Bryan Randa elevates the art of glassblowing

Glassblowing is a storied tradition in the town of Sandwich, one so treasured that the Sandwich Glass Museum has made it their mission to carry the torch of this spellbinding art. The Sandwich Glass Museum claims to have “relit the fires” of glassblowing in town. Furthermore, it’s fair to say the museum has also, serendipitously, lit quite the fire in Pocasset resident Bryan Randa.

Growing up on a farm in the middle of Iowa, Randa was oblivious to the world of glassblowing. “I grew up outside, running around fields and playing on the rivers and streams – that’s all I did,” he says. “When I was little I loved all animals, and I loved the ocean, but all I would ever see of it was in books and on TV.” As a child Randa also loved to draw, and “As soon as I could,” he says, “I started doing pottery,” which he practiced throughout high school. After high school he studied graphic design, as well as drawing and sculpture, at his local college, and in 2004, at age 19, he moved to Onset, intent on pursuing further study in graphic design at MassArt. One day, as Randa drove around exploring the Cape, his plans suddenly changed. He had come across the Sandwich Glass Museum.

“I was like, ‘Wow! What’s that?’” he recalls. “So I went in, and there was a demo area, and some guy had just finished up doing a demo.” Randa struck up a conversation with the man, learning that he had been giving a demonstration on glassblowing. “That was the first time I ever knew you could actually blow glass,” Randa reveals. “He told me about a couple studios on the Cape, and then he was like, “McDermott, you’d probably get along with McDermott, so call him.’ So I called him. He was working on rebuilding his furnace, so it took, like, a month, almost, of me just calling him – ‘Hey, are you ready yet?’”

When David McDermott finally said yes, he welcomed Randa into his and wife Yukimi’s backyard studio, McDermott Glass Studio in Sandwich, and immediately put Randa to the test. “On the first day he was here, in the first 10 minutes, the air compressor blew up, so I gave him my credit card and I said, ‘Go to Hyannis and get another compressor.’ And he looked at me like, are you out of your mind?” McDermott recalls fondly. Randa proved himself to be reliable, and keen on the craft. “He was here every single day after,” says McDermott, “and I was just impressed by him.”

“I remember realizing how much I loved it,” Randa says of glassblowing, “like the sparks flying off of the pipes as they’re gathering gas out of the furnace, or the smoke everywhere from the tools burning while you’re making something – all these big, crazy tools that look like weapons.”

Randa eventually moved back to Iowa, taking up a glassblowing class. “I was just learning how to blow a bubble, and I could make paperweights and stuff like that. That kept me interested,” he says. After several months in Iowa, he reached out to McDermott about returning to work at his studio. “At the time I said, ‘Alright, but we don’t have any money.’ We had an extra room, so he stayed with us for a few years,” McDermott says. “It was like one little family.”

The close bond they formed would prove key to Randa’s development as a glassblower as well as their success as a team. “There’s not really much verbal communication going on when you’re in the studio working,” McDermott says. Randa explains: “A lot of it is silent communication – you’re trying to read each other’s minds to be there before they need something. That was a really important thing at McDermott that I learned. It’s a glass language, basically.”

For over a decade Randa honed his “fast, efficient glassblowing” skills with McDermott. “And then I got more into doing sculpture,” Randa says, “and that took over,” so he set his sights on going solo. “We were really sad to see him go, but we’re really happy for him,” says McDermott. “He’s a glass artist to be reckoned with, for sure.”

Inside the newly expanded studio behind his Pocasset home – the carefree sounds of The Beach Boys juxtaposing the intensity of the flames blazing from a torch – Randa demonstrates, with an ease that is seemingly second nature, the lampworking process, which he employs to make his popular small-scale pieces. “I have to focus on keeping this base warm – that’s the biggest thing. If that cracks, it’s pretty much over,” he noted as he sculpted a piece featuring a sea horse. But how exactly does Randa know the base is warm enough not to crack? “Experience, I suppose,” he says. “It’s knowing how long you have with your internal clock. There’s an internal timer that you get when you’re making glass – you get a window of what you can get away with – and you get used to it. The crazier it gets – the more stuff, the bigger it is – the harder it is to control that timer and be in tune with it.”

What’s striking about Randa’s work, especially his sea creatures, is the life-like detail achieved – how every piece appears to be in motion, full of spirit. “That’s my main goal with glass – that when you look at it, it makes you move with it,” Randa says. In addition to his nautical-themed creations, Randa also has a series of contemporary, vibrant vases and bowls that feature tiny figural men positioned on them in various scenes. “A lot of glassblowers are conceptual… I’m not really like that,” he says, explaining, “I’m more factual with what the piece is and what it’s doing,” though he recognizes that subjective interpretations will naturally occur anyway. Take, for instance, his bowl design that includes two figurines reaching out to each other – their action is literal, but the viewer could imagine a conversation between the male figures.

“It’s unbelievable,” McDermott says of Randa’s work. “The thing that separates excellent glassmakers from good glassmakers is an eye – knowing exactly what the glass is going to do. A lot of people just don’t get that or develop it,” but to McDermott, Randa no doubt has that eye for such detail. Plus, “He’s just a great kid,” McDermott says, “respectful, honest, hardworking, talented – every positive superlative that you could possibly think of, that’s Bryan.”

Another positive superlative to add to that list: humble. “My detail and proportion – I feel like I’m decent at that,” Randa admits bashfully. “It’s hard,” he says of glassblowing. “You can’t just half do it. For me personally, it makes you want to come back and try it again and get better at it.” Also what keeps him coming back: “It’s fire – playing with fire, that’s really cool.”

