,000 or so residents of the city of Fitchburg are about to find out just how much artistic talent the area has to offer.
Art lovers may need a full tank of gas or the equivalent energy on a bicycle for the entire weekend. The epicenter of the activities will be Fitchburg, of course, but the surrounding communities of Gardner, Leominster, Princeton and Townsend will be sites of studios where artists will be exhibiting.
“I had a dream to do this gallery,” says Tamar Russell Brown of Gallery Sitka at 454 Main Street in Fitchburg. The dream became a reality in May 2014 when Ms. Russell Brown started up a gallery at the Phoenix Park Mill in Shirley, and culminated with the grand opening of Gallery Sitka in downtown Fitchburg in July 2016. Some 40 area artists are represented by Sitka, and that gallery has an email list of over 100.
Art is a family affair for Tamar. “My father is an artist,” she reports, and her great aunt and great uncle were both painters. Though her father tried to warn her about the difficulty of making a living in the arts, she followed that dream anyway. The story goes all the way back to her teens, growing up in Tennessee. “I was collecting art at 15,” she recalls. Apparently she was destined for this calling in the art world from an early age.
Lisa Regopoulos paints pastels and considers herself an impressionistic artist. “I’m often trying to catch an image as if you had just caught a glimpse of it,” she says of her working methods. “You put more of yourself into the work,” she says, if you are working under that urgency of catching not just the visual fireworks of the images she paints en plein air (in the great outdoors) but also the mood, the feeling created while observing her subject matter. She’s out to capture, of course, an impression, and to communicate the excitement of a fleeting moment of beauty. The pastels are pigments held together by binders that allow tremendously vibrant colors to live on the paper surface, perhaps more strikingly than is possible with other materials.
Lisa will be opening her entire house to art lovers, hanging many recent paintings and working at the easel on a picture while her visitors look on. Some of the other artists who answered the call will be doing the same kind of demonstrations.
Ann and Peter Capodaglia made their own dreams come true in 2008 when they opened the Boulder Art Gallery at 960 Main Street, in the shadow of the Rollstone Boulder, one of Fitchburg’s proudest landmarks and the inspiration for the name of the gallery. The lovely Upper Common area is the backdrop for the gallery, which also serves as Ann’s studio.
The Capodaglias were both teachers. Ann enjoyed 36 years as a Visual Arts instructor at Fitchburg High School, while Peter is a retired middle school science teacher who worked for 35 years in the Shirley school system. Ann is a watercolorist. Along with her watercolors, Ann will also be offering giclee prints and note cards at Boulder on both days of the art tour. Peter has been a collector of vintage art for many years. They are both dedicated to promoting and supporting local and regional artists.
Most of Boulder’s art is representational, Ms. Russell Brown says, with beautiful landscapes predominating. Sitka focuses more on abstract works that provide exciting interactions of pure color and texture.
Among the artists participating will be Doreen M. LaScola of Gardner, Ellen Schneeflock of Ashburnham, Pam Short of Lancaster, Linda Williams of Ashby, Leonard A. Haug of Princeton, Therese R. Blood of Westminster, as well as Brian G. Beaudoin, Randy LeSage, Christopher Di Nunzio, Kathryn Swantee, Iphigenia Burg, Jennifer Jones, Jen Hemenway, Gail Bloom, Sally Sargent, Kate Shaffer, Priscilla Mavrikis Walker, Keven McCarthy and Wil Darcangelo.
Ms. Russell Brown has created a special map to guide art lovers to all the participating studios and galleries. Go to fitchburgopenstudios.com for the map and more information about the big weekend.
The North Central Massachusetts Development Corporation (NCMDC) granted a micro-loan to Angelica Jimenez for $25,000 to assist the purchase of equipment and the costs associated with starting Angel Salon and Spa in Leominster. Angelica has over 15 years of experience in the industry. Angel Salon is a professional salon and spa offering services to men, women and families conveniently located at Twin City Plaza, 875 Merriam Ave. in Leominster.
This loan was a gap loan in partnership with Fidelity Bank. NewVue Communities assisted the new owner with a business plan and financial package. For more information please visit www.angelsalonandspa.com/.
As a microloan lender, NCMDC can provide loans to small businesses up to $150,000 for working capital, equipment, inventory, expansion and working with our banking partners to provide gap financing for the final piece of a project.
The new Elect North Central Coalition will host a debate for the candidates vying to represent the 3rd Congressional District at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 18 on the Fitchburg State University campus.
