All Over Albany

Fields Sculpture Park at Omi 2017

"Arcs in Disorder" by Bernar Venet.

There are a bunch of places around the greater Capital Region that are worth a short weekend drive to check out -- because they're fun or interesting or just a different place to be, if only for a little while.

The Fields Sculpture Park at Omi -- in Ghent, in Columbia County -- is one of those places. And its summer exhibition opens this Saturday, May 27 with new sculptures from a handful of artists. There will also be new site-specific installations, performances, and special lunch vendors in the cafe there. Admission is free.

What is the Fields Sculpture Park? About blurbage:

Comprised of over sixty acres of rolling farmland, wetlands and wooded areas, The Fields Sculpture Park presents the works of internationally recognized contemporary and modern artists, offering the unique possibility to experience a wide range of large-scale works in a singular outdoor environment. Founded in 1998, The Fields offer nearly eighty works of art on view - with several pieces added or exchanged every year.

It's a beautiful spot and a fun walk. We also hear it's a good art activity for kids because 1) Whoa! Huge, sculptures! and 2) They can run around in the wide open spaces outside.

Earlier: Sculpture parks to explore

Olana and the moon

Check out this moon photo of Olana taken by Ken Bovat earlier this week and posted on his Facebook page. Unreal.

[via @Froebel]

The house with the view that's always changing

Now at Art Omi: A house that spins. Yep. That's a video clip of it above.

From the exhibit blurbage for ReActor:

ReActor is the newest work in an experimental, performative series of "social relationship architecture" designed and built by internationally renowned architect-artist duo Alex Schweder + Ward Shelley.

Located in Architecture Omi's Field 01, ReActor is a habitable sculpture, where Schweder + Shelley will live in full view of Omi's audience. The 44-foot by 8-foot structure rotates 360-degrees atop a 15-foot concrete column in response to its inhabitants' movements, exterior forces, and interior conditions, making visible the intimate relationship between architecture and its inhabitants.

This week T Magazine has excerpts from Schweder and Shelley's diary of living in the house for five days earlier this month.

There's another performance/habitation (?) September 24-25, and then a five-day performance October 6-10.

Spinning house or not, Art Omi and its Fields Sculpture Park in Ghent (in Columbia County) is a worth a visit sometime. Big sculpture works are set in a gently rolling landscape. It's beautiful and peaceful and weird (in a good way). And admission is free.

Touring Olana as a three dimensional artistic composition

Emily sent along this photo from one of the carriage paths as an example -- the lake, meadow, slope, trees, and house were all part of Church's design.

The Olana State Historic Site in Hudson -- the home and studio of Hudson River School painter Frederic Edwin Church -- has a new tour this season, and it highlights an aspect of the site that was new to us: That the area around the beautiful home is itself a designed landscape.

The guided electric vehicle tour follows roughly five miles of the carriage road system on the 250-acre site, surveying the various landscape elements that Church designed.

We heard about the new tour via Emily Lemieux*, who's been leading it. And we emailed her to find a more. Here's a clip from her response:

Frederic Church wasn't just a landscape painter, he was a landscape architect and the entire 250 acres of Olana is a designed landscape, a three dimensional artistic composition. It's like Disney Land for Art History fans.

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Sculpture parks to explore

You want the arts and the culture that come with a museum, but it's finally getting nice out. Who wants to be cooped up inside in the springtime?

The solution: sculpture parks. You get your arts and culture, you get your fresh air, and hey -- you might just get some exercise while you're at it, too.

Here are a bunch of sculpture parks within a day trip of the Capital Region...

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Spending a winter day in Columbia County

Columbia County is special. Its quiet rustic aura attracts people from places such as Albany and Manhattan for a retreat from urban life. (And it's close enough to escape for just a day.) A multitude of little towns are filled with culture, fun, warm drinks, and good food, just waiting for you to explore.

If you're in a hurry hop on I-90 east, but there are plenty of back roads if you want to take it slow.

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Film Columbia 2015

The annual FilmColumbia film fest returns October 19-25. And this year's festival has expanded to include screening venues in both Chatham and Hudson.

As usual, the festival slate includes a bunch of films that are already getting attention because of screenings at other festivals and/or they're eagerly awaited because of stars or directors involved.

A few of this year's selections that caught our eye are after the jump.

Tickets for the general public go on sale October 9. They're $12 for day films, $16 for evening films. There are also festival passes for all films ($225) and all films + events ($250).

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All correct, Martin Van Buren

The short video embedded above -- narrated by linguist Arika Okrent and illustrated by Sean O'Neill for Mental Floss -- details the "lexicographer-approved" version of the history of the term "OK." Which, as you might know, involves Kinderhook's favorite son, Martin Van Buren.

