Tag: Artist

Framing Rosslyn

No, it’s not my birthday. Yes, I realize that the image accompanying this post might be confusing. Sorry. Framing Rosslyn recollects a previous post celebrating friend and artist Catherine Seidenberg while marking a rewarding step forward toward furnishing and decorating Rosslyn’s icehouse.

Framing Rosslyn (Artwork: Catherine Seidenberg; Photo: Geo Davis)

As icehouse rehab winds toward the finish line, I’ve been able to begin shifting from construction mode to decorating mode, finally choosing some of the artwork and artifacts that will be joining me in the icehouse soon. Eith the help of my bride and Nico Sardet at Furchgott Sourdiffe Gallery in Shelburne I’ve started to finalize some new framing including this handsome birthday gift from Catherine back in 2016. This remarkable rendering will make its next appearance once framing is complete and it’s hanging in the soon-to-be completely rehabilitated icehouse. Mark. My. Words. (Especially “soon”!)

Custom framing at Furchgott Sourdiffe Gallery means experienced service and attention to detail… [and] extensive design services combined with expert craftsmanship… Archival materials and techniques are used to guarantee preservation of your artwork. (Source: Furchgott Sourdiffe Gallery )

The *Other* Framing

Although the impetus for this post is gratitude for a gift from Catherine and gratitude to Susan and Nico for helping me consider the most suitable frames for the icehouse artwork, I’m also drawn the idea of framing a home. Not just a painting of a home, but the property itself.

I’ve reflected elsewhere on the ways that windows and doors frame exterior views, and even the way that the porosity within a building can frame elements of the interior environment. Perhaps I’m a little obsessive with the ways that hearts become a hole. And the ways that we experience those parts and that whole…

Some years ago when we developed our plans for an historically inspired fence and when we then presented the proposal to the Essex planning board, I tried to convey this notion of framing. The fence, running between the north and south property lines, parallel to the sidewalk and road, and parallel to Lake Champlain, helped define and delineate Rosslyn. Not as a home, but as a property. A collection of four buildings that are related to one another. A cohesive and integrated tableau writ large.

The desire to explore the interrelatedness of these historic buildings through stonewalls and landscaping has been one of the most enjoyable endeavors over the last seventeen years. A slow motion sculpting of Rosslyn’s almost 70 acres into an aesthetically and functionally appealing program, discrete elements coalescing into a logical and well integrated experience. The relationships between the discreet parts — in some cases fixed in brick and mortar, in other cases evolving gradually with experimentation, maturation of flora, and the patina-ing and aging of the built environment — continue to meld with revision and the passage of time. Editing and reevaluating help distill the successful initiatives from this best abandoned. And little by little relationships develop, an affinity emerges. A wholeness, set apart from surroundings. Or so I conceive as, little by little, we strive to frame Rosslyn…

July 3, 2023
Catherine Seidenberg: Artist

Rosslyn by Catherine Seidenberg

I wrap my digital arms around friend, neighbor, artist, and gardener extraordinaire Catherine Seidenberg for this memorable birthday gift. Thank you!

Catherine’s whimsical black and white watercolor of Rosslyn’s front facade offers a chance to reflect on the past decade Susan and I have spent reinvigorating this quirky property and an invitation to daydream about its future. The matched tree hydrangeas are a nod to a pair of similar (though far older varieties) hydrangeas that flaked the entrance columns before we excavated the front of the house. The older plants were transplanted with an excavator and now thrive astride a gate in the garden behind the carriage barn. The view to the right of the house, beyond the stone wall, reminds me of photographs of Rosslyn in the 1800s when the rolling hills beyond the carriage barn and ice house were far more open than today, a sea of apple orchards and green pastures dotted with grazing sheep.

[Sometimes a post is born, neglected, orphaned, left unpublished in blog purgatory. Sadly this is one such case, despite the fact that I’ve enjoyed this painting daily from its perch above the fireplace in my study. The following update reminded me that Catherine’s painting was never properly celebrated, so I conjoin the two newsworthy items here to showcase the multidisciplinary creativity of artist Catherine Seidenberg.]

Craigardan Artist-in-Residence, Catherine Seidenberg

After two years assisting with Rosslyn’s vegetable and flower gardens Catherine moved on to new challenges. She notified us this past spring that she was returning to ceramics, and would be spending much of this year in Keene, NY as the Craigardan artist-in-residence.

Craigardan Harvest Plate Resident, Catherine Seidenberg (Source: craigardan.org)

HARVEST PLATE RESIDENCY For ceramic artists who wish to participate in Craigardan’s delicious celebration of the farm, the food, and the plate. 9-month Winter residency. The 2017 Harvest Plate Resident: Catherine Seidenberg (Source: Craigardan)

Craigardan Harvest Plate Resident, Catherine Seidenberg (Source: craigardan.org)

If you’re in the Adirondacks (or near enough to swing through Keene, NY) I encourage you to meet Catherine in mid-September.

