STORM KING ART CENTER...VISIONS OF SILENCE

I LOVE THIS PLACE…

STORM KING’S SILENT ALLURE

By
Warren D. Jorgensen



I make it a policy to tour any new area via bus on arrival, to get a larger overall view of the area, which is how Jean and I wound up on the on the tramway that transports visitors around the 500 acres of Storm King Art Center.

Within minutes of the start of the ride, we were coming up on what appeared to be another of the monumental sculptures that dot the landscape. It was a box-like frame of shining steel and glass, shoved kitty-corner into the side of the hillside; a singularly distinctive stainless steel and glass contemporary work. Not my cup of tea, but impressive, nonetheless. As odd as it sounds, the towers seemed to fit into the natural scene surrounding it.

“Nice,” I said, “I wonder who did it”, as Jean unfolded the guide on her lap, her finger trying to connect the dots with the artist’s listings. Before she had a chance to answer, the driver enlightened us and pointed up my almost total ignorance on the subject of modern sculpture
.
“On your left, ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer said “is our new elevator shaft that will connect the grounds to the upper level”. Paula folded the guide and put it back in her purse, smiling smugly.

There are art parks, and there are art parks, but The Storm King Art Center, set amid the rolling hills of the Hudson Valley, always draws me back when I need a day to clear my mind, relax the body, and set the world right. This where I come to gain respite from the world; a place so quiet that a library is a cacophony of noise by comparison. Strolling the lush green slopes, it is easy to get lost in time and space, to be at once calmed and excited by monumental works that weigh upwards of several tons.

These and the monumental works of art created by the artist’s heart and hand blends with the natural landscape so well that it is difficult to tell where the hand of man and the forces of nature separate.

These are works created by some of the most famous and widely recognized sculptors in the world, and the permanent home of the Alexander Calder collection. The Orange and black steel works of this most notable of American sculptors is spread out over “Calder Hillside”, free-forms standing out in stark contrast to the adjacent David Smith work venerating that artist’s vision of womanhood. I am drawn however to Alfred Hrdlicka’s “Golgatha”, a willowy shadowed vision of the mysteries of womanhood that somehow always reminds me of the women I have known or would like to have known. I guess it’s a guy thing.

Isamu Noguchi’s “Momo Taro” does not appear so much a work of art as a place to stop and rest, its marble pieces inviting visitors to just sit and rest a while. Somehow, with this piece, everyone seems to break the rule against touching or playing on the sculptures, probably because it seem so much a part of the natural landscape.

The center is now in the fifth year of a seven year planting schedule that will add fields of grain, alfalfa, buckwheat, oats and wildflowers alongside the pathways that meander through the park. This will complete the blending of earth and sky, the hand of man and nature’s bounty into one whole.

And appearances are always deceiving, assumptions shattered so easily, as if I had not already learned that.

As we came around to the end of the tram ride, I noticed four glass enclosures, each covering what appeared to be industrial machinery. Never one to pass up an opportunity to stick my foot in my mouth, I nudged Paula.

“Hey, that’s neat”, I said. “They’ve even got the water treatment plant on display”. Our friendly driver once again put me straight. “Just ahead of us, ladies and gentlemen, is Magdalena Abakanowicz’ Sarcophogi in Glass Houses”

Well, like they say, I may not know art, but I know what I like. WDJ

AN ADIRONDACK STATE OF MIND

AN ADIRONDACK STATE OF MIND


More years ago than I admit to, while on a cross country skiing adventure, I came to the shore of a lake in the Adirondack Mountains. Before me was an unbroken snow-field, untouched, unmarked, bathed in the soft red-gold glow cast by the last rays of the setting sun. The only sound was that of my heartbeat, the only movement my breath vaporizing in the winter air. I felt as if I were the first human on the face of the earth.

The Adirondack Mountains are not just a place on the map. They are a truly unique, prime—and possibly solitary—example of progressive environmental thinking in a time when none existed. Legislated into existence in 1882 in an amendment to the state constitution, they comprise a patchwork of private, public and corporate lands bound together and preserved for the public good. They are the “Forever Wild” six million acres forming nature’s roofless cathedral; with many floors and hundreds of rooms. The Adirondacks are a state of mind.

