"Puck has TB?"

As I said, July is the jewel in our crown.

This jewel is constantly polished, refined, and reformed by creative vision, inspiration, and downright out-of-the-box thinking. Or, how about, out-of-the-theater?

Outdoor theater is not a new idea, by any means; as a student, I was awed by many memorable performances in lush college quads, parks, and an amphitheater; my New York City nephew is a 10-year-old veteran of Central Park performances. Many other cities and college town boast similar opportunities.

But here is a new twist: how about Shakespeare in the Adirondack Park-?!?

While Central Park is a restful haven of nature for Manhattan, and college quads and parklands offer refreshing respite from the numbing grind of academia - well, they're pretty small compared to the 6 million acres encircled by the Blue Line!

No problem.

Stephen Svoboda, the executive director of the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts, is not one to be cowed by fickle mountain weather. His heart does not quake at the logistics of moving a show 12 times in 7 days, over hundreds of miles of twisty mountain roads. A Midsummer Night's Dream is to be performed between July 25th and August 1st at an array of locations to make you reach for a map: Thendara, Tupper Lake, Blue Mountain Lake, Long Lake, Old Forge, Raquette Lake, Minerva, Indian Lake, North Creek, Paul Smiths, Inlet, and Speculator.

This I gotta see!

The nearest performance to my location is July 31st at the Adirondack Park Visitor Interpretive Center (VIC).

Click here to see when and where it will be near you.

And no, Puck does not suffer from tuberculosis! My 15-year-old son (who aspires to comedic greatness) posed the question when he learned this play is being staged outside in the clean mountain air so often prescribed to victims of that disease. But the show promises to cure lots of other, more modern ailments: ennui, indifference, worldliness, apathy . . .

Our North Country summer is the more luscious for its brevity. Make the most of its opportunities, and rejoice in creative invention!

The Jewel in the Crown

July.

For this, we endure all the year's discomforts, all its trials, all its hardship.

For this, we are the envy of the earth. Bugs notwithstanding!

Birdsong fills the fragrant air dawn to dusk. If it rains, the waters sing. If it is clear, the sun dances. If you are bold, neither rain nor sun can keep you from seizing the rich sweet adventure of a North Country July.

And now, in July, may be the fullest time on a North Country arts calendar. Everywhere! Everything! Art - music - dance - theater!

Don't take my word for it - skate over the the Calendar page at ncpr.org (everyone's favorite website!) - dozens upon dozens of arts related events are listed this month. If you prefer hard-copy information, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise has published an "Arts in the Park" guide available, free, lots of places - and of course the Arts Council of the Northern Adirondacks produces the free Arts Directory, which will be hitting shelves and information stands any day now.

The North Country is magnificent throughout the year. It is a gleaming crown of natural beauty and man-made ingenuity. But July is surely the crown's brightest jewel - twinkling at you now.

Bustin' Out All Over

Third Thursday: Saranac Lake. It's the place to be if you enjoy art, music, and community spirit.



Starting at about 4:30 this afternoon, over 30 local artists and musicians will flood the downtown area. The general public can guide themselves through this creative smorgasbord with a free map that features locations and descriptions of events. Anyone so inclined will have the chance to enjoy Native American art, pen and ink caricatures, and even see the processes used by lapidary artists. For those who prefer hands-on discovery, Luanne Riley will host an Artist Trading Card Workshop, and toe-tapping, foot-stomping music will fill a park and several streets. Upscale Resale, an antique store extraordinaire, will be displaying Victorian art, and the galleries of such luminaries as Tim Fortune and Georgeanne Gaffney will have open doors and paint-scented air.



Numerous venues offer refeshments, but for those interested in serious food, the famous Blue Moon Cafe will be open late into the evening. Besides exibiting the work of local artists, they make a MEAN pannini - and their menu features a huge variety of other yummies. Other excellent eating establishments will also have open doors and warm smiles.

Don't be put off by rain. Bring an umbrella, and enjoy the sunshine of an open, lively, arts-oriented town for the first Third Thursday Art Walk of 2009.

Art Works

News flash:

Art works in Saranac Lake.

By this I mean, art is an effective engine of both cultural enrichment and economic growth. Art functions to draw the community together socially and to attract visitors to enjoy our village.