Slide Talk: a conversation with harvest plate resident, Catherine Seidenberg (Friday, September 15, 2017, 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM) Meet artist-in-residence Catherine Seidenberg, view her ceramic work and learn about her beautiful processes. Catherine is our summer Harvest Plate Resident, crafting all of the tableware for the fall benefit event, Dinner in the Field. (Source: Craigardan)

Susan and I are looking forward to the fall benefit!

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July 31, 2017
Mary Wade’s Rosslyn Art

Rosslyn, Essex on Lake Champlain (Painted by Mary Wade)

My bride refers to herself as “Mama” to our Labrador Retriever, Griffin. It’s always struck me as a bit goofy, preferring, I suppose, to think of myself as my dog’s master. Though anyone familiar with our little family of three would hastily remind me that I might have that backwards, as Griffin clearly rules the proverbial Rosslyn roost.

I kid Susan that her childfree stance belies latent maternal instincts which she channels into her canine progeny. (N.B. While you might initially balk at this, detecting an underhanded jab, you can rest assured that Susan is quite comfortable with — even proud of — her “Dog Mama” status. And any implication that I’m married to a metaphorical dog, well, let me just suggest that the quick glimpse of my dazzling damsel in the video below will handily refute any concerns. After eleven years she still knocks my socks off!)

So where were we?

Mother’s Day.

Despite endlessly kidding Susan for mothering Griffin (Perhaps over-mothering?), I actually find it endearing. And our almond-eyed-butterscotch-furred best friend is thoroughly content with the arrangement.

“Hello, my love bug. Mama missed you,” Susan greets Griffin when he races up to meet her at the end of the day. His tail wags excitedly and he stretches his head upward, offering a nice slobbery kiss. “How did Mama get such a drooly boy?” she asks playfully as she wipes off her nose and cheek.

This year, I decided it was time to accept my bride’s dog mother instinct. No, I decided it was time to embrace it with a surprise gift or two. And the perfect gift? A symbol of our family, our home.

Rosslyn’s boathouse (Artwork by Mary Wade)

Each winter Essex residents celebrate the holidays early during a weekend-long event called Christmas in Essex. It was this tradition which connected me to Mary Wade, a folk artist who lives in Willsboro but runs a seasonal gallery in Essex each summer. She creates painted wooden models, silhouettes, and paintings of historic buildings in Essex that are collected by her fans all around the world.

Although I’d visited her shop in the past, it wasn’t until last December (when Mrs. Wade was offering her artwork for sale during the Christmas in Essex event) that we discussed her Rosslyn inspired artwork. I spotted a painting of Rosslyn’s boathouse adorning a wooden box (see image) and asked her if she could make a birdhouse modeled on the same structure.

“I think so,” she said, considering. “I could do that.”

“What about a painting of Rosslyn?”

“Oh, sure. I’ve done that plenty of times, you know, all the Merchant Row houses.”

As soon as my bride was safely out of earshot, we began to conspire. Could she undertake *both* projects this winter? She could. And much more!

Last week I met her at home where she unveiled these whimsical renditions of Rosslyn and Rosslyn’s boathouse. The small painted silhouettes of the the boathouse were a bonus, unanticipated when we made our plan last December. She had gotten the idea while creating the birdhouse, and she liked it so much that she decided to make almost a dozen to share with her other collectors.

I suspected that the birdhouse would prove too valuable to allow it to fulfill its intended use, and Susan promptly confirmed my suspicions.

“What a perfect centerpiece!” she exclaimed arranging the miniature copy of Rosslyn’s boathouse in the center of our deck table to test out her theory. It was a great idea.

The beautiful painting of Rosslyn will likely be hung in the morning room where a growing collection of artist renderings of the quirky Eastlake inspired dockhouse adorn the walls. And for now, the silhouetted boathouse is in the screen porch. Until I convince her that it would be fun to have in the boathouse…

May 15, 2012
Rosslyn Rapture
A meditative moment today to revisit “Rosslyn Rapture: A Bronze Sculpture by George McNulty” with a poem about the figure and an acknowledgment that memory can be an imperfect copilot.

Rosslyn Rapture (Sculpture: George McNulty, Illustration: Geo Davis)

Perhaps the sub theme for today’s post should be derivative content? The image above is a digital watercolor derived from an edited and altered photograph of the bronze figure sculpted and gifted by George McNulty. My poem below also re-examines the sculpture, also reimagines the bronze figure, also seeks to illustrate why, how this gift from Rosslyn’s previous owner continues to affect me.

Rosslyn Rapture, Poem
```
No homunculus
this alchemist's art,
this sculptor's artifact.

No bronze bauble this 
daily reminder of 
progeny and forebears.

But rapture itself,
ecstatic, triumphant,
lifted with gratitude.

This marbled, mantled
rhapsody appeases
my meandering mind.

— Geo Davis
```
Baby, No Baby?

In my previous post, I recounted a conversation I had with Jason McNulty about a bronze baby that was present in the sculpture’s upheld hands.

When I gave George McNulty’s son, Jason, a house tour a few year after completing our renovation, he immediately spotted the sculpture.

“What happened to the baby?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” I responded, confused.

“The man was originally holding a baby up in the air,” he explained.

