The Gardan Journal Issue 07

THEGARDAN

CRAIGARDAN JOURNAL

ESSEX COUNTY ARTISTS

Dear Reader,

As a counterpoint to our previous issue highlighting the visiting artists and scholars-in-residence at Craigardan this past summer, this issue features artists, craftspeople, and creative thinkers from Essex County, our home in New York State.

Creative exchange is the crux of any arts program, and residencies offer the time and space for creatives to explore ideas and push the boundaries of their work among other artists. By welcoming artists and scholars from around the globe to work here in Essex County, we are exposing the creative world to the richness, depth, and breadth that is the Adirondack community. And vice versa.

This issue represents a small sample of the many talented people living and working in our region. We released a call for submissions and received a rainbow of responses that included photography, poetry, woodworking, pottery, short stories, paintings, weaving, and even some science. We depart from our regular format to offer a gallery of words and images — an inspirational sampling of this talented rural community.

This issue is dedicated to architect Nils Luderowski who will be forever remembered in the buildings at Craigardan.

This issue is made possible, in part, by the Essex County Arts Council's Cultural Assistance Program Grant with funding provided by Essex County.

— All of Us at Craigardan December 2022

MISSION

Craigardan is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with a mission to encourage the human imagination to interpret the world with philosophical, ecological, and artistic perspective.

To ful fi ll our mission, Craigardan supports artists, chefs, craftspeople, farmers, scholars, and writers through residencies, social justice initiatives, and other community programs.

PROGRAMS AND PLACE

Located in the heart of the Adirondacks, Craigardan’s artist-in-residence program strives to cultivate a rich and collaborative place-based experience for all people working in all disciplines.

Our strong interdisciplinary foundation encourages creative thinking and collective problem solving by welcoming diversity in all of its forms.

BOARD AND STAFF

Mary Barringer, President

Allison Eddy, Vice-President

Lorene Garrett, Treasurer

Kate Moses, Secretary

CONTACT

CRAIGARDAN www.craigardan.org info@craigardan.org 518.242.6535

THE GARDAN

The Gardan is intended to foster conversations about creativity and its processes among and across all disciplines. We welcome contributions from artists and thinkers, activists and farmers, environmentalists and chefs at any and all stages of creative development.

Each issue is inspired by and draws from the weekly happenings during a residency session, delivering a small piece of our program — along with inspiration and ongoing support — to encourage you to self residency wherever you are.

We hope that The Gardan will unite you with your extended family of creative thinkers and bring a breath of Adirondack air to your inbox.

Each issue can be found online at www.craigardan.org

CONTENT SUBMISSION

We invite your contributions of words, images, video, fi eld notes, sound, and any other way you wish to connect to us, and to each other.

Issues are curated by our editors. Complete guidelines for content submission are online at www.craigardan.org/ journalsubmission

The Gardan is guided by our staff and fully supported by Craigardan’s funding and the efforts of our board and volunteers. We are actively pursuing grants and donations that would enable us to offer compensation for contributors. All contributors receive a complimentary print copy of The Gardan

Ron Banaszeck

Story Bellows

Loren Michael Mortimer

David Speert

EDITORS

With special thanks to editors Mary Barringer and Kate Moses.

9216 NYS Route 9N, Elizabethtown, NY 12932 All artwork is used with permission of the artist, who retains copyright of their work

Emma Ainsworth

Nancy Both

Vanessa Crowley

Michele Drozd

NANCY BOTH, Keene

“In 2011 Hurricane Irene exposed layers of clay along with clues to the geological history of Lake Keene. I collected clay samples from Styles Brook and created a slip for this bowl.”

B-Mix clay with Styles Brook Slip, fired in the Craigardan wood kiln, 2018

IN THIS ISSUE

FRANK OWEN, Keene Valley The Poet is Sleeping Acrylic on canvas

FRANK OWEN, Keene Valley Lecture Acrylic on canvas

COURTNEY FAIR, Elizabethtown

In a shop equipped with modern machines, I often make decisions based on what a machine can’t do. Working with reclaimed and native materials that have a voice of their own, I choose joinery and final surface marks that could only be made by skilled hands, hoping to leave a trace of the maker in the work.

I love the surfaces that result from creating a piece, and the following years of maintenance or neglect. You can begin to sense patterns in the way something was used by the marks it bears. Wide plank flooring reveals layers of paint worn through from foot traffic. Fencing becomes calligraphy as the boards warp, twist, and fall. Cupboard doors bear scars from hardware changes or failure. Patches are placed in boards where knots failed or mice persuaded their way through. The top board in a feeding trough becomes chewed round by cattle, and rooflines sag from years of weight and weather. I hope to make work that evokes my passion for these stories, without making work that is imitative or contrived.