To learn more about Bryan Randa and his work, visit randaglass.com.

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At Lexaco, you’ll find your piece of Cape Cod

For Lisa Guariglia, nature’s beauty runs deep. It’s the little things, the elements of the natural world that often go overlooked that particularly strike her. The seed head of a dried-up coneflower. Lichens found on rail fences. Wild grapevines curled around a rusty old guardrail in Chatham. Baby mussel shells washed ashore on Nauset Beach. “The textures are so beautiful – that’s really what’s fascinating,” she says.

It’s Lisa’s fascination with the intricacies of nature that ultimately led to a “bucket-list dream” of an opportunity to work with her husband, Ed. “It only took us 40 years,” Ed says with a laugh. Delving into their long-held interests in jewelry making, Lisa and Ed joined forces with their artist daughter, Alexa, to establish Lexaco. 

“It’s where nature and art intersect,” Lisa says of their new Harwich Port boutique, noting that the letters L, E and A in the name represent the three partners and the “X” indicates the creative crossroads connecting them. At Lexaco, visitors will discover a collection of delicately handcrafted creations that highlight the natural world of the Cape. Lisa, whose background is in graphic arts, offers her handmade jewelry that jump-started the boutique business. Her artistic designs, from charms and bracelets to earrings and necklaces, feature her foraged finds from nature, including those aforementioned, cast in silver, gold or brass. “Once people get the feel for our jewelry, it’s a language all its own,” says Lisa, noting the evocative nature of her pieces’ rich textures.

Ed, who spent decades in the fuel oil industry, is a lifelong photographer, and his captivating images of breaching whales are available as prints at Lexaco. Additionally, Ed handcrafts Damascus steel knives, and he is currently developing a line of men’s jewelry, including necklaces and bracelets featuring tuna clips (locking devices used when trolling for tuna) on thick leather cords. From Alexa, a fine artist represented by Moskowitz Bayse, a gallery in Los Angeles, visitors will find her large-scale watercolor paintings on display. In the future, prints of her work will be available, as well as a line of textiles, including scarves and table accessories, that she will be creating in collaboration with Lisa. Lexaco also features pottery by Chatham clay artist Theresa Harriman, thin-turned bowls by Harwich woodworker Robert McNulty, and furniture pieces by Orleans woodworker Richard Jacobson, and Lexaco is the exclusive retailer of Monahan Jewelers’ ball bracelets.

“We celebrate nature as it is, not as what we want to make it,” Lisa says of the common thread among the artisans featured at Lexaco. Listening to Lisa and Ed marvel about nature’s wonders and discuss the future of their burgeoning business, their passion is palpable. Lexaco is undoubtedly the fulfillment of their creative callings. Ed puts it simply: “It’s our creative oasis.”

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Steve Potter finds his second
act in a long-held passion

Renowned chip carver Wayne Barton once described the art of woodcarving as an “adventure.” For Steve Potter, woodworking is a lifetime adventure—one that continues today in a way Potter never saw coming, but that would surely make Barton proud.

For 35 years, the Connecticut native, as well as his wife Jan, worked in the state’s public school system—she taught English, he taught industrial arts, including woodworking. His passion for the craft began in the mid-1960s while taking a shop class in junior high. “Just to walk in and smell the fresh cut wood—ah, it was great,” he recalls fondly. In between his teaching work, Potter pursued his own woodworking endeavors, which included hand-making such fine furniture as Windsor chairs. Woodwork took a pause, though, upon his and Jan’s retirement. “We sold our house, we sold everything in it, I sold my woodshop, and we moved onto our boat full-time in Boston,” he details. 

When the couple decided to move back to dry land, Potter says, “It had to be the Cape,” having spent summers of their teaching years in Truro. Settling in Eastham, Potter’s woodworking desires resurfaced. At this point, furniture making was “been there, done that”—instead, Potter had woodcarving on his mind, which he admits he knew nothing about. He contemplated what to carve: Birds? Little caricatures? “Nothing was hitting me yet,” he says. In his research he came across chip carving, and then one day, inspiration struck. “We rent a place in Florida every March, and we were sitting there and all of a sudden I said to my wife, ‘That’s it!’” he recalls. “And she said ‘What?’ There was a wooden tray on the coffee table. I said, ‘I’ll chip carve serving trays!’”

Chip carving, an art form practically as old as time, involves precise, angled chip-like cuts to create decorative inlayed patterns. Potter dove into studying the techniques of chip carving, reading books by masters like Barton. He even transformed the basement of his Eastham home into a workshop. After a “horrible” first attempt at chip carving, he says his wife encouraged him to be patient and not give up. “Someone once said that woodworking minus patience equals firewood, and boy is that the truth,” he says, smiling. So he kept at it, establishing his own chip carving business, NausetWood, and in the two years since then, Potter has proven to possess a remarkable knack for the craft, creating in painterly detail intricate geometric shapes and coastal images on his wooden canvases.

“His pieces are wonderful—I love them,” says Jane Williamson, owner of Oceana in Orleans. “I love that each one is different, and he is always pushing himself and changing his designs and improving his trays.” Williamson was the first retail owner Potter approached to sell his work. As Potter recalls: “I showed her my trays and she said, ‘I’ll take that one, that one, that one, but I won’t take that one,’ and I said ‘How come not that one?’ and she pointed out a glue line that I didn’t even see. She said, ‘That won’t sell.’ I thought, ‘Wow, if I’m going to do this, I have to make these things flawless.’ That was the challenge.”

