It’s difficult to convey the scope of the Storm King Art Center. There is simply so much there and from different areas of the grounds you see the sculpures in different ways in relation to the landscape around them. I snapped quite a few pictures while I was there, and posted a bunch of them from my phone on Instagram and Facebook, but I thought a larger photo-collage would better give a sense of what the place is like.
I didn’t make any attempt to label the photos. Sculpture lovers will easily identify some of the artists. When I visited Storm King, I was among the first visitors of the day, and as I drove up to the Museum Hill parking area, I was somewhat overwhelmed. I went into the indoor museum first and talked to some of the staff there, trying to figure out a way to approach the grounds. As I started walking the grounds, using the map to help get oriented, I began to get a feel for the different areas.
I managed to cover most of the grounds on my visit. At one point, after walking for hours, I was back up on Museum Hill and realized I had missed a couple major works at a far corner of the grounds. Back down the hill I went and it was worth the additional walk. When I had arrived in the morning, I laughed at the elevator which takes visitors up to Museum Hill from the meadows below, but I was dog-tired (and sweaty….it was very warm and humid) by the time I got back there and welcomed the lift up.
There is nothing like an Old Time music festival. It’s a much different thing than most music festivals, which are all about watching performances by a line-up of acts doing their thing. I know to some of my Toronto friends, Old Time music is some kind of obscure mystery. They have no idea there is a huge and focused community around it. There are at least a couple people I know who, aware I play banjo, just assume I play Bluegrass. Oh no, no, no no. I’ve never tried playing that Scruggs-style banjo and really have no interest in it at all. I returned last evening from the Rockbridge Mountain Music and Dance Festival, after a very long drive in the rain. This seems like a good time to write about my experience and what it’s all about.
Sure, at Rockbridge there were a couple mini-concerts by the bands playing the square dances (and yes they were great bands, the Earl White Stringband and the Crooked Road Ramblers), and sure there were workshops delivered by fantastic players like Marsha Todd and Kilby Spencer, but the heart of an Old Time music festival is the jamming at the campsites.
When a jam becomes an event
This jam was cooking
A small morning jam at Dick & Lisa’s place
It was the jamming that drew me to Rockbridge. I’ve been mostly a front porch player and I know I need to get out and play with others way more often. At a festival like Rockbridge there are many, many strong players. Many are multi-instrumentalists. Some have been playing for 20, 30, even 40 years and some of these folks have been playing with one another in their communities and at festivals for many years. Camped all around me were players who were as good as anyone playing this music. I was very fortunate to make friends, for instance, with a really powerful fiddler (and fabulous person) named Kathleen O’Connell, who was camped next door to me. She told me she’s one of the two Katies in a band called Katie and the Bubbatones. Of course I looked them up on the YouTube cause everything is on the YouTube. Here’s they are playing Hangman’s Reel at the Laurel Bloomery Fiddler’s Convention a few years ago….
Some jams are pretty open and the players don’t mind others sitting in, and some jams will just grow and grow. I saw a couple jams at Rockbridge in which there were 7 or 8 fiddlers, 3 or 4 guitars, a couple bases, banjos galore, and even stray mandolins, dulcimers and what-have-you. Other jams are clearly way more private. I found that I made friends in the area of the festival grounds I was camped in – by the river – and was pretty much welcome in most of the jams going on around there (yes, even after they heard me play – ha ha).
There’s some protocol around a festival jam. Generally, one of the fiddlers is in charge, calls the tune, and decides how long to play it. In some friendly jams though, other players can suggest tunes. For example, in one D-jam I was in, we were chit-chatting between tunes and I guess I had a hankering to play some Arkansas Traveler, so I started noodling it on the banjo. Our fiddle player looked at me and said in his gruffest voice, what’s that? Arkansas Traveler. Can’t he travel any faster than that? So I started in as fast as my stubby fingers would take me. The fiddle jumped in, the guitar was right on it, and off we went. I’d never played it anything like that fast. What fun!
Occasionally a tune at an old time jam will be short, but mostly they go on for a while, and once in a while they go on for long while. The fiddler who starts the tune is responsible for stopping it and there are two ways to do that. One way is by calling out, ONE MORE TIME, after which everybody plays the tune one full time then finishes together. The other way is to raise one leg as a signal to finish up. In one jam they had another interesting protocol. I don’t know if this is common or just among this group of players, who happen to know one another well. The fiddler might raise his or her leg to stop the jam. Then another player vetoes that, by making a V-shape with both feet. That player is then responsible for ending the tune. The first time I saw that happen, I saw the V-shape signal but I didn’t know what it meant and I was confused when everyone kept on playing.