I am inspired by battered toolboxes; the simple structure of a pine grain bin with its corners smoothed and sweet brown from years of molasses leather handles worn supple from use; a favored blanket chest with its careful repairs; the massive exposed joints pinning together the structure of a barn; and the proud but weathered stance of a locust post still standing after years of service. I build furniture that evokes my passion for these stories while creating work that is vibrant and fresh.

The process of designing and building furniture puts me in contact with the things I value. The days at the lumber mill, doing business with people I respect and admire. Making simple and intuitive solutions for joinery or surface, decisions that will last with integrity. Hearing the sounds of the wood shavings underneath my feet in the shop alive with the smell of drying lumber and linseed oil. Sensing the dance between myself and the will of the wood grain, while pulling shavings with a well-tuned drawknife. These simple acts empower the objects they create. The rocker, cupboard, stool, or table that results is witness to these values.

COURTNEY FAIR, Elizabethtown Rocking Chair

COURTNEY FAIR, Elizabethtown Table

COURTNEY FAIR, Elizabethtown Stools

LAURA VON ROSK, Schroon Lake

My small-scale paintings stem from my love of miniaturization, illusion of space, observation of natural phenomena, and appreciation of works from other artists I admire, across cultures and time. Elements of landscape and natural forms mix with memory and imagination. Forms are repeated, emphasized, and manipulated to create tension between the imagined and the real world.

At the start the paintings may be inspired by a specific place or visual memory, but as they develop, they may transform into something unexpected. Often, they are completely invented – constructed only to serve particular formal concerns to create an image that I would want to linger over, or a place I want to spend time in.

I am fascinated by the rich color and physicality of oil paint. It amazes me how this one versatile medium, oil paint, can be employed in such a variety of ways, creating an endless range of effects. Through metaphor, expressive shape, color, and light, I hope to create images that give visual form to physical forces, as well as psychological states of mind, through an expansive landscape in a small format.

LAURA VON ROSK, Schroon Lake Summer Pond Oil on wood, 10 x10 inches, 2022.

CHASE TWICHELL, Keene

A Poem of the Pandemic

I am a poem of the pandemic, roaming the unlit streets at night alongside packs of dogs scavenging, many with collars and tags. So what kind of poem should I be?

My vows: Tell the truth. No decoration. Remember death. I’ll just go on trying to do that, this time appearing as words spray-painted on a graveyard wall.

LAURA VON ROSK, Schroon Lake Frog Pond Oil on wood, 10 x 10 inches, 2022.

- Julia Gronski

JULIA GRONSKI, Keene Patty Porcelain, 5.5 x 3.5 inches

“I am inspired by nature, the mundane, and rural vernacular. I am drawn to the fringe, be it on the side of the road, the hiking path, or the local lure.”

JULIA GRONSKI, Keene

KIRSTEN LIEBL, Westport

MATTHEW HORNER, Keene

This sculpture was carved from a granite cobble in 2022 and is in my ‘Celestial’ series of work. The star-like patterns are created after the polishing process by repeatedly hitting the surface with a single-point carbide chisel called a pointing chisel. In the past I have textured parts of sculptures with a bush hammer to juxtapose them to the highly polished or honed surfaces.

The timing for this series was aligned with all the photos from the James Webb telescope. I am inspired by natural phenomena and forms that repeat themselves in nature.

MATTHEW HORNER, Keene Untitled Granite

GERRY BRADLEY, Elizabethtown

Ruminations

I have always tried to respect the living, But I’m not always all forgiving It’s easy to love a friendly dog, In youth I’d even hold a frog. I owned a cow; I played with cats, Tolerated mice, (knew no rats). A pig, a hen, a deer - all friends (Though at our table met their ends.)

And still I value tame and wild As much as when a little child. Binoculars close to watch the deer, Healthy fox and kits I do not fear. Jean’s bear was such a welcomed sight Not met with over-anxious fright.

But yet I have an unwanted list I greet with shout and shaken fist Cruelty can’t be tolerated, But laissez faire is overrated. So…Not hesitant with mosquito slap If offending bug attacks my nap, No guilt attached when boot shall plant Square on the top of scavenging ant.