“I have to say, a lot of people bring things in for us to see, and we don’t take everything—we’re very picky,” Williamson notes. “When I met Steve and saw the quality of his work, I knew straight away it would work in Oceana. And he has continued that attention to detail.”

As Potter puts it, he strives for “museum quality” pieces. “I want something that somebody’s going to look at and go ‘Wow! This is cool!’” he says. He fashions trays in four different sizes, from 9” by 12” up to 16” by 20”. Once he gets an idea for an image, Potter will immediately begin sketching out the design and an accompanying border in pencil, oftentimes with the aid of a compass, directly onto the surface of a piece of basswood (“It carves like butter,” he says). During his teaching career Potter taught technical drawing, and the skill certainly comes in handy here. “The layout is extremely important. If the layout’s wrong, the carving’s wrong. It’s got to be done flawlessly,” he explains. “Then I have to mark every area that’s going to get cut out, because if I cut out the wrong area, might as well be firewood,” he says with laugh. After the wood is completely carved with a chip-carving knife (it’s like an X-Acto knife but more curved, like a bird’s beak), Potter then crafts the sides and handles for the tray out of Eastern white pine and glues those pieces on. He uses a wood dye to color the tray (this kind of dye provides a richer color than a standard stain, he notes) and then sprays on a lacquer finish. The underside of the tray is outfitted with a suede covering so it won’t slip and slide.

Potter’s work is available in an array of patterns and colors making for a variety of options when choosing the perfect piece.

Once a tray is finished, “I’ll close my eyes and I’ll feel around it,” Potter says. “Somebody’s going to pick this up, it can’t be rough. I’m making it to be friendly to the hand. It’s got to feel just right.” While Potter’s pieces are designed as serving trays, their craftsmanship inspires other creative uses. “I made my wife a smaller one and she uses it for her jewelry,” Potter notes. “Some people hang them on their walls. It’s cool.”

To Potter, chip carving is more than just a hobby. “This is my purpose now,” he says. “I wake up every day with something to look forward to—this is it.” There’s always a new design to be imagined, always something new to be learned about the craft, and with such greats like Wayne Barton, as well as Dennis Moor and Pam Gresham, as his inspiration, Potter is driven to realize his full potential as an artist.

“I’ll look at their work and read their books, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to get there someday,’” he says impassionedly, flashing his endearing childlike smile. “I have the desire to take it to the top, if I can. I’ll see how it goes.”

NausetWood serving trays are available at Oceana, Lemon Tree Pottery, Woodworks Gallery, Creative Hands Gallery,
and the Cultural Center of Cape Cod.
To learn more visit nausetwood.com

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Sarah Richardson & Brandi Felt Castellano

Kam Appliances

As marketing manager for KAM Appliances of Hyannis, Sarah Richardson shares the company’s passion for community. In all of her efforts, Richardson strives to show the community that KAM genuinely cares about its customers and ensuring they take home the best appliances for their individual needs. But how can you really decide what’s best for you, your family and your home without first seeing it in action? With that in mind, Richardson came up with a clever idea: bring on board a professional chef to showcase in-house all of the possibilities of KAM’s wide range of kitchen appliances. Enter Brandi Felt Castellano, a Cape native with 20 years of restaurant experience. Together, Richardson and Castellano hope to make the appliance-buying process not only easier but also more fun.

CCH: Sarah, what would you say you bring to the table at KAM?
SR: I think I come in with a different marketing view than they’ve had in the past. When KAM started, it was radio and newspaper, those were the two avenues of advertising. Now, it’s so much more. There are different ways of doing TV – there’s digital TV, there’s regular TV. There’s digital radio, there’s regular radio. There’s Google Search and there’s Facebook. There are all these digital ways to go. With our Instagram, I try to make it so unique. My goal is to reach different people, and I think it’s working.

CCH: You mentioned making KAM’s Instagram unique…
SR: A lot of the brands we sell will offer us ads, and they’re the same ads every dealer is using across the country. I want to differentiate KAM. I want to show off more who we are. Since we recently hired Chef Brandi, in the last few weeks it’s been a lot of food, which is great because who doesn’t like to see pictures of food? Hopefully it inspires people to stop by and see what she’s doing.

CCH: Sarah, tell me more about your decision to bring Chef Brandi on board the KAM team. And Brandi, why did you decide to join KAM?
SR: I think it’s hard for a lot of people to visualize how something will work. We can tell you how it’s going to work, but if we’re able to show you with actual food, it takes it to the next level. And I think you then have a certain level of comfort with what you’re purchasing. That’s something we really wanted to offer to customers – to help them in a different, fun way. It’s an experience.
BFC: At KAM, I get to cook food on the best appliances, and talk to customers with real-life application and experience on the products. And there is a lot of potential for what we can do with this position. The sky is the limit. 

CCH: What can people expect from this new collaboration?
SR: Expect Brandi to start posting some cooking classes. She’s coming up with these great menus to do as in-store demonstrations. She recently did an anti-inflammatory diet – she made these Tahini Brownies out of sweet potatoes. So expect unique, fun menus to come from her, and then also really fun, different cooking classes. And if people want to suggest something, they can email us and we will add it to the agenda. There’s going to be a little something for everybody at different times. We also will bring groups of builders in to show them the different appliances too, and Brandi’s here to cook up some food for them.
BFC: We’ll get more involved with helping the community and helping new customers. Long-term, my role will help people seek out KAM rather than just a regular appliance store – it will be the place for people to go and learn and get a new perspective. 

