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Arts Alive - Page 2

Hudson's Winter Walk Saturday December 1, 2007

On Saturday evening December 1 from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m., Hudson’s main street will be transformed into a winter wonderland, as the Hudson Opera House presents “A Winter Walk on Warren Street,” the eagerly-awaited kick-off to the holiday season in historic Hudson, NY. Always held on the first Saturday in December, this festive holiday celebration is now in its eleventh year and has become a premier event in the Hudson Valley.

The mile-long outdoor party known as Winter Walk, transforms Hudson’s commercial district into an eclectic mix of the traditional and the contemporary to kick-start the holiday season. Modern-day clowns dance next to Victorian carolers. A stilt-walking Toy Solider juggles his way down the street next to Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. Horse-drawn carriages clip-clop past African drummers, while a bagpiper and other street musicians add to the mix.

Children are fascinated by Saxophone Santa and by the live reindeer who come down from the North Country especially to be at Winter Walk. Who knew that a Snowman could walk, or a Grandfather Clock, or a Gingerbread Boy? Hagrid and Harry Potter will be there, and it is rumored that Shrek will show up too. Jack the Bear is coming, for sure, and so is Mother Goose. And of course it wouldn’t be Winter Walk without Mr. & Mrs. Santa Claus sitting in City Hall to hear children’s wishes.

Winter Walk is well known in the region for its innovation and ingenuity. A major feature is choreographer Abby Lappen’s window installations, where dancers posing as department store mannequins come to life to the delight of young and old alike. Dance curator Elena Mosley has arranged for a multitude of dance companies such as the Energy hip hop group from Kingston, the Albany-Berkshire Ballet, the Sternfeld Dance Studio, the Hudson Valley Academy of Performing Arts, the Upstage Dancers and Kuumba Dance & Drum.

Many musicians from the region, ranging from folk to jazz, and classical to country/western, are regular performers at Winter Walk. Many of them perform in shops and restaurants. Others, including a quartet of cock-eyed cockneys, groups of carolers, accordion players and brass players, perform on the street.

The streets are closed to traffic for the three hours of Winter Walk, allowing pedestrians to traverse the street with ease, or to hop on a horse-drawn carriage or a free trolley provided by the City of Hudson. Restaurants are likely to be crowded, but street vendors take up the slack by providing food to eat on the go.

Winter Walk often continues past the official closing time of 8:00 p.m. when fireworks are seen atop Promenade Hill, at the Western end of Warren Street.

This popular event draws over 15,000 attendees from Hudson and Columbia County, as well as visitors from Greene, Albany, Dutchess, Ulster Counties and beyond. Visitors to the City are warned to arrive early to secure a parking spot. Municipal and county lots can be found on Columbia Street between Third and Fourth and between Fifth and Sixth, on Union Street at Sixth Street, and on Warren Street at two spots between Third and Fourth.

Winter Walk is produced and presented by the Hudson Opera House, a multi-arts center housed in an 1855 building which was once City Hall. The Opera House offers a wide variety of workshops, classes, performances and exhibitions in the building that is currently undergoing restoration.

For more information call the Opera House at 518-822-1438 or visit the Opera House website at www.hudsonoperahouse.org.

COLUMBIA COUNTY MEETS ITSELF

The CCCA has been awarded its first grant from the Folk Arts Program of New York State Council on the Arts for the project Columbia County Meets Itself.  This field research project will culminate in two presentations by great Hudson-based musician/dancer/visual artists André Badila of Congo, and Azouke Legba, nee Gregory Sanon, of Haiti. Researcher Eric Bebernitz will begin with these artists a survey of the traditional arts in Columbia County. Azouke infrequently has opportunities to perform the sacred music of Haiti which he has recorded for Smithsonian Folkways, and less frequently, to perform it in a context. He is also a traditional sequined voudoun flag maker. Andre has passed on knowledge of traditional dance and music, as well as inextricably intertwined threads of ancestral philosophy including respect for the body and for nature to his 10 children, but is similarly under-appreciated, and seldom contextualized. Research will cover traditions of other ethnic and cultural groups throughout the county, but the starting point will be these two interview subjects, who will perform at the culminating events. CCCA has presented these artists many times since 2003. However, this project represents a new programming direction, because we have not contextualized these artists, nor shared with the public: the traditions embodied by them; the context in which these traditions were developed, or the contexts in which they maintain and develop their art.

