Artists and Art

November/December issue, 2009

Lynn Stein

Her Art, Her Way

by Paul Clark

There’s something familiar about the art of Lynn Stein. But then again, there isn’t. And in everything she is as an artist — painter, singer and artistic director of Rockland Center for the Arts — that’s exactly the way she wants it.

Her jazzy, figure-and-style-oriented paintings are the colorful reincarnations of the alluring fashion photographs that first enchanted her as a young girl in the ‘60s. A vibrant, vicarious approach that now totally and unashamedly mimics the fun, familiar and frolicky fashion photos she sees on the society page of the Sunday Times, the back of a Kohl’s catalog or in movie ads tucked alongside articles in magazines and other media. (Her colorful re-creation of a vintage publicity shot featuring Yves Montand and Shirley MacLaine captivated the cover of a recent issue of The Hook.)

It was something I always wanted to do but didn’t because of my training in school,” Stein smiles, “I didn’t feel it was ‘valid.’ In those days, you didn’t work with photographs.” But then she saw the art of Gerhard Richter, an “amazing German painter” whose dashing style and exuberant executions instantly validated — and ignited — her desire to color up and personalize the fashion, emotion and persona of the moments frozen in the photos she fancied. “I love clothes, seeing people in clothes and what the clothes say about the people wearing them,” she says. “When I saw Richter’s paintings, I just went crazy! I thought: what difference does it make? That’s what I want to do!”

Stein is also putting a lot of time and energy these days into another art form she has always enjoyed doing her way: singing. Like her paintings, the songs she sings with her new love, the recently formed bass-vocal duo Jon and Lynn, are familiar ‘60s melodic pop and jazz compositions. But each, as she and bassist Jon Burr recreate them, portrays a beat, style and fashion all its own.

Her partner Jon Burr is an accomplished musician she first met 12 years ago while making a CD in New York, and re-connected with through Facebook. Burr has played with legends like Tony Bennett, Eartha Kitt, Barbara Cook, Rita Moreno and others. As a duo, they’re busy performing in and around the New York City area, and recently posted a collection of six new tracks on twt.fm. There’s also a new video — put together by Burr and posted on MySpace — that coolly and cleverly integrates several of her trademark paintings into the production.

“It’s a lot of fun,” she says, “but also scary because it’s not practical to be doing this. We’re both in our 50s and people in their 50s,” she laughs, “do not go around their house making music videos.” Is painting easier than singing? “With art the stakes aren’t as high, I have total control. I get my Yea! moment when the painting is finished. Music is your ego on the line. I have something to say and if you’re not listening,” she grins, “what am I doing up there?”

Stein also has a lot to say at Rockland Center of the Arts, where she began working after moving from the Bronx nine years ago. “At the time,” she explains, “they didn’t have a gallery director, no curator on staff, no one to do the booking of performances.” Today, she’s the Center’s artistic director, a position she developed through hard work over time. “I love my job,” she beams, “I’m so lucky to be working there.”

At RoCA she does everything from developing, coordinating and marketing exhibits of area and regional artists — as well as artists outside the Hudson Valley — to arranging live performances, expanding and improving the scope of youth and adult educational programs, and ensuring that all of the Center’s programs work for everyone.

“My biggest challenge is balancing what’s happening around the country with what’s being done in the region,” she says. “I feel I have a good handle on making the work I do bring in as accessible to the public as possible. I hope I have an impact on the community, and that I make the artists feel good about what they do so that RoCA becomes a goal for artists to have their work shown there.”

To keep new work and talent coming in, she continually goes to shows and exhibits, and follows up on leads from all over the country. She attends and books performances — cellist and Rockland native Eric Friedlander being one of the most recent — and is exploring new media possibilities like an exhibit of iPhone and other phone-cam photos. “With phones, you tend to take pictures of things that you ordinarily wouldn’t. It’s a lot more intimate, and could be really interesting.”

Lynn Stein is happy doing what she wants, just the way she wants it. Right now, she wants to concentrate on the singing, “because even when I’m not doing it, I’m thinking about doing it. I still like to paint, because it does good things for me when I paint. I love my job,” she beams again, “but when I sing, there’s nothing like it. It’s just way-off-the-charts wonderful.”

Visit Lynn Stein’s online gallery at lynnstein.com. Hear her latest recordings at twt.fm/jonandlynn, and see her music video and upcoming performance dates at myspace.com/jonandlynn. For information on RoCA exhibits, performances and programs, visit rocklandartcenter.org.

