The Hurdy–Gurdy Man
Musician Ben Childs is the kind of guy struggling musicians love to hate. Since the age of 7, Childs, now 44, has had the uncanny ability to pick up an instrument and effortlessly learn to play it. “I started playing piano when I was 7, then saxophone, then guitar,” says the Tequesta resident who today plays dozens of instruments including drums, bass, banjo, mandolin, and even the tin whistle.
Yet there was one instrument that always eluded him. “Since I was a child, I have always been fascinated by the hurdy-gurdy,” says Childs. “I find the way it sounds bewitching.” He recalls first seeing the instrument played in his uncle’s English folk band, Blowzabella, and wanting to try it himself. But at a cost of $3,000, a new hurdy-gurdy was out of reach for the young musician.
He shared his passion for the instrument on his podcast, 561 Music, and Justin Hucker, owner of Live Music Community in Palm Beach Gardens, was listening. “Justin started a crowdfunding effort to get me a hurdy-gurdy,” says Childs. “All these people helped me buy one, which was just the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me.” In January 2023, Childs’ new hurdy-gurdy arrived from Poland.
The instrument, which is thought to have originated from the fiddle, dates back to around the eleventh century. It is played by turning a hand-cranked wheel, which rubs against strings (much like how a bow rubs against violin strings) and produces a droning sound. Melodies are played on a keyboard, pressing wooden keys down against strings to produce different notes. While the hurdy-gurdy is common in Europe, it is rarely seen in the United States.
There was a learning curve to playing the hurdy-gurdy to be sure, even for this very talented musician. “It’s not like any other instrument,” says Childs. “It’s difficult to play. There are a lot of things happening at the same time.”
Locals can catch Childs playing gigs (on various instruments) with The Killbillies, the folk-bluegrass band he has been part of since 2010. He has also started to record on the hurdy-gurdy. “I thought it would be fun to do all the Star Trek themes on it,” he says. “I’m also working on an original composition. So look for hurdy-gurdy music by Ben Childs soon!”
Fruit of the Loom
Elizabeth Esther Kelly was 22 years old when she moved to Woodstock, New York, the picturesque town in the Catskill Mountains that has long been a hub for artists. “I was born an artist, and Woodstock is the oldest arts colony in the country,” says the 74-year-old Stuart resident, who lived and worked in Woodstock until moving to Florida in 2009.
Kelly initially worked at the colony as a fine arts painter and a cataloger for international avant-garde artist Rolph Scarlett. In 1993, she opened her own retail store, Gateway to Tibet, outside Woodstock. It was that same year that she took up a new art form: weaving. “There was a small cottage industry in Woodstock that needed weavers, so I trained myself to weave,” says Kelly. She bought a loom and started weaving high-end scarves that were sold in luxury retail stores like Saks Fifth Avenue.
After moving to Florida, Kelly continued to weave as an artist in residence at the Fish House Arts Center in Port Salerno. “I wove there for 13 years,” she says. “Ninety percent of people who came to my studio had never seen a loom. They didn’t even know the process was called weaving.”
While weavers like Kelly are rare today, the practice of weaving was an important skill in colonial America. When England restricted the export of wool to America at the turn of the eighteenth century, colonists began weaving cloth from locally produced cotton, flax, and wool crops. Less than a century later, the Industrial Revolution brought automation to weaving, and manual weaving became more of an art form.
Kelly explains that weaving on a traditional loom is a very physical process during which the weaver throws a shuttle back and forth across the loom while simultaneously stepping on a foot pedal. The shuttle holds the crosswise thread, which is woven through the lengthwise threads stretched out across the loom. “This took 15 hours to make, and I’m fast!” she says, holding up one of her signature Salerno Shoulder Wraps that she both designs and weaves.
Today, Kelly weaves out of her home studio in Stuart, where she also paints and illustrates in numerous mediums, and sells her creations on her now-online Gateway to Tibet shop. The practicing Buddhist looks at weaving as the perfect metaphor for the interconnectedness of life, a basic tenet of Buddhist philosophy. “Weaving requires patience, diligence, and perseverance,” says Kelly. “It’s a very meditative process, and in the end, you are creating something beautiful.”
In Sync
When the members of the barbershop quartet Better Days Ahead log on for a Zoom interview for this story in late July, they are on summer break, all scattered across the country. Yet despite dialing in from vacation homes thousands of miles away, the camaraderie—and enthusiasm for “barbershopping”—among this foursome is palpable.
“Barbershop is something that is contagious,” says Don Miller, a Port St. Lucie resident and the tenor in the group. Miller, 80, was first introduced to barbershop music in his hometown of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. “I went into a local church where they were practicing, and I was hooked,” he says. Miller has now been barbershopping for 40 years.
Kurt Harrup, who sings lead in the quartet, has a similar story. The Jensen Beach resident, 80, was teaching in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1968 when a colleague invited him to a chapter meeting of the Barbershop Harmony Society. “I had never heard of barbershop before,” recalls Harrup, who joined the chapter and has been singing barbershop ever since.