When a tune begins, you know what key it’s going to be in because generally several tunes or even an entire jam will be in a single key. Clawhammer players are typically tuned in a particular way for playing in different keys and fiddle players will often play in cross tuning for “A” tunes, for instance. Often fiddle players will have two fiddles at a jam, one in standard tuning and one in cross tuning. Sometimes the player who starts the tune will call the name of the tune, but often a fiddler will do a one-potato-two-potato and just get right down to business.
Everybody jumps in fairly quickly and the tune is played over and over and over again. All the players react to one another without consciously thinking about it, and the group establishes a nice big groove. In the best jams, as everyone gets deeper into the groove, the various players all become a single unit. It’s a magical, remarkable thing to be part of that. A banjo player I admire suggested to me a couple years ago that when you get deep in the groove it opens up something in your playing and you find yourself contributing to the jam in ways you didn’t know you could. I’ve totally experienced that. I’ve felt almost outside myself (ecstatic?), listening and playing – and thinking, how the hell am I doing this? After I’ve been in a really good jam, I just want to do it again and again.
I do much better in smaller jams than bigger ones. The ones I like best have perhaps 2 fiddles, a banjo player or even 2, and a couple guitars. A stand-up bass player is a great addition and the addition of someone on banjo-uke or mandolin or mountain dulcimer or even harmonica can add texture. The fiddle lays out the high melody and the guitar puts down the changes. I try to concentrate on one fiddle and one guitar as I try to find the tune. Sometimes in big jams I find it difficult to get in the groove, find the melody and really contribute well. I sat in on one really big jam the other night and just couldn’t get my head into it and soon stopped playing and just listened for a while.
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There is every kind of camping set-up you can imagine at an old time festival. Some people sleep in their cars. There are lots of tents and a huge array of campers and vans, from old beat-up teardrop campers to giant fancy-pants Airstream units. Many people have “easy-ups” or canopy structures with tarp walls to make outdoor rooms. These can provide shade and protection from rain and at times from cold too.
the hippy van
outdoor rooms
across the way from my camp
getting fancy
I really learned the importance of these structures at Rockbridge. I was sitting down in the camp next door with two of my new friends, Kathleen and Bill the other afternoon. I think we were about to play some Julianna Johnson, when all of a sudden a thunderstorm came roaring in. The wind nearly knocked down Kathleen’s table. She jumped up and starting reinforcing the tarps. The rain started with a vengeance. The three of us were trying to keep the shelter together when we realized water was pooling on the ground underfoot. We scrambled to get our instruments in their cases and get them up off the ground. It was a crazy-powerful storm. After the storm, I was happy to see my tent and flimsy screened in shelter were still in place. A couple people weren’t so lucky.
Later that night, a slow steady rain began. It rained all night. By some miracle my tent kept me totally dry. At one point in the night I put my hand on the floor of the tent and could feel pooled-up water underneath the tent. I could hardly believe none of it found its way inside. It was pretty soggy striking camp yesterday morning. Dick and Lisa across the way made sure I had lots of coffee before my long drive back to Canada. As I drove away from Buena Vista Virginia, the steady rain continued and it rained and it rained and it rained and it rained some more until I got close to the Peace Bridge in Buffalo. What a grueling drive. It should have taken me around 10 hours but I did it in 12 and a half. I tried to drive at a slower pace than I normally would for safety because of the rain, but I found there were some transport drivers with little patience for my prudence. These drivers rode my tail, making me very nervous. At one point in Pennsylvania I pulled into a rest area and closed my eyes for 15 minutes, then stopped in the next town for a jumbo coffee. One or the other of these things, or maybe both, gave me a burst of new energy for second half of my drive.
I had a fabulous time at Rockbridge, but I’m happy to be back home with my honey and the dogs and cats. My wet camping stuff is still sitting out in the car, and it’s a problem because the rain I drove through has now found its way up to Toronto, so it will be difficult to dry everything out. For now, I’ll put it in the shed out back until we we a dry day, then I’ll spread everything out and get it well dried before packing everything up.
I visited Dia:Beacon in the Hudson Valley today, just a few miles away from Storm King, which I visited yesterday. Dia has been in this huge old Nabisco factory building since 2003.
I loved seeing the huge collection of John Chamberlain’s work.
Louise Lawler had an outdoor audio piece which was just wonderful. She created bird calls from the names of famous male artists. It had me laughing out loud.
I saw Blinky Palermo’s work for the first time.
