Spring!

 By Tom

It’s finally spring!  Not calendar spring, the vernal equinox of March 20, but the tangible spring that you can see and feel.  Green grass, flowers, blossoming trees, warm sun and running streams.  Time to get out and get busy.  It’s time to move the snow blower to the back of the garage and get the mower ready.   And we’re working in the garden today.   But I can’t help grabbing my camera from time to time.  Last night’s rain is still clinging to the daffodils, and I can’t resist a shot.  Gotta go now, it’s too nice to be inside.  Enjoy your day!

Bittersweet

A THING of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

From Endymion, by John Keats

Fall’s display has turned to shades of brown. The once bright leaves crackle underfoot and blow in the wind. But two delights linger on: bittersweet and winterberries. Their brilliant reds and oranges quickly draw the eye, and they have been a source of pleasure for me every year. But this has now become a “bittersweet” experience. I never knew until now that there are two varieties of bittersweet. The indigenous American variety only has berries at the tips of the vines. An invasive and far more common variety, native to eastern Asia, was introduced in the 1860s. On the invasive variety, the berries grow along the length of the vines, and the vines have a tendency to engulf and slowly kill surrounding vegetation. It’s sad to discover that such a beautiful vine is engaged in a silent war with our native flora. Purple loosestrife and teasel are two other such plants that come to mind. I think that nature has always been a force of change and evolution. Nothing is stagnant, nothing is forever, and the transport of invasive species by mankind only accelerates an eternal process already carried out by birds, animals and the elements. But however you rationalize or try to justify such a process, the visual experience is forever changed. Keats’ observation must be followed by Prospero’s rejoinder, “Tis new to thee”. By Tom

See You at the Fair!

The Grahamsville Little World's Fair starts today.  It runs from August 16-19 and is packed with an incredible amount of fun.  Need to get away?  Need to relax?  Come to the fair! The Catskill Artists Gallery will be there, in the craft pavilion.  Come see us between rides, or before the tractor pull, or after finishing the last lick of that cotton candy you've been dreaming about all summer!-- Tom

Summer

    The Pond Eddy bridge, sans tubers

I enjoy exploring and taking photographs year round.  Every season is special in its own way, and I’m hard pressed to pick a favorite time for beautiful subjects.  But when it comes to comfort and convenience, summer is the best.  The obvious advantage over the other seasons is the warm weather.  No need to scrape my windshield and warm up the car, just start ‘er up, roll down the window and go!  There are no snow drifts to sink into, snowbanks to climb over, and no painfully numb fingers from manipulating a metal tripod or fumbling with tiny camera buttons. Sometimes the very best spot to capture a waterscape is not at the edge of a river or lake, but a few feet out into the water. When you’ve taken great pains to be at the perfect spot at the perfect moment, are you going to let a few feet of water get in your way? In spring or fall, I carry along an extra pair of shoes for such occasions, but in the summer such sacrifices are instead a pleasure, when you can strip down to bare feet and wade out to your knees with ease.  My favorite time of day is early morning, when the sun starts its climb into the sky. The lighting is often quite dramatic. Here again summer has its advantages.  The days are longest, and sunrise right now is about 5:30.  So I have beautiful light very early, when there are no people, tubes, kayaks or cars to get in the way.  It’s easy to share a river when everyone else is curled up in their beds or sleeping bags!  By Tom

Ridgewood Street Fair

Our booth at the Ridgewood, NJ Street Fair

by Tom
We had a perfect spring day for the Ridgewood Street Fair.  There was a large crowd and a nice variety of vendors.  Our display looked great and we made some nice sales.  Sales make me very happy.  Of course they are a source of profit, which sustains us financially and allows us to continue to create.  Sales are also the culmination of the creative process.  They symbolizes acceptance.  Your endeavors are appreciated to the degree that people want to possess your work or present it to others as a gift.  There’s no higher compliment.

You missed the show?  Too bad!!  It was a most enjoyable day.  But it was just the beginning of the season, and you’ll have many more opportunities to see our work.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

by Tom

I can tell when I’ve settled into the new year when I no longer have to erase the “2” and replace it with a “3.”  It used to be a problem, until I took to using a mechanical pencil.  But that’s another story.  Today’s story…some thoughts on where we’ve been and where we’re going.


You already know the bad news.  Life is something of a juggling act.  At times you must cut back or risk dropping everything. So it is with our friend Margaret Helthaler.  We will miss her cheerful participation, wise advice, and her incredibly beautiful work.


It’s been a year since we became a “Gallery without Walls.”  This new beginning, a re-invention of ourselves, has been an exciting process. We are a diverse group, all from different backgrounds, all taking different approaches to our craft and working in very different media. But during the year, as we created a website, planned and participated in events, our differences blended into the background and our group pulled together as one.  The impossible was made possible.  Technical challenges, deadlines, and the physical tasks of setting up, sitting, and taking down exhibits were made much less daunting by the caring participation of the group.


Our schedule for the coming year is still being planned.  We have applied to a number of shows and are waiting for notification of acceptance.  As we receive confirmation, look for changes on our events page!  Many thanks to our friends for your support in 2012.  We look forward to seeing you again in the coming year.

Our booth at last year's Bethel  Woods Fall Harvest Festival

Ready for Winter?

