Update

This month saw many firsts for the Prattsville Art Center - the arrival of the first Artists in Residence to live in the Art Center’s main building; the opening of our first exhibition with electric lights; the first paycheck disbursement to our student interns, the beginning of our first filmmaking workshop, and our first partnership project with the Windham Arts Alliance. Artists in Prattsville this July include natives of Korea, Paris, Germany, Canada, the US, and Mexico, several of whom were included in the Center’s new exhibition, Into the Clove.

The gallery opening and residency took place amidst ongoing renovations to the building, and our first artists to arrive braved several hot summer days without showers. In return, they were rewarded with evening fireworks, barbecues, and afternoons of swimming in the Schoharie Creek, as well as new rural audiences for their work. The Board Chair of the Olana Foundation joined the opening after visiting the neighboring Zadock Pratt Museum, and was taken by a large scale photograph, The Last Mohican” by Nadia Verina Marcin, which comments on the landscapes of Thomas Cole.

Recent Wins

Wins this month include our co-presentation, with the Pratt Museum, and the Catskill Mountain Foundation, of a new work by the Bessie Award winning Brooklyn Dance Company, Third Rail, on the Prattsville Town Green – perhaps the first professional dance company to visit the Town in a century. The Green sits between the former Prattsville Academy (now the Town Hall) and the site of the Town’s former Opera House (now the Fire House). Construction funds for the Art Center are providing jobs for the local community, and training for town youth, who are learning new skills as they help with renovation, teaching, and administration of our new space. Artists in Residence are working side by side with teenagers and carpenters; as one said, “It is changing every day here.”

Insight/Reflection

As we build partnerships in the area, the interaction across generations has been an exceptionally vital aspect of the project. Watching an older photographer consult on the installation of his work with a Canadian artist and the Director of a nearby artists’ retreat, both 30 years his junior, I was struck by the mutual respect and easy camaraderie shared by artists of every age.