Contributors

Brooke Geery [“Thai Basil offers an authentic taste of Southeast Asia in the Green Mountains,” page 7] is a freelance journalist and photographer who resides in the East Hills of Rutland Town, Vermont. She spent 20 years living in Portland, Oregon where she ran the online snowboard media empire Yobeat. com in addition to doing digital strategy for brands as Nike, before returning back East to hunt mushrooms, skateboard Vermont’s hidden concrete gems and write about local food, art and culture. Photo by Chris St.Amand

Bellamy Richardson [“That’s so Berkshire,” page 15] is a student at Williams College and aspiring journalist from New York City. She is currently a features intern at the Berkshire Eagle and serves as the executive editor for features at the Williams Record.

On the Cover: Artist Alex Kamaroff poses with some of his work at Glendale Brook Studio in Lenox, Mass. Photo by Caroline Bonnivier Snyder. Story, page 12 Publisher

Jordan Brechenser

jbrechenser@reformer.com Editors

Kevin Moran

kmoran@berkshireeagle.com

Jennifer L. Huberdeau

jhuberdeau@berkshireeagle.com Art Director

Kimberly Kirchner

kkirchner@berkshireeagle.com Regional Advertising Managers

Bennington County, Vt.:

Susan Plaisance

splaisance@manchesterjournal.com

Windham County, Vt.: Lylah Wright

lwright@reformer.com

UpCountry Magazine is a publication of

Andrzej Mikijaniec, owner of Andrzej’s Polish Kitchen, on Putney Road, in Brattleboro, Vt., cooks kielbasa on the grill. Mikijaniec tries to have all the food prepared before opening so people don’t have to wait long for their meal. Photo by Kristopher Radder. Story, page 60

Thai Basil offers an authentic taste of Southeast Asia in the Green Mountains

By Brooke Geery

Vermont has many culinary specialties: Pizza. Sandwiches. Maple creemees. But If you’re seeking the spice and flavors of Southeast Asia, the Green Mountain State is probably not high on your go-to list. However, on Manchester’s Main Street strip, Thai Basil restaurant and martini bar delivers authentic flavors with a locally grown and sourced twist that will make you forget what state you’re even in.

From classic curries to signature noodle dishes ($9 to $15), fresh salads ($10.50 to $12) and stir fries ($9 to $15), the food rivals the finest Thai establishments in New York City. It’s also the place to get a warm bowl of pho, the classic Vietnamese noodle soup, served up with a Thai twist.

Got a vegan or gluten free member in your party? The menu offers many options for the selective eater, all clearly marked. If you’re truly a fan of spice, you can order anything on the menu “Thai hot,” a spice level that requires a strong stomach! Want it mild?

Thai Basil owner Nong Chompupong, front, and her partner, chef Varit “Peter” Yanyoo, serve authentic Thai cuisine in Manchester Center, Vt. Photos by Brooke Geery

Just ask — they can do that, too.

For the rabid carnivore, turn the menu to find Chef Varit “Peter” Yanyoo’s rotating list of chef’s creations ($17 to $31). The Pet Yahng Himapan ($31) is Thai Basil’s signature roast duck, perfectly crisp and served with fresh sauteed ginger, onion, tomato, carrot, cashew nuts, roasted chilies and pineapple. Can’t settle for one meat? The Three Musketeers ($25) features scallops, shrimp and sliced chicken breast immersed in a sweet and spicy panang curry with red bell pepper, carrot, Thai basil and kaffir lime leaf.

To wash down your meal (or just to take the edge off after a long day of work/ exploring), Thai Basil offers more than 18 unique martinis, crafted up before your eyes on the mahogany inlaid-hardwood bar or served to you table side.

And while the food tastes amazing packed in a to-go container, the dine-in experience is even better. Super-friendly servers, sometimes including co-owner Nong Chompupong herself, make sure you never wait long. And in the kitchen, Yanyoo is working overtime on artful plating to guarantee each meal that comes out delights the eyes as well as the mouth.

How they got to Manchester

Chompupong and her partner Yanyoo’s family ties run deep throughout the region. She spent her early childhood about an hour outside of Bangkok, Thailand. When she was a teenager, the whole family immigrated to the United States.

She learned to cook working in her father’s restaurants; first in New York City and eventually moving north to Boston and finally settling in Albany, N.Y. As an adult, she took what she’d learned and put it into her own restaurants. Prior to opening Thai Basil in Manchester, the pair ran two restaurants in Essex, Vermont: the Drunken Noodle and Lemon Grass. In 2011, they moved operations south.

“We loved Manchester and its location in the mountains,” Chompupong said. “It’s the same as Thailand. Nice country, suburban, not too busy, no problems. It’s a very nice location, and we have a very good reception from the town.”

