EVERGREEN
Stories from trying to build a shared life that lasts
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Photos: Linden’s birthday request
For his 12th birthday Linden asked for both sides of his family to come together for a dinner at Lupinewood. Meeting 91-year old grandpa after hearing all the stories was a real treat. He got a cell phone and him and his mom have matching cases 🥹
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Writing + Video: Forest Fire
This story forms part of the backstory behind beyon/Sable Island Pony’s song Destriers — there’s a song intro, lyrics and full video of beyon performing the song accompanied by Olive Klug after the photos below * Every year there is a season when the smoke from the wildfires out west…
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Photos: Selling art at Waterway Arts
Grateful to Waterway Arts for carrying our work in their beautiful space Waterway’s about an 8 minute drive from Lupinewood, tucked in neighboring Great Falls. It feels like a little oasis, with light pouring through the big storefront making everything inside glow. The art and objects at Waterway are all…
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Writing: Uncharted Waters
“Dad, there’s something I need to tell you.” My son and I had just finished moving into Lupinewood, a long and harrowing process that involved wrestling a wildly unhappy cat into her carrier, scrubbing a decade’s worth of grime from kitchen walls, and consolidating all our worldly possessions into two…
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How We Do It: 2025 In Numbers
Ben here, writing from my collective position affectionately known as Back End, where I help tackle all things technological, administrative, and financial involved in collective living. It’s my first year in this position, and I’ve spent that time learning all the ins and outs of managing collective finances for a…
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Events: beyon’s Birthday/Solstice Show
Anja lit up the darkest day of the year with her magic enormous moon (lit up the mudroom cuz it was too enormous to fit through the door). It was a windy day and when Dan passed the moon strapped to the top of Anja’s vehicle teetering up our street…
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Writing: Live Free.
This story is from an earlier time in our history as a collective. Content warning: it contains themes of suicidality. When I called her she’d been standing on the guardrail of a bridge, preparing herself to jump. I didn’t know this. I was en route to a meeting and had…
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Writing: The Fresh-eyed Ordinary
Before I got Creature, my idea of dog parenthood was bathed in golden light and made hazy through the lens of hope and fantasy. In my mind, we’d be fast besties. We’d travel the world together, he’s get along with all my friends and lovers, I would paint and draw…
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Photos: The Time Capsule
2 years ago we created a time capsule in youth crew. We took polaroids together and wrote letters to our future selves. Then we sealed them up in a ball jar and stuck them in a weird little tunnel in the basement that the kids found sufficiently mystical for safekeeping.…
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How We Do It: House Position
We all have chores and pitch in to keep things clean and organized, but taking care of a place this big is daunting. We’ve discovered that if you have 9 artist-types sharing a place and running programs out of it, invite the public into it, throw in a couple of…
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Photos: The Feast 2025
The annual feast caps off a weekend-long retreat we hold for ourselves and folks we collaborate with. During the retreat we reflect on the last year and make plans for the coming one as an organization. Then the feast is a chance to invite a broader circle of folks into…
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Photos: Aurora Painting the Magnolia
While she loses the last of her leaves for the year, it feels right to give the magnolia tree a proper send-off. This is the time this spring when Hunter caught Aurora starting a new painting under the magnolia’s branches, when the flowers were in explosion-mode.
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How We Do It: Grounds Position
beyon’s position in the collective at Lupinewood is Groundskeeper. She keeps the grass mowed where the kids play and the parties go down. She shows up to the Sisyphean task of beating back the bittersweet, and tends the ancient lilac bushes, the teenage chestnut trees and the special patch of…
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Events: An Auspicious Beast
This continues to be the season of Makoto Chi 😉 Fresh from a group gallery show opening and artist talk at the Human Marks Tattoo Symposium last month at at the University of Hartford (some shots from that show at the start here!), he’s now in Vancouver exhibiting An Auspicious…
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Writing: Melting Before the High Priestess
The world lost a legendary advocate for the freedom and dignity of all people this week with the passing of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. Terran was privileged in getting to speak alongside her this summer at a panel and screening of Dream Homes, the short film about queer collective living featuring…
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Photos: Coming Out Party
Scavenger hunt was attempted and aborted by many, but 3 intrepid children made it to the end and earned themselves a prize. Folks pulled their own prints at Paper Ghost, and at EAM, made sounds into handmade contraptions that let you record your voice and play with it like putty.…
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Writing: Fellow Traveler
The year we moved into Lupinewood we decided to throw a huge party and invite the whole town to celebrate. It was late spring of 2017, just after the election, with the gears of the current culture war just starting to really turn. As a group of tattooed transsexuals moving…
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Updates: Welcoming Ben and the BackEnd 🙂
Delighted and honored to officially introduce Ben, who’s 7 months into the year-long process of becoming a full collective member here. Every person at Lupinewood has a position helping run this place, and we lovingly call Ben’s position “BackEnd” – among other things, he wrangles the multi-headed hydra that is…
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Introducing The Queer Lineages Project
The Queer Lineages Project is a DIY research and oral history project that seeks to trace trajectories of queer collectivity throughout time and situate Lupinewood within them. Making up the map as they go, Aurora and Hunter are teaching themselves how to research the obscure history of LGBTQ collective projects,…
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Institute news: Start Something info session
Stop by for snacks, drinks, and more information on how to apply to the Institute’s core program called Start Something: A six-month program that can support you developing and launching a community arts project at Lupinewood! Stipends available; no experience necessary. If you’d like to attend but are struggling to…
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Institute news: Coming Out Party!
