Concept

A message from Hank:

Finished Vase

Concept  comes first. It is up to the artist to translate an idea into reality.  Often this is a trial and error process -- it’s knowing what ideas to keep and work with, and  what to put in the garbage can.

The idea of waterproof wooden vases didn’t just happen; it started when I looked at a barrel planter and thought to myself “flower pot cover.” After I made one, I realized the inside had to be waterproof. Paint didn’t hold up; neither did automotive undercoating.  I tried polyester resin only to learn that it did not adhere  to hard wood, it had internal crazing, and  it  smelled awful.

A friend who saw me struggling suggested epoxy resin. Problem solved.  It’s waterproof, it  adheres to hard wood, has little odor and no internal crazing.  It was like putting a stamp on an envelope -- it just worked.

The flower pot cover soon  morphed into an artist’s  paint brush holder. I saw the paint brushes as flowers and the waterproof wooden vase was born. I showed  this work at craft shows and craft  galleries; people said they loved what they saw, but I made no sales.

Cherry Burl First Cut

I kept at it. I knew I had a good idea, but something was missing. Up to this point I was working with store-bought wood.  A friend, Brian, also a woodcrafter, gave me an apple wood log.  

At first I didn’t know what to do with it; to use it, I had to make boards out of it . I turned my table saw into a mini saw mill and boarded out the log. Unlike store-bought wood, It was full of knots and worm holes. I made a vase out of these boards and – BINGO -- it sold. I soon learned about book matching (arranging the panels so the grain patterns match at the edges), and how to do a  compound miter, which lets me make a tapered vase.



Rough Assembly

Nobody lives in a vacuum, and we are all influenced by our senses.  I can think of very little that is more  satisfying  than having an idea, applying what I have  learned, and then  turning that idea  into reality.



Cherry Burl Boards







The Experience of Place

A message from Margaret:

I usually begin my day with a long walk in the picturesque surroundings of my Hudson Valley/Catskill Mountain home in upstate New York. These walks not only provide subject matter for my art, they also replenish me both physically and mentally. With this in mind, I decided to start a blog that serves as a visual record of the experience of place. I invite you to view the blog at: http://morningmeanderings.blogspot.com/

A Sense of Wonder

A message from Nada

The Colors of Morning Move Across the Sky

From Wonder into Wonder, Existence Opens. --by Lao Tzu

I've always been attracted to the feeling of wonder, that sense that the world is filled with amazing possibilities and can open up in unforeseen ways.

Another ancient sage encouraged cultivating appreciation and wonder when observing the creative flow of energy expressed in theatre, music and the visual arts as a means entering Divine Consciousness itself. While we may not put it in those terms, I'm sure many of us are moved and transported into feelings of delight, wonder and expansion by artistic expressions.

That is the allure of art for me - its unique ability to open me up to new ways of seeing, feeling and interacting with the world around me. We all see the world so differently, and our experiences and perceptions are unique to our own viewpoint.  So when I look at the work of my fellow artists in CAG, I find myself smiling at Kathy Jeffers' whimsical clay creations.  And when I see the delicate coloration of Tom Kelemen's gentle photographs, I relax into nature's bucolic scenes.  Hank Schneider's vases make me appreciate the wonders of wood, each tree uniquely growing in its own patterns formed by wind and weather over the years - just as each artist's creation is a piece of their experience and perception that emerges from entering their own creative flow.

My own artwork is inspired in moments where I've been touched by the beauty of nature, a strong feeling, or an inner experience in meditation.  That seed moment informs my creative expression. I don't always plan out the piece, but rather go to my studio and begin working with materials: clay, gold leaf, resin, silicone, glass paint, transparencies of photographs I've taken, and objects from nature. I get completely absorbed for hours in the interplay of these materials. Then - Surprise! These disparate elements have come together to express that seed moment. And guess what happens then? There is an experience of wonder, of revelation, of delight and expansion!

I do think those sages are on to something.

Spring

A message from Robert:

It’s spring in the Catskill Mountains of New York State.  Birds are arriving and the daffodils are poking out of the ground. Brooks and streams are flowing rapidly.  The area, once lively with hotels large and small, has become a creative center for artists, crafts people and musicians.  Local farmers markets feature seasonal produce, cheeses and baked goods.  Many of them travel with their products to markets in New York City.