Of course, this is not unique to Saranac Lake; a recent Plattsburgh Press Republican article points out that "several development studies have concluded that a real revitalization of downtown cannot happen unless there is a strong arts corridor." To read the whole article, click on this link:

http://www.pressrepublican.com/ed_choice/local_story_160232423.html

Saranac Lake's "arts corridor" is dazzling. Perhaps because it is a relatively small town, art-related vitality permeates nearly everything. In recent months, a group called Saranac Lake Art Works has been re-energized, and is actively working to use the arts as a vehicle to promote and strengthen the whole town. (Click the link to see their website.)

At present, Saranac Lake Art Works consists of 11 arts-related businesses and individuals, and, since formally associating about 6 months ago, they have engaged in multiple promotions and events.

Over the winter, the group drafted an article about local arts for the 2009 - 2010 Visitors' Guide produced by the Saranac Lake Area Chamber of Commerce. Besides the advertising support of several member businesses, the group itself created a full-page ad to highlight the village's creative wealth.

In April, they mounted and staffed a collective booth the Adirondack Living Show in Queensbury. Pictured above, it featured work representing each group member and also general information about Saranac Lake.

In August, Saranac Lake Art Works will be hosting the First Annual Adirondack Plein Air Festival. Plein air, or working outside in natural light, is favored by many artists, and many more are curious to try it. (Click here to see a previous NCPR report by Todd Moe about plein air artists.) Artists of all suitable media (painting, pastel, photography, etc.) will be invited to spend a weekend working en plein air in the Saranac Lake region from August 21 - 23, culminating in a show and sale of the weekend's work on Sunday afternoon.

And of course, Saranac Lake hosts the Third Thursday Art Walks every June, July, August, and September. The Saranac Lake Art Works group certainly didn't start this (though one of the group's members, Tim Fortune, did), but they are active in helping promote it. Similarly, the Artists at Work Studio Tour, a soon-to-be three-year-old event, was initiated and is run by others, but Saranac Lake Art Works invests in advertising it. (And again, one of the magnates of the Artists at Work Studio Tour, Sandra Hildreth, also belongs to Saranac Lake Art Works.)

Art works. A community with arts-related industry works. Saranac Lake is one of the most vibrant arts-related industrial centers of the North Country.

The Light Fantastic

Light.

I have written before of its significance - its centrality - to our lives and our arts. (Click here to read.)

Light is mentioned repeatedly in the PBS documentary about the Adirondacks, which first aired in May 2008. Through the history of white settlers' wilderness explorations and into the present day, people have found that something about these mountains creates an extraordinary quality of light.

Artists strive to capture a sense of this quality; as the source of vision, light is the root of all visual arts. Painters especially seek that elusive, magical illumination which will elevate a two dimensional surface to three dimensions - or more, if time can be considered a fourth. Since the 19th century, many have embraced the value of working "en plein air", or in the open air, as a way to understand light. Painting in this way has its own challenges, of course - not least of which is the need to work quickly, for light changes constantly with the earth's rotation.




Plein air paintings are often suffused with light in a way unique to the painting world. Have you seen, standing in the woods on a cloudy day, how softly the light might touch a mossy boulder or a naked branch? The forms are hard, defined, unyielding - but the light is gentle, and alters their solidity.



Alternately, have you found vivid colors and sharp shadows when direct sun pours down? Colors appear which you never saw before; shadows develop layers of depth; water can even hurt the eyes with its brilliance.



A master of plein air painting sees these things and more, and expresses them on (usually) canvas or paper. A painting made by such a master can bring you to the world, so you almost smell the pines, feel the touch of breeze, hear the splashing river.



Such a master is Sandra Hildreth. Pictured above is one of her plein air portals, a doorway to an Adirondack afternoon. Her style is realistic, but more: it leads you from the confines of your daily life, your worries and distractions, into a realm more than real, a place where you see as never before.



A place where light comes alive.



Sandra's work is currently featured at the Adirondack Artists' Guild in Saranac Lake; that show has an opening reception Friday, June 5th, and will hang until July 5th. (As I have written before, the AAG knows how to throw an opening!) If you can't make it to Saranac Lake, however, she will also have a show at the Tannery Pond Community Center in North Creek from June 27th through July 30th.



If you can, go see her work. You will gain a richer vision of our world, and a fuller comprehension of light.

Garden, Forest, and Paint

On a recent morning in my garden, I was struck anew by the tenacity of life bursting forth from winter's grip. As I turned fragrant soil, uprooted stubborn weeds, moved long-legged perennials, and as earthworms and milipedes scuttled away - I had to marvel at life's abundance.