Two related but distinct events open to the public will be held. A community education function will take the form of a lecture/demonstration, possibly at the Hudson Youth Center   Badila and Legba/Sanon will be presented to the Hudson community - youth, caregivers, teachers, administrators, and the general public - as the under-recognized "living local treasures" that they are. Fieldwork conducted by the researcher will provide context, in the form of printed programs so attendees develop an appreciation for the context from which the Congolese and Haitian traditions are derived. A full performance event is under consideration for the Hudson Waterfront Summer Festival in 2008.

CCCA's Executive Director Jan Hanvik has deep and wide experience in Latin American, African, and Afro-Caribbean dance and music.  That has led to CCCA support of and collaborations with André and Pamela Badila’s Diata Diata (Walk On! Walk On!) International Folkloric Theatre, and the Haitian Community Development Project. Folklorist Eric Bebernitz  was selected for his commitment to researching the folk arts of the Hudson Valley; his experience working with a local arts council (Saratoga); his experience researching the African-American community in the Hudson Valley (also Saratoga); and his ability to translate interview materials between French and English.

This project will also focus on improving  photographic, biographical, and recorded documentation of these artists.  Verbal introductions at the events will be made by Pamela Badila, alternating with the folklorist, to moderate a discussion about these drastically different yet related Francophone cultures. Preliminary recordings of the lecture and the performance will result. Critically needed for the interfacing of the arts and the schools are teaching materials based on the local yet international cultural treasures available in the region. A curriculum based on "African American History of Columbia County" was recently put together by a local scholar. Germane to the project would be written biographies of the artists describing their migrations from Congo and Haiti to Columbia County.

Mr. Legba's art infectiously involves audiences of all ages, races, and cultural backgrounds. To be investigated is the extent to which the public can participate in drumming and Voudoun (sequined) flag-making workshops with Mr. Legba.  Legba has studied, performed, and recorded the sacred music of Haiti throughout his life, and designs and manufactures sequined voudoun flags according to traditional veve designs. Mr. Badila preserves the traditions of Congolese dance and music. He is also a self-taught watercolorist of scenes of his native Congo, and commonly speaks, in French, in metaphors which reference Congolese traditional respect for the ancestors, for our own bodies, and for nature. Albany-based folklorist Eric Bebernitz was chosen because of his commitment to studying the folk arts of the Hudson Valley, for his experience working with a local arts council (Saratoga), with a Hudson Valley African-American population (Saratoga), and his ability to translate French-English research materials 

CCCA Executive Director Jan Hanvik is a member of the Board of Directors of the New York Folklore Society, which makes the following statement about its activities: As we look through the lens of folklore, we learn important things about ourselves and our neighbors—the dazzling variety of cultural creativity and expression by ordinary people, the always evolving traditions that bind us into groups and sustain us through good times and bad. The New York Folklore Society works to foster the vitality, persistence, and understanding of the folklore and folklife that enrich groups and communities in New York and beyond.

Roe Jan Library Sponsors “Learning Through Music”

Library Director Carol Briggs is pleased to announce that the Roeliff Jansen Community Library hosts the popular Learning through Music program run by music teacher and performer Amy Hilliard.   This eight-week program uses traditional children’s songs and rhymes, classical music selections, folktales, and selections from children’s literature to introduce children to music notation while they literally jump with joy.  The program will serve a total of 60 children in five groups from toddlers to kindergarteners. 

Since its inception in the spring of 2003, Learning through Music has earned a reputation as an excellent learning experience among Roe Jan community children, parents, and caregivers.  Many parents have found their children humming the songs they learned on their way home and spontaneously bursting into song during the week, and the interactive group activities are designed to help even shy children become comfortable with others.

Instructor Amy Hilliard is a graduate of Eastman School of Music, receiving her undergraduate degree in Voice and Music Education and her graduate degree in Music Education.  She has taught preschool music at MaryAnn Hall’s Music for Children in Westport, CT and at the Eastman School of Music.  

