Karen Davidson: Designer (Graphic/Interior/Exhibition Space); Musician
Peter Seward: Painter; Musician
Karen and Peter are relative newcomers to the North Country, but they quickly inserted themselves into the arts equation here. They left New York City and purchased Dave Vana’s property outside Lake Placid, which they continue to renovate.
After sixteen years in the commercial art trenches, Peter quit his job as a staff artist for an apparel company to embark on his own fine art painting journey, which often has thorny narrative subject matter. He is well known for his series of paintings exploring the “Frankenpine” cell tower issue. Peter is President of the Board of Directors of the Arts Council for the Northern Adirondacks.
Karen maintains a full schedule as a graphic designer whose work enriches our North Country in many ways. She recently designed a community mural project at the Lake Placid Transfer Station, to be installed in the next few months. Also, she designed the new exhibits at the Trudeau Lab for Historic Saranac Lake. Besides the design work, she plays violin with Just Jills, and she is the Vice President of Bluseed Studios. Further, she completed the fall 2008 class of the Master Gardener Volunteer program with Cornell Cooperative Extension, and she researches the genealogy of her great-grandfather Gebo/Gibeau from Ogdensburg. Karen is eager to find time, soon, to continue a project of burning imagery onto wood planks. She has curbed some international travel ambitions to live in the North Country.
Visit Karen's website http://www.davidsondesigninc.com/
Peter's website is viewable at http://www.peterseward.com/
Addison Bickford: Musician
This is how it really happens – and has happened for generation after generation – in the mountains, in the woods, on the farms, upon the sea. Where there is work to be done, there is music to be made; and a dance floor is claimed from a barn floor, or from the deck of a boat, or from a patch of packed snow in an opening among the trees.
At Addison Bickford’s sugar house one crisp afternoon in March, a group of friends gathered. Addison had his fiddle. Nancy Bernstein brought her banjo. When the sap of the maples had been thickened to syrup, and its sweetness tasted and its density tested, the batch was drawn down and a new batch begun to boil. Then it was time to play.
Addison first came to the Adirondacks to study forestry at Paul Smiths College. After a hiatus at the University of California Santa Cruz to study Organic Farming and stints working in British Columbia, Alaska, Kentucky, Texas and Louisiana, he created a homestead off the grid in Rainbow Lake where he still lives. He has three children: Aidan, Celeste, and Claire. His primary occupation is as a student of life. He is an avid gardener and grows all the food he can. He pays his bills by making Maple Syrup (available at Nori’s Village Market), selling hardwood lumber and firewood, and sometimes by playing music.
He has played in more bands than you can shake a stick at. He has played with Back Roads, Spring Water String Band, North Branch, Will James and Sonny Fortune, The Old Mountain String Band, Blues Line, Reckless Abandon, Trout Lilly, Windy River, and 30 Thieves and the Thunder Chief. Some bands have been successful. All have been fun.
Phil Gallos: Writer; Photographer
Phil Gallos was born long ago and pretty far away. He moved to Saranac Lake when he was nine years old and considers this his home town (take that, Big Apple!). He has been studying the life of the Saranac Lake region for several decades. In the 1970s, he worked as a photojournalist and writer for the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, chronicling stories of everyday life along with significant town-altering events. He has been told he is an expert on local architecture, having written the definitive guide, Cure Cottages of Saranac Lake.
Phil has applied the same journalists’ inquisitiveness to his examination of the region’s natural history. For five years he wrote a weekly outdoor column, By Foot in the Adirondacks, and he also contributed numerous chapters to the Discover the Adirondacks series of hikers’ guidebooks. A self-confessed “tree hugging dirt-worshipper,” Phil likes boulders, trees, small mountains with big views, quite waters, and most people.
Phil got his first camera when he was six years old. He is still trying to figure out how to use it.
Monique Monette: Lampwork Glass Artist; Painter; Sculptor; Mixed-media Artist; Singer
Monique is addicted to her art. She grew up on a farm in Mooers, NY, before attending Plattsburgh State University. There, she studied sculpture under Carol Vossler, and graduated with a degree in Fine Art. She used to be a welder and found she liked working with a torch. When she suffered a back injury which limited her mobility for several months, she began making stuff with glass.
Much of her current work is jewelry, which Monique loves. She sees it as a means to boost the self-esteem of the wearer, and it makes her feel very good to know her work has such a positive impact on others. Locally, her work is available at the Twin Crystal Rock Shop in Saranac Lake.