Two local painters who also study the natural life of the North Country are Lee Ann Sporn and Meg Bernstein - both of whom have been subjects of previous posts in the blog. (Click here and here to read some of these.)

Now, the two have mounted a show together in the Cantwell Room of the Saranac Lake Free Library. They have spent the last year visiting the Debar Wilderness area, together and individually, and painting their observations of it.

Each artist works in both watercolor and acrylic, and though each has a distinct style, they harmonize. Lee Ann's watercolor pieces are in the tradition of botanical illustration - she is a biologist, after all, and her paintings are enriched by her careful examination of life's pathways and mechanisms. Her acrylic pieces, however, feature a looser approach: still clear, but more exuberant - perhaps a bit more playful than scientific.

In this exhibit, she pairs the watercolors and acrylics of similar subjects together; for example, above is her acrylic rendering of a jack-in-the-pulpit cluster; below, she depicts a single plant in watercolor. My photos do not do justice to the originals, but perhaps you can see how the watercolor features precise detailing, while the acrylic, though still carefully observed, has looser lines, a greater sense of playful energy.





Meg's pieces take the energy and playfulness even further. Her acrylic paintings remind me of a time I saw original oils by Vincent Van Gogh; the paint swoops with its own ideas, thick and sensuous, leaving luxuriant brushstrokes to hint at the hand behind the work. It's thrilling to see, and inviting to ponder.

Meg's pieces in this show are all landscapes; trees commune with clouds, while colors dance from water to mountain to sky and beyond. The watercolors, too, share the force and vibrancy of our lush North country.






Life is: celebrate! Enjoy art, and make some of your own! For inspiration, dig around in a garden, or walk through some woods, or go see Lee Ann's and Meg's work in Saranac Lake. Or - all of the above!

Bursting Barriers

This is the cover of a new book: "Rethinking Acrylic: Radical Solutions for Exploiting the World's Most Versatile Medium", by Patti Brady. -The world's most versatile medium? Some artists might quibble with that subtitle, but Brady uses acrylic in so many ways, it seems plausible...



Acrylic paint is a modern invention, part of the post-war plastics revolution (click here to read a previous post on that topic). While more traditional media such as oils and watercolors have been studied for centuries, we have had only the last few decades to play with acrylic paint. And yet, with creative minds and adventurous spirits, chemists and artists alike have pushed this new substance in exciting ways.




One of the most adventurous artists I know is Meg Bernstein, of Saranac Lake. Meg has embraced multiple media through the years, from fabric and beads to watercolor to computer art - and, always, acrylic. Her landscapes move with fluid, harmonious shapes and colors, leading the viewer to a fantasy world recognizably related to the Adirondacks, but brimming with previously unimagined possibilities. Meg also steps easily from the representational to the abstract; sometimes her paintings blur that line. Recently, Brady's book has been inspiring her to lots of new experiments.

Meg is a teacher and mentor to many artists, both formally at Paul Smiths College, and informally as an inspiring friend and advisor. Several years ago she took me under her wing, and taught me more about art than any three people I had ever known before; I continue to seek her guidance whenever I am perplexed.

Like now. I LOVE the ideas set forth in Brady's book - she uses color, texture, shape, and line with abandon, flinging forth materials and letting them take her where they want to go. She creates innovative surfaces for ink-jet printing, and incorporates these into larger pieces. She pours, drips, scrapes, carves, slathers, and crackles her way through her art.

So does Meg!

But I have trouble achieving the joyful release of their work. I have generally created representational art - which I still enjoy - but I am trying to increase my fluency with color, shape, and texture through acrylics. I am striving to break my own barriers of ideas and intention, to let the medium itself direct my work to a greater degree.

Meg is a master at this - when I see her work, I am encouraged - and challenged! And fortunately, she maintains a permanent (but always changing!) display at the Adirondack Artists Guild here in Saranac Lake. And, together with Lee Ann Sporn, she has a show opening at the Cantwell Community Room of the Saranac Lake Free Library on May 27th. (Click here and here to read earlier posts about Lee Ann's work.) When that show is up, I will write about it here.

In the meantime, I will continue to experiment, explore, and try to relinquish a degree of control in my work. It's not easy - but what of value is? Through this journey, I am relying on Patti Brady's new book, and on the dazzling work and solid insights of Meg Bernstein.