Learning through Music is designed to prepare children for literacy and open them to cultural differences as well as to benefit caregivers by educating them in how to play with their children in meaningful ways that encourage learning and literacy.   This eight-week program has filled up quickly in the past so the library encourages parents and caregivers to reserve places early.  The program will be given 8 Saturdays beginning January 5th, 2008, ending February 25th. 

For more information, contact the Roeliff Jansen Community Library at 518-325-4101 or at www.roejanlibrary.org

Longer term, the library announced its capital campaign for a new building at a jolly, dessert-filled barn dance at a circa 1799 barn in Ancram, Saturday October 13.  An overflow crowd heard that the proposed 7,500-square-foot building will be a one-story, environmentally conscientious project built on 9+ acres on Route 22, just north of the old Roe Jan School in Hillsdale. The space will be filled with natural light and provide westward views toward Audubon and other preservation lands.

The library has been accepted into the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s (NYSERDA) new construction program that supports “green” building. It will be built using local materials and blend into the gorgeous landscape of Columbia County.  The structure will be built low on the site, conforming to Copake's Scenic Corridor Overlay Zoning. The new facility will give residents of Ancram, Copake, and Hillsdale a true community library to enjoy for generations to come.

The new 7,500 sq. ft library will include space for a collection of up to 40,000 items; room for quiet study and literacy and educational programs; nearly 1,500 square feet of space for children to read, play, and attend story programs; up-to-date technology and computers for children and adults; accessibility for those with disabilities; public restrooms and central air conditioning; display areas for the work of local artists and stored relics of local history; work areas for our dedicated volunteers; an outdoor patio for performances, picnics, tent sales, and other events; administrative offices; room for friends to visit while viewing our spectacular countryside; a community room, that can be open independently of the library, for educational and cultural events; a refuge for reading and socializing in the cold of winter.
Expanded collections will featurecapacity for 20,000 more books, periodicals, and other materials; enhanced reference, business, and skills-development collections; expanded audio-visual collections including CDs and DVDs; and community information bulletin boards.

The new library will be a beautiful and functional “green” building of which the entire community will be proud. Trustees and staff plan to work hand in hand with the school system, government, service organizations such as Columbia County Council on the Arts and its Hudson Valley Arts in Education Roundtable, and community groups to ensure that the new library has a positive impact on family, our neighbor’s family, and every member of the Roe Jan community.

Groundbreaking on the new library is planned for the end of 2008.

Farming Umbria by Holly Hughes at Joyce Goldstein Gallery

This salon style hanging of plates, prints, and paintings packs the walls with a layered complexity. Wandering the densely populated surfaces, we enter the attic of the artist’s mind.  Explore images built, accumulated and collected, packed full of the suggestive and the recognizable, the legible and the “just sub-noun.”  Fragments of broken narratives leave dangling threads to pick up. In cahoots, the imagination runs wild.  The exhibit opens Saturday December 1 with a reception from 4-6 PM, and continues through December 30.  The Joyce Goldstein Gallery is at 16 Main Street, Chatham, NY.  Contact 518 392 2250 or joysgall@taconic.net.

Flooded with color, these fresh images invoke their past ancestors.  History is a tattletale, with not so hidden “other possibles” lurking everywhere. Nature’s images speak and the artist takes the liberty of toying with coats of arms of the once powerful: a heraldic perfume, a siren of warning. Recombinatory strategies unearth new meanings and reveal the telling instabilities of signs. Each visitor to the show is invited to board the trains of thought.

Techniques deployed in monotypes made in Hughes’ Ghent barn have inspired the color drawings of her majolica plates. While creating these in a factory in the Umbrian hill town of Deruta, Italy, Hughes studied the vast ceramic collection of the local museum.  Plates have opened her paintings to an iconographic explosion and she was moved to be working alongside artists and artisans in an unbroken tradition dating back to the Renaissance.  Now, whether painting in a brilliant palette of gouache on paper or using thousands of Q-tips to work subtractively on plastic plates to roll through her etching press, she feels that all mediums participate equally in her necessary fictions.  

