Arts and Culture

Think about the huge stone buildings of France — Notre Dame, or the huge medieval castles. That stone had to come from somewhere, right? In fact, it came from huge underground quarries, some under what would become the battlefields of World War I.

It’s well known among Maine art lovers that the iconic Andrew Wyeth painting “Christina’s World” is a portrayal of a real woman – Christina Olson – and her real house, in rural Cushing, Maine.

Unless you’re a hermit yourself, there’s a good chance you know about Chris Knight, better known as the North Pond Hermit. Knight lived alone in the woods in the Belgrade Lakes area for 27 years, stealing the necessities of life from camps before he was discovered and arrested in 2013.

GEORGETOWN, Maine — Renowned Maine artist Dahlov Ipcar has died, her sons, Charles Ipcar of Richmond and Robert Ipcar of Brooklyn, New York, said in a statement Saturday afternoon on behalf of her family.

Ipcar was 99 years old when she died Friday, her sons said.

“Dahlov spent the morning as usual at her easel working on her latest painting; she fielded a few calls with her son, Bob, pertaining to a sit-down interview for a publication and worked with her son, Charlie, on a number of projects related to her upcoming exhibits,” they said.

The Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville is getting a very big gift — a donation from Peter and Paula Lunder worth more than $100 million.

Family stories are complicated, as we all know. People don’t talk about things, and when they do, their perceptions of facts – actual facts – are wildly different.

Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Michael Chabon is a part-time Blue Hill resident. In his latest novel, “Moonglow,” the author explores this idea as he tells a story about his grandfather — or the grandfather of a fictionalized version of himself. Talking with him on his deathbed, Chabon finds out a lot about his grandparents he hadn’t known, much of it both surprising and incredibly dark.

Most of us take fonts for granted, as used for typefaces such as Times New Roman, Calibri Light or Arial Bold. But they can be pretty revolutionary: Hundreds of years ago the design of standardized fonts paved the way for the proliferation of printed material and, much more recently, eased the exchange of emails, text messages and the whole world of digital reading.