My offender list has grown with time Resulting in this rambling rhyme. There’s no forgiving spring’s black flies For painful bites and swollen eyes; It’s hard to know I may get sick From a pinhead-size embedded tick. The cutest chipmunk can be a pestHe takes one bite and leaves the rest. Begonias eaten; war declared Don’t tell me Havahart’s unfair.

I often consider an unknown giant Who may find I am uncompliant, And if I majorly offend Might send me to a bitter end With hearty stomp or mighty slap Or even in a heartless trap. Despite this I will roll the dice, And bait the ants and trap the mice.

MATTHEW HORNER, Keene Untitled Stone Cobble

BEN STECHSCHULTE, Keene Valley Demo Derby

BEN STECHSCHULTE, Keene Valley Demo Derby

CHASE TWICHELL, Keene

Who Cooks for You?

One night we heard barred owls very close: hoo-hoo—hoo-hoo (pause) hoo-hoo—hoo-hoo:

Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?

Local lore says bears can sound like that, but that’s untrue. It is true that they have a wide range of vocalizations, but they don’t hoot.

People sometimes mistake their calls for faraway barking.

I sang hoo-hoo—hoo-hoo, and a bird answered me, territorial. We humans sat out on the porch imagining his brown ring-face, his decision to choose

this place for his home and defend it. Barred owls stay their whole lives in one place, in this case, a last scrap of wilderness. They can live into their twenties,

Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?

Whoever translated that from Owl into English missed it entirely. We hear them often here in the territorial northern night. They’re not talking about cooking.

When it gets dark they try again to reach us, reasoning, rebuking, beseeching:

Hoo-hoo—hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo—hoo-hoo.

MEQO SAM CECIL, Elizabethtown Untitled

HARRY CALDWELL, Elizabethtown V-2 Wood-fired stoneware

NILS LUDEROWSKI, Keene

1942-2022

A Tribute

A designer and architect, Nils "pioneered the New Adirondack Style of architecture, a blend of Shingle, Craftsman, Prairie, and regional expressions, while maintaining an eye for modern living requirements and technology. His structures are thoughtfully designed to fit their surroundings, as if a part of the natural landscapes themselves, without losing the rich texture, color, and form that make his designs distinctive.”

(www.luderowskiarchitect.com)

Craigardan began working with Nils in 2019 to design a new campus for the organization. It was an opportunity to think about how architecture can actively serve to connect artists with the environment around them, with their own work more deeply, and with each other and the community at large. Nils hiked the rough site with us multiple times — exploring views, discussing light and space, and gaining an understanding of place.

Nils quickly became an integral part of the new Craigardan. Since our earliest meetings he not only thought carefully about the buildings as our architect. As a designer and artist he helped to shape and guide the vision that is to become our new home: the arts center, gallery, community space, kiln pavilion, studios, housing, farm, and trails. He always brought wisdom, perspective, humor, and color to our notions of what Craigardan could and should be.

Nils has left his mark on the Adirondack vernacular, and he has left his mark on the present and future Craigardan. We are honored to be building a campus of his design, in his memory.

NILS LUDEROWSKI, Keene

Craigardan Campus and Building Sketches 2019-2022

ROBERT SEGALL, Upper Jay Untitled Wood-fired ceramic

ROBERT SEGALL, Upper Jay Untitled Wood-fired ceramic

BARBARA J. HOFRICHTER, Jay

A Firefly Story

It all started last night when Nilana said she wanted to catch a firefly and she no longer had her net.

“What happened to it?” I asked her.

“ My sister ruined it.” Blaming a sister for something was fairly frequent but before she took it further.

“Maybe there is one at the thrift store” I suggested.

“Oh!” Her face lit up.“ Miss Bonnie is a teacher at Kid’s Club and she works at the thrift store.”

“Would you like me to ask her if she has any while I am work tomorrow?”

Big nod and “Yes, please.”

So true to my promise, as Grandma, I made a call to the thrift store on Saturday morning. Bonnie was not there yet but the person who answered the phone made a note of Nilana’s wish and her Grandma’s number.

After work I think my phone took a message but on a whim, I pulled into the Unicorn Square shop to ask if by any chance the owner might have something that could serve as or be converted into a firefly net. Well, she tried. She found some netting; found some circles; found some straight handles; but they could not be glued or twisted well enough to stay together. So I bought her magic book and went home to see if I could find anything like netting and an unused metal coat hanger. The message on my phone said Miss Bonnie had not come across anything like a firefly net, but she would keep looking.