CCH: What advice would you give fellow young professionals looking to succeed here?
SR: Find the job that makes you smile and laugh – I laugh all the time here. Find the job that makes you the happiest. Don’t go for a job with a title and glamour – go for a job that makes you enjoy your day.
BFC: You need to have drive and patience, and be a part of the community. You have to find your village and support your village and be a part of it all.

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Perfect Days on Pleasant Bay

A majestic site and a dream design team set the stage
for a remarkable new home in Orleans

As the Cape’s own Katharine Lee Bates stood atop Colorado’s Pike’s Peak in 1893, so awestruck by the unbridled natural beauty before her, it was then that the iconic words of what would become “America the Beautiful” began percolating in her mind. The amber waves of grain, the purple mountain majesties—Bates’ reverence for nature’s wonders is undeniable, and so too are the patriotic musings those wonders inspired throughout her song.

Over 100 years later and 2,000 miles away, it’s easy to imagine the kind of feelings Bates experienced when bearing witness to the land and seascape that greet you at one special hillside property in East Orleans. Surrounded by lush unspoiled woodlands and boasting views of Nauset’s outer beach, Pleasant Bay stretching south toward Chatham and the Atlantic beyond, the site is simply enchanting. Enchantment is just what the property’s new owner experienced when she first visited these serene grounds.

“That first day I drove out there, it was quiet,” she recalls. “You could hear the wind through the cedars, so you heard the breeze, you heard the birds, you saw this beautiful ocean, and I really felt like I was transported back in time, like to the Cape 70 years ago. That’s really what sold me on it.”

That sense of “old-fashioned Cape Cod” in the natural beauty is what has drawn the owner and her husband, residents of Boston’s South End, to Orleans and the Outer Cape for family vacations year after year since their children were preschoolers. Now empty-nester grandparents, the couple wanted to make the Cape a more permanent fixture in their lives—they wanted a place here all their own, a restful retreat from urban life, where their growing family could gather for many more years to come. In April of 2017, they began searching for a house. “It’s funny because so many of our friends said it’s going to be a year’s journey, just start looking now and just keep your eyes open, and don’t jump the gun. … We found this property literally on our second trip to the Cape after we engaged a broker,” reveals the owner. “[Our broker] said, ‘You’ve got to come down and see this piece of land. It’s just spectacular and unique.’ When I drove down and saw it, I called my husband and said, ‘We’ve got to buy it,’ and then he came down and agreed. We had been talking about it and talking about it, and we didn’t expect to find something so perfect.”

The couple could have bought the land as is, with the existing home on site, but they had a second purchasing option: contract with Paul van Steensel of Cape Dreams Building & Design to build a new custom home designed by Bernadette Macleod of Ryder & Wilcox. But the new home’s footprint would be limited to a 3,000-square-foot house due to the conservation land surrounding the property. “The neat story is that one of the original founders of the Orleans Conservation Trust originally owned this property, and he and his wife granted permanent conservation easements on the property, resulting in a relatively narrow building envelope,” the owner explains. That didn’t deter her, though. “I’m a chief sustainability officer for a major company, and I love the fact that the property is so protected,” she says, “and that it could sit comfortably in this beautiful part of the Cape. I love the design of the house—it is a very classic Cape vernacular. So we said yeah, we’ll go for it. That was the start of the journey.”

“To me, the biggest challenge was fitting all of the elements that most people want in a home these days in a smaller space,” says Paul van Steensel. Making the most out of what space they had, then, to comfortably accommodate the homeowners and their visiting family would be a significant theme throughout the two-year project. 

Sited atop the hill and wrapping around the front of the property like a one-armed hug, the two-story home is carefully positioned to offer sightlines of the water from practically every room. For the owners, it was important the home feel as open as possible, and that nothing compete with the views. “We wanted to let the property and its proximity to the water speak for itself,” says the project’s interior designer, Ashley Hilferty of Ashley Bradford Interiors. Upon stepping through the deep-red front door, your eyes are immediately met by the view of the water, framed like a painting by a black-framed slider leading out to the deck off the living room. Window frames throughout the home are black, further encouraging your attention on the natural beauty outside. Nonetheless, there is much to admire about the design inside.

Richly grained, 8” hickory flooring spans from the entryway and living room into the open kitchen/dining area. In the kitchen—designed by Dean Sarrasin of Kitchen Port Inc.—an oversized island, complete with a leathered-granite finish, allows for barstool seating. Although the dining area is limited in width, a Dutch-style, 70” walnut dining table—designed by Hilferty and crafted by Cape Dream’s millwork division, Timmerwerk Custom Cabinetry—fits perfectly and can easily accommodate eight people. Spooling off of the kitchen/dining area, the architectural design of the home forms the crook of the arm in the aforementioned hug. The inner arm finds the mudroom, and running along the outer arm, Macleod has flanked a sprawling three-season porch whose angles allow the panoramic views, through mahogany-clad windows, to provide a treehouse-like sensation, perched above the vibrant conservation woodlands.

At the end of the mudroom, a set of stairs leads to the homeowners’ master suite, located above the two-car garage. “It’s away from the rest of the house to give the homeowners their privacy and a place to escape while kids and grandkids can still be in the main home enjoying each other,” says Hilferty. The landing at the top of the stairs offers the choice to enter the bedroom to the left, or a door to the right leads to the upper level of decking. Inside the master bedroom, a Juliet balcony offers a spot for quiet contemplation overlooking the greenery. Other features that Timmerwerk fashioned include a custom closet niche with built-in, soft-close drawers on either side in the master, as well as a custom bed and headboard with built-in floating nightstands made of butternut in the second-floor guest suite. “Every square inch of available storage that could be built in was done so we could avoid putting in extra dressers,” the owner says.

