Larger than Life
The festival’ s Executive Producer, Nancy Vitale, likens the project to directing a film.“ There are dozens of moving parts,” she says.“ Artists, shop owners, schools, sponsors, volunteers— it’ s like a living set.” But she credits Kahn’ s charisma and vision for keeping everyone inspired.“ Melany has this incredible energy,” adds Vitale.“ She’ s part producer, part artist, part ringmaster. She’ s brought out the best in everyone involved.”
As the festival neared launch, the farmhouse that once hosted Dollhouse Clubhouse began to resemble a creative workshop on overdrive. On any given day, Kahn could be found unpacking new submissions from local artists— ceramics, stained glass, knitted animals— while volunteers installed lighting or adjusted wallpaper inside the restored Victorian.“ Every time a new piece arrives, it feels like Christmas morning,” says Kahn.“ I never know what I’ m going to find when I unwrap the next box.”
A Legacy in Color: The Kahn – Mason – Trumbull Lineage
To understand the wellspring of creativity that runs through Melany Kahn’ s life, one must first look to her lineage— an extraordinary family whose work shaped the course of American art. Her father, Wolf Kahn( 1927 – 2020), was one of the most celebrated landscape painters of his generation. Born in Stuttgart, Germany, he fled Nazi Europe as a child, finding refuge and, eventually, his calling in the United States. After serving in the
Navy and studying under the famed painter Hans Hofmann, Kahn became known for his singular ability to fuse color-field abstraction with luminous realism. His canvases— fields of lilac fog, amber trees, and violet-shadowed barns— captured the light of the world as if it emanated from within.
Kahn’ s mastery earned him exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney, and the Museum of Modern Art, but it was in Vermont that his vision found its deepest resonance. For more than half a century, he painted from the family’ s West Brattleboro farm, the same place where Melany now works. The meadows, sugar maples, and distant hills of Windham County became his lifelong muse, their ever-shifting hues reflected in his pastels and oils.“ He painted the same view over and over,” says
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