The Woodstock Writers Festival just concluded its seventh season – read my article at Upstater.com. The festival was co-sponsored this year by The New School.
© 2016 Simona David
Tag: woodstock writers festival
This weekend:
- Woodstock Writers Festival celebrates its seventh anniversary;
- Carlos Santana performs at the Bardavon Opera House;
- And, Dr. Wanda M. Corn from Stanford University speaks at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, exploring Artists’ Homes and Studios as Archive and Romance Places.
Find more at Upstater.com.
The Publishing Panel at the Woodstock Writers Festival this year. Panelists included: Sara Carder, editorial director at Jeremy P. Tarcher, an imprint of Penguin Random House; Mary Cummings, vice president and editorial director of Diversion Books, a digitally focused publisher in New York City; Gail Godwin, bestselling author, three-time National Book Awards finalist; Ned Leavitt, literary agent; Jenny Milchman, novelist (Ballantine / Penguin Random House); and Nan Gatewood Satter, editor. Satter also moderated the panel, along with Martha Frankel, author and the executive director of the festival.
© 2015 Simona David
Fabulous weekend coming up in the Catskills and surrounding area: the Woodstock Writers Festival is celebrating its sixth anniversary, Corning Glass Museum is opening a new wing, the National Museum of Dance is hosting an evening of tango demonstrations, the Arts Upstairs gallery is having an art opening reception, and Spillian is hosting a radio panel. Plenty to choose from!
Woodstock Writers Festival
The Woodstock Writers Festival kicks off tonight, March 19, with a traditional Story Slam event. Tomorrow several concurrent workshops will be offered from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.: fiction, memoir, social media, and publishing are among offerings this year. Also Friday at 6 p.m. there will be a cocktail party at Commune Saloon in Bearsville, followed at 8 p.m. by a conversation with Chris Stein and Will Hermes. Saturday is the panels’ day: spirituality, publishing, journalism and fiction are scheduled throughout the day at the Kleinert / James Center for the Arts on Tinker Street. A cocktail party begins at 6 p.m. at Joshua Café, followed at 8 p.m. by an exchange between Joe Donahue from WAMC and novelist Abigail Thomas, an event held at the Kleinert / James Center for the Arts. Sunday morning there will be a literary breakfast at Joshua Café with guest speaker James Howard Kunstler from NPR. The festival will conclude Sunday afternoon with two panels: one on biography, and the other one on memoir. Memoir A Go-Go panel will be moderated by author Martha Frankel, the executive director of the festival. For more information, visit http://www.woodstockwriters.com/.
Corning Museum of Glass
Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, Steuben County, is inaugurating a new wing this weekend – a 100,000 square foot Contemporary Art + Design space designed by architect Thomas Phifer. The New York Times wrote about it here. The new wing, which includes a large contemporary glass art gallery, and a renovated historic glass factory ventilator building, will open to the public this Friday, March 20 at 9 a.m. There will be a ribbon cutting ceremony at 10 a.m. Also, hot glass demonstrations will be offered throughout the weekend. For more information, visit http://www.cmog.org/event/grand-opening-weekend-events.
National Museum of Dance
National Museum of Dance in Saratoga Springs is hosting 125 Years of Tango – A Walk through the History of the Dance, this Saturday, March 21 at 7 p.m. The evening will feature music, dance, and demonstrations. Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres will be served. For more information, visit http://www.dancemuseum.org/.
Arts Upstairs
Arts Upstairs gallery in Phoenicia, Ulster County is hosting an opening reception this Saturday, March 21 at 6 p.m. featuring a group show titled Spring on My Mind, and also a solo exhibit featuring artist Astrid Nordness. Nordness paints and works in clay. She incorporates various elements of nature in her work, and uses a wide color palette. For more information, visit http://www.artsupstairs.com/.
Spillian
Spillian mansion in Fleischmanns, Ulster County is hosting Stealing All Transmissions, an event co-produced in partnership with WIOX Radio Station in Roxbury, Saturday, March 21 at 6 p.m. The event includes a book launch – Stealing All Transmissions: A Secret History of the Clash by Randal Doane, Assistant Dean of Studies at Oberlin College; Doane will be delivering the keynote address. Also, a radio panel will tackle the role of radio in the digital age. Panelists include Meg Griffin from SiriusXM, Ida Hakkila from WDST Woodstock, Sonny Rock from WRIP Windham, Jezz Harkin from WIOX, and Brian Sickora, CEO of WSKG Media, among others. Joe Piasek, executive producer at WIOX, will be moderating. For more information, visit http://wioxradio.org/.
Have a fabulous weekend!
Art in the Catskills, published earlier this year, is an inventory of cultural assets in the Catskills, and it essentially serves as a travel guide for art and history lovers.
I wrote this book, because this is the kind of book I wish I was handed when I moved to the Catskills ten years ago. And, although some of the cultural projects that I discuss in this book were developed later – like for instance The Woodstock Writers Festival, which launched in 2010, and The Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice, which also launched in 2010, most are well-established, well-known historical landmarks. For instance, Thomas Cole’s Old Studio at Cedar Grove Mansion in Catskill was built in 1839; the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild was founded in 1902; the Maverick Concert Hall, the oldest chamber music hall in the country still in existence, opened in 1916; the Woodstock Playhouse opened in 1938; all these are national artistic and cultural landmarks.
People are used to come to the Catskills for its tremendous outdoor recreational opportunities, but what I’m saying with this book is that the Catskills is also an amazing cultural destination – look for instance at the Glimmerglass Opera Festival in Cooperstown – the festival will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year (it opened in 1975). Or Bard Music Festival, which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. And, right here close to us, there is Belleayre Music Festival that brought Ray Charles and Wynton Marsalis to the Catskills.
And there is art in all forms and styles. Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown displays works by famed landscape painters like Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand. The Emporium in High Falls houses documents about Cubist painter Marc Chagall, who lived in New York City in the 1940s, and maintained a studio in High Falls – Chagall painted in the Catskills from 1946 to 1948. So, there is a lot of art in the Catskills.
I knew quite a bit about the Catskills prior to writing this book, but during the research phase, I learned many new things:
- The National Museum of Dance in Saratoga Springs, founded in 1986 by Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney and his wife Marylou, is the only dance museum in the country, and one of the very few in the world. Its collections are extensive;
- Thomas Cole’s New Studio, which was built in 1846, and was demolished in the 1970s, is currently being re-built based on the original design model.
There is a lot going on in the Catskills, and I talk about all these in my book. A second edition is coming out early next year.
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Looking forward to talking more about Art in the Catskills!
© 2014 Simona David
