In 1995 or ‘96, Cheryl and I found a coffee shop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire called Caffe Kilim. The coffee was great, but the people were the reason we kept coming back. We became regulars. Eventually we moved to Portsmouth, in no small part because of Kilim.
The painting they wouldn’t sell
In the summer of 2001, Justine McNamara, an artist visiting from Australia, painted Kilim for a local show. The owners, Yalcin Yazgan and his wife Janice Schenker, bought it, and it’s hung on their walls ever since. That’s Yalcin far left, long hair and mustache.
The young woman beside the guitar is Kate Crowell, a local artist who worked at Kilim. She and Justine became close that summer, painted together, and showed their work side by side at the Music Hall.
We loved that painting. Over the years we offered to buy it more than once. Yalcin and his family always said no.
Asking for our own
In April 2021, I wrote to Justine directly. Could she paint Kilim again, and put my family in it?
Seventeen days later, Kate died.
Everyone was heartbroken, Justine most of all. But she told me she was glad for the chance to paint Kate one more time.
Watching it take shape
Around then I was reading the newsletter of painter and author Kimberly Brooks, who calls a painting’s in-progress versions its “ultrasounds.” They’re the early glimpses a collector almost never sees. Justine sent me hers.
The first came with an idea: paint our younger selves into the bottom right corner, strolling out with our baby daughter. The strange part is that earlier that same day, Cheryl had looked out at the highway and said she could picture our younger selves in traffic, heading up to Maine. She didn’t know about the painting. It was a surprise, and she hadn’t seen Justine’s note.
The second ultrasound showed the younger versions of us coming to life, with our present-day selves nearly done.
The finished work
Justine wrote a message on the back of the canvas. We read it on video before we hung the painting in our home.
When she shared the finished piece, Justine wrote:
20 years ago i created a series of paintings of iconic places in the city of Portsmouth NH during a fun summer spent there in 2001…including one of my favourite hangouts “Caffe Kilim” Some places are so rich in character and deliver you friendships and memories to last a lifetime x it’s where I met my beautiful friend Kate ❤️ we painted together all summer and had a show together at the Music Hall 🇺🇸
x I loved that Yalchan purchased the painting all those years ago and it has graced the walls ever since. The original painting of Kilim is filled with just some of the amazing characters who frequent the place to share stories over the best Turkish Coffee I have ever had!
It was so cool to receive a request from a family who have also enjoyed over 20 years of good times at Kilim, to create for them ..their own painting …same but different 💘 a week after hearing from them I heard the tragic news of Kate’s passing ….so more than ever, it has been a joy to jump back into all the old photos and memories to create this new version X long live Caffe Kilim and the memory of our beautiful Kate
Long live Kilim, and the memory of Kate.