Earlier on AOA: Portraits of Martin Van Buren, in honor of his birthday

A family home in the country

Many of the previous Open House homes belong to fairly new owners -- people beginning their life in that home, or those who had spent a couple years making the home their own. Martha and her family have owned their Columbia County home for 14 years, a time during which the house was lovingly restored, her three children grew up, and now the family is beginning the process of letting go of this home and preparing for the next chapter.

Despite growing up in the Capital District, this is a part of Columbia County that I had never been to until about 10 years ago. It is breathtaking. The rolling hills, the open space, the vast sky -- it is a gorgeous part of our region. Martha's house is perched on a hill and has a splendid view of the surrounding countryside.

The story of Martha's family and their home is a look at the choices a family made about where to live at various points in their lives, the labor of love that home ownership involves, and the relationship between a home and the land it sits on.

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Talking about talking about movies

One of the events at the currently-in-progress Film Columbia that caught our eye is this panel on Saturday about film criticism -- and its lineup:

+ Moderator: Peter Biskind, author and Vanity Fair contributing editor

+ Owen Gleiberman, former head critic for Entertainment Weekly and current critic for bbc.com.

+ Eric Kohn, chief film critic and senior editor at Indiewire.

+ Wesley Morris, 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner and staff critic at Grantland. (That's Morris on the right.)

+ Alison Willmore, film critic for BuzzFeed and co-host of the podcast Filmspotting: SVU.

The panel discussion is Saturday, October 25 at 10 am at Tracy Memorial Village Hall in Chatham. Tickets are $15 and available online.

photo via Wesley Morris Twitter

Quick trip: Beebe Hill fire tower

Here's another quick trip that could be fun this time of year: Beebe Hill and its fire tower.

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Film Columbia 2014

Birdman, starring Michael Keaton, is on this year's slate.

Film Columbia -- the annual autumn film festival in Chatham -- returns October 22-26. As in years past, the festival slate includes a bunch of films that are already getting attention because of screenings at other festivals and/or they're eagerly awaited because of stars or directors involved.

A few of this year's selections that caught our eye are after the the jump.

Tickets for the festival go on sale October 4 online, and October 3 in person . Individual screenings are $12 (day) and $16 (evening). An all-festival pass (screenings + events) is $250 / an all-screenings pass is $225.

Many of the screenings sell out, so if you'd like to attend, it's probably better to buy earlier rather than later.

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Behold! New Lebanon

The Columbia County town of New Lebanon -- it's just across the border with Rensselaer County -- is attempting to turn itself into "the nation's first living museum of contemporary rural American life" this fall. So what does that mean? Blurbage for Behold! New Lebanon:

We invite you to experience the joy of living seasonally and to fully engage with rural living. Have you wondered how volunteers fight fires? Come meet our firefighters in the firehouse. Have you ever heard of a heritage breed of cattle? We'll introduce you. Have you ever wondered if you could survive by eating what you find in the forest? We'll show you how. Want to make our New Lebanon Slab Pie? No problem. Wish you could give your grandchild a toy to cherish forever? We'll teach you how to make one. Curious about what goes on behind the scenes of a car racing track? We'll take you there and introduce you to our drivers. Do you wonder who lives in small towns and how we spend our time? We'll tell you. And along the way, we'll invite you to sing with us, dance with us, eat with us, learn with us, read with us, and chat with us.

Today, taking our cue from our forebears, the citizens of New Lebanon are again pioneering a new idea. Behold! New Lebanon is building the nation's first living museum of contemporary rural American life. Honoring the techniques and know how of generations past, we are updating them to forge a sustainable future ... You may have visited historic museums where costumed docents play characters from yesteryear and demonstrate skills of times long since past. But during "Behold! NewLebanon," we will introduce you to the way we live and work today and offer you an opportunity to learn, appreciate, and try our way of life.

Here's a recent NYT article about project, which includes some backstory -- the idea is an effort to draw tourists to the town, which as struggled for economic development.

The town-as-living-museum project will be running three more weekends this fall. Tickets start at $25 for a day.

photo: Uli Rose

The School

Still looks like a school from the outside.

How about this: A NYC-based gallerist has turned a 30,000 square foot former elementary school in Kinderhook into a gallery (yes, that Kinderhook). Its name: The School. (Because of course it is.)

From a NYT T Magazine recap of the opening (with slideshow) this past weekend of Jack Shainman Gallery's The School:

The last time artwork adorned the walls of the Martin Van Buren school in Kinderhook, N.Y., it had been commissioned at the request of elementary school teachers. On Saturday, however, both new and retrospective pieces by the artist Nick Cave were installed throughout the newly converted 30,000-square-foot building, while dancers costumed in Cave's idiosyncratic Soundsuits performed outside for a crowd of art-world cognoscenti and local residents. ...