“A lot of people don’t realize how much of what I call ‘dead space’ there is in a house,” says van Steensel. “When you have a lot of eaves, there’s space behind there but it never gets used.” The limited dimensions of the rooms prompted the builder and his team to maximize that space throughout the home—from built-in drawers, cubbies and closets in the four bedrooms (three, including the master, are en suites) to open shelving flanking the fireplace in the living room. On the second floor, the design team gave the homeowners additional living space with a centralized open media room, complete with a dry bar as well as access to the upper deck overlooking the water and pool patio below.

When it came down to the details, no matter how small, the owners, with their keen sense of design, overlooked nothing. Having gone through renovation and new construction projects in the past, these homeowners had a firm grasp on exactly what they wanted for their forever home. From the metal roofing and aesthetic exterior brackets, to square-edged moldings instead of crown, to thicker interior doors, everything was customized to their specific preferences. “This was a treat,” van Steensel says of working on the home. “Being able to work with people who are so appreciative of quality, it’s nice to be able to build to that higher standard.”

“Every time we talked to Paul or the subs or Ashley, we made design choices on the fly,” notes the owner—including their decision to cover the majority of the walls in white shiplap. “We made that decision literally in two hours on a Saturday afternoon,” she recalls. “We just walked through every room and decided 100 percent shiplap or not, and then in the rooms where it’s not we picked the accent wall, and in the bathrooms we did the ceiling. Paul actually laughed and said, ‘Are you sure?’ and we said, ‘Yeah! Let’s go for it!’ In certain settings it would seem very gimmicky, but to us it felt very authentic.”

Construction started with an 18-by-36-foot saltwater pool, designed by Viola Associates, and installed where the existing home had been. “We had to excavate and pour the foundation of the pool before we could build the house, because once the house foundation was in, there was no way to get back there,” explains van Steensel. Then came work on the surrounding hardscape. “It was absolutely incredible the amount of stonework we did,” says Al Sorbello of Sorbello Landscaping Inc., who worked in collaboration with Yarmouth landscape architect Phil Cheney and David Lyttle of Ryder & Wilcox on the project. The landscape team designed two concrete-poured retaining walls around the pool, and to beautify these walls, Sorbello selected a veneer of Boston Blend Ashlar stone. “This was one of those situations where you have an opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons, and even throw some vodka in too,” he says with a laugh. To Sorbello, the two stone-faced retaining walls create “the sensation that you’re swimming on a cliff overlooking the ocean.” For the pool patio, Sorbello chose thermal bluestone paving, and each end of the pool is flanked by sections of lawn and shrubs, creating a cozy, enclosed feel.

In the front, another retaining wall is found along the circular driveway, featuring a charcoal-toned veneer with Belgian block edging. Beyond this wall is a living barrier wall of sorts—layers of trees of varying heights, including 22-foot-tall Radican Cryptomeria, screen against neighboring property and blend in seamlessly with the natural conservation landscape. To achieve the Cape cottage look the homeowners desired, the team incorporated a row of low-growing Hameln grasses along the base of the retaining wall, and hydrangeas and native shrub species tastefully dot the grounds throughout. In the center of the driveway, a River birch tree, a special request from the owner, is illuminated at night as it casts artistic shadows from its unique peeling bark. “That’s a sentimental favorite for me—it was my mother’s favorite tree,” she says. “Whenever I drive up, it’s so nice because it reminds me of my mother—it just gives me a sense of good karma.”

“All in all, it’s been a successful project,” reflects van Steensel. “The owners have been a pleasure to work with,” he adds. “Oh, they’re a true joy,” enthuses Hilferty. “They really take pride in this property, and they wanted to do the right thing in terms of  protecting the land and the water.”

“What I appreciated is how respectful everybody was,” the owner says. Speaking of van Steensel, Hilferty and Sorbello, she adds, “They all love the Cape too, and they want to do right by it, and that came through.”

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Tim & Todd Duffany

M. Duffany Builders

As the next generation owners of their family business, Tim and Todd Duffany are focused on the future, applying the lessons learned from their father, M. Duffany Builders’ founder Mike Duffany, to ensure continued success. Whether it’s through Todd’s, 38, involvement in site supervision or Tim’s, 36, role in day-to-day operations, these brothers aim to follow in their father’s example—a man who, they say, always does the right thing. “When people talk about our father,” explains Tim, “they have a special feeling, a respect, for him. He’s a good moral compass. It’s always like, what would Mike do? People say he could yell at them and they’d feel good about it,” Tim says as he and Todd both laugh. “So we strive to be that grounded, balanced, and approachable.”

CCH: How did you come to be involved in your family’s business?

Todd: For us it stems back to when we were little guys. We used to ride around on the pickup truck with our father…

Tim: Picking up nails on job sites for a penny.

Todd: Then come high school, we worked summers doing roofs, and siding. Once in a while we used to pick up a hammer and put a piece of trim on here and there. Both of us went out to college and then again spent summers working here. I went to school for aviation. After 9/11 that industry changed, and I decided that this was a better opportunity for me, so I came back here right after school to work full-time. It’s been 15 years now.