It had never even occurred to me that there might have been another part of the sculpture, a part now missing. A baby. That’s what he’s lifting up and celebrating.

I explained to Jason that we had not removed the baby. We had never even seen the baby. Aside from the addition of a marble base, this is exactly how the sculpture looked when it was gifted to us by Jason’s father.

Probably his father had made two versions, Jason suggested, one with a baby, and one without. Or perhaps the baby was cast separately and conjoined afterward. (Source: Rosslyn Rapture: A Bronze Sculpture by George McNulty)

Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to dig through old photographs, searching for evidence of the figure holding a baby.

I’ve now realized what I must have previously forgotten (or overlooked). Apparently I’d seen both versions — with and without baby — years before.

There are indeed two versions of the sculpture as Jason suggested. And if you look at the photograph above, you’ll see McNulty‘s sculpture *with baby* on the left side of the mantle above the fireplace. You may need to zoom in a bit, but the darkly, silhouetted figure clearly holds a baby high in the air.

However, our version of the figure, as you can see in the photograph below, holds no baby. Hence my fanciful notion that the figure, a metaphorical, stand-in for the homeowner, is holding aloft — in adulation and gratitude — a magnificent abstraction. Rosslyn rapture!

Rosslyn Rapture: Bronze Sculpture by George McNulty

It’s worth noting that the hands of the figure above betray no evidence that a bronze baby was cut out or ground and sanded off at some point.

George McNulty’s Bronze Sculptures in Entrance Hallway

The photograph above shows Rosslyn’s entrance hallway about the time we began looking at the property in 2004 or 2005. If you look at the top of the bookshelf, on the right hand side of the photograph, just short of the far end (ie. near middle of photograph) you can just barely make out the sculpture with baby, similar to the one on the mantle piece above. Here’s that same view from the opposite angle.

George McNulty’s Bronze Sculptures in Entrance Hallway

The sculpture is clearly visible in this photograph of the entrance foyer along the north wall.

Now comes the exciting part. Reviewing my early photographs from visits to this house when we were still considering whether or not to purchase the property (as well as in the photographs that Jason McNulty generously gave me taken during approximately the same timeframe) the bronze sculpture appears in both of the locations here documented: on the bedroom mantle, and on the foyer bookshelf.

But I remembered another location: George McNulty’s basement sculpture workshop.

George McNulty’s Bronze Sculptures in Workshop

Perhaps you’ve noticed the sculpture (with baby) just left of the G. McNulty, Sculptor sign that is propped against the back wall?

Here’s a slightly different angle, zoomed in a little tighter…

George McNulty’s Bronze Sculptures in Workshop

In both of the two images above, and there’s some thing else that might catch your eye. If you look directly to the left of the sign, I’ve described, you will see a head. And behind the head? I believe that squinting a little bit and looking closely, you’ll see the empty arms of a second sculpture with no baby.

And, so it would seem, Jason McNulty was correct. Two versions were made. So I will choose to imagine our figure holding high, not a baby, but the glorious abstraction of HOME.
March 28, 2023
Old House, New Home
Old House, New Home (Source: Geo Davis)

I’ve lived much, perhaps even *most* of my life in old houses. With the exception of late middle and high school, 3/4 of college, briefly in Santa Fe (1996-9), and briefly in Paris and Rome, my homes have been within old houses. And, come to think of it, some of my boarding school years were in old homes too. And yet each new home was revitalized — and revitalizing — when it became my personal (or familial) residential oasis. Old house, new home.

Hyde Gate, Essex, New York (Illustration by Kate Boesser for All My Houses, By Sally Lesh)

With Rosslyn becoming our place of residence, starting in 2006 and fully by 2008, this old house, new home combination took on new levels of significance. The oldness of the house wasn’t just evident in the architecture and design, the building materials and dated/failing mechanicals, and the time-earned gravity that many enduring old buildings exude. All of these were in evidence with Rosslyn, for sure. But there was something more.

Rosslyn’s history included a notable human legacy: lives lived and recorded; stories told and retold; images made, circulated, and collected. Rosslyn’s backstory as a prominent presence along Merchants Row; built by one of the two founding families in Essex; plus the iconic boathouse attracting the eyes of generations of photographers, artists, travelers; the years spent as a local enterprise (restaurant and watering hole, vacation accommodation, and boating regatta hub); and well documented home and preservation subject of George McNulty who helped catalyze Essex’s recognition in the historic register;… Rosslyn was an old house, new home with an outsized history. This was new to Susan and me.

The questions. The advice. The judgement. The memories and stories and artifacts. The responsibility. The stewardship. The pride… It’s been an adjustment. A learning curve. A deeply formative journey. A privilege.