Joining Dia Beacon, Storm King, the much-hyped forthcoming Marina Abramovic Institute and other new galleries that recently cropped up in the area, the reworked 1929 Federal Revival building and its five-acre property -- situated near the main square of the quaint, picturesque village -- offer yet another lure for art seekers heading north from the city.

Or, as Vogue would like you to know: "In case you hadn't heard, upstate New York is the art world's latest hotspot." (There's also video from the opening at that link.)

The School will be open to the public on Saturdays from 11 am-5 pm starting May 31, according to the gallery's website.

Also: The new season at the Art Omi's Fields Sculpture Park in nearby Ghent opens June 14.

(Thanks, Jamie)

photo via Jack Shainman Gallery FB

Suzanne and Erik's North Chatham homestead

Suzanne and Erik's home story is one of transitioning from urban to rural, from a large house to a smaller one, from a life of convenience to a life of homesteading.

A year ago, the couple and their two young boys moved from their large home near Schenectady's Central Park to a smaller home on several acres in the northern Columbia County countryside.

I had a chance to visit with the family -- as well as their 19 chickens and 4 alpacas -- and hear about what it's meant for them to live in a rural part of the Capital Region, where their land is as important to them as their home itself. The family brings a unique perspective, with Suzanne's background as a biologist and Erik's background in engineering. They take a passionate, thoughtful, and intentional approach to their home and the land surrounding it.

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It's history. It's theater. It's film. It's all three.

This Sunday, actor Stephen Lang -- you know, from Avatar -- will be at the Crandell Theater in Chatham for a one-man show and film about the Battle of Gettysburg, called The Wheatfield. Blurbage:

"The Wheatfield" is a swiftly moving and vastly entertaining 70 minutes of live theatre, film, music, and anecdotal history commemorating the most significant three days of the Civil War. It was conceived and constructed by renowned actor/playwright Stephen Lang (Avatar), a Kinderhook resident, and was originally performed last summer as part of the Gettysburg Foundation's "Salute to the States."

The afternoon program begins with Lang performing his solo piece "The Wheatfield," in which he portrays Union officer James Jackson Purman, a Lieutenant who was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism during the Battle of Gettysburg. In this live, testimonial theatre piece it is 50 years after the war and Purman is attending a gathering of former veterans where he vividly recalls the fateful encounters that took place on July 2nd and 3rd, 1863. Stephen Lang notes that "Purnam was wounded aiding a comrade and subsequently saved by a Confederate soldier. This is the story Gettysburg and indeed the entire war, through the experiences of one man."

Lang's live performance is followed by a short film, also called "The Wheatfield," that he wrote and in which he performs.

The program will be hosted by historian Harold Holzer. It starts at 4 pm on Sunday, December 15. Tickets at the door are $15 / $10 students.

In conversation: Zak Pelaccio and Ruth Reichl

Pelaccio and Reichl

Could be interesting: Chef Zak Pelaccio -- from Food & Game in Hudson -- will be at the Spencertown Academy Arts Center this Saturday for a conversation with food writer Ruth Reichl. The topic: "Beyond Local: Taking Local Food to a New Level." Admission is $20 and "reservations strongly advised."

Pelaccio gained fame in NYC food circles for restaurants such as Fatty 'Cue and Fatty Crab, and he popped up in media such as the Food Network. He and his wife, Jori Jayne Emde, now live in Columbia County and this past summer they opened Fish & Game in Hudson -- the menu for which is very focused on locally-sourced products. It has gotten very positive reviews.

Ruth Reichl is, of course, the former editor of Gourmet Magazine. And before that, she was the restaurant critic for the New York Times. She's one of the nation's most famous food writers.

The event at the Spencertown Academy is at 4 pm on Saturday, December 14. A reception follows, but if we were in Columbia County around that time, we'd head to head to Hudson (or nearby) to get dinner at one of the many restaurants.

[via I Love Hudson]

photos via Zakary Pelaccia and Ruth Reichl websites

Apple pie from Green Acres Farm

Alas, there is not yet an <aroma> tag for the web.

I know what you're thinking: "Apple pie? From a farm near Hudson?"

Apple pie is almost always at least good. And the best is inevitably made by your grandmother.

So why am I bothering?

Because I've come across a pie that is excellent in all regards. Every individual element -- the crust, the fruit, the filling -- is worth raving about.

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Film Columbia 2013

Film Columbia -- the annual autumn film festival in Chatham -- returns October 22-27. As we've come to expect, the festival slate includes a bunch of films that are already getting attention because of screenings at other festivals and/or they're eagerly awaited because of stars or directors involved.

A few of this year's selections that caught our eye are after the the jump.