Tim: For me, after I graduated college, I got into financial services. I was in the wealth management business, and I did a little bit of outsourced operations and CFO work, so a lot of my clients I advised were similar to our family, where they had a business and then they had real estate and everything mingled together. Then, two years ago, there became a need here for someone full-time, especially as Mom and Dad are stepping back, to fill in the operational role. I had some projects wind down and it was good timing, so here I am.

CCH: How do you plan to build upon M. Duffany Builders’ 35 years of success?

Todd: We’re trying to honor the model our father created, which is based on integrity and longevity. Folks find value in different ways. For us, value is finding means and methods that outlast everybody else. So more and more now we’re facilitating that with the guys in the field and bringing his knowledge to all those guys through osmosis.

Tim: Our clients, they value quality work. Some people value the cheapest option on the market, and that’s not what people are hiring us for. They want something that’s going to last for them and for their kids and not have to redo what’s been done years ago. So quality is incredibly important to us.

Todd: And we aren’t production builders—we only build one to three new homes at a time. We do a lot of repair work, a lot of renovations—the more complicated the better.

CCH: So why are the more complicated projects better?

Todd: It’s something new every day. You go to a job and there’s something different that somebody’s presenting to you, some sort of issue that you have to find the solution to. Some people can’t think outside the box, but we look at things in a different way. That’s part of why I didn’t end up getting into the aviation field—I was on track to fly commercial, and after a while of thinking about it I didn’t want to get into the commercial world of flying. Although the experience would be great, I didn’t want to be in the same routine most of the time; my personality doesn’t really enjoy that. I need to do something different all the time—that’s just who I am—so I found that to be not challenging enough. I’d rather do it recreationally.

CCH: In what ways have you been able to contribute to the growth of the company in your time here thus far?

Todd: To go way back, I was big into the computer piece of the business, trying to bring our father along with emails and introducing him to a different dynamic that he wasn’t used to, with spreadsheets and Excel, that sort of thing. So I helped him morph the estimating process to be able to manage more. That was almost 14, 15 years ago now. And then over the last five years, I’ve been really diving into customer relationships and the whole estimating process and taking that off Dad’s shoulders, because he used to do the lion’s share of it. So now he can relax a little bit more and take off time more often when he wants to get involved with other things around town…

Tim: He’s big on community…

Todd: So every opportunity he gets he jumps on another board.

Tim: So a lot of my focus has been around the succession transition. We’re in the middle, I’d say, of the transition plan. In any succession, some of the biggest hurdles can be due to the fact that the systems are built around people. The business relies on institutional knowledge that somebody has, so from day one for me it’s been about understanding the business, what the workflow is, and figuring out how we can streamline this better to be more efficient. Also, there’s 35 years of success here, so how have we done things to be so successful? I’m trying to replicate that in a more systematized way and translate that into a process so it’s repeatable.

CCH: What do you enjoy most about working in your respective roles?

Tim: For me, it’s knowing that I can add value. I look at things that happen here operationally, and I see a path for improvement. The core values and ways of handling business are strong and ingrained, those aren’t changing. From here, it’s about improving upon the day-to-day details.

Todd: I enjoy meeting somebody new every day. It’s neat to make these connections with people—what brings you to Falmouth, what are your long-term goals here? I like to do the foreplanning for jobs—paint me a picture of what you’re envisioning, and how can we help make that dream a reality for you?

CCH: What’s been your experience working for your family business?

Tim: There’s a lot of pride here. Everything people do, they want to do it the right way. There’s a sense of ownership. … I remember, growing up, when the office was at our house and seeing the same guys—some of those same guys are still around. They’ve been able to provide a good living for their families, and to be able to continue that gives me pride.

Todd: The sense of family isn’t just with us; it carries through to everybody here. We try to be people that our guys can look up to, whether we’re older brothers for people or someone they can chat to outside of work to help them get through and help put them in a better position. It’s a cool family dynamic in that regard, too.

CCH: What would you say you admire most about each other?

Todd: I respect Tim a lot—even if we disagree on things. It’s been like that since we were kids. We’d drive our mother nuts getting into fights—[she would yell] “Go outside! Go outside!”—but at the end of the day we were best friends, all through high school and college and even now.

Tim: Todd’s always been someone, just like Dad, that I feel fortunate to be able to look up to. He’s always been doing the right thing. Todd was never in trouble growing up—outside of when I was able to convince Mom that he started it (they both laugh). He got me into playing lacrosse, and he kept me in Boy Scouts. I always say he’s the kind of guy you want your daughter to marry. Everything he does, whether you agree with him or not, is for the right reasons—and it’s not always about him, it’s usually about what’s the right thing to do, just like with Dad.

CCH: As you’ve touched on, community is quite important to your father—how important is community to you guys?

Todd: In the past I’ve been involved in Pop Warner, with the Scouts, youth lacrosse—I was a coach and a board member. As my [now 18-month-old] daughter gets older I’d like to be involved again to some degree in all of that.

Tim: Community is ingrained in who we are—that was part of our upbringing. Growing up, I was 9 and you (to Todd) were 10, I think, when we were playing Pop Warner football in Bourne. At that point, our parents got together with a few other Falmouth families to start Falmouth Pop Warner so that youth football would be more accessible to Falmouth families. People come here to build homes, and for us, we build homes, but we also feel like we build communities. Falmouth’s a very special place, and like most places on the Cape, people try to find a way to be here. We help support that, including with the people who work here as well as our subcontractors—giving people a way to make a living without having to go over the bridge. This is a family business, but when we say family… the 33 people that are here, if there’s anything they need, then what can we do to help? That’s who we are.

