Arts

Keep Drawing, Keep (Th)inking: the Keith Knight Story

By Sky Malerba Born and raised in Malden, MA, cartoonist, rapper, teacher and activist Keith Knight delighted in drawing since early childhood. This week, Keith Knight is the subject for Malden Arts Mondays, a two-month long celebration of artists and figures associated with Malden.  “I always used to draw on walls, and draw in class, and I’d never get in trouble for it, in fact, I kept on getting higher grades,” he said of his school experiences.  He drew cartoons based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm and used portraits of his  classmates and teachers as an analogue to a character in the story. “You should be doing a syndicated cartoon,” his teacher  told  him. That was the beginning  of Keith Knight’s career as a highly regarded American cartoonist 20 years ago. Knight graduated from Malden High in 1984 and after a brief stint as a professional Michael Jackson impersonator in the 1980s,  he created perhaps his most memorable in the 1990s. The K Chronicles was a weekly autobiographical comic strip, published  in The San Francisco Examiner and then […]

Arts

For Malden artist, nature’s beauty endures even in a pandemic

Another in a series of stories on how Malden residents are coping with the COVID-19 pandemic.  By Elizabeth Scorsello Malden artist, Peg, dreamed about spending a week in May in Turin, Northern Italy, at the International Center for Ceramics to mark the year of turning 80. She had planned to take classes with potters from all over the world. Now, she wonders when – or if – she will ever get to make this trip. Peg, a resident of Malden for 14 years,  paints and draws, does ceramics and teaches art.  She taught kindergarten in the Boston School System. Retired and living in senior housing, she was teaching ceramics. And then the coronavirus appeared. “About a month ago the management (of senior housing) tried to get on top of it,” Peg told Neighborhood View. “We received a mailing describing the virus and (tell us to start)  washing hands, etc., to get ready for the coronavirus.” Two weeks ago a notice went up and a robo call started telling residents no visitors allowed except for family […]