Come for an afternoon of live music, food, demos, lawn games, a scavenger hunt, and opportunities to learn about and explore Lupinewood Institute, its projects, and the hilltop grounds of the historic stone mansion at Lupinewood in downtown Greenfield, MA! Families welcome. Donations accepted but not required, free to all.…
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Photos: Fair play
Sure several of the rides had seats wrapped in caution tape, the bluetooth speaker died on the Music Express and the Rip Cord became the R.I.P. Cord when it got shut down mere minutes after Linden stumbled off of it. But nothing can taint the glory of the Franklin County…
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Photos: Art Crit Field Trip in New Salem
We discovered something special that we didn’t know existed in the county where we live. In New Salem there’s a museum surrounded by gardens and geese that collects art mostly from still-living artists. They put on an international painting competition every year that awards one contemporary representational painter $35K to…
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Institute news: First-ever newsletter
Electro-Acoustic Mechanics is recording local bands on reel-to-reel equipment, and the sounds of new musicians using the space to practice can be heard floating across the yard on any given afternoon. Meanwhile, new members keep joining Paper Ghost Print Shop, attending weekly workshops and demos and pulling original prints. Read…
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Writing: Ritual
The glass terrarium of leaf-brown cocoons had been sitting on the stone porch for so long I’d nearly forgotten about it. But a party for my birthday was starting in the unicorn room, and just as the human guests started rolling in, so too did an unexpected guest with wings:…
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Photos: Centipede
That time we formed a centipede with our inner tubes hitched to beyon’s canoe so she and Ax could haul our asses down the final hour of the river before dark
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Photos: New paintings underway from Aurora
Friends and folks in the collective have been posing as models for a new body of paintings Aurora’s got underway. Stay tuned <3
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Photos: Art crit group
At first it was a little scary to say critical things about each other’s work in progress, especially since each artist here makes such different work. But since we started meeting most every Thursday for an art criticism session we’ve been learning how to push each other’s specific visions forward.…
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Writing: Into the big elsewhere
To my Asian friends, my dad is a source of intrigue. Unconcerned with the values that so often define Asian fathers, he spent his formative years dropping acid in arthouse cinemas, riding motorcycles and getting into situationships all over Ontario. Him getting high and forgetting toddler-me on the roof of…
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Photos: Birthday dragons
For 2 years the house became a ghost town every Sunday while most of the collective gathered their swords and satchels and congregated behind closed doors for a sprawling D&D campaign. Andrew got too busy to DM and the campaign’s been on hiatus but Makoto requested a special reunion session…
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Writing: Diablo
When I was about 14 I got placed in a foster home where the family spoke exclusively Spanish. I guess they put me there because my last name was Gonzalez, but I didn’t speak any Spanish, and the parents didn’t speak any English. They had this kid, named Xavier, who…
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Photos: Hunter moves in
Photos: After we raise enough money to repair the drywall in his room, Aurora and Ben do the last of the cleaning and finish work while Hunter moves his final box of things and spends his first night at the house.
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Photos: Shutter speed queen
Each of us at Lupinewood hold an official position in the work of running this place. Hunter is going to be taking over as documentarian in the Media position, which until now has defaulted to Andrew, who’s had to fit it in on the fly while he’s doing project coordination…
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Photos: Bowling alley breakfast club
Photos: Andrew taking a lane from an old bowling alley and turning it into a kitchen counter
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Photos: Celebrating Creative Individuals grant
Photos: So grateful to the Mass Cultural Council for awarding $5,000 to Makoto and Ruby through their Creative Individuals granting program. The Creative Individuals grants are unrestricted — so rare to find funding for artists that doesn’t stipulate what they do with the money, and extends the trust that they’ll…
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Photos: Hunting season
Took like 7 seconds for one of the kids to find the golden egg at the Easter egg hunt this year, in a hiding spot we thought was clever…