The Farm in Cossayuna, New York (Painting: Louis Coldwell)

Old House, New Home
```
Once upon a time
this handsome old house 
became our new home,
and along with it
almost two hundred
years of backstory,
lives, styles, and lifestyles.
I try to gather
into a basket 
or a tapestry, 
a moving picture
or a singalong,
the colorful threads,
the adventures, and
the text textured tunes.  
```
October 20, 2022
Rosslyn Rapture: A Bronze Sculpture by George McNulty

After purchasing Rosslyn, George McNulty, presented us with a bronze sculpture born of his own hands and imagination. Standing with arms outstretched, extended skyward, the figure’s celebratory posture exudes joy and pride. In my view, McNulty’s miniature man appears to be celebrating or perhaps praising, arms reaching upward toward the heavens. Rosslyn Rapture, I’ve titled it (albeit only in my mind.) With no permission from the artist to name/rename his work, you’ll note no plaque adorning the base, no engraved nametag competing for attention. In fact, until now I’ve kept mostly mum about my personal title for McNulty’s sculpture. It felt presumptuous to impose my narrative, my interpretation onto another’s creation.

Rosslyn Rapture: Bronze Sculpture by George McNulty

And while we didn’t have Rosslyn Rapture plaqued, we did have it mounted on a small marble base for display. When we received the sculpture a couple of bolts protruded from the bottom of the feet for mounting. Since, at first, the figure could not be exhibited without a base, we held it in our hands. We felt the weighty bronze, ran our fingertips over the textured surface shaped by the fingers of a man who invested almost four decades into studying and documenting and slowly restoring the buildings which we now call home. We traced the figure’s lanky limbs and placed our fingertips into the sculpture’s tiny palms. There was an intimacy. A connection. Or so I chose to believe.

In time I came to see the sculpture as McNulty’s exaltation for a home and a heritage that he loved. A man exalted with reverence. It was a hypothesis that fit the man I’d briefly come to know. It was a hypothesis consistent with the anecdotes and memories shared by his Essex friends and neighbors. It was a hypothesis that justified his commitment—spanning almost four decades—to preserving this historic property. But mostly, as I’ve come to learn in the years since, it was a hypothesis that helped me explain my own love affair with Rosslyn. I realize now that I was ascribing my own passion for this property onto the previous owner. I was enraptured with Rosslyn, with our new life at Rosslyn, and with the prospect of restoring this stately home and grounds to the restrained elegance still evident but fading. I had reimagined this art as an artifact of the previous owner’s passion and devotion for Rosslyn when in fact my hypothesis was first and foremost self referential.

Rosslyn Rapture: Bronze Sculpture by George McNulty

A Bronze Sculpture

In short, I realize now that Rosslyn Rapture was my creation. McNulty’s was a bronze sculpture of a man with outreached arms and open hands lifted high. I saw a man grasping for something or praising a higher being. Or perhaps the man’s adulation was for a woman with whom he was impassioned? But fancy clouds my vision. The man’s arms are outreached. That is clear. Whether in praise or celebration or something altogether different, only the sculptor knows.

For many years the figure has presided over our living room from his perch on the mantle above the northern fireplace. When I gave George McNulty’s son, Jason, a house tour a few year after completing our renovation, he immediately spotted the sculpture.

“What happened to the baby?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” I responded, confused.

“The man was originally holding a baby up in the air,” he explained.

It had never even occurred to me that there might have been another part of the sculpture, a part now missing. A baby. That’s what he’s lifting up and celebrating.

I explained to Jason that we had not removed the baby. We had never even seen the baby. Aside from the addition of a marble base, this is exactly how the sculpture looked when it was gifted to us by Jason’s father.

Probably his father had made two versions, Jason suggested, one with a baby, and one without. Or perhaps the baby was cast separately and conjoined afterward.

Both possibilities seem possible, probable even. Imagination flushes out the narrative. George McNulty sculpts the man out of clay, creates a mold from the original, and—using the lost wax process—casts several bronze replicas. Separately and by the same process, he casts bronze babies which he then welds to the man’s hands. One of the figures, for some mysterious reason, remains empty handed. No baby.

I found myself, wondering if his son, now standing in the living room of the house where he had grown up, might perhaps have been the inspiration for the sculpture, maybe even the model. The man did, after all, resemble his father. And the baby? Anybody’s guess.

It occurs to me later that there’s another possibility. Perhaps each of the figures originally held a baby high in the air. But one broke. Or the sculptor removed it. Maybe that’s why he gave it to me, because it was an incomplete piece. This seems like a reasonable hypothesis, and maybe it’s correct. But I prefer the possibility that he gifted us this version because it leaves open the hands, open the possibility that Rosslyn is the subject of the man’s ecstasy.

Rosslyn Rapture: Bronze Sculpture by George McNulty

Rosslyn Rapture: Bronze Sculpture by George McNulty

January 13, 2023
Chronicler or Artist

Chronicler or Artist I: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)

I really *should* post an update on our loft flooring “research”, copper flashing (aka drip edge) installation, east elevation gable window framing, revised drawings from Tiho that address a few outstanding items like column, stairway, railing, and other trim details (plus lighting, electric, and mechanicals),… But I’m going to postpone these already postponed updates a little longer to talk instead about a recurring subplot in recent months.