Democratic candidate Lori Trahan, Republican candidate Rick Green and Independent candidate Mike Mullen have been invited to debate at Fitchburg State’s Kent Recital Hall in the Conlon Fine Arts Building, 367 North St. Admission is free and open to the public.
Elect North Central is a coalition of organizations dedicated to making the democratic process accessible and assuring that local and regional issues are examined and addressed by candidates running for office.
“The members of Elect North Central represent a broad cross-section of leaders in media, education, community, and business organizations, and was formed to provide residents an opportunity to hear the candidates on issues affecting them and the region,” said North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce President Roy Nascimento, the chair of Elect North Central. “The coalition members plan to continue collaborating on projects that will engage candidates and voters, and provide a platform for the voices of our region to be heard.”
Charles St. Amand, practitioner in residence in the Communication and Journalism Department at Suffolk University, will moderate the debate.
Panelists will include:
– Cassparina Carlson, student representative, Mount Wachusett Community College
– Sherman Whitman, radio host, WPKZ 105.3 FM and AM 1280
– Gary Hutner, general manager, Gardner News and Clinton Item
– Cliff Clark, city editor, Sentinel & Enterprise
– Irene Hernandez, president, Minority Coalition of North Central Massachusetts
The organizers will also solicit questions from the public in advance for possible inclusion in the debate.
The Elect North Central Coalition includes Fitchburg Access Television, Fitchburg State University, Gardner News, The Item, Leominster Champion, Lowell Sun, Minority Coalition, Mount Wachusett Community College, NewVue Communities, North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce, Sentinel & Enterprise, Spanish American Center, Suffolk University, Telegram & Gazette, Three Pyramids, United Hmong of Massachusetts, Worcester Business Journal and WPKZ Radio.
Interior Effects: Furniture in Contemporary Art pays tribute to New England’s history of furniture manufacturing
through an exploration of the unique capacity of interior furnishings to embody cultural traditions and to shape
the spaces within which we live and work. From studio furniture to artworks ranging from sculpture to video,
Interior Effects centers on furniture and its design as psychologically charged metaphors.
The exhibition combines the work of 10 New England artists who collectively explore themes including tradition,
community, gender, and the emotional impact of design. Tracie Pouliot’s oral histories and Liz Shepherd’s new
installation directly link to two furniture companies that were based in Gardner, Massachusetts—The Chair City.
Pouliot’s books record the stories of former Nichols & Stone employees, while Shepherd’s installation uses midcentury
designs produced by Heywood-Wakefield to examine these objects as iconic, regional, and gendered.
The furniture of Judy Kensley McKie, Yuri Kobayashi, and Leah K. Woods exemplify the booming studio furniture
movement in New England, which has applied extremely high technical and aesthetic standards to the creation of
one-of-a-kind furnishings. The designs of these three female furniture makers each distinctly play with traditions
and the symbolic potential of form.
In other works, furniture is used to explore institutional ethos or personal character. Celeste Roberge’s Miniature Stacks
are mini-chair monuments to artists such as Joseph Beuys and Meret Oppenheim. Katarina Burin pays homage to Fran
Hosken—one of the first women to graduate from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design—and her furniture designs.
The color saturated scenes in Sarah Malakoff’s photographs of interior spaces make the viewer aware of furniture as far
more than a benign, functional object in a domestic setting. Sandra Erbacher’s pairings of office furniture examine the
way design reflects a corporate philosophy. And Samantha
Fields’s cast porcelain chair legs animate stitched sculptures
that humorously invite feminist consideration of class, the female body, and domesticity.
Interior Effects is the second in a series of FAM exhibitions that link contemporary art practice to our region’s industrial
heritage. In 2016, FAM presented Plastic Imagination, and in 2020, will organize a show on the theme of paper.
This exhibition will be organized by Curator Lisa Crossman and Terrana Curatorial Fellow Candice Bancheri. It will be
accompanied by a Learning Lounge that will provide historical examples of furniture produced in Gardner thanks to the
Gardner Museum.
Opening Reception
Sunday, September 23, 2–4pm
Lost Manufacturing, Found Art
Saturday, November 3, 1:30–2:45 pm
A panel discussion on the effects of deindustrialization, as it relates to the region’s rich history of furniture making.
Panelists include UMass Lowell Professor Robert Forrant, artist Tracie Pouliot, and former Nichols & Stone employees,
followed by a talk by artist Liz Shepherd.
Behind the Scenes: A Closing Tour with Terrana Curatorial Fellow, Candice Bancheri
Sunday, January 13, 2pm