Hiking

September/October issue, 2009

Fall Hiking Trails and Halloween Tales in Harriman

By Paul Clark

No matter where Bob Clinton has lived and traveled he has always found a way and a trail to hike. But by far his favorite places have always been right here in Harriman. And after decades of traversing its many trails and woods roads — on foot, skis, horseback and more — it’s safe to say that he knows Harriman better than just about anyone.

So with that in mind, and especially now with fall’s cooler, crisper climate and jaw-dropping colors fast approaching, who better to point you in the right direction for some truly spectacular hiking — and the chance to soak-in some real Halloween spirit in the process? Here are a few of his suggestions for autumn hiking fun...

If you enjoy the other-worldly sensation of walking through ghost towns and wandering among the spirits, Clinton suggests a hike to Doodletown on the scenic 1777 Revolutionary Trail (a trail that follows the route of British troops on their march from Stony Point to attack American forces at Forts Montgomery and Clinton in October, 1777) in the northeastern part of Harriman and Bear Mountain. First settled in the 1760s and abandoned just over two hundred years later, here you’ll find the crumbled foundations of erstwhile houses, a mine once owned by Thomas Edison, still active and abandoned cemeteries, and more than enough stonework, stairs, silent paths and walkways to tickle and tease your imagination.

Some say that Doodletown derived from “dood tal,” Dutch for “dead valley.” Clinton, who is also a photographer and musician, prefers another, more lyrical explanation. “The song Yankee Doodle Dandy is how the town got its name,” says Clinton. “The British marched through the settlement, singing the song to taunt the residents, so the town was called Doodletown.” Clinton discovered the town himself in the late 1960s. “Back in high school, we used to drag race on the main street there. We knew there was an old cemetery there, and thought it would be a good place to spend All Hallows Eve. So I said, ‘let’s go find it.’ It was classic Halloween night .... The wind was blowing through the treetops. The moon was poking in and out of the clouds, and vines and trees were reaching up through the gravesites. We hung out there all night telling ghost stories and reading epitaphs on the headstones.”

"Behold me now as you pass by,

As you are now so once was I,

As I am now you soon must be,

Prepare for death & follow me.”

– an epitaph in Doodletown

If, however, you prefer to mix your hiking with one part climbing and two parts treachery and murder, the place to do it is up in Claudius Smith’s Den on the scenic Blue Disc Trail in the southwestern part of the park. “Claudius Smith was America’s first outlaw,” explains Clinton, He used this place (an intriguing natural shelter concealed and protected by over-hanging rock formations) as his headquarters.” From 1774 to 1779, Smith, a British sympathizer who, along with a gang that included his own three sons, stole horses, cattle and just about every other thing they could from surrounding homes and farms — sometimes killing innocent people in the process. “He went both ways,” says Clinton, “he stole from the Americans and sold to the British, and also stole from the British and sold to the Americans.

Smith was finally caught and hanged in Goshen in 1779.” As you stand among these remote and rocky recesses it isn’t difficult to appreciate the isolation that this hideout commanded back then. And if you close your eyes and listen, you can almost feel the presence of Smith and his gang, and hear them bragging about their pillaging while plotting their next ones. While you’re in the area, the remains of an old mine, the Black Ash, are nearby and worth seeing.

Or course, there are several more recent — and peaceful — examples of the past to hike to and through, including several marked and unmarked trails and roads that reveal lasting reminders of the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a Great Depression-era program created in the 1930s. The CCC and the hundreds of workers it employed were instrumental in the building of roads, camps, water and other projects throughout Harriman, including the infrastructure that created Pine Meadow, Welch, Silvermine and other present-day lakes. And to this day, Clinton and thousands of other overnight hikers have appreciated the presence of several unique CCC-built shelters, like Big Hill on the intersection of the Suffern-Bear Mountain Trail (SBM) and Long Path, and Stone Memorial shelter on the SBM near Pine Meadow Lake. “These are beautiful shelters,” says Clinton, “and obviously built to last. Many have still-working fireplaces built into them.”

Which other trails does Clinton recommend for fall hikers? Pine Meadow Road, sensational in fall and easily accessible from the boat launch parking lot at Sebago Lake. “That’s one of my favorites. It’s wide, not difficult and it leads to some nice lakeside spots along the way.”