Michael Heizer actually excavated 20 foot deep pits in the building for a work which was 125 feet long.
There was so much to see. Massive Richard Serra’s; Dan Flavin light works; Sol Lewitt wall drawings…
Walter De Maria; Lawrence Weiner; Dorthea Rockburne…
Fred Sandback; On Kawara; Louise Bourgeois….
And so much more. What a fantastic place! As a bonus their cafe serves excellent lunches. As well Beacon is a lovely town with a main street well worth exploring.
I spent yesterday wandering through Storm King, a 500 acre sculpture park in the Hudson Valley, boasting one of the best collections of outdoor scuptures anywhere.
It includes a spectacular collection of Mark Di Suvero’s massive steel constructions (one of them is pictured here), and so much more. There are forest trails and meadows and sculpture everywhere, some of it huge in scale, along with many more intimate works. There is also an excellent indoor museum, as well as a lunch spot on the grounds.
It’s an opportunity to see the work really shine in a landscape setting. I walked the grounds on a humid, hot and cloudy day, until I was exhausted. I’d love to visit this place again in a different season. There is enough spectacular work to see to sustain art lovers over several visits.
I like roadtrips. I’m no longer so interested in the crazy and grueling drive to Cody Wyoming in 36 hours kind of roadtrips I used to do with my buddy East Texas Red, back when we were pretty serious about chasing trout with a fly rod. These days I’m just not in so much of a hurry. I take my time, make plenty of stops and enjoy the trip as much as the destination.
Next week I’ll be on my own on the road to indulge in two of my top interests, art and music. The first destination will be the Hudson Valley in New York State to visit the Storm King Art Center and the Dia Art Foundation: Beacon. Storm King is an open-air museum, a 500-acre sculpture park with an amazing collection of large-scale sculpture in the landscape. Dia’s collection focuses on the work of artists who came to prominence in the 60s and 70s, including site-specific and long-term exhibitions.
When I leave the Hudson Valley, I’ll be heading south to Virginia for the Rockbridge Mountain Music and Dance Festival. There will be square dancing and min-concerts by the Earl White Stringband and the Crooked Road Ramblers as well as banjo, fiddle and flat-footing workshops. The real joy of festivals like this though, is jamming at the campsites. I attended this festival last year, made some friends and played lots of music. There are a number of old time music festivals each summer, mostly in Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina and some people do the whole circuit. Some of the people I met last year knew one another well because they’ve been going to many of the festivals over a period of many years. I was told that Rockbridge was a relatively small, laid-back festival – perfect for me.
Last year, people at Rockbridge were very friendly and inviting and made me feel very comfortable. There were some really great players there. In fact, it seemed as if most of the players were far more accomplished than me.
This morning I went through my camping gear to make sure everything was in good order. I’ve added a screened shelter to my gear this year, just in case it rains. As well as cooking in the campsites, there will also be some quality food trucks at the festival. Last year you could get a variety of food, and it was all pretty tasty. The town of Buena Vista is just across the river from the festival, so going into town for dinner is also an option.
I can’t thank Tuffy P enough for looking after the house and the menagerie on her own while I’m enjoying my solo roadtrip. I’ll be able to make it up to her later in the month – she’s going to fly over to England for a wedding, and plans a short trip to France while she’s in the neighbourhood, to visit Paris and Monet’s garden in Giverny.
This morning, before the full force of today’s heat and humidity set in, I went for a walk in a local Toronto woods. After all the rain we’ve been having lately, there were many mushrooms in the forest, some I was familiar with, others not.
Destroying Angel
There were quite a few mushrooms in the Amanita group in the woods. These mushrooms start in the form of an egg. As they grow, the egg breaks, leaving a ring and a volva wrapping around the base of the mushrooms. This group of mushrooms contain some of the deadliest mushrooms around, including the scarily named Destroying Angels – white gilled mushrooms with a ring, a volva and white “free” gills, which are not attached to the stalk. Although there are some edible Amanitas, I avoid the whole group, just to err on the side of safety.
Giant puffballs
This has been a banner season for giant puffballs, Calvatia gigantea. These are excellent edibles when immature, as long as the flesh is white. Discard once the flesh turns yellow then brown. I must have spotted 15 of these in various sizes this morning. I brought some smaller ones home for dinner, and left the others either to spore out or for others to enjoy.
Turkey tail
Turkey tail mushrooms, Tremetes versicolor. Many people believe a chemical in these mushrooms, Polysaccharide-K is beneficial in cancer treatment, although I have read that clinical trials have been inconclusive. I came across two logs today with turkey tail.