Okay, maybe it’s unfair to dub it a subplot since so far it’s defied definition. At heart it’s a grappling with mission. And permission. As I pour over sixteen years’ worth of memories and plans and artifacts and notes and photos and stories and poems and intertwined lives and ephemera there’s an inner struggle at work. Am I simply gathering the strings of a vast collection, curating its diverse snippets into a sort of chronicle, a history, a retrospective map? Or am I creating from these fragments something new and unique? Am I more of an historian or a mosaic maker? Am I chronicler or artist?

Chronicler or Artist II: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)

“He chooses; he synthesizes; in short, he has ceased to be the chronicler; he has become an artist.” — Virginia Woolf (Source: The Art of Biography)

There’s an inevitable tensions between the duty of stewardship and the affinity for storytelling and poetic truth. Between the responsibility to document important details for future Rosslyn homeowners and the creative freedom to explore textures and layers, melodies and harmonies, whimsical what-ifs and errant adventures.

But it’s more than this. It’s verisimilitude. Veracity…

I believe that there are different kinds of accuracy. I am a storyteller, not an historian, and though I strive for verisimilitude, some truths are more effectively preserved and conveyed through stories than history or vaults. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

And so I pendulum between two muses, each jealous of the other, both second guessing, both casting aspersions.

Some days I toil like an archeologist amidst a midden heap of artifacts, rewinding time’s mysteries, deciphering the prior summer’s garden vegetables from this season’s rich, dark compost. Other days I seduce and charm and coerce the artifacts to share longer forgotten truths. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

Chronicler or Artist III: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)

And there’s the not too subtle complication of recollection. My memory muddles — more of the composting variety than the austere archival variety — appreciating the possibilities of parallax, and grafting whimsical paisley’s onto sturdier scions to ensure that they survive the tempestuous toils of time.

I am startled to discover that these precise, unambiguous reference points frequently contradict my recollection. Dramatic events indelibly etched into my brain at the time have already blurred despite the brief lapse of time. I curse my mischievous mind and then accept that 100% accuracy will inevitably elude me. My mind’s imperfect cataloging at once humbles and liberates me. Though an unreliable historian, I am a chronicler and curator of stories, not facts. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

So there it is. I’ve flirted with this truth before, and I double down today. Caveat emptor. Ask not of me the court stenographer’s unblinking authority. And I’ll not ask of you the jury’s verdict or the judges conviction.

According to Garcia Marquez life is not only the experiences, the moments lived. Life is also the rendering of those experiences into stories, the recollecting, the filtering, the imagining, the sharing. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

Recollecting, filtering, imagining, choosing, curating, synthesizing, sharing,… This is the map I use. Chronicler or artist? Yes, but mostly the latter.

Perhaps even with history we become overconfident that the facts are irrefutable… Absent an omnipresent video camera that documents my life as I bump along, capturing every minute detail precisely, permanently, Garcia Marquez’s perspective offers reassuring guidance. Though I frequently daydream about a collaborative memoir comprised of the recollections of everyone who participated in the rebirth of Rosslyn, my story is an eclectic nexus of personal experiences, filtered, aggregated and cobbled into narrative cohesion by me. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

Chronicler or Artist IV: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)

And yet the challenge of a dual mission permeates this 16-year exercise. There’s an inevitable tendency, a responsibility even, to document. To archive. To showcase. And there’s the omnipresent siren song of wonder and whimsy. While I still endeavor to provide a responsible accounting of our life, love, and toil at/with Rosslyn, I’m succumbing to the beguiling song of the sirens.

My quest for permission needn’t require such wayward roving. It is first and foremost my own consent I’m questing after. And part of accepting this is granting myself permission to embrace art above chronicle. I’ve suspected this. Dithered. Wondered. Worried. But this morning a confident confluence is flowing. And I’m ready… (Source: Quest for Permission)

Fair warning, then, while I dive into the reflective waters simultaneously mirroring the misty morning and revealing the pebbly depths. I’ll be back. Soon.

December 11, 2022
Creative Collisions & Happy Accidents

Boathouse, Essex, NY (Credit: Paul Flinn)

A few days ago I came across a provocative Facebook post that artist Nick Bantock had shared on December 30, 2022. The date’s not particularly notable, but the author is. Familiarity with Bantock’s work adds context and texture to the explanation about his creative process, specifically how he moves from found ephemera to finished artwork.

I keep an in-between tank, a collection of part-constructed smaller pieces that are in a state of flux or transition. Resonating bits that touch or brush-up against one another, in a pre-morphing box (or in this case, a studio drawer)… Ideas are rarely plucked out of the ether, in my experience they come from creating an environment where happy accidents and surreal collisions can best occur. (Source: Nick Bantock, Facebook, December 30, 2022)

I’d be wise to leave his words to stand alone. Unsullied. Undistorted. Unaccompanied. A beacon.

And I’ll try.

But trying isn’t enough. Temptation is building, like a wave rising higher, gaining momentum, wisps of foam falling from the curled lip.

And so I succumb. Slightly.

Creative Collisions

The image above, an illustration of Rosslyn’s boathouse by Essex resident, Paul Flinn, was documented by Tony Foster. Between upcycling garapa decking boards into distinctive wall paneling for Rosslyn’s icehouse rehab he popped into Essex Town Hall, spied this handsome architectural sketch, snapped a photo, and pinged it through the ether to me.

