"Get Away" With the Arts

by Carol Youngs

"All great beauty has about it a simplicity which we find alike in the finest
types of human character, and in the greatest works of art, and indeed is
it not art which reveals such beauty to us?"
From The Reality of Beauty, written by Woodstock Arts Colony founder Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, 1907

Always wanted to try your hand at painting, or indulge in the smooth, creamy feel of raw clay just before it's thrown on a potter's wheel? Indulge your love of art in two special artist conclaves, Woodstock (Greene County) and New Berlin (Chenango County). Hang your hat at a lovely bed and breakfast, take a few classes on a weekend and stroll through these storybook villages to visit museums, or tour the history of one man's quest for a special artist's paint.

Downtown Woodstock is a veritable haven for those interested in the Arts. Galleries and shops, including SweetheartGallery.com, offer a plethora of one-of-a-kind art from glass to jewelry to paintings and photography. Sunday afternoon drumming sessions on the commons in today's Woodstock are reminiscent of that long-ago event in a farmer's field; that event still reverberates in this beautiful valley.

Consider attending classes in jewelry making. Try your hand at a ceramic studio program set in a vintage dairy barn, take part in an Artist, Writer or Musician residency or retreat at any number of arts and crafts cottages in Byrdcliffe Arts Colony. America's oldest continuing arts and crafts colony is listed on the national register of historic places and set amidst open fields, manicured lawns and dense forest. You can also tour the colony's main house, White Pines, the heart of the Colony; guests such as naturalist John Burroughs, actress Helen Hayes, and dancer Isadora Duncan regularly visited at the turn of the century. Designed by founder Ralph Whitehead and Bolton Brown, it served as the home of the Whitehead Family; and offers a quintessential example of the Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts style, based on the value of hand craftsmanship and living in harmony with nature. Examples of Byrdcliffe craftsmanship in furniture making can be seen at the colony and in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. While visiting you'll want to be sure and take in the self-guided walking tour of the complex.

You might also check out Opus 40, a fabulous little place between Saugerties and Woodstock and "One of the largest and most beguiling works of art on the entire continent,"(Brendan Gill, Architectural Digest). The work is an immense composition of finely fitted stone, rising in ramps and swirling terraces around pools and trees and fountains from the rock bed of an abandoned bluestone quarry. It took Harvey Fite 37 years to finish the job - working solo.

 

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