Tickets for the festival go on sale October 4. Individual screenings are $10 (day) and $15 (evening). An all-festival pass is $199. Many of the screenings sell out, so if you'd like to attend, it's probably better to buy earlier rather than later.

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Edgar Wright at The Crandell

Check it out: director Edgar Wright will be at The Crandell in Chatham this Sunday for a screening of his new movie The World's End. He'll introduce the movie and hold a Q&A afterward. The screening's at 4 pm and tickets are just $7.

The World's End is the third movie in Wright's "Cornetto trilogy" of comedies, which also includes Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. It stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (of course), along with Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, and Rosamund Pike. It's gotten very good reviews.

Wright also directed the adaptation of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, and going way back, the British sitcom Spaced.

The Crandell screening is at 4 pm Sunday. And tickets are just $7.

Film Columbia: You might be thinking, "Shouldn't the slate for this year's Film Columbia be out soon?" The answer is yes, yes it should. Keep an eye out for next week.

Alligator on the loose

Not the typical lost pet story -- from a State Police press release:

State Police in New Lebanon are asking for the public's assistance in locating a missing alligator named Kobe. Kobe absconded from his cage last night in the Cemetery Road area of New Lebanon. Kobe's owner states he was last seen wearing a blue collar. If you see Kobe, please contact the State Police at (845) 677-7300. For safety reasons, do not approach Kobe.

New Lebanon is in northern Columbia County near the Rensselaer County line.

Apparently Kobe -- that's him in the pic -- is a 3.5-foot alligator from Rhonda's Reptiles, a reptile rescue/party rental ("Reptiles for Parties and Events"). The owner, Rhonda Leavitt, tells the TU she does "not consider [Kobe] to be a dangerous animal," and that he'll probably run away from people. [CBS6] [YNN] [TU]

Noted.

photo via NY State Police

Virtually on display at Art Omi

This could be kind of interesting: Art Omi in Ghent is hosting augmented reality tours of its Fields sculpture park. From the blurbage for Augmented Reality: Peeling Layers of Space Out of Thin Air:

This 40 minute tour allows viewers to enter a virtual world and see pieces created by 8 architects for Architecture Omi. Using an app installed on your smartphone, these works are viewable in real time as spatial projections onto the landscape - marking a further integration of novel technology in our everyday experience. What we experience here is not fully virtual; what we see on our phone is what we see around us, eerily enhanced by the overlay of digital content.

*This exhibition is only viewable through an iPhone, iPad, or Android. An iPad is provided for shared viewing.

The tours start at dusk (they're aiming for 5:30 pm in August). They're free and open to the public. (Though, as it mentions, you'll need one of those mobile devices -- and it looks you'll need the Layar app, as well.)

It appears Omi has done this before, in 2011. A video clip of the exhibit (installation?) is after the jump.

Augmented reality is one of those things that gets hyped now and then -- and seems like it maybe, could be cool and useful eventually -- but often falls flat. It'd be interesting to see how it plays out in this setting.

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Helsinki Hudson

The owners of Helsinki Hudson have a goal: to bring the community of Hudson together through food and music. And after only two and a half years, they say they're pretty happy with their progress.

The club moved to Hudson about two years ago after 15 years in Great Barrington. Owners Deborah McDowell and Marc Schafler say they wanted a bigger space that they could own themselves, and a spot closer to Shafler's home in Columbia County.

"But we also really wanted to be an integral part of the change in Hudson and help in their renewal," says McDowell.

"Let me tell you something," Schafler, "Hudson is happening."

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Film Columbia 2012

Many of the screenings are at the Crandell.

Film Columbia -- the annual film festival in Chatham -- is October 17-21 this year. And the schedule is now out. As in years past, it includes upcoming films that you've probably heard about -- or will hear about -- as well as panels, discussions, and parties.

A few of the selections that caught our eye are after the jump.

Tickets go on sale to the general public this Sunday (September 30). The screenings often sell out.

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A home where you don't have to turn on the heat

The Capital Region's first Certified Passive home.

Writer Susan Guthridge-Gould and her husband, photographer Chris Gould are a little passive aggressive.

Which is to say they are aggressive about passive. Their passive home.

The Columbia County couple is building one of the first certified passive dwellings in the region. They're keeping a record of the process on their blog, Newhudsonvalley.com.

What is a passive house?

Lets start with what it's not. It's not to be confused with a solar house - or any other practice of green-construction that uses a complex equation of sustainability and technology to reduce its carbon footprint.

A passive house has only to meet two main requirements:

+ Use 90 percent less energy than a conventional home

+ Achieve that goal through its design and construction rather than mechanical technology.

In other words the house has to rely on its placement in the environment and an air-tight construction to keep it warm in winter and cool in summer.

So... does it work?

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