They are home to 100,000 people and 4,000 bears, hosting ten million visitors a year. They are High Peaks—forty six with elevation over 4,000 feet--and shadowed glens, rustic falls and dead-calm lakes and pools, rivers that become streams that connect lakes and flow constantly with the movement of nature’s clock. They have been this way since the beginning of time. Timeless, they are what you need when you want to suspend all physical, emotional and mental connections to the “real world” of man made high rise canyons, and suburban angst.

The Adirondacks have always called out to the wild in man, drawing those who explored the valleys, climbed those mountains, forded those streams, and canoed those lakes and rivers. They were so isolated that the source of the Hudson River, Lake Tear-In-The-Clouds, was not discovered until seventy years after the Lewis and Clark Expedition had reached the headwaters of the Columbia River. The explorers, hunters and trappers who first came here evolved into the venerable Adirondack Guides of legend, with their distinctive Adirondack Guide Boats, the waterborne symbol of that wild.

Theodore Roosevelt came here as a sickly child, wandering and exploring these woods, publishing his “Birds of the Adirondacks” in 1877. It can be said that his love of the outdoors, the love that would eventually give the country Yellowstone and its vast National Park System was born in his soul here. Here also is where Winslow Homer immortalized the Adirondack spirit in his watercolors.

William West Durant, a developer with dreams created the hallmark of Adirondack architecture. “Great Camps” were the wilderness estates of America’s elite, where they enjoyed the illusion of roughing it. Thirty-five Great Camps still exist, almost all in private hands. Durant’s 27-building 1,526-acre Sagamore was sold to the Vanderbilt family, who used it as their summer retreat until 1954, when it given to the state. All but eighteen acres became state land, and it functions today as a privately owned educational and environmental center. Santanoni Camp is open year round, its 12,000 acres home to ski and hiking trails, camp sites and a variety of environmental programs. In true Adirondack spirit, however, it takes a seven mile walk to reach it. Wawbeek, with two of the original 19th century buildings still standing is commercial lodge and hotel, providing visitors with the ambience of rustic living complimented by full service restaurants and amenities. For those with pockets deep enough to handle the $14,000 a week rent, Dry Island offers dominion over your own private 12-acre, 4-year old “Great Camp” on Saranac Lake.

In a one week stay, from a rented room or cottage—the latter is preferable—the diversity is all within no more than a short drive in any direction, including up. You can turn each day into a new sight, a new taste, a new sound, or no sound at all.

You can bushwhack to the summit of Mt. Marcy, the highest of the forty six High Peaks, or ride a gondola to the top of Whiteface, the fourth highest. Whiteface is also the only peak that permits auto traffic to the summit, just as most of the lakes are off limits to any form of motorized traffic.

You can you can throw a line and split a fresh-caught trout over an open fire for breakfast, and enjoy Tex-Mex or Italo-Greek, or pheasant with a caramelized sauce and Vermont Cheddar tart in Honey Guinness syrup for dinner. All in the same day.

You can canoe the more than fifty eight lakes of the St. Regis Canoe area or lounge on a tour boat with full service on Lake Placid; rent or buy—if you can handle the five-figure price tag—an Adirondack Guide Boat, or paddle one vicariously at the Adirondack Museum, where you can sample the entire history of the park and its people.

You can cycle the seventy-nine mile “Teddy’s Trail”, or pull up a chair and watch Freestyle Olympic hopefuls perfect their aerobics on plastic ramps into swimming pools.

The host of two Olympic Games, Lake Placid is the multi-faceted diamond set in the shadow of the High Peaks region, the epicenter of Winter Olympic sport activities available nowhere else in the country. You can ride make a bobsled or luge run, or envelope yourself in your own fantasies on the same ice where twelve American kids beat the Russians at their own game in 1980.

Routes 28 and 30 are the major two-lane blacktops through the park, but to rush through here is to deprive yourself of the essence of the park. To experience the park is to live it, breath it, and to feel it. Then at the end of the day enjoy a sundowner on a split-log deck overlooking a lake at sunset. This is the sojourner’s life inside the Blue Line. I’ve done it before, and most assuredly will do it again.WDJ