Also, the 1779 Revolutionary Trail in northern Harriman, which traces the route that Anthony Wayne’s American troops took in their drive to retake Stony Point from the British. There are other longer, more difficult trails in Harriman, too, including Suffern-Bear Mountain. The SBM is “a truly great trail, but,” Clinton cautions, “a difficult one that only experienced hikers should attempt because it’s all up and down. There’s next to no flat terrain on its entire 22-or-so mile length.”

But whichever trail you take, however many times — once, twice or like Bob Clinton, every chance you get — you should follow his advice to always take the right map, take your time and have fun. And while you’re there, you’ll heartily agree: You can’t top Harriman on Halloween or any other time in fall for an afternoon, day or weekend of fresh autumn air, great exercise, a little bit of history and a lot of fantastic foliage everywhere you look.

For more information on Harriman State Park, visit nysparks.state.ny.us/parks. For trail information, use the maps of Harriman Bear Mountain trails published by the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference (available at Ramsey Outdoor Stores, EMS, Campmor and other stores, and visit nynjtc.org/view/hike.

Winter Camping

January/February issue, 2009

Cold Weather Cool

Some whys and hows for winter camping in Harriman State Park

By Paul Clark

Without a doubt, some of the coolest, closest and most encompassing outdoor gems of the Lower Hudson Valley are the sights, trails, and everything else in Harriman State Park. I’m a big, forever fan of Harriman. And for good reason.

Because where I grew up in the endless geographic evenness of Illinois, it took a drive well into Wisconsin or Michigan to find enough varied terrain to make hiking and camping more exciting. But even after years of hiking and backpacking amongst the ageless, glacially engraved formations of Harriman’s rock, forest and scenery, I’m still endlessly enthralled and grateful that all this geologic goodness is within a few miles’ drive from home.

Compared with the kind of backcountry trekking you might see depicted in high-adventure magazines, Harriman is not the Rockies. Or anything near requiring oxygen bottles and Sherpas. But with over 46,000 acres in Rockland and Orange counties, it’s the second largest in the New York State parks system.

There are more than 200 miles of diverse, well-marked trails, including stretches of the Long Path and Appalachian Trail. Add in several well-placed shelters and campsites, and more than enough conquerable altitude and adventure and you have everything you need for exceptionally good dayhiking, overnight camping or backpacking for two, three or more days at a stretch.

Not surprisingly, most people prefer Harriman during the warmer, lusher, longer days of spring, summer and early fall. And I’m not averse to that kind of Harriman time either. But on some of those nice long days and three-day weekends, it can feel like each and every one of those folks is right there with you. But I’ve also found that in the colder, starker, far-less-peopled months of winter, Harriman is an entirely different world. Which makes it the perfect season — and reason — to take on a quality of camping you can’t experience any other time of year.

Cold-weather camping in a tent or shelter — even if for just one night — takes a bit more resolve than camping in July. It also requires careful planning and preparation. But it does have its upsides. Hiking in the cold is far more exhilarating than hiking in the heat. There are no mosquitoes or other bugs crawling and flying around your face and food. The absence of leaves on trees puts more sunlight on trails to reveal added dimension and sharper detail in everything you see.

After sunset, that same lack of leaves opens the nighttime sky to expose more stars and constellations, and brighter floods of moonlight. A campfire never felt more warm or welcome. And with a few inches of snow on the ground, the entire environment seems sealed in a kind of calm and quiet you don’t get a chance to listen to very often. But one of the biggest advantages is this: with all that tranquility going on around you, you can also enjoy a better night’s sleep than you’ve probably had in a while.

Upsides aside, however, cold can be cold. And if you’re not properly prepared for, or predisposed to it, hiking on harder, frozen or icy trails can be more challenging, and a night spent outdoors can be less than comfortable. But if you’ve hiked and camped in Harriman during the warmer months and thought about extending your ventures into the colder ones, the best way to make for maximum fun is to plan well, and keep it simple. Here’s a few suggestions:

Know where you’re going and don’t go it alone. Always camp with one or more other people. Be mindful. Many of Harriman’s trails aren’t as safely accessible in winter. Plan on camping within a reasonable hiking distance — 90 minutes or less — from where you park your car. Stay in, or pitch your tent near, a shelter. (A shelter is a good “Plan B” in case tenting doesn’t work out.) If a shelter is “Plan A,” some of them have fireplaces built into them. Those that don’t have an established fire ring nearby. Bring a lightweight tarp along to cover the open front of the shelter to block the wind and retain heat.