CCH: Your commitment to community also extends to education. Explain your involvement there.

Tim: We have a couple students right now at the Upper Cape Tech who are doing their co-op with us. We’re working with Mashpee to try to get a similar program up and running through the Home Builders Association. We’ve been talking to Falmouth High School about opportunities for summer jobs here. Through Mass Hire we have someone here now who’s working to get a construction certificate, and part of that is job placement for 60 hours. And then there’s a construction course at 4Cs every year, and I speak at the lunch. We try as much as we can to be out in the community and be a part of it, in whatever role that is.

Todd: We’re big advocates of the Home Builders Association. Dad was a past president, and he just got back on the board.

Tim (laughing, surprised): Did he? Good for him.

Todd: We all want to make this place as viable as we can.

CCH: What would you say to fellow young professionals who are looking to succeed here on the Cape?

Todd: I see a growing need for good, skilled tradespeople, no matter what you want to do… there are opportunities out there for folks.

Tim: When I started my career in Boston, I had visions of that for the next 20-plus years. But the skills that I learned there are so transferable. If you’re focused on growing yourself, no matter where you are, you’re going to have more opportunities, especially around the Cape.

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Picture yourself surrounded by a sea of lush grape vines, sipping on a rich cabernet made from those very grapes while enjoying a five-course meal, live music and local art. This kind of immersive experience is just what you can expect at a Truro Vineyards Wine & Dine event. In its seventh year, Wine & Dine is held Wednesday nights in the summer—this year through August 28—and pairs the fine wine and spirits of Truro Vineyards with the fresh creations of Blackfish Restaurant. 

“It started with the idea that we could highlight local chefs,” says Kristen Roberts, co-owner and CFO of Truro Vineyards. The event quickly became an exclusive partnership with Blackfish—whose Crush Pad Food Truck is a mainstay at Truro Vineyards. 

For Blackfish owner Eric Jansen, the Wine & Dine series allows him and his team, including chef Brian Erskine, cart blanche to create an authentic farm-to-table dining experience. “We hit the farmers markets in Orleans, Wellfleet, Truro and Provincetown, and then we have farmers dropping off directly to us,” Jansen explains. “This year, we’re using day-boat scallops, which we can get right from Ptown.” Wine & Dine menus are curated the day of the event, inspired by that morning’s fresh finds. “If a farmer drops something off Wednesday morning, like strawberries and rhubarb, that’s definitely going to be showcased on that night’s menu,” says Jansen.

Highlights from last year include coriander-crusted Bluefin toro with local braising greens, and the popular Twenty Boat spiced rum milkshakes with rum-glazed potato donuts. Twenty Boat is the signature rum brand of South Hollow Spirits, the distillery subset of Truro Vineyards. South Hollow Spirits and a selection from Truro Vineyards’ 20 wine varietals can be seen at Wine & Dine. “We pair each course with a wine or a special cocktail and spend a little time talking about them,” says Roberts. “People sit together—it’s sort of family style, and everyone seems to be friends by the end.” A local musician performs throughout the night, and attendees can buy from the local artist/artisan on hand.

“We want our guests to have a lovely time,” Roberts says. “It’s a beautiful spot, and it’s an intimate way to experience the property in the middle of the busy summer.”

Tickets are required to attend the Wine & Dine events, and they often sell out. To learn more and purchase tickets, visit trurovineyardsofcapecod.com, or call 508-487-6200.

Check out these other Farm to Table locations
The Buffalo Jump
Chatham Bars Inn Farm
Farm.Field.Sea
The Farmer’s Table

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“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure… Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?”

The illustrious words of Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” are currently coursing through Matthew Bielen’s mind. The audiobook version of the novel is serving as the soundtrack of sorts to Bielen’s days spent creating in his Springfield, MA studio. “It’s amazing that people have read it without the audiobook,” he says. “It’s perfect for making art, because Melville uses all these adjectives and describes everything down to the detail, and it puts so much imagery in your head. And it’s all subject matter I’m interested in. It definitely shows through in my work.”

Bielen’s abstract, collage-like works are at once incredibly thoughtful and, as he puts it, essentially unconscious. He goes into a piece with no expectations of its final outcome, knowing his innermost thoughts and feelings will somehow find their way into the work. It’s free association at play here. Take, for instance, the titles of such works as “Narwhal Tusk” and “Breeches Buoy”—the maritime and coastal facets of Cape Cod, where Bielen has visited every year since high school, are always in the back of his mind. To Bielen, his artwork is a reflection of the reciprocal relationship between humans and nature. 

“There’s this push and pull between nature and how humans react to it, by either building upon it or devastating it,” he says. “So in my work, I’m fighting against the paper—the push and pull of the black and white, the tearing of the paper where edges meet—and I’m putting my own heavy-handed human mark on this sort of natural process… Whatever the paper is creating I have to either agree with it or disagree with it and see if I can find a resolution to it.”

For any given piece, Bielen begins by making light marks on paper—whether it be plain, colored or tracing paper—with either charcoal, black chalk or black ink, along with acrylic paint. He’ll then glue another layer of paper on top. He might tear away at that paper or add more to it—it depends on how he perceives the piece in the moment. And then he makes more marks. “I use acrylic paint to put in some marks to change the balance of the picture, or I’ll use oil pastels—the smallest amount of color can set everything off,” he says. This whole process might last just a day, or a week, or an entire month or two.

