A little warmer with a high of 58F and a mixed lot of multifarious cloud cover.
A little warmer with a high of 58F and a mixed lot of multifarious cloud cover.
Nippy! A high of 52F with a mix of sun and clouds. Comfort food weather: squash soup, chickpea patty, and rose latte with oat milk at Village East.
Another sweltering July day in October: a high of 86F with gauzy cloud and leaves flying in the wind like confetti.
A fall scorcher: a high of 82F with clear skies and another serene sunset.
Sunny and warm with a high of 75F. Clear blue sky. A fall scorcher.
Another crisp morning under a big dome of pale blue with cloud moving in early afternoon. Humid with a high of 68F. Fall colors are muted by the cloud.
A clear, still morning with fog in the valleys. Mostly clear sky all day, and a giant moon. A high of 62F.
A bright day with cloud like a thin veil, and one big fluffy cloud that looked lost. A high of 69F and another fiery sunset. The last day of summer.
A chilly sunrise with overnight frost whitening the flora, and steaming mist rising into a crystal clear sky. A crisp day, with a high of 69F and the landscape looking like it’s slowly being sanded down. This is the penultimate day of summer.
Warm and sunny, with wispy bits of cloud like someone didn’t clean up the sky properly and a high of 70F. Overnight lows dipping into the thirties. Frost warning.
Another steamy day, overcast and dry with a high of 83F. Post-sunset torrential downpours cool the evening air.
A very rainy summer is coming to a dry, sunny end – well, fingers crossed, as summer’s not officially over until September 22nd this year. I have mostly been focused on my fine art studies at Andes Academy of Art. Every Wednesday, there is a figure drawing session with a live nude model, from 4pm-7pm at Streamside Yoga, 509 Main Street Andes that only stops during the darkest depths of a Catskills winter (and word is that we’re in for a bad winter). Local artists Lisbeth Firmin, Steven Burnett, Gary Mayer, Peter Mayer, William Duke, Sandy Finkenberg attend this class, and it’s been a thrill to be influenced by the best artists in the Catskills, and although my sketching is getting so much better, my watercolor is what sells.
This year I launched a print version of Upstate Dispatch – a magazine – that was well-received, but did not sell well. I’ve caught up with the retailers of the magazine who said that customers did not want to pay $20 for the magazine. I’ve mulled this over with booksellers and local artists, and we’ve come up with the theory that people see magazines as disposable and don’t want to pay for them. I collect some magazines, and all my artist colleagues – about 30 friends – all bought a copy of Upstate Dispatch because they see it as art.
This theory is proven by the fact that our sketch sale to benefit The Heart of the Catskills animal shelter at the Andes Academy of Art this week was mobbed by customers who were happy to pay $20 for a rough sketch or watercolor that took less than 20 minutes to draw in our figure drawing classes. The whole show of about a hundred works that were tacked up on the wall unframed, was almost sold out.
It really opened my eyes to what sells and what is valued. Art is, after all, a commodity. Periodicals, not so much.
This brings me to books. A local bookseller told me last night that nobody wants to buy books either! Journalists’ salaries have been in significant decline for decades, but do people really want all words to be free? How’s a writer supposed to live? Despite this, Upstate Dispatch celebrates its 9th birthday this year. Thank you to all who read regularly and, an extra thank you to a handful of you who contribute (through the donation page). Plans are in the works for an art studio and gallery. I hope you’ll come and visit.