Keep an eye on the forecast to avoid surprises, pack the right clothing (nothing made of cotton) and wear it in layers. Equally important, be sure to have a sleeping bag far warmer than the kind you took to summer camp. Come 3 a m, a nice and warm zero-degree or colder-rated bag is worth twice your total body weight in gold.

To a lot of people, though, spending a night or two out in the winter cold is something only Huskies and crazy people do. For me, winter camping is one of the best experiences you can have, and being called crazy for enjoying it makes it feel even better. But like all the other great things you can do in Harriman, it will always instill a greater respect for nature than you ever had before. And a much deeper appreciation for having an incredible place like Harriman so close by.

For more information about Harriman State Park and the New York State park system, visit nysparks.state.ny.us. For more on winter camping, visit backpacking.net/wintertips.html

Catskill Mountain Foundation

November/December issue, 2008

Catskill Mountain Foundation

Securing the future of a rich artistic heritage for everyone

By Paul Clark

Up in the Catskill Mountaintop villages of Hunter, Tannersville and Maplecrest, an exciting, serious, highly ambitious and forward-reaching plan is taking hold. A plan that not only borrows from the past to revive the present, but also to secure the future of of a rich artistic heritage while putting money back into the local economy.

It isn’t the first time that a town or region has turned to the arts to rekindle public interest and growth. But rest assured, you’d be hard pressed to find a plan that could match the scale, scope and magnitude of the one that the Catskill Mountain Foundation began here ten years ago.

The premise was simple. Since the early 19th century, the arts have been a vital part of Mountaintop culture. Painters, poets, playwrights and artists of every other kind, style and medium have been drawn here by its native soul and spirit. Washington Irving found inspiration along its forested roads and trails. The venerated masters of the Hudson River School worked and flourished right here among its peaks, streams and sunsets.

But as the years passed and populations and interests changed, these communities began to wane. In time, the results were closed resorts, empty stores, deteriorating structures and abandoned properties. And for seasonal operations like skiing, a changing climate meant inconsistent snowfall and an uneven flow of business.

By the mid ‘90s, Peter and Sarah Finn — each with strong personal and artistic ties to the Mountaintop region and the New York theatre and entertainment communities — looked around and saw an opportunity. A chance to invoke the region’s rich artistic culture to energize, connect and transform these Mountaintop villages into a national and international art destination centered on the performing arts, art education and sustainable living. And, in doing so, put money back into these communities by creating jobs for residents and by bringing visitors — and revenue — to local businesses year-round.

In 1998, they established the Catskill Mountain Foundation. It was a huge undertaking. And today, as the Foundation celebrates its 10th anniversary, it still is. But in that time incredible progress has been made. To date, nearly $30 million in donations from private sources and public funding from local, state and federal governments, major partnerships, as well as revenues from the Foundation’s own operations have been generated.

With that funding, the Foundation has been able to reclaim and adapt existing structures and turn them into theatres for film and digital media. Construct state-of-the-art performance centers for music, dance, theatrical presentations and concerts. Conduct cultural and music festivals. Create galleries, libraries and museum, cafés, a farmer’s market and bookstore. And establish an unparalleled creative art center where people of all ages can study everything from ceramics and painting to photography, digital media and more.

In the village of Hunter, for example, the Doctorow Center for the Arts was once a market, movie theatre and ski repair shop. Today you can enjoy chamber music and other live performances in its new Evelyn Weisberg Hall. And choose from two movie theatres, one featuring first-run films, the other featuring digital, high-definition independent films, concerts and events. In the Pleshakov Piano Museum, you can see some of the rarest, most time-traveled instruments in the world. Together with his wife, Elena Winther, Vladimir Pleshakov, an internationally renowned virtuoso and musicologist can inform and entertain you with a cultural, technical and romantic history of the piano, then delight

you with his playing of Rachmaninoff, Beethoven and Chopin on instruments dating back to the time of Michelangelo and Mozart — some with links to Tsar Nicholas I, Queen Victoria and other prominent people and places.