Manchester also offers an environment able to grow many of the Thai ingredients that aren’t readily available at stores in the area.

“In the summer time we grow our own ingredients,” she said. “We grow basil leaves and Thai chilis, and sometimes we get local mushrooms. This year we don’t have as much growing because we just didn’t have the time.”

Surviving Covid

Over the past decade, Thai Basil has grown into a must-visit location adored by the local community, so when COVID-19 threw a wrench in the system, the owners buckled down and did what they could to stay open.

“We never closed the restaurant during COVID because we had to support the locals,” Chompupong said. “It was even more difficult to get ingredients. We were having to drive to Albany to get things, but we tried to do everything the best that we can for our community. It was more difficult to make the food to go, so we had to learn and work twice as hard.”

Yanyoo said he’s been running the kitchen solo for over a year, but hard work is in the duo’s DNA. They adapted and with the exception of a few days here and there, and a reset day every Wednesday, they just keep pumping out delicious food.

“We are here every day, it’s our baby,” Chompupong said. “Some people can work from home, but with a restaurant you have to be here.”

And with every turn of the re-opening spigot in Vermont, they were able to open and little more. For summer 2021, the restaurant’s dining room bar and patio are all open and ready for things to get back to normal. Chompupong is just glad to still be working in such a friendly place.

“We are so happy to be in Manchester,“ she said. “From my first day, until now the locals have been so sweet. I love them.”

Thai Basil

4940 Main St, Manchester Center, Vt. 802-768-8433 thaibasilvt.com

Hours

Lunch: Thursday to Tuesday 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dinner: Sunday to Thursday, 3 to 8 p.m. and Friday and Saturday, 3 to 9 p.m. Takeout: All day, Thursday through Tuesday

The many angles of Alex Kamaroff

Painter discusses his origins in hard-edge modern art, demand for his work and how bipolar disorder is his wild and fickle muse

By Noah Hoffenberg LENOX, Mass.

You might have $22 million lying around to purchase a painting by Wassily Kandinsky.

Then again, you might not, says typically prolific painter Alex Kamaroff of Middlefield.

“You can’t afford a Kandinsky, but you can afford a Kamaroff,” he notes.

The 72-year-old’s paintings are in demand, such that he keeps his Glendale Brook Studio open seven days a week during the Berkshire summer season. He attests to more than 60 sales of his work over the past three years, unheard of for a newer artist, says Kamaroff.

“You ask any artist, and tell them I sold 60 paintings, and they’ll tell you I’m full of the devil,” says Kamaroff, a New York City transplant who moved to the Berkshires.

Visitors can enjoy the artist for themselves, as Kamaroff paints in his gallery and loves good conversation. Apt listeners soon learn that his whirling dervish mind is alighted, and sometimes darkened, with bipolar disorder.

His hyper-creative and less creative states

His highs, or hypomanic states, are marked by boundless creative spurts and results-oriented ideas that he qualifies as genius; in his low states, he works more slowly, and creates art far less feverishly, going by technique, instead of manic-levels of inspiration.

For those unfamiliar with bipolar, Kamaroff explains it this way: “Hypomania feels like three or four cups of coffee with sugar.”

Kamaroff is in the midst of one of his downs.

“My wife calls it ‘the Mozart disease.’ The highs are when I’m at my most creative. The kicker, about two months ago, I came out of a hypomanic phase and haven’t been able to paint,” says Kamaroff. But, he tells himself, “If you have technique, you’ll figure it out.”

Easing back off the gas pedal

This is the first time in 10 years that Kamaroff is easing back from a period of prolific painting, in which he churned out more than a hundred works. He’s not quite calling it a break, but rather a much slower mode of production.

“I still paint. I’ve got a painting I’m working on right now. I force myself to paint. I have technique. Once you have that, you never lose it,” says Kamaroff. “I used to paint a painting every five days. This one will take me six months. But my wife loves it.”

Kamaroff refers to his greatest fan, biggest supporter and also his wife, Irene Goodman, of the literary agency that carries her name; Kamaroff has been her longtime scout, poring over thousands of manuscripts in his lifetime, plucking out a few New York Times best-selling authors over the past 40 years.

Despite his unexpected break from his highly productive state, Kamaroff’s mind is ripe and rapid-fire with memories, anecdotes and facts, which he shares easily in a way that makes the listener feel warmly invited into his rainbow-colored existence.

Kamaroff says he’s not trying to make a living with the gallery.

“This is a hobby. I was a literary agent and found best-selling authors. I also wrote 21 romances under the name Diana Morgan back in the 1980s,” says Kamaroff. “That’s how I learned painting: It’s pacing, intensity and resolve.””

Feeling like Pollock one day

What Kamaroff refers to as his “hobby” began about 10 years ago, while he trudged across his yard, dressed for home repair.