Creative energies are running as well. We eight members of the Catskill Artists Gallery are gearing up for a busy year of art activities, showing our work in June and August at major local Catskill Artists Gallery exhibitions. In addition, we will be participating in important art and craft fairs in New York and New Jersey.

The recent launch of our website has already been discovered by people in New York and other states in addition to web users abroad. They are responding to our wide range of works for sale including ceramics, jewelry, glass objects, fiber art, sculpture and photographs.                              

We are proud of having created the website ourselves to help stress the individuality of our members and their unique approach to materials and techniques. Kathy Jeffers' ceramics and Cate Gundlah’s works in glass, for example, are as original and unique as any in the world.

As a member of the gallery, I feel a sense of accomplishment, having helped my friends and colleagues to make the transition from a traditional physical gallery to this exciting new entity which can reach so many art lovers everywhere.  It is good to think about this degree of potential exposure and personal feedback.

This is a culmination of my own artistic development.  I always felt like an artist, even in childhood. This was reinforced during school, college and university years, when I specialized in fine arts and art history. Professionally, this led to teaching college courses in studio art and history of art. Many exhibitions resulted in work in public and private collections. And now, I am part of this group of like spirits, all working toward a common goal.

Photo by Ken Howard

 

                        

The Transition

A message from Kathy:

As our Moms and all the great sages of the world would say: You don’t know until you try: If you don’t try, you will always regret it,  never having tried.

As a founding member of Catskill Artists Gallery, I want to share what the process and experience has been like, going from a bricks-and-mortar storefront gallery in Liberty, New York for the past nine years, to what we have become, as of March 4, a “gallery without walls.” In this tough economy, sales were down and we just didn’t want the expense of paying rent, electric, phone, etc., any more, but the five original members  really, really wanted to keep the business going. We also had our eye on a few of our former consignors who had shown enthusiasm for the gallery by bringing in new work of the absolute highest quality, and coming to openings, and who seemed to truly like participating in a group such as ours.  We asked several of them to become members, and three of them accepted. Margaret, Tom, and Nada are our new, fantastic, and quickly-proving-to-be-invaluable members. So now we are eight! 

We unanimously agreed that we need to focus our efforts in three areas:

1. Robert, who believes deeply in contributing to the cultural environment and sense of community of our area, especially wanted to keep our presence in Sullivan County as a group that periodically has art exhibits.  We were all on board with that, and decided we could still have exhibitions in venues other than our old storefront.  So far, we have scheduled two exhibits for this year, The Old Stone House in Hasbrouck, NY and the Liberty Museum  in Liberty, NY, and we may have one more that is in the works.
2. We all agreed that we should continue to do craft shows, and more of them. Craft shows, although a lot of physical work, have always been a good income generator for us. Now that we don’t have the physical gallery to take care of, we will have more time and energy to do more fairs, as well as three more people to share in the work. We have expanded our horizons, gotten those applications turned in (thanks to a lot of research by Cate and Nada) and are already scheduled to do fairs in Orange County, NY, Rockland County, NY and Ridgewood, NJ, as well as our usual local craft fairs in Sullivan County, NY
3. I have always wanted to figure out how I could sell my work on the internet, but had always found it daunting to tackle that project alone. Everyone agreed with me, and with Buff, who was also very interested in the idea of online marketing of our work, that selling from the web would be a very good way to keep in touch with our loyal customers and reach new ones.  We thought that if we had one website for our whole group, we could all learn how to set it up and maintain it ourselves, rather than paying an outside webmaster.

We had initial help from a friend of Buff’s, Ellyane Hutchinson, who is an expert in web design and calmly steered us through the critical first steps. And with Margaret now on board, we had an in-house instructor to help us continue to learn how to navigate this new learning curve of creating and managing the new website. Her skills as a computer graphics designer and professor and administrator at the college level have been very helpful.
 

Buff and I worked closely as a team to learn this information, asking Margaret questions now and then. We gave instructions to the other artists in a few face-to-face (actually three or four faces to the computer screen!) tutoring sessions. We each now manage our own page, i.e. photographing, retouching and sizing in Photoshop, optimizing, embedding keywords, putting up our own work, and topping off each image with a PayPal/Buy Now button.