Holly Hughes was born in San Antonio, Texas.  Living in NYC and Columbia County, she keeps studios on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and in an old barn in Ghent.   Hughes is a Professor of Painting and Drawing at Rhode Island School of Design. She has exhibited in solo and group shows in New York at Dru Arstark Gallery, David Beitzel Gallery, Piezo Electric, Philippe Briet Gallery, Graham Modern, One Penn Plaza, P.S. 1, The Work Space, A. I. R., Anita Shapolsky Gallery, etc.

 

Outside New York, Hughes has been represented in shows in Germany, People’s Republic of China, Finland and France as well as across the US including Rhode Island, Tennessee, California, Indiana, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Connecticut, Maine and Maryland.

 

Her work has been reviewed in ARTnews, Art Forum, Art in America, The New York Times, D’Ars (Milan), Drawing, Art New England and other publications.  Some of the collections including her paintings and prints are Citibank, and the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College.

Riders Mills 4th Annual Fence Show

On Saturday, September 8, the Riders Mills Historical Association and the Columbia County Council on the Arts had a hot and steamy day for their 4th Annual Fence Show. I found my spot on the fence thanks to RMHA President, Bob Leary and his trusty band of fence men.  I was near Barbara Willner, Nancy Clark, Dorothy Powell Purello and next to Bill Carbone.  Bill is a great talker and I got to catch-up on all of the recent news and political hi-jinks in Hudson.

The Fence Show is a delightful way to keep in touch with painting pals and to see what they have been up to.  Judith Vargas Warren of the Warren Painting School is taking 15 of her painting students to Tuscany in a few weeks.  I’m sure they will have a great trip.  I had some photos of Bill and Peggy Holland that I had taken of their booth at the AHS Blueberry Festival.  I was happy to present the snaps to them.  Jim McFarland and Ian Hemingway had a return engagement on the fences and seemed to enjoy the day.

Rhode Island School of Design alum Lock McKelvy stopped by to say hello. I told him the news that Richard Merkin was having a painting retrospective at Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson from September 20 to October 28th.  Lock reminded me that he studied landscape architecture at RISD and did not have the chance to have Mr. Merkin as his teacher.  I thought he might like the party.  He was a big influence on my TV design career and I did have a big crush on him, too.

CCCA Executive Director Jan Hanvik and Tricia Di Gregorio organized the art sales at the Council table. (Total sales nearly $7000, despite the threat of rain and an early shut-down.) Tricia had to keep moving her headquarters into the shade as the sun beat down on her.  It was a hot day on the Old Schoolhouse grounds.  The valiant Jackson’s Old Chatham House cooks had a recalcitrant grill and had to go back for reinforcements.  One of the RMHS members volunteered to bring in his tent.  I was feeling a bit dizzy in the heat and did not have my reporter’s notebook to record the good deed doer’s name. But I have the feeling that the Riders Mills crew is a very giving group.   Charming Nick Biggs was out and about and it was good to see Bill Bulick enjoying the day.

Painter Bart Gulley and his adorable black Pomeranian pooch were on the grounds handing out his Regarding Landscape workshop cards.  Where is Pomerania anyway?  If you would like to fine-tune your landscape painting skills with Bart, you can give him a jingle at (518) 392-3972. 

While I waited in line for my delicious burger from the Jackson’s Old Chatham House grill, I thought I might keel over.  It was too hot for me and my sales were cold.  I needed the comfort of my Blue Beauty’s air-conditioning.  I packed up early and went home. 

Planning is afoot for the 5th Annual Riders Mills Fence Show for Saturday, September 6, 2008 with ever-evolving improvements, such as turning it into an invitational, hiring a tent to protect from sun and rain, and other suggestions picked up from the artists and the art-lovers.  Contact the Columbia County Council on the Arts at 518 671 6213 or info@artscolumbia.org for information. You may also contact Fran Heaney, 518 392- 7159, fheaney@taconic.net

The Hudson River Studio Opens in Hudson

Dennis Wedlick Architect LLC (DWA) is proud to announce that it hasa established a center in the Hudson Valley, as a nexus of rural architecture, regional preservation, and sustainable development. The thriving architecture firm has long had a presence in the “rural ring” around New York City, designing projects including complex second homes, eco-friendly cottages and farms, hospitality and university buildings, and green communities. Beyond its architectural contribution, DWA has become known for its commitment to the area through its passionate advocacy of historic preservation, sustainable development and rurally appropriate design. So long a contributor to Hudson Valley development, it was only a matter of time before the firm made it official: DWA’s Hudson River Studio opened in Hudson, New York in October 2007 www.thehudsonriverstudio.com.