“I was walking along with a piece of plywood, some paint from Home Depot and stiff brushes to throw out,” he recalls.

“Just for the fun of it,” Kamaroff flung, dripped and splashed some green paint on the board.”

He still has the board in his studio.

“I went Jackson Pollock crazy for a year, making a mess of the place, doing about 40 of those paintings,” says Kamaroff.

Eventually, he says: “I got really good at it and learned what Pollock did. When he threw paint in the air, he knew exactly what it would look like landing on the canvas. Each different paintbrush created a different drip in the air.”

Stop by and see some of Alex Kamaroff’s 130-plus original paintings and talk some art with the artist himself. The Glendale Brook Studio is at 27 Church St. in Lenox, and closes at 6 p.m. Call 413-551-7475 or visit glendalebrookstudio.com.

One man’s trash ...

But, Kamaroff refers to his early work as “garbage,” and he tossed most of his early work in the trash. Of the two paintings that he kept, one sold last year and the other is on display in his gallery.

His rubbish, as it turns out, was many a homeowner’s treasure in Middlefield. Kamaroff’s hilltown neighbors saw no reason why perfectly good art should go to waste, he says.

“They think one day I'm going to be famous and they're going to make a fortune from the paintings they took. I have been in my neighbors’ homes and seen paintings that I threw out, up on their wall,” says Kamaroff.

In fact, some of these throwaways ended up making his first sale. A friend was eating at Koto in Pittsfield, and relayed to the owners that Kamaroff had some pieces that would look wonderful there.

“The paintings looked just like Japanese sushi bowls with chopsticks. He took them out of the garbage. They paid 50 bucks a piece for them, and that’s when I became a professional,” says Kamaroff.

A gallery for hard-edge painting

Kamaroff decided on opening a gallery about three years ago, after spying his current space while dining at Alta in Lenox.

“There was an empty store across the street, and the owner was cleaning out,” he recalls.

Kamaroff doesn’t remember how he came to hard-edge painting, in which he uses all kinds of tape of varying widths to create his sharp and bold images, which are reminiscent of a number of modern artists.

“I can’t tell you why. I took some tape one day and taped around the edges of the canvas. And then I started using tape to throw paint. I said, ‘Well, this is neat, it’s starting to create some kind of edge,” he recalls.

He then took to researching hard-edge painters and their style of work.

“Little by little, I started to study Kandinsky, Miro, Leger, Glarner. I started to steal from them. Picasso once said, ‘Good artists copy but great artists steal.’ That’s what art history is all about,” says Kamaroff. “I started to steal from all of the 20th century modern artists.”

Influences are there, especially James Hendricks

He says that visitors notice the influence of the greats in his work, which Kamaroff enjoys.

“They say, ‘You stole this from Kandinsky.’ Or, ‘you stole this from Glarner.’ Or, ‘you stole this Bolotowsky.’ I say, thank you for the compliment,” he says.

Kamaroff also credits his Orkin man for making a connection between him and another client, James Hendricks, the late University of Massachusetts professor and painter, whom he eventually came to call his mentor and best friend. The Middlefield painter admits he was dubious at first.

“Hendricks invited me over. I figured he’d be another loser of an artist. He was scary brilliant. I just fell to my knees and said, ‘Mister, you and I are best friends.’ Every Wednesday we’d talk about art for hours, and that man taught me everything about every modern artist in the world.”

In long conversations, the men never repeated themselves, recalls Kamaroff. “I called it Wednesday with James,” he says, missing his friend deeply.

His ultimate painter’s tool: tape

Everything that Kamaroff produces is made with his tape techniques, which gives his paintings their sharp lines and prevents smearing of his acrylic paint.

There’s no need to look for deep or hidden meanings in Kamaroff’s work, as he’s of the school where image and color are gathered together to please the eye.

“I look at the canvas that’s blank and I start with something, and just paint, and then it takes off from there,” says Kamaroff, joking that it’s “probably all the LSD trips I took back in the 60s.”

As for the purchasers of his art, “I hope that every once in a while they look up and enjoy it.”

Like Kandinsky, Kamaroff

“I went Jackson Pollock crazy for a year, making a mess of the place, doing about 40 of those paintings.”

— Alex Kamaroff, painter, on the start of his art career employs a compass to paint precise circles, a technique that’s revealed by the tiny pin-prick in the painting where the compass is centered.

“It took me years to figure it out. Ask any potter how long it took them to center a pot. It’s the same way,” says Kamaroff.

A small staff prepares his canvases, covering them in thick, opaque gesso, which makes his colors pop. “It gives you good, beautiful, perfect edges,” he notes.