Slime mold
When I started learning about mushrooms, I understood that slime molds (or moulds) were fungi. I’ve read though that they are no longer considers part of that “kingdom”. However you want to group them, they’re plenty strange and interesting and this morning I saw this yellow-orange variety in a number of areas of the woods.
Here at 27th Street, we have quite a few trees, most of which were planted at some point far and away before we arrived on the scene. The notable exceptions are our Shishigashira Japanese Maple up front and the “Cherokee Brave” flowering dogwood we planted out back earlier this season. Now we’ve added one more. Tuffy P came home from Whistling Gardens the other day with a Korean Pine in the back of the car.
The Korean Pine, or Pinus koraiensis is a nut bearing pine tree (yes pine nuts!) native to eastern Asia. In its native habitat it can reach heights of 30 metres tall, but cultivated specimens are likely to grow to only half that height. They have long needles in bundles of 5. These trees are well-adapted to cold winter, do well in urban settings and tolerate some shade.
Apparently, our Korean Pine will be slow-growing for its first few years then will start to seriously spurt up.
Since our front yard veggie gardens have done so splendidly well, I’ve removed the old raised beds out back. They were fine for spring lettuce and a few other things, but marginal for anything which needs a lot of sun. Before the raised beds went in, we had a dying apple tree back there which we removed. The old stump from the apple has mostly rotted away now and several years later, the Korean Pine will be its replacement.
I’m not sure how, in close to 58 years on the planet, I failed to read any of Patricia Highsmith’s novels. Recently we watched the Wim Wenders film, The American Friend, based on Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game, and we loved it. Soon after, we watched the second film based on the same book, (also titled Ripley’s Game) and directed by Liliana Cavani. Here was two very different Tom Ripleys, played by Dennis Hopper in the earlier film and John Malkovich in the second. What a fascinating character.
There is an interview with Wim Wenders on our DVD copy of The American Friend and in it he speaks of his admiration for Highsmith’s work, and his attempts to option one of her novels for a film. It was after watching this interview I thought I ought to read Highsmith’s novels.
She has written quite a number of novels, including Strangers on a Train, the basis for the Hitchcock film of the same name. Should I go back to her early work and start there? I considered that but instead decided to first follow the Tom Ripley character and first read the 5 novels known collectively as The Ripliad: The Talented Mr. Ripley; Ripley Under Ground; Ripley’s Game; The Boy who Followed Ripley; and Ripley Under Water. These 5 novels were published over a considerable span of time, from 1955 to 1991.
I gobbled up The Talented Mr. Ripley. I think part of the strength of this novel is that we find ourselves liking the anti-hero Ripley while at the same time realizing he is a cold-blooded, twisted murderer. One of the ways Highsmith achieved this is taking her time before killing off Ripley’s first victim. By the time he does the deed, we’re already invested in the character.
It’s chilling to read how Ripley imagines the possibility of murdering his first victim, then knowing he was going to do it, then carrying out the deed swiftly and violently. He doesn’t exactly like murder. In fact he seems to have some distaste for it, and only kills again because he sees it necessary in order to protect himself. We learn how perfectly capable he is of making a split-second decision to take a human life.
Tom Ripley may have no morals and no conscience but he is certainly subject to fear – fear of getting caught, something which he feels is inevitable in parts of The Talented Mr. Ripley. He imagines police waiting for him, taking him away.
The Talented Mr. Ripley is a compelling psychological page-turner based on a strangely compelling murderous sociopath of a character. I’m looking forward to digging into Ripley Under Ground.
Tuffy P writing this post – I spent the day at Whistling Gardens yesterday with Jennifer and Garth, and had the best time. Summertime in the garden doesn’t get much better than spending a day with friends at Whistling Gardens. This garden is spectacular! It now boasts North America’s largest peony collection, with over 1,000 varieties. It was the conifer garden that stole my heart. Go and visit- see over 2,300 species of conifers. As their site notes – ‘many specimens are the only ones in the world’. I left with a new Korean pine tree for our front garden, purchased from their garden centre – a Pinus Koraiensis (Korean Pine) that we will plant this weekend. Enjoy the photos and venture over to their site. Plan a full day visit there in the spring to see the peonies!
Whistling Gardens Augus vista
Jennifer and Garth
Cones and Flocks
August blooms at Whistling Gardens
Whistling Gardens sky
Spectacular Zinfin Doll Hydrangea
Jennifer and Tuffy P
Bee bonanza
Pinus Strobus Tiny Curls pine tree
Close up view of Pinus Strobus at Whistling Gardens Aug 2018
27th Street 