Collaborating with creative characters; emphasizing the merits and possibilities of adaptive reuse while repurposing collected curios, salvage, and surplus; and generally endeavoring to create an environment where “happy accidents and surreal collisions can best occur” just might be working. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Tony.

Happy Accidents

Fusion. Collage. Combinatorial creativity… It’s been immensely satisfying to help catalyze the morphing. And it seems that everyday their are more happy accidents. They’re not all tidy or comfortable. Sometimes there friction and frustration. Sometime fission in place of fusion. But we’re in a flow state that, like an undertow and a strong surface current, are pulling us forward. Where? Too soon to say. But creative collisions and happy accidents suggest we’re trending in the right direction!

January 7, 2023
Genre Fluid

Today I offer you a quick follow-up to my February 4, 2023 post, “Genre Resistance“. In diving a little deeper into the genre fluidity of Rosslyn Redux (in general) and redacting Rosslyn in particular, I hope to dilate the creative quandary and exploratory process.

But first, a couple of asides.

Nude with Yellow Backdrop by Paul Rossi (Photo: Geo Davis)

First, yes, you read that correctly. Genre fluid. Not gender fluid. But… I couldn’t resist the temptation to include the painting by artist, Paul Rossi. It hangs in our front parlor (aka the “green room”) adjacent to a painting we purchased in Kenya in 2005 shortly before we were wed in a traditional Maasai ceremony. More on that elsewhere. But the nude against yellow backdrop (one of several Rossi paintings, illustrations, and linocuts we’re fortunate to own) was at once appropriate and inappropriate for this post. And the similarity between genre and gender fluidity was the inevitable trigger. Looong story short, Susan fell for this painting the moment she saw it in Paul’s Wadhams studio a dozen or more years ago. Had to have it. And so home it came. But the next morning, while coffee-ing up in the morning, if memory serves, she suddenly remarked that the female figure was endowed with a phallus! Actually, that’s not exactly what she said, but that was the gist. She still loved the painting, but she’s never been able to “un-see” the appendage (the subject’s hand and wrist) as anything other than, well, let’s call it a gender blending silhouette.

Now, for the second aside. If you landed here looking for music that bridges more than one classification, I’m sorry to disappoint, but this is your exit ramp. Thanks for stopping by, and safe travels!

I’m well aware that the term “genre fluid” has been adopted primarily to describe the unboxing of music categories, the wide ranging appetites that many/most of us have when it comes to our musical listening preferences, and even the hybridization across conventional genres that accurately describes a great deal of the most innovative music being performed. In fact one would be hard pressed to quickly dig up any non-music references online to “genre fluid” without some headlamp-on spelunking into the bowels of the interwebs.

Paintings in Front Parlor (Photo: Geo Davis)

But today I’d like to post a gentle challenge to the mainstream music-centric understanding of genre fluidity. Specifically I’d like to steer you toward a broader, more inclusive notion of art, literature, and music that defies conventional segregation. I’m referencing creative arts unconfined by convention and convenience, free range arts that occupy liminal spaces, interstitial inventions, and hybrid genres that redefine expectations and experiences.

Let’s alight briefly here:

Genre Fluid: appreciating several different genres. Most commonly applied to music, but can also refer to films, games or any other media. (Source: Urban Dictionary)

And here:

I probably mean this in the most manifesto-ing way that genres don’t exist. They don’t exist at all… Genres for me are just a way in which we are controlled, protected I suppose but I’m not a writer to be protected at all. — Eileen Myles (Source: The New Inquiry)

We all recognize genre distinctions. They’ve been trained into since childhood. But does that make them important? Conclusive? Binding? Beneficial? Or just familiar?

So how does this notion of genre fluid composition relate to Rosslyn? I’ll sidestep the obvious architectural and design implications (which, incidentally, are spot on!) for now and restrain this reflection to writing.

August 2022 marked my return to the challenge of *redacting Rosslyn* out of sprawling scrapbooks, flaneurial field notes, poetry and storytelling, lyric essays, monologues, and an avalanche of artifacts.

[…]

Ostensibly a memoir in trajectory and scope, this idiosyncratic experiment… [is] an amalgam… that bridges and blurs genres, that gathers heterogeneous ingredients and collages them… in interstitial narrative, allowing the wholeness to emerge out of the fragments, not altogether unlike a mosaic. Or a montage. Or a sculpture… The space in-between the fragments becomes as important as the fragments themselves.

This experiment in genre fluidity is second nature, and I suspect that some readers may find it slightly vexing. Undisciplined and disjointed. Fair criticism, I should note. But a compelling component of the creative process at this germinal stage. No, not just compelling. Enabling. Empowering. Generative.

I don’t find it interesting to stay in my lane, to observe the rules of the road, etc. Blogging for me has been an opportunity… [to] play around and experiment and defy expectations and overlap genres and distort genres per the whims or needs of my moment, my message. And this doesn’t just go for word salad. It’s a visual salad too. A library, stage, and interactive interactive gallery. And more. Lately I’ve been experimenting with video. With audio. Experimenting. Exploring. No rules.

