Ken Picard

3 weeks ago | sevendaysvt.com | Ken Picard

click to enlarge Few Vermonters are old enough to remember the summer of 1937, when sweltering temperatures and scant rainfall sparked a brief but intense fad of public nudity. It was started, surprisingly, by a Rutland minister who encouraged his flock to beat the heat in their birthday suits and "enter the world as God made them."Can't recall that local history lesson?

3 weeks ago | sevendaysvt.com | Ken Picard

click to enlarge Dave Sellers (September 7, 1938-February 9, 2025) often said, "If you're not having fun, it's not worth doing." That ethos defined his personal life and career as a convention-busting architect, designer, builder and inventor. For Dave, building houses was less about the science of home construction than it was about vision, experimentation and creativity.

1 month ago | sevendaysvt.com | Ken Picard

click to enlarge Another week, another attack on the arts  by the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE's latest target: Vermont Humanities, which supports an array of arts and cultural programming including early literacy classes, veterans' reading groups, teacher trainings and traveling history exhibits.

1 month ago | sevendaysvt.com | Ken Picard

click to enlarge The way sculptor Chris Cleary sees it, optimism is a sentiment that's been in short supply of late. So his newest work aims to spread more of it. The Jericho Center artist and three-time winner of the Seven Daysies readers' choice award for best sculptor has been busy on his latest roadside project: "HOPE." Its four letters stand seven feet tall, 25 feet wide in total and are "larger than life," he said.

1 month ago | sevendaysvt.com | Ken Picard

click to enlarge For more than half a century, Joanne Sheehan has refused to give her tax dollars to the U.S. to pay for war. The 76-year-old trainer in nonviolent civil disobedience moved from New York City to Norwich, Conn., in the 1970s, just to make it easier for her to protest the company that builds nuclear submarines for the U.S. Navy. Sheehan has been arrested many times for her activism.