To step back a bit, before learning how to put our images up on the website, Hank, a professional commercial and art photographer for many years, taught Cate, Nada and me, who all do 3 dimensional work, how to improve our photography skills, including  balancing and diffusing lighting, and becoming more familiar with setting the proper shutter speed and aperture settings on our cameras to achieve the sharpest, truest photos. I found my previously learned Photoshop skills (I had taken two semesters of computer graphics at the local community college and produced our gallery show cards and newspaper ads) proved invaluable in sizing and retouching in preparation for putting photos of our work up on the site, and I was able to give lessons to Cate and Buff, who are now among the ranks of first-level Photoshoppers. Tom and Nada, we found out, already had those necessary skills.

  

Whew! WE DID IT! OUR ONLINE GALLERY IS UP AND RUNNING AND WE HAVE ALREADY MADE SOME SALES!

Lastly, rather than dwell on the sadness of having to close the doors of our sweet gallery after nine years of hard work and good times, I prefer to see that this re-forming of our gallery has been one of the major positive synchronistic events of my life—all the right people together at the right time doing a good and worthwhile thing.

I believe that everyone creates their own luck. I predict we will be very lucky.    

Thank You!

We appreciate the good wishes we have received from our many supporters as we begin a new chapter as a "gallery without walls." We invite you to visit our blog often to learn more about our activities as a group as well as the efforts and ideas of our individual artists. You may also wish to follow us on facebook.

Please feel free to leave comments on our blog posts. In order to prevent spam, your comments will not be visible until they have been approved. Thanks again for your support!

The Value of Community

Our former gallery in Liberty, NY

A message from MARGARET:

Artists tend to be a solitary bunch. We spend a lot of time in our own heads, nestled in our studio, lost in the “flow” of our creative process. While uninterrupted solitude can be vital to an artist’s productivity, real value can also be found in stepping outside of our selves and connecting with others.

When I was a graduate student in the Art Institute of Boston’s low residency MFA in Visual Arts program, one of the first things I was directed to do was to “tap into” my local art community. Instructors shared frightening statistics regarding the percentage of MFA graduates who no longer practice their art. The phenomenon is often attributed to the loss of structure and accountability graduates face upon completion of their degree and subsequent exit from the academic environment. AIB’s theory is that if participants of their low residency program connect with their local art community while they are pursuing their degree, they are more likely to continue as working artists after they graduate because their support system will remain in place. It’s a good theory and probably quite effective when properly implemented. I say, ‘properly implemented’ because I didn’t work hard enough to connect with artists near my rural home when I was in graduate school. Instead, I traveled thirty-plus miles to participate in neighboring art community activities. I was willing to do this as part of my graduate studies, but once I completed my degree and began teaching full-time, I found myself less and less willing to invest the travel time. As work and parenting responsibilities crowded my agenda, my art slipped lower and lower on my list of daily priorities. I was in danger of becoming a statistic, but one small connection kept me from slipping over the edge completely.

In 2007 I began to show select works at the Catskill Artist Gallery in Liberty, New York. Unlike some of the other venues and organizations I had become involved with during graduate school, the Catskill Artist Gallery was only about fourteen miles from my home. So as my schedule became more complicated it was easy for me to maintain a relationship with CAG while others fell by the wayside. This connection helped me to remain engaged in my art practice and stands as a testament for the value of community.

According to Baumeister and Leary’s Belongingness Hypothesis, “humans have an almost universal need to form and maintain a least some degree of interpersonal relationships with other humans.” In addition to providing a sense of structure and accountability, being part of a group or organization of like-minded individuals provides one with a sense of self worth and determination. These truths have become increasingly clear to me, as I have become more involved with the Catskill Artist Gallery and its recent transition to becoming a “gallery without walls.”  As I meet with the seven other members of our group to discuss our plans, I find myself more and more motivated to engage in my art practice. In recent weeks I have been more active on Twitter and Facebook and I have finally published a personal website.  Being part of CAG has renewed my ambition and I suspect it has done the same for the other members of our group... There truly is strength in numbers. Visit our Events page to learn more about the good things we have planned for 2012.