The netting I could find was from a bag of lemons in my refrigerator. It was plastic but had netting that might be fine enough to catch a firefly. So as Grandma I went to work with pliers and duck tape, padding the handle with quilt batting scraps and securing the opened plastic to a coat hanger loop. It looked okay. But Nilana was not yet home. So I set it aside next to a plastic cleaned-out peanut butter jar, saved especially for summer fun.

When I did see her, she was dressed in yellow head to toe and had a mask on from the party she had just attended. I told her the story and showed her the net and jar. She immediately declared that her Dad could make a hole in the top and she told me we had to wait until it was darker.

She popped in and out a few times as the evening darkened. The no-seeums were out during one moment while I was talking with her mother but she had seen a firefly across the road and pretty soon there might be one in our yard. I had come inside with my supper when she appeared saying: “Grandma, when you finish that you should put on some sleeves so the bugs don’t bite you and come outside and watch me catch them.”

How could I resist? So I did exactly what she directed and she even handed me the bug spray. It was a stolen golden moment watching a six-year-old chasing fireflies with her new net. She was determined; she was ecstatic; she caught one! Fortunately her Mom was there to help her transfer it into the jar. And her Dad had made the hole. She was delighted that it lit up in the jar but she assured me it preferred the dark so when she said goodnight she announced she would keep it for a day and then let it go and maybe catch another one tomorrow.

LANSE STOVER, Keene Valley Basket, 1982 Soda-fired stoneware

CHASE TWICHELL, Keene

My Last Time Fishing lasted half an hour. It was a test-drive I failed. I feared the slippery mosses and wished for a hand rail. As a kid I scrambled from pool to pool without thinking anything. With a paper cup of worms, I’d work my way upstream, dragging an undulating night-crawler tied to a thread, luring the babies, four or five inches, slowly over the net, then straight into the fresh brook water in the bucket, on which I’d float a twig of leaves. The darkness and shadows soothed them on their way to the pond, where they could live much longer, provided an otter didn’t find them, or an osprey.

LANSE STOVER, Keene Valley Box, 1982 Soda-fired stoneware

LANSE STOVER, Keene Valley Vase, 1993 Electric-fired stoneware

SUSAN HOFFER, Upper Jay Climate change displacement: her-story documents the data Oil on cradled hardwood. 24 x 36 inches

SUSAN HOFFER, Upper Jay Saving the planet’s biodiversity “one turtle at a time.” Schroon Lake, NY Oil on cradled hardwood. 24 x 36 inches

REBECCA SODERHOLM, Keene Valley Dust, Bike Start, Maidsville, West Virginia. 2020 from Hare Scramble

ROBERT SEGALL, Upper Jay

Train to New Orleans, September, 2016

Day extended its long promise, light swept through his refuge.

But it was time for business, back to the old routine. (John Ashberry, Finnish Rhapsody)

I have no familiarity with day’s long promise, or light sweeping through my refuge.

Where in the every day expectation of death is that?

I awaken in fear of the pending day and the task of re-attaching the tendons of a yesterday severed by sleep.

Rhapsodic happiness? Humor? Simple enjoyment? Humph, I say.

If there were a glass at all, it would be half empty. Expect the worst. Hope for the best. This is my mantra.

I had a dream: I sit in coach class on the Crescent as it speeds over the causeway across Lake Pontchartrain. America’s backyard rushes past the window.

An attractive woman takes the aisle seat to my right. She wears a black dress. Her dark hair is cut short and neatly combed.

It frames her pale features.

In the waning light she points out the lights of Charlotte flickering to life in the distance.

“Can’t be! Impossible!” I grumble. “We’re light years from Charlotte.”

“No, really,” she says.

“Look deep into the fog, past the clutter of America’s backyard.

Look through the fog,” she says. “It’s like a necklace, like a string of pearls. You see them?”

I turn back to the window, and . . .

“Yes, yes, I see them!

I see the lights of Charlotte.”

I cry and embrace her. She returns my embrace. We cling to one another in our coach-class seats. I feel something deep within me break. On the bed beside me lay my eyeglasses. Crushed.

MONICA MZESE, Lake Placid Ghost 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20 inches

MONICA MZESE, Lake Placid Good and Bad 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 14 x 18 inches

CYNTHIA SCHIRA, Westport

Untitled Woven cotton, linen, rayon, raffia, and reflective elements

LAUREN MCGOVERN, Upper Jay Language Lessons

The age-old symbolism of three pulled me into my studio one afternoon. I wanted to create a collage of three windows or portals or containers of….the Beginning (in it), After (making my way), and Now (the ongoing present) for my personal experience with grief. I was intent on incorporating the flashcards my younger son, Owen, used to master new languages. He hand wrote hundreds of flashcards for Spanish and Mandarin; later, when he entered high school, he created some to learn Russian. He died at age sixteen by suicide in 2018.