Demand keeps increasing his prices

His bold modernist paintings sell for between $2,000 to $5,000 each, with prices rising steadily as Kamaroff’s star continues to climb. Kamaroff sells no prints at his Church Street gallery, but visitors can pluck the pieces of art that move them, “right off the wall,” says Kamaroff.

“As I get better and better and more famous, I get closer to getting over $5,000 at the low end,” says Kamaroff.

Even in his down state, the painter is confident that both he and his creative upswing will soon return.

“I'll come back,” says Kamaroff. “I always come back.”

Stop by and see some of Kamaroff’s 130-plus original paintings and talk some art with the artist himself. The Glendale Brook Studio is at 27 Church St., Lenox, and closes at 6 p.m. Call 413-551-7475 or visit glendalebrookstudio.com.

That’s so Berkshire!

5 summer experiences you won’t want to miss in the Berkshires

By Bellamy Richardson

After a long year of Zoom events and social distancing, the Berkshires are back and ready for a summer full of in-person activities. Gather your friends and family, pack a picnic and a blanket, and get ready to have some fun!

There are many fun things to do outside with the whole family, such as taking a yoga class in a scenic location and feeding baby animals on a farm. And of course, the Berkshires are booming with creative new theater productions and musical performances. Here are five things you’ll want to do this summer

Picnic on the Tanglewood lawn

297 West Street, Lenox, Mass. 617-266-1200, bso.org

Let the picnics commence! After a year of livestreaming events, the Boston Symphony Orchestra returns to its summer home at Tanglewood. Season highlights include performances by Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma; violinist Lisa Batiashvili; a special tribute to John Williams (who also returns for the popular John Williams Night); and Popular Artist Series concerts by Brandi Carlile, with special guest Mavis Staples, and by Judy Collins and Richard Thompson with special guest Jesse Colin Young. NPR’s popular news quiz game show, “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!,” also returns to Tanglewood for one night in August. Tickets may be hard to come by this season, as attendance capacity is limited to 9,000 — 50 percent of normal capacity.

Concert goers set up their picnics early on the Tanglewood Lawn. Berkshire Eagle File Photo

Try goat yoga at Hancock Shaker Village

1843 West Housatonic Street, Pittsfield, Mass. 413-443-0188, hancockshakervillage.org

Have you ever tried doing yoga with a goat? Throughout the summer, Hancock Shaker Village will host special events, including musical performances and yoga classes — both goat yoga and “yoga for movers and shakers.”

Open 11 a.m. through 4 p.m. daily, visitors can also explore the herb gardens, heirloom vegetable gardens and visit the barns and historic buildings.

Brianne Capeless and a goat share their space in the grass during ‘goat yoga’ at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield. Berkshire Eagle File Photo

Feed baby animals at Ioka Valley Farm

3475 MA-43, Hancock, Mass. 413-738-5915, iokavalleyfarm.com/summer

Get up close and personal with baby animals at Ioka Valley Farm. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, this family farm is home to many baby animals. Stop by Uncle Don’s Barnyard to visit and feed the animals. Kids also can explore the hay tunnel, giant sandboxes, farm book library, and outdoor farm-themed playground. Families can relax and enjoy the sunshine in the picnic area. Also make sure to check out the locally grown products such as high-quality maple syrup, natural beef, granola, and sauces. Season passes are available.

Visit Uncle Don’s Barnyard with the kids at Ioka Valley Farm. Berkshire Eagle File Photo

Williamstown, Mass. 413-458-3200, wtfestival.org

Williamstown Theatre Festival is back! The festival returns from a season on Audible with three in-person world premieres — all outdoors and in a variety of locations. The front lawn of the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance is the stage for “Celebrating the Black Radical Imagination,” which explores the power of Black storytelling with a series of nine solo plays written by Black writers and performed by actors of color. The Clark Art’s reflecting pool is the setting for “Row,” the story of a woman who aims to be the first to row solo across the Atlantic. “Alien/Nation” is an immersive theatrical experience that takes the audience on a journey through Williamstown and is inspired by events that took place in the area. The season runs through Aug. 8.

Williamstown Theatre Festival returns this summer with three live shows around town. Berkshire Eagle File Photo

Listen to a unique musical performance at The Foundry

2 Harris Street, West Stockbridge, Mass. 413-232-5222, thefoundryws.com

Looking for a wide variety of unique musical performances? Look no further than The Foundry, with weekend performances scheduled through Sept. 19. Scheduled performances range from an Emerging Artists Series, that celebrates up and coming vocalists, instrumentalists, and comedians, to the West Stockbridge Jazz Series, featuring internationally acclaimed jazz musicians and vocalists such as Lauren Henderson. Upcoming acts include: It Was A Very Good Year, Daddy Long Legs, The Freemonts, and Colin Isottie & Duo Nouveau. •

Audience members arrive at The Foundry. Photo provided by The Foundry