This freedom to share our Rosslyn adventure per my mesmerizing muse, uninhibited, unbound, has been an exhilarating and liberating counterpoint to the often rigid structure, rules, and traditions that guided our historic rehabilitation. Untethered. Whimsical. Freestyle. (Source: Genre Resistance)

Does this make it right? It’s too early to say, at least in any sweeping and conclusive way. But it has been vital to my creative process. Hybridization and fusion and cross pollination are — have always been — exhilarating and attractive to me. Mix. Remix. Repeat…

Thank you for abiding my appetite for curiosity and experimentation!

March 3, 2023
Where in the World is Rosslyn?
Essex, NY in 1876 (Source: OW Gray Atlas of Essex County)

Where in the world is Rosslyn? If you’re not too terribly averse to a verse, here’s an introduction writ small (wrapped up in a tidy micropoem.)
```
Up in the Adirondacks
at the foot of the foothills,
where Champlain's sweet waters
refresh, render respite,
and sooth worldweary souls,
a sanctuary sings
welcoming melodies.
(Source: Where's Rosslyn?)
```
Poetry not your preference? Pity! 😉 Let’s try this.

Rosslyn is perched on the Adirondack shore of Lake Champlain in Essex, New York. Unlike the Adirondack High Peaks region, the Adirondack Coast (which comprises much of Champlain’s western shoreline) exhibits picturesque colonial architectural unlike the more recent Adirondack rustic camps located further inland. Historic Essex boasts one of the most intact, best preserved collections of early 19th century United States architectural heritage. Serving as a gateway community since the late 1700s, Essex remains an important crossroads today. The Essex-Charlotte ferry connects New York State with Vermont, while nearby NYS Route 87 and Amtrack trains connect Montreal, Albany and New York City. (Source: Where’s Rosslyn? )

Beginning to zero in on where in the world Rosslyn is? If neither the poetics of place nor encyclopedic brevity are helping much, let’s try a map or two. Maybe I can narrow your focus a little further with this line drawing that I created with Katie Shepard for our community blog, Essex on Lake Champlain back in 2015. (If you click on the map it’ll open a window where you can download the unfuzzy PDF complete with a key explaining each of the numbers in the map.)

Essex Architecture Map, July 2015 (Source: Essex on Lake Champlain)

Enough with the old school black and white (and sepia with faint rose highlighting). It’s time for technicolor!

Where in the World is Rosslyn in Color?!?!

When it comes to brightening things up, there’s no better bet than close friend, artist, and best selling author, Amy Guglielmo (@amyguglielmo). Back on November 18, 2013 I shared a post showcasing Ms. Guglielmo’s dazzling aerial view of our Essex neighborhood.

Essex Aerial View (Art by Amy Guglielmo)

So, where in the world is Rosslyn? Train your eyes on the three docks/piers extending out into Lake Champlain. The middle one is the ferry dock. (See the ferry heading to Vermont?) The smallest of the three man made peninsula’s is Rosslyn’s dock house (aka “boathouse”). Armed with that little insight, perhaps you can find the same property on the two maps above? (Hint: the boathouse wasn’t yet constructed in 1876 when the map at the top of this post was made.)

Now back to Amy’s painting and Rosslyn’s boathouse, “the maritime folly that enchanted us back in 2005-6 enough to swap NYC for the Adirondacks.”

Heck, it still enchants us despite constant maintenance and seasonal flood worries. And the boathouse hammock is a mini vacation!

Head inland from the boathouse and you’ll discover Rosslyn itself, tucked next to two massive trees, a ginkgo and what I believe is a silver maple (Acer saccharinum). In fact, I’m sitting in the top right room on the second floor right now. Perhaps if you swoop in a little lower you’ll catch me jotting this blog post.

A little further left of the house are the carriage barn (lower) and ice house (upper) which offer up all sorts of mysteries. But those for another day. Unless you remember three curious artifacts I shared with you a while ago… (Source: Essex Aerial View)

Hopefully this helped orient you. Yes, a Google map might be more precise and quicker, but sometimes Rosslyn Redux and the art of homing aren’t particularly precise or quick. Besides, a thin veil of privacy keeps the snoopers away. Or at least adds a little challenge to their quest. But if you’re looking for a little more clarity on where in the world Rosslyn is located, I suggest you check out this hopefully helpful hub: “Where’s Rosslyn?“
January 17, 2023
Autumn Landscape Poetry
Autumn Landscape, October 27, 2015 (Photo: Geo Davis)

TGIF… time to put another log on the fire, pour yourself something refreshing, and unwind for a moment together. Busy-ness and a continuous cascade of commitments can gradually hypnotize us during the weekly hurly-burly, so let’s take a few minutes to exhale and redirect our attention at this dramatic time of year. Transformation all around us. Breathtaking beauty all around us. I invite you to round out your week by contemplating the autumn landscape.