I took the red flashcards from the plastic bin without reviewing them, and felt both stunned and awed when I laid them out on my work table. Each one fits with a section of my life since 2018 and the overall piece I’d envisioned. I had to pay attention. I had to pick myself up.

A damaged copy of a Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds helped me construct the last panel. I’d bookmarked several pages with drawings of eagles, swallows, vireos, and terns. The Caspian Tern, the largest tern in the world, inhabits shorelines; my baby loved both freshwater and saltwater environments. According to Peterson’s, the bird’s voice is “a hoarse, low kraa-uh or karr; also repeated kaks.” Owen was a skilled imitator and would’ve loved perfecting those kaks to entertain us around the family dinner table.

As long as I keep writing and sharing about Owen, my memories of him stretch to others. There’s durability in that. Latir is the Spanish word for beat/pulsate/throb. I compartmentalize my grief daily in order to grocery shop, teach, drive, and so on, but the truth is the loss is a swift current moving just beneath the surface.

MICHAEL ANDRE INTRABARTOLA, Elizabethtown

Mugs Wheel-thrown and hand-built porcelain

Berry Bowls

Wheel-thrown and hand-built porcelain

MICHAEL ANDRE INTRABARTOLA, Elizabethtown

SAMUEL BOWSER, Schroon Lake

Tryp-Tick

“It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea [tick] our two bloods mingled be”

— From John Donne, The Flea

2014 was one of those life-changing years. It included a trip to Tuscany with my wife, painter Laura Von Rosk, where we spent much of our time viewing Renaissance masterpieces. That year I also migrated to the Adirondacks, where I was frequently “bitten” by ticks. Unlike John Donne’s flea, a tick’s “bite” is more akin to Ahab’s harpoon being planted in Moby Dick’s flank. The tick uses its hypostome – a barbed, spear-like headpiece – and its chelicerae to lance and claw its way into skin. [see scanning electron micrograph] The scientist in me was fascinated by the sublime beauty of these structures. The tick injects a host of substances to numb the wound and prevent coagulation while feasting. In terms of mingling blood, rather than the erotic overtures in Donne’s poem, inside the tick my blood was likely mingling with that of a rodent. Indeed, the common host of Ixodes scapularis (the black-legged tick, formerly known as a deer tick) loves to harpoon and ingest the blood of field mice. Yuk!

Given the fi rst-hand exposure to early Renaissance art, and being something of a wise guy, I was inspired to make light of these serious topics. [see tryptick] Like the early master’s paintings, the three ticks may seem awkward and not anatomically correct. That’s the only similarity, though: the gilding is faux, the paint is acrylic, and the panels are plywood discarded while installing wall outlets in Laura’s studio. One thing art and science share – they’re intense, sometimes frustrating, and sometimes rewarding endeavors. I often find humor in both.

SAMUEL BOWSER, Schroon Lake Tryp-Tick Acrylic on plywood

NOËL CARMICHAEL, Lake Placid

Heaven

Hill Trails, North Elba

*This is a multi-media poem. Click on the links for video components when reading digitally. Find a digital version online at www.craigardan.org/gardan

Two girls. Sisters. The day doesn’t seem to have the makings of anything special. Overcast. Occasional glimpses of sunlight as the clouds shuffle along. Dull but hopeful shades of green.

An ordinary afternoon. Muddy April. Light snow recently melted. Sunset approaching.

There is no occasion. No birthday. No holiday. No celebrations of achievements or successes. Just a weekend afternoon, with half-decent weather. Finally, out of doors after a long, lonely winter.

As the woods part and the open field comes into view the girls are overtaken by play.

Ahhhhh!

Laughter.

Running with abandon.

Running holding hands.

Running. The younger sister’s stuffed cat also wants to hold hands. Now they are a circle. Inspiring a game of Ring around the rosie. Now, Lying in the wet grass, Spontaneous hugs and kisses, And up again.

Standing on a giant rock in the middle of this valley sending out a greeting “Hello World” Giggles. And more giggles. It is not only the view but this feeling that gives the place its name as a childhood memory forms.

MICHELLE ZELKOWITZ, Elizabethtown Nun Da Goa Ridge