Across the street the gleaming Hunter Village Square stands where a gas station once did. Here you can browse and shop among original, locally created works of art in the gallery and craft shop, and enjoy lunch in the Fresh Harvest Café and Market. A few steps away, The Village Bookstore, with over 10,000 titles, includes the one area’s largest selections of regional books while also offering a true literary experience with regularly scheduled readings of popular books for children, as well as readings of poetry and prose by authors that have included Francine Prose and Debra Winger. And on the way out you can pick up a copy of the Catskill Mountain Region Guide, the Foundation’s free monthly magazine.

A few miles down the road in Tannersville, a small, run-down 1930s movie house is well on its way to becoming the glittering, totally renovated and expanded, 270-seat Orpheum Performing Arts Center. Scheduled to open its doors next year, it will be one of the very few professional centers in the region with a stage, state-of-the-art lighting, dressing rooms and other facilities grand enough to attract and accommodate the finest professional dance, theatre and orchestral companies and performers.

In nearby Maplecrest, one of the finest, most innovative art education and natural farming programs anywhere is well underway — and still growing. Situated on land donated to the Foundation, this one-time resort is now the Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts. Many of the resort’s old buildings have been reclaimed and modernized to make room for sophisticated, fully equipped classrooms and studios where a full range of courses and programs are conducted. And given new life as well-appointed housing for students and teachers alike.

The Sugar Maples Center provides the perfect setting for students from across the United States to come to the Catskills to live and learn from some of the most talented and accomplished instructors in ceramics, fiber arts, painting and drawing jewelry making woodworking, photography, music theatre, digital arts.

The Foundation also hosts a variety of exciting festivals and special programs. They include the Mountaintop Culture Festival that celebrates Catskill culture through music, film, fine arts and crafts. The Amati Music Festival that gathers some of the best international young student performers to help them practice and enhance their skills for two weeks at a time in the summer.

In the Orchard Project, a student-apprentice, in-residence theatre arts program, participants get the instruction and rehearsal space they need to develop their work. And just this year, the Foundation welcomed the faculty and students of the Hudson River School for Landscape Painting, and its critically acclaimed founder, Jacob Collins. This is the only landscape painting school in the United States that focuses on the work of the Hudson River School masters.

Also at Sugar Maples, just a short walk down the road, the Foundation’s Natural Agriculture Program, in partnership with the Shumei organization of Japan, teaches and practices the art of natural agriculture. Here, no chemicals or fertilizers, including manure, are used. Crops of carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, peas and other foods are grown instead in pure soil and water, enriched only by naturally occurring nutrients in the surrounding environment. As a result of the Shumei method, these crops are more resistant to disease, taste better, stay fresh longer and are more nutritious than those produced by standard industrial farming.

The Shumei philosophy also reveres and promotes a deep, almost spiritual harmony between the work of the farmers who cultivate the crops and those who eat the foods they grow; healthier foods results in healthier people. And because crops grown and distributed locally, their overall carbon footprint is far smaller than crops grown and shipped hundreds or thousands of miles away, all of which creates a healthier environment for everyone.

Under the direction of Kenji Ban, this 4.5-acre farm represents the center of the Foundation’s sustainable living goals. And serves as an educational center of teaching and learning for students and visitors. Other initiatives that the Foundation plans, and, in time, will achieve is establishing renewable energy systems, including solar, to provide locally generated power to the entire 130-acre Sugar Maples campus.

The ongoing story of the Catskill Mountain Foundation is really one big story with many smaller stories inside — all being written at the very same time. But there is still more work to be done, and many more years to go until this tremendous plan is fully realized.

But as it stands now, the Foundation and all of its work and progress in the performing arts, education, natural agriculture and sustainable living — and giving back to local communities — also makes it one of the most exciting , inspirational and entertaining destinations ever created in the Mountaintop region. And with several good hotels and bed & breakfasts in the immediate area, all just two hours away from the Lower Hudson Valley, it’s a place everyone and their families should see, experience and enjoy for themselves.

For more information on the Catskill Mountain Foundation, including all of their upcoming performances, films, special events, courses, activities, The Pleshakov Piano Museum, Shumei and more, visit www.catskillmtn.org.

Note: The Hook expresses its sincere thanks to everyone at the Catskill Mountain Foundation, especially Peter Barker, Executive Director, Pam Weisberg, Director of the Performing Arts and Carolyn Bennett, Director of the Hudson Square Bookstore. And thanks as well to Stefanie Josec, proprietor of the Washington Irving Inn in Hunter for all her hospitality.