Meet Your Neighbor
Rebecca Cennamo
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT WRITER

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent

Date of birth: "I'm growing young."

Likes most about Nantucket: "The unseen Nantucket. It's like a net of people who hold the island together in the tsunami of summer. And you can really blossom here if you are eccentric."

Likes least about Nantucket: The increasing phoniness. "To me, Nantucket is a sacred place. Now it's swamped with materialism."

Favorite TV show: Programs on The History Channel.

Sitting cross-legged on her bed, Rebecca Cennamo was surrounded by her paintings and said creating new art is her favorite pasttime when she is not working.

Born and raised in Manhattan, she enrolled at Columbia University where she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in writing. Following graduation, she moved to France, "To get a life to write about."

She lived between New York and France for about five years and spent a few months in a New York monastery, prior to visiting Nantucket with her brother 17 years ago.

Once she saw the island, she decided she had had enough of urban life.

"It was very hard to go back to an ugly city," she said. "Nantucket was a place that didn't belong too much to the United States; it was so sophisticated for such a tiny sand bank. It all seemed very wonderful and it was beautiful."

Cennamo also discovered that Benjamin Franklin, whose mother was a Nantucketer, is her grandfather six generations removed. Over her first several years here, she learned the innkeeping trade. She spent a summer running her own inn on Deer Island, Maine and when she returned to Nantucket, she became employed as housekeeper and personal assistant to Teresa Heinz Kerry for seven years.

Six years ago, a friend of Kerry's who lives in Polpis asked Cennamo to caretake the family cat for a winter. The friend was Philippe Laffont, who started the Dreamland Foundation. After that winter, Cennamo stayed on in a cottage on the property to care for Laffont's house and guest quarters.

"I became a domestic in the loop," she said.

Along the way, Cennamo stopped smoking - and subsequently stopped writing.

"I found I couldn't write if I didn't smoke," she said.

But Cennamo found another creative outlet in painting, when the late artist Paul Longenecker became a close friend and mentor.

"I'd always been drawing and I'd always wanted to be an artist, but I never saw the artist in me until I met Paul. He charged me absolutely nothing for five years of mentorship. That doesn't happen in this world," said Cennamo.

She said she left employment at the Kerrys a year ago to concentrate on her painting.

"Paul gave me the courage that I had the talent to do this," she said. "He was the consummate gentleman, but a grueling teacher. I loved that about him."

Right now, Cennamo is building her inventory in preparation for gallery shows. Besides painting in her cottage's peaceful studio, Cennamo enjoys walking with friends, reading and meditating. She said someday she would like to see the turquoise water of the Caribbean, but at the moment her life is full.

"My only dream is to follow what God wants me to do and hopefully, art will be involved." i