For principal Dennis Wedlick, The Hudson River Studio has been an ambition for over 20 years.  Immediately after earning his degree in architecture, Wedlick had the honor of working with legendary architect Philip Johnson. Midway through his 12-year tenure in Johnson’s office, Wedlick received his first commission to design a cluster of woodland cottages on a plot of farmland in the Hudson River Valley. Thoroughly charmed by the landscape, within a month Wedlick had purchased an abandoned farm field and begun making sketches for a small, picturesque home in which he and his partner reside to this day.

“The farm fields, the second generation forests and the indigenous architecture were, and continue to be, great sources of inspiration,” said Wedlick. “Beyond that, rural landowners in the Hudson Valley were practicing sustainable development long before it was fashionable.  For years they have been building environmentally-sensitive structures, adaptively re-using historic buildings, and advocating for the preservation of open space.  We have always wanted to be a part of that.”

Wedlick’s first project in the region led to dozens more residential commissions on both sides of the Hudson for his New York City-based firm. Sharing a romantic design sensibility, a quality that has come to be a firm signature, all these homes were built with local materials and an exacting attention to regional architectural style and a sustainable future. Dennis Wedlick Architect LLC’s reputation was built to a large extent on its Hudson Valley portfolio, and its list of local projects has continued to grow in the residential sector as well as the commercial and institutional arenas. Under the leadership of Wedlick and his partner in the firm, Alan Barlis, AIA, DWA has taken on projects as diverse as the Environmental Studies Department at Vassar College, a rehabilitation of the legendary Antrim Lodge at the base of the Catskills, and large-scale community-planning projects throughout the valley.  

The Studio, which occupies a two-floor historic building in downtown Hudson, will be much more than a second office for the firm.  Wedlick and Barlis envision it as a center for regional design, development, art and craft. The workspace includes a dedicated loft for exhibitions and conferences.  To inaugurate the space, the Studio hosted an exhibition of exquisite architectural renderings by local artist and architect, George Ellsworth Shear.  The unique exhibition Hudson Valley Style, Then and Now: The Picturesque Renderings of George Ellsworth Shear, the collection of exquisite renderings of notable buildings in the Hudson Valley was on display. Shears is a local artist and architect renowned for his meticulously researched and executed images of extraordinary homes.  The opening was timed to coincide with Hudson ArtsWalk, produced by Columbia County Council on the Arts.

The Studio will also be the headquarters of the Hudson Valley Congress of Residential Architecture, a regional chapter of the national advocacy organization of which Wedlick is a founding member (www.corarchitecture.com). Most importantly, the Studio will become a center of discussion about the development of the region. In the Hudson Valley as in other rural areas, the entire community depends on maintaining healthy natural and agricultural environments, while promoting economic growth—and design can play a major role in striking this balance. DWA hopes that work done at The Hudson River Studio will contribute to the development of design solutions that may be exported to similar developing rural areas across the country and beyond.

“No matter what the project—be it the creation of a weekend retreat inspired by nearby Shaker architecture, the renovation of a historic building for a new corporate headquarters, or the planning of an entire community to support agricultural development—The Hudson River Studio will promote innovative and picturesque design while respecting the history and natural environment of the Hudson Valley region,” said Wedlick.

The Hudson River Studio, Dennis Wedlick Architect LLC, is located at 17 North 4th Street, Suite 1N, Hudson, New York 12534. Tel. 518.822.8881. www.thehudsonriverstudio.com
The New York City office is located at 85 Worth Street,  4th Floor, New York, NY 10013. 212 625 9222                

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