Like Harrup, many singers are introduced to barbershop through local chapters of the Barbershop Harmony Society, founded in 1938. Considered an African American folk art, barbershop emerged in the southern United States in the late 1800s. True to their name, the quartets were often formed in barbershops, a hub for socializing at the time. A typical barbershop quartet consists of a tenor, lead, baritone, and bass.
The members of Better Days Ahead may all be in retirement, but the genre is attracting young singers, according to baritone Mike Tarlton. “We have a program for Florida high school students every June at Stetson University,” says the 69-year-old Palm Beach Gardens resident. “It starts on Thursday afternoon, and on Saturday night they put on a show. It’s amazing how great these kids sound.”
Chuck Martin, 77, the bass of the group, says the quartet is also changing with the times. “We do barbershop renditions of popular songs like “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” from The Lion King movie and hits from Broadway musicals,” says the Jupiter resident.
The group performs at local churches and senior living facilities and delivers singing valentines every February. But you never know where you might run into these
guys singing…. “We’ve been known to walk along the streets of Jensen Beach and just start singing a tune,” says Harrup. Adds Tarlton: “It’s like a flash mob of four guys.” To inquire about performances, contact Better Days Ahead at tinmanrush@gmail.com.
The Tree Whisperer
In a small museum outside Milan, Italy grows the Ficus retusa Linn, the world’s oldest known bonsai tree. Estimated to be over 1,000 years old, the tree requires daily care to maintain the perfect amount of light, water, humidity, and temperature in every season. It is a routine Dennis Richards knows well.
“The real trick to bonsai is keeping the bonsai alive,” he says. “Most people don’t understand that. They think bonsai is all about taking the little scissors and trimming them and misting them, like you’re sending them to the beauty parlor. It’s not about that at all.”
Richards first started bonsai gardening over 25 years ago—and he readily admits that his early attempts did not go so well. “My wife’s stepmother had bonsai, and she would give me one on occasion, but I could never keep them alive,” he says. While living in Maryland in 1996, Richards sought out a local bonsai club and got serious about the craft: “I began learning about the horticulture behind bonsai and understanding how they grow and
what it takes to keep them alive.”
The practice of bonsai—which literally means “tree in a pot”—can be traced back to 210 B.C. China. It didn’t become widely popular until the twelfth century, when Zen Buddhists in Japan adopted the practice. Among Buddhists, bonsai trees are believed to be objects of meditation and focus even today.
As Richards tends to his small forest each day, he too understands the profundity of this ancient practice. “It’s very nurturing,” he says. “When you’re caring for the trees, there is a symbiotic relationship. They give you a sense of fulfillment.”
Today, Richards has more than 40 bonsai at his Palm Beach Gardens home, with species including buttonwood, crepe myrtle, Japanese gray elm, tamarind, bougainvillea, juniper, water jasmine, and more. Over the years, he has also parted with many of the bonsai he so intensely cared for, giving them to aspiring gardeners to help them get started. “It’s sort of a given in the bonsai world that people are willing to help someone put their first tree in a pot and tell them how to care for it,” he says. “That’s how you learn bonsai.”
This past summer, Richards donated a juniper bonsai to the Taste of Africa event at the North Palm Beach Country Club benefiting the African Orphan Education Foundation. He had cared for the tree for 20 years. To find a bonsai workshop near you, visit americanbonsaisociety.org.
A Dyeing Art
Suzanne Connors looks at a swatch of fabric and sees a blank canvas. The fiber artist has been intrigued by textiles ever since she began working at her parents’ Stuart carpet store in 1983. “I have always been into textiles,” says Connors, who worked as an interior designer and construction project manager for 25 years before becoming a full-time artist.
In 2008, Connors was living in North Carolina. The construction market was in decline, so she opened Aya Fiber Studios and started creating fiber art. When a friend invited her to an indigo-dyeing workshop, Connors found her true passion. “I just fell in love with making the patterns and all the different ways you could get different designs,” she says.
Known as the “king of dyes,” indigo is one of the world’s most ancient dyes and has been used by the people of Egypt and Asia for over 4,000 years. In the eighth century, a dyeing technique called shibori emerged in Japan. Similar to tie-dyeing, shibori involves manipulating cloth to create a visual texture when the cloth is dyed. When shibori is used in indigo dyeing, the result is brilliant blue and white patterns, each completely unique.
Connors moved back to Florida in 2021 and opened Aya Fiber Studios in Stuart. There, she creates fiber art including her shibori collection of shawls, table linens, bags, and kimono-style jackets, which she sells at the studio. She also offers workshops to teach others various fiber arts including indigo dyeing, batik, shibori, botanical printing, and more. “A lot of these things are becoming ‘lost arts,’” she says. “The younger generations aren’t learning this stuff.”
Dedicated to her craft, Connors is planning a month-long trip to Japan in 2025, where she plans to work with Japanese artists to teach students the shibori technique.
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