Are you ready for winter? Gone are the bright, colorful days of early autumn. With two steady weeks of morning frost, nature slips quietly into winter’s cold embrace. Our last snowfall barely sticks, but the ground is beginning to freeze. Ice is creeping over pond, lake and streamside. There are occasional traces of green, and a few stubborn leaves refuse to fall. But we move irresistibly into the cold darkness  of winter, a season of rest, before the cycle of life begins anew with the light and warmth of spring.

I think I’m ready. I will never adjust to the first moments in bed, before the sheets warm up. But waking up is becoming routine. The cold floor under foot. Slipping into warm clothes heaped on the radiator the night before. Warming up the car and fetching the newspaper before enjoying a hot cup of coffee with breakfast. Boots, hats and gloves have been taken from their summer resting place. The snow shovels are ready. And me too. I think.  Tom

Farm Dog

Farm Dog • © Tom Kelemen

A Message From Tom:

I’d like to introduce a subject I rarely think to photograph when capturing the more scenic aspects of farm life. Busier than the farmer himself, Ronnie the farm dog rarely has time to sit (or stand) for a portrait. There are cats and rats to chase, cows and horses to nip, woodchucks and rabbits to contend with…and when done with his doggish chores he helps bale hay, chop corn, fix machinery and supervise EVERYONE. I think he would be shocked to discover that he is not human. He is a loyal companion who works long hours and never complains. This troublesome mutt could teach us all a thing or two about life!

An Invitation to Dream

A message from Tom:

Old houses are filled with stories. Can you hear the workers? The saws and hammers echoing off the hillsides on a spring or summer day long ago? Can you smell the plaster and fresh paint?  Walls that once provided shelter from the elements now witness nature's return. Who lived there, what did they do? The remnants of runners on those narrow, steep stairs have stories of husband and wife slowly ascending after a hard day, of children scrambling up into warm beds on chilly winter evenings, and stepping down anxiously on their first day of school. I see a rich tapestry of humanity woven back into our past and continuing far into the future. Go ahead, dream!

Where My Feet Are...

Some thoughts from Tom

Technology influences art.  What you create and how you create it are unique to your individual skills and imagination.  But your creative process is in part defined by your choice of medium and its technical limitations.  I think this is true in all media, and I feel it very strongly in my chosen form, photography.                                                                                    

When I first became interested in photography, it was a chemical process. In black and white photography, sensitized film is exposed to light, causing a subtle change in silver salts that are chemically treated to form microscopic particles of metallic silver, black to the eye and varying in quantity  according to how much light struck the film.  The more light, the larger the concentration of black particles.  Areas where less light struck produced fewer black particles. This produces a negative image on transparent film that is projected onto paper by basically the same process to produce the final positive image.  Things have changed dramatically with the coming of computers and digital cameras.  Photography is now a digital process, where light is electronically recorded.  The information is stored in binary code, manipulated and output for view on paper or monitor.  Matthew Brady would have recognized my darkroom and 35mm SLR as a miniaturized, refined version of the photographic equipment he hauled around with horse and wagon during the Civil War.  But digital?  Wow!

 Both forms record a three dimensional scene, a frozen slice of time and space, and translate it into a permanent, two dimensional image.  But the capture, manipulation and output of the final image is much faster and simpler than before.  Technology has taken a process that was once the domain of specialized craftspeople, simplified it and expanded it far beyond its original form. When I used film, the limitations of a finite quantity of film and the time-consuming process of developing and printing images forced me to think carefully before shooting.  Should I take several pictures of a particular subject, or save film for something that might present itself just around the corner? Whatever decision I made, I wouldn’t know the outcome until hours or days later, when the film was developed.  And when shooting black-and-white, colors reproduce as shades of gray, so form and light were much more important than color.  I learned to “see” in black and white. 

Digital photography offers me freedom from the old chemical process.  I can confirm proper exposure with a glance at a histogram, and view my finished image immediately.  And the number of photos I can take is limited only by the size of my memory card.   Digital photography has simplified a process I gave up, in part, for lack of time and space. I embrace these new changes and step gladly into the future with one foot, but at the same time, I feel my other foot stuck in the past.  I no longer need to pass up shooting a waterscape because a beer bottle floats in the foreground.  It is easily removed on the computer.  But while I have endless tools and opportunities to alter images, I find myself only making changes that I would have done with film.  I adjust image exposure, correct perspective, and remove small imperfections that detract from the overall composition.  Beyond basic adjustment, change comes slowly for me.  Why?  I think it’s a mix of both fear and comfort.  Fear of the unknown, of mastering a new technology that alters a routine and thought process anchored in lessons from the past.  And comfort.  I’ve never created an HDR image or stitched images digitally into a panorama.  I would like to, but something holds me back.  Creating compositions within a 1x1.5 frame proportion and capturing only what I see are self-imposed restrictions, much like a poet writing in the rigidly defined forms of sonnet or haiku.  I use self imposed limits for both the challenge and comfort. Challenge for me has been a conformity with the past rather than an open embrace of the future.  But change is on the horizon.   Recently I’ve been experimenting with the “clarity” adjustment in Photoshop, altering and softening image midtones.  The result is a softer, almost watercolor-like quality that works differently with different images.  The effect can be very subtle or very pronounced.  And it’s a refreshing change from crisp, sharp images that I routinely produce.