© J.N. Urbanski – Usage prohibited without consent
This is Part One of Fleischmanns, A Poem in Eight Parts
(Imaginative Historical Projection)
By Bill Birns
Part One: On the Porch at Fleischmanns
© J.N. Urbanski
Amy Masters and Ted Sheridan share an elegant and softly lit studio in Arvkille, which they had built as an addition onto their Catskills home three years ago. This winter will be the third winter they’ve worked in it. Warmly inviting, the studio is decorated in muted tones, covered in art and filled with books and trinkets collected over the years. Winter is a time for thought and meditation, especially when there’s a foot or two of snow accumulated outside and your studio is the warmest part of the house, like Masters’ is.
© J.N. Urbanski
The Catskills Pinhole Camera Project was launched three years ago and Upstate Dispatch participated last November, writing about it here. My pinhole camera was attached to a tree facing west through our forest for about a month and the above image is the processed result: a month of vivid, winter sunsets through bare trees.
The Painters Gallery’s Wanda Siedlecka started the project with her friend Przemek Zajfert and the entire community was invited to join. Everyone who asked for it received the beautifully packaged camera with instructions.
© J.N. Urbanski
Their exposures were processed for free by Zajfert, a photographer from Stuttgart, who has mastered photographic and cinematic techniques from the time of their invention and early stages of development. Last Spring, the first one hundred exposures were exhibited at The Painters Gallery in Fleischmanns and future exhibitions are planned.
Lisbeth Firmin
Highlights in the Margaretville area: the EBDR Plein Air Painters’ group exhibition at the Commons Gallery, Lisbeth Firmin and Robert Axelrod. Robert’s stunning landscapes are on show at the Longyear Gallery. Lisbeth has opened her studio upstairs in the Commons Building to visitors today and will continue tomorrow. Her New York City scenes are lushly gorgeous and her studio is also reminiscent of a New York City painter’s studio with its warmly inviting office nook. It’s somewhere you’ll want to park yourself for a while, with a frosty beverage, and just soak up the atmosphere.
Lisbeth Firmin’s Studio
Robert Axelrod