There is often a sense of chaos in Bielen’s work, one that stands to challenge its viewer. “Art is supposed to, at its purest form, make people uncomfortable,” says Bielen. “You don’t have to go in and see what I see necessarily, and you don’t have to see anything,” he adds. “If it moves you, for the better or worse, that’s enough.” –

See Bielen’s work at Larkin Gallery, Provincetown, larkingallery.com (solo exhibit June 14-25), and Cross Rip Gallery, Harwich Port, crossripgallery.com, or at matthewbielen.com.

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Twenty years ago, Michele Usibelli’s husband gave her the best Christmas present. It was a gift certificate for an oil painting class just down the street from where they lived in Edmonds, Washington. “He knew that I always had a love of art,” says Usibelli. In fact, she predicted in second grade that she would grow up to become an artist. But it didn’t always seem like art would be her career path.

In her early 20s, Usibelli was working as an architect, but within a few years time she came to realize the work just wasn’t fulfilling her creatively. So she shifted gears and took on the job as director of marketing for the National Park Service, which afforded her the opportunity to travel the world. Then in her 30s, married with a 14-month-old and a newborn, Usibelli again needed a change of pace—as much as she loved to travel, she couldn’t continue such a job that kept her away from her family so much. When she received that gift certificate from her husband, Usibelli says she had no idea it would mark the beginning of a fruitful art career.

Within the last two decades, Usibelli, who splits her time between Woodway, Washington and Whitefish, Montana, has seen her paintings in numerous national and international juried exhibitions. After learning oil painting, Usibelli taught herself how to paint in acrylic and, as of recent, in gouache, an opaque kind of watercolor. She says she continues to hone her distinct impressionistic style—an enrapturing style that relies on color. “I view the world as a series of color shapes. … It’s really light and shadow that attracts me to paint much more than what the subject is,” says Usibelli, noting, “I can lead the viewer around the painting the way I want to with my use of color.” 

Whether it’s a harbor scene, a Western landscape, a still life, a portrait or even an abstraction, Usibelli calls back to her draftsmanship skills, and approaches every painting by starting with her focal point. “I’ll put in my brightest focal point color, and then I’ll put in the darkest, hardest edge color next to it, which creates that contrast for the focal point,” she explains. “Everything moves out from the focal point toward the edges of the canvas; the colors are grayed down a little bit so your eye stays in the center of the canvas.” Before Usibelli begins painting, she tones her canvas in a bright gold color. As a result, “When I scrape away at the painting,” she says, “it creates a real warm glow, almost as if it’s coming from within the painting.”

There is a palpable life force in Usibelli’s work, and that’s no happy accident. “I truly believe there’s a difference between a pretty painting and a painting with life,” she says. “And I think all the conflicting elements in a painting—warm colors versus cool colors, thick paint versus impasto paint versus a thin wash of paint, saturated color versus gray color, a hard edge versus a soft edge—play together to create an energy in a painting. So that’s what I’m trying to achieve with everything I paint.” Usibelli adds, “My goal is to draw people in, and create a moment.”

Michele Usibelli is represented on Cape Cod by the Cortile Gallery, Provincetown, cortilegallery.com. To learn more about the artist, visit micheleusibelli.com.

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For Nick Heaney, verbal communication doesn’t come naturally. With dyslexia, words don’t always come so easily. For the stumbling block that it is, dyslexia has actually been a building block for Heaney, too, cultivating in him the deft ability to communicate visually.

“Visual language and visual communication always came naturally to me,” says Heaney. “I’ve always been drawing and sketching.” As a student at Cape Cod Regional Technical High School, Heaney discovered graphic design. “From there, I really loved the field,” he says, “taking words and making them into something beautiful, making them into artwork—taking something that’s challenging to me and making it more creative and more approachable.”

Heaney, 24, has gone on to study graphic design at Cape Cod Community College and UMass Dartmouth, but his artistic pursuits are not resigned to just one medium. A self-described experimental artist, Heaney has taken to fine art to explore a more emotional means of expression. His representational, acrylic paintings—typically measuring 11” by 14” or 12” by 12”—are nuanced with a cornucopia of rich textures that fittingly reflect the visual world around him. “When you’re driving around Cape Cod, especially on a sunny day, you see a beautiful shimmer on the ocean in the ripples and how it reflects, so I really want to capture that,” Heaney explains. “I’ll put layers of glitter down and metallic paint mixed in, and then I’ll put layers of glass bead medium on top of that, which allows the shimmer to shine through.”

He’s even incorporated actual sand and rocks into his seascape pieces—the tangibility of his work is poised to conjure up a yearning for a summer beach day. To Heaney, “It’s creating something expressionistic, but you can look at it and maybe get a flash of an image, which is inspiring.”

In addition to being a featured artist at the Steve Lyons  Working Studio & Gallery in Chatham, Heaney serves as their curator and artist assistant. He’s also involved in their yearly young artists exhibitions, working with fellow emerging artists to help get them featured in these shows. Recently Heaney has taken his curating talents to his church, St. David’s Episcopal in South Yarmouth, organizing a multi-media exhibit of parishioners’ artwork inspired by the Stations of the Cross. It’s yet another way Heaney is utilizing art to break down language barriers—to help make powerful connections through the visual art of self-expression. –

See more of Nick Heaney’s work by visiting
stevelyonsgallery.com, and on Instagram @nickh830.

Check out these other Emerging Artists:

Daniel Michael Dobbins

Margot Keil

Ted Skirvan

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