The Boquet Valley Studio Tour brought many vistors to the art farm over the course of three days. There is a nice account on the Lake Placid tourism blog:
It seems almost accidental as you drive along on Sayre Road in Wadhams, NY. I crested a hill and found myself facing a rough-yet-elegant steel sculpture poised in a panoramic and rustic Adirondack farmscape. There's an eye-rubbing "what did I just stumble on" moment as you approach Crooked Brook Studios. The sweeping vista of the mountains, and the lines of trees are punctuated by these artifacts that run the spectrum from unadorned and outmoded farm equipment to, well, something else, as if the machinery, put out to pasture, began to think "is this really all there is?" And clearly, it isn't all. The machines, the pieces, the containers, the barns – the very land itself – seems to be caught up in an evolution toward a profound expression.
The pieces emerge from landscape rather than intruding on it. There is an easy flow when you walk the farm and observe the industrial textures against this
natural landscape. As I walked the low rise from the parking area to the barn, a favorite Cornell sculpture rose into view: "The Angel of Inerrancy Conveying Well-meaning Souls to Hell". It's a large, intricate and powerful piece at sixteen feet long almost fourteen feet high. It was recently featured in Adirondack History Center Museum retrospective of Cornell's work, "Inside the Landscape," occupying the Museum's front lawn for several months. Cornell first began work on "The Angel" back in 2004 with his son Noah, when the two "used their tractor to pull a substantial piece of twelve foot long, three foot diameter piping made of quarter inch sheet iron out of the swamp and then put a bend in its already belabored shape by twisting it around a tree," said Cornell. "These awesome sections of unusually heavy pipe found occasionally in our area are remnants of the original power generating turbines of Wadhams that supplied power to the mines in Port Henry," said Cornell. The piece is both of the landscape, but also carves shapes and forms out of it's surroundings, like many of the sculptures on the Art Farm. Cornell said he hopes that the sculpture, in its present location overlooking the pond, "will hopefully encourage visitors to contemplate the long, slow journey of the well-meaning souls."
After exploring the farm I headed into the barn-that-is-not-a-barn that serves as a gallery to check out some large canvases and a number of less element-resistant three-dimensional pieces that hang on the walls and from the lofted 20-foot plus high rafters. Aside from being mostly empty space and a massive wall of windows on one end, it's still very much a barn. It's an inviting space that encourages you to spend time with the work. Each piece is given its due – in that way, more like the lobby of a large metro museum than a gallery. There was a table filled with sand where Ted invited people to participate in creating their own piece of sand art with a collection of had-been cracker packages, honey dispensers and bottle caps. It was very therapeutic to play in the sand with the simple implements, and Ted remarked that it was, in fact, used as a kind of therapy. I thought it was very much in his character to invite you over to tour his studio, and then deflect your attention to a pile of sand for you to play in instead. He has a genius for avoiding attention. [photos & text by Athena Roth]
The studio tour was not the only event Columbus Day weekend. The Dragon Press Bookstore in Westport had an event featuring out-of-town writers who all trooped over to visit.
Michael Swanwick, Ted Cornell, & Jeanne Beckwith
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