As another week of icehouse rehab draws to a close, I’m shifted gears a little. I’ll post an update soon, however there’ve been several compelling-but-competing intrigues to pursue. Yesterday’s post about rehoming the “truckling” in exchange for an inspiring reuse/recycling story has elicited several compelling possibilities. (Hoping to make a decision soon, and I’ll share the winning story!) I’ve also been crowdsourcing (albeit quite limitedly among friends and family) perspectives on what makes a house a home. Can’t wait to share the riches tomorrow! For now, with this pair of jolly Jack-in-the-box updates about to spring out into the open, I’m recalibrating and refocusing on autumn landscape.

Autumn Streamscape
```
As wildlife crisscross
these riparian byways
scents, tracks, graffiti.

— Geo Davis
```
This haiku takes as its seed the layered narrative along Library Brook which meanders the western margin of Rosslyn’s back forests and fields. So much wildlife trafficking this vital corridor, and all of them communicating, carrying on a distributed dialogue, and creating artistic artifacts.

I spent some time flail mowing near a small portion of this riparian region last summer, eliminating some invasive that have clogged the stream, and encouraging native flora to thrive, ensuring a healthy habitat for our wild neighbors. I thought that I had taken photographs of a mesmerizingly beautiful glade thick with stream-side wildflowers, but I’m unable to find them. Perhaps these images were meant to remain wild, earned quietly on foot, cross country skies, snowshoes.

These contemplative places abound at Rosslyn. And my haiku doesn’t offer a sufficient snapshot. Perhaps I’ll be able to update this page with another poem that offers the scents and sounds of this this wild autumn landscape. For now I’d like to offer you a potent portrait by a Vietnamese poet, Hồ Xuân Hương (1772–1822), that hints at the intoxication I’m alluding to. If “the banana leaves” are overlooked, her poem feels as if it might be leaning against a stump beside burbling Library Brook.

Autumn Landscape
```
Drop by drop rain slaps the banana leaves.
Praise whoever sketched this desolate scene:
the lush, dark canopies of the gnarled trees,
the long river, sliding smooth and white.
I lift my wine flask, drunk with rivers and hills.
My backpack, breathing moonlight, sags with poems.
Look, and love everyone.
Whoever sees this landscape is stunned.

— Hồ Xuân Hương (Source: Narrative Magazine)
```
Let us all breathe some moonlight tonight, and let us all let go the of the week just lived and look at the autumn landscape, allow it to stun us, to remind us how to love. Everyone.
November 18, 2022
New Year’s Eve

It’s New Year’s Eve 2022. I’ve just returned from a provocative exhibition by Shirin Neshat, with whom I originally became acquainted by way of Essex friend and photographer, Larry Barns, a dozen years or more ago.

New Year’s Eve: ephemeral folly (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)

Land of Dreams is a solo exhibition by Shirin Neshat, an Iranian-born artist and filmmaker based in New York Comprising photography, film, and video, the exhibition brings together two bodies of work, Land of Dreams (2019), and Dreamers (2013-16), a trilogy of video installations.
Source: SITE Santa Fe

While there’s much to say about Neshat’s work, that will wait for another time as this day’s, this year’s minutes are too quickly sifting through my fingers and falling into a new year. It’s New Year’s Eve. An ending. And a fresh start.

Instead of responding to Neshat’s portraits and films, I’ll allow this post to follow the footfalls of my afternoon, out of Neshat’s Land of Dreams and into Max Cole’s Endless Journey. This New Mexico-based painter’s meticulous meditations slowed my senses and my sensibility. Cole’s “Thoughts on Art” leapt from the wall and into my dream-addled skull, tickling the tattered leaves of my inquiry these last five months.

And “knowing how way leads on to way”, one fragment falling upon another, and another, and another,… I’ve decided to resist looking back — for now at least — for answers and assurance that this afternoon’s wisps and tatters and excerpts are what they appear to be. I’ll trust the “singing underneath” and trace my index finger aling this newfound map, starting with a few snippets from Max Cole’s “Thoughts on Art”.

There is nothing to say without first knowing yourself.

Choices have to be made and parameters established. All that remains should be only essential means. This process of definition occurs over years.

Art is something that must be lived. It is long and there are no shortcuts.

As in life, in art nothing exists removed from the past or separated from the present.

Most of reality is not visible. Art makes perceptible the indefinable quality of presence. It is content which is the soul of art.

[…]

The motivation for making art is art and its insights into that which transcends the material. Nothing else. There can be no compromise.

[…]

All creativity draws from the same source regardless of discipline and eventually merges at a common point which is philosophical.
Max Cole, “Thoughts on Art” (SITE Santa Fe)

It’s New Year’s Eve. An ending. A fresh start. An interstitial moment, part conclusion and part beginning. The common point where deconstruction couples with construction, the philosophical rebirth. Death. Birth. Phoenix from ashes.

And that photograph above, a folly fabricated by Hroth, temporarily framing my future desk view, is in fact a fleeting and false perspective. Delightful. Whimsical. An old window and frame repurposed from the historic icehouse’s former life, propped in an incongruous aperture in the icehouse’s future life. A meeting of of past and future in the present. Ephemeral. Art rendering for a moment the invisible visible. “Art makes perceptible the indefinable quality of presence.”

December 31, 2022