Shamim Allen: Singer; Guitarist; Song Writer
Although she lives in Saranac Lake, in her family home she renovated herself with lots of help, Shamim does not limit herself to purely local concerns. She recently spent time in Central America studying permaculture with a group of biologists and environmentalists. She has been a member of the Dust Bunnies for five years, an acoustic trio which performs their original songs around the North Country; and she is a roving rhythm guitar player for various Irish groups.
Brooke Noble: Ceramic Artist; Artist in Residence at Bluseed Studios
Brooke took her first pottery course in the year 2000 at Syracuse University where she received a Bachelors degree in Art Education; but she had “caught the clay bug,” and it changed the direction of her life. She went on to get a Masters in Fine Arts/ Studio Ceramics at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She now has exhibited her work in sixty galleries nation-wide, and her shows often sell out. What she makes is hard to categorize. Two words come to the fore, however: magical and whimsical. Much of her “pottery” is actually functional sculpture.
Brooke made her way to the Saranac Lake area from Chautauqua County. “I’m drawn to the mountains,” she says, “because I like extreme, cold weather.” Her days are filled renovating her house, exhibiting, teaching, making cool stuff, and working at the Caribbean Cowboy restaurant in Lake Placid. She says she would like to teach at the college level.
Sue Grimm: Musician; Teacher of Music; Composer; Dancer; Naturalist; Lover of Life
Sue is a native of Oswegatchie, N.Y., which, in itself, is reason enough to be included in this exhibition. She was a student at the Crane School of Music, the Eastman School of Music, and SUNY Geneseo, where she received a Masters in Music Librarianship. She then worked as a Music Librarian at Vassar College and as a Library Librarian at SUNY Geneseo, SUNY Canton, and Paul Smiths College before moving into teaching music and making music full time. She has taught more children to play more kinds of instruments than have a right to occupy a town the size of Saranac Lake.
Sue lived her previous life as a Painted Lady butterfly (Vanessa cordui). This has resulted in some interesting karma which she is resolving through her work as the Butterfly House Naturalist at the Adirondack Park Visitors’ Interpretive Center in Paul Smiths. She believes most of all in “living lightly on the land” (like a butterfly) and is inspired most by the “visually gorgeous” Adirondack environment and by others playing music.
Sue can fly in the dark but is attracted to the light.
Here is a link to a YouTube of Sue performing a piece she composed for the Rebecca Kelly Dance Company http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gY89MNVUV4
Mark Kurtz: Photographer
Originally from the Rochester New York area, Mark came to the Adirondacks in childhood on family and Boy Scout camping trips, and as an adult he worked on staff at Massawepie Scout Camps near Tupper Lake. In the mid-80s he directed the Scouts’ Adirondack Voyageur Trek Program, and he still volunteers as an instructor with that adult leader training program today.Like so many of us, he fell in love with this area, and decided to find a way to live here. Fine art and commercial photography have given him a way; his award-winning work has graced publications, advertisements, galleries and homes for decades now. Every year he produces a slide show for Saranac Lake’s Winter Carnival. He is also a powerful community activist, having helped found the Sound Adirondack Growth Alliance (SAGA), Saranac Lake Art Works, and other pro-active community initiatives which remain top secret.
Mark's work can be seen "live" at his gallery on Broadway in Saranac Lake or online at http://www.markkurtzphotography.com .
Donna Foley: Weaver; Shepherdess
Donna says it beautifully and succinctly.
“Weaving a path from sheep to dye plants to this mountain farm retreat has kept me busy for more than 25 years. Within my weavings are the joyous new lambs but also the harsh deaths, the trekking through bogs or mountaintops looking for plants, the hot days of putting up hay and the long winters at the loom listening to its heartbeat and searching for the thread that binds it all.”
Donna works and lives at Four Directions Farm and Weaving Studio, Vermontville, NY (ten miles northeast of Saranac Lake). http://fourdirectionsweaving.com/index.html
The McKenzie Pond Boulders are actually not even near McKenzie Pond. They are in the forest north and east of McKenzie Pond Road. They are now famous among "boulderers" (those who climb boulders) and even have at least one web page devoted to them (see http://www.newenglandbouldering.com/media/McKensieGuide.pdf ); but when I first saw them (I am not a boulderer), back in the mid-1970s, only a handful of local people knew of their existence. They are an amazing community of forms and have very compelling energy. The Adirondack Mountains are rich in great boulder assemblages, of which this is but one -- its popularity enhanced, no doubt, by its accessibility between the villages of Saranac Lake and Lake Placid.