|
|
|
July Fourth First Saturday
Saturday, July 4 2009
A cold front had come through and driven away all the humidity and rain that has been plaguing the Hudson Valley for the past couple months. The sky was clear and the air was cool, at least for the Fourth of July. At one point I walked into the greenhouse and, unusual for this time of the year, it felt like I was walking into, well, a greenhouse. I looked at the thermometer and it was 67 degrees Fahrenheit in there, so it must have been colder than that in the big wide outdoors. And it was the middle of a sunny day in July, a season when we're normally thinking about bodies of water to jump into.
I mixed up a batch of concrete tinted with black tint and used it to fill the voids in the stone retaining wall around the door well of the greenhouse door. This was mostly done out of æsthetic considerations, though the wall will also be stronger and need less weeding with the voids filled. I fully expect the joints to crack once the ground freezes, at which point it will be as if I found perfect little rocks to fit between the big ones, and many of these little rock will be wedged between bigger natural stones in such a way that they could never be extracted.
In the late afternoon, Gretchen and I went into Kingston to attend the city-wide First Saturday art opening event, which we hadn't been to in years. We started out in Uptown, but evidently no First Saturday participants there. It had the look of a sleepy cowboy town, with plenty of parking available and almost nobody on the sidewalks.
Down on the Rondout there did appear to be First Saturday activity, so we hadn't picked the wrong day. We parked on Union and went off to see what there was to see. As always for an evening of art openings, we walked into a couple places, made suitably-appreciative grunts at the unremarkable work, and then left. I've matured since the days when art openings mostly meant free wine; somehow it didn't seem right to take wine from an opening of a stranger whose art I wouldn't be buying.
Economically, the Rondout is a spooky place these days. Stores and restaurants have always struggled there and, with the exception of the Armadillo and Mariner's Harbor (the big seafood place catering to douchebags) turnover is high. But the number of empty places for rent that we passed today was appalling. It made us feel good for the few things that still seemed to be in working order: the docks, the beautiful suspension bridge, the Bridge Water Grill, the cancer dome, and the foliage on the plants.
Our main reason for being at First Saturday was to attend the opening at KMOCA (Kingston Museum of Contemporary Arts), which is run (in part) by our friend Deborah, the woman with the huge dog named Juneau (she was also one of our house sitters while we were in the Pacific Northwest). The art at KMOCA today was mostly conceptual: short conceptual films and grainy semi-absurd photography. I took it all in with an open mind but I'm sad to report that my mind was not blown. This is going to sound egotistical, but exhibits like this make me want to get back into painting just so I can show people what inspired art really looks like. (And if art isn't inspired, why bother?)
Still, it was a beautiful day and I got to meet some fun new people as well as connect with friends. I could talk about things like building a half-underground greenhouse with people who genuinely seemed to think that might be a fun product. And for me building my greenhouse is just one big art project, every bit as conceptual as, say, a short film of a glittery giant accidentally squashing a cardboard church.
For dinner, Gretchen was open to suggestion but seemed to be interested in checking out a new Italian place she'd heard about called Frank Guido's Little Italy off Broadway in Midtown. It was a comfortable place with old patinas but uncluttered tastefulness. We sat out on the sidewalk and ate through the sunset. The puffy white clouds turned first orange and then purple.
As for the food, well the salad and especially the olive oil for dipping our bread were uncommonly good. But the rest of the food was flavorless to the detail. I got an absurdly thin-crusted non-vegan ten inch pizza and it had both a flavorless crust and a flavorless red sauce. AS for Gretchen, she ended up getting most of her pasta to go so she could doctor it up with the technology available at home.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?090704 feedback
previous | next |
