_____ Meet the Folk Artists 4 _____

A new bi-weekly feature

Ken Etts and Joe Hewitt

Whistle Stick

Ken Etts lives on the acreage his grandfather farmed in Montgomery Hollow, Roxbury NY.  He and his wife Toni run a successful dog kennel and grooming service as a retirement business.   Ken, known locally as "Chub",  made a living in car body repair and had a reputation for being able to shape metal and bondo so sensitively that his work was commonly called "artistic."

Ken's contribution to the exhibit "Folk Art in Wood", to take place in September, is neither metal nor bondo.  By chance, I had my cell phone when I encountered Chub at the convenience store and somehow the conversation came around to the whistle stick.  He quickly retrieved one from his truck and demonstrated it for me. [Please forgive my un-huhs and clucks during the recording!]  The wood carving - notches taken out of edges of a square "dowel"- is a technique that characterizes some folk creations called "tramp art" that are often included in exhibitions of Outsider Art.  In the whistle stick the notches are more functional than artistic.  Watch the video and see if you can detect what makes the propeller turn.  Then watch again to see what makes it reverse direction.  Can you hear the whistle that happens at the same time?

Ken Etts demonstrating the whistle stick, December, 2019

Ken has made several whistle sticks.  He says he learned to make them and to operate them from Joe Hewitt, the legendary state trooper and tradition bearer originally from Denver NY and now living in  New Kingston.  Joe is well-known as a keeper of bees, a student of Native American traditions, and a deep well of local knowledege and skills.  He remembers teaching Chub to make whistle sticks, but said he hadn't made one in a long time, until now.  Joe learned to make whistle sticks from Freddy Hammond, a fellow state trooper who was from Ithaca, "the best friend I ever had in the state police," Joe says.

Joe Hewitt demonstrating his newly made whistle stick, January 2020.

The folk process is usually assumed to be oral transmission from one generation to the next.  But in the case of the whistle stick it seems to be from one adult male to another.  Perhaps this is just a happen-so, because another wood skill Freddy Hammond knew - making a whistle from striped maple bark - Joe had already learned as a child from Ralph Felter Sr., a carpenter who was working at Joe's Dad's farm.  And still in the generational pattern, Joe remembers showing his kids how to make striped maple whistles.  He realizes now that he needs to show his grandchildren how to make and use whistle sticks, passing on both the creation and mystery. 

You will be able to view a whistle stick, and perhaps a demonstration, this September at Catskills Folk Connection's exhibit, "Folk Art in Wood" at Hanford Mills Museum.  It will run through September and end with the Museum's Woodsmen's Festival in early October.  Should we not be able to present the exhibit for in-person viewing, there will be an on-line exhibit at Catskills Folk Connection's new website, now being designed.

Ginny Scheer, Folklorist, Catskills Folk Connection

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______Meet the Folklorists 3 _____

A new  bi-weekly feature 

Kira Lendo

Creator of Pictures in Wood

Kira makes pictures in wood using a woodburner.  The varying textures and wood tones look like layers of different wood, but instead come from choices of tips for the woodburner.  “There is no layering... if you touch one of the pictures you will feel the indentations – some of them deeper than others -  [of] the pen – it’s not really a pen but the woodburner – burning itself into the wood.”

She uses color on a few of her works, but most of them are in the colors of the wood itself.  For the natural colored ones she uses  "... different tips ... it looks almost like a pen, and the tip is different.   And the one I use has different wires on it and some of them make better .. curves, some may shade better.  … I have a tendency to use the same one that I like over and over again ..."

Kira is inspired by her mother who was an accomplished artist in pencil and watercolor.  As she found her creative spirit grow Kira tried many different media, settling on wood-burned pictures, supported by her husband who clear coats the pictures, builds frames and encourages her with select tools.  Kira is clear that doing art is her time for herself, for her self-expression.  Nevertheless, she participates in a few craft shows each year where she sells her work.

You will be able to view some of Kira's creations this September at Catskills Folk Connection's exhibit, "Folk Art in Wood" at Hanford Mills Museum.  It will run through September and end with the Museum's Woodsmen's Festival in early October.  Should we not be able to present the exhibit for in-person viewing, there will be an on-line exhibit at Catskills Folk Connection's new website, now being designed.

____Meet the Folk Artists 2____

A new bi-weekly feature 

Gary Mead, Unique Wood Furniture

Gary Mead, a resident of Arkville has until recently produced the wood for his one-of-a kind furniture at his own sawmill. He comes from a creative family who made their living on a New Kingston dairy farm. But Gary taught himself to carve and shape wood into imaginative pieces that have attracted buyers from near and far.

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Gary's creativity doesn't stop with wood furnishings.  He also writes books for children and composes poetry that is featured regularly on WIOX's "From the Forest," the radio program of the Catskills Forest Association.

Listen to about six minutes from Gary's interview in which.he describes his creative process. It begins with finding the right wood or tree, his work recorded in a shop diary, and then in drawings and poetry about the piece.  This excerpt ends with Gary describing his realization that the tree had been showing him all along ("a child is born") how to design the interior of one of his works.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1M82ULcHHucNOhP5CrRP2yzliWEft7P-S

You will be able to view Gary's newer creations, see his shop diaries - some written in the woods with "plant juices"- and read his poems this September at Catskills Folk Connection's exhibit, "Folk Art in Wood" at Hanford Mills Museum.  It will run through September and end with the Mill's Woodsmen's Festival in early October.  Should we not be able to present the exhibit for in-person viewing, there will be an on-line exhibit at Catskills Folk Connection's new website, now being designed.

______Meet the Folk Artists______

A new bi-weekly feature:

This is the first in a series of articles about folk artists
who will be presented by Catskills Folk Connection this year.

  

Joseph Dibble, Bovina Center, NY

Decoy Carver

Folk Art in Wood

Joe Dibble has always been artistic.  When he saw a collection of antique decoys, he determined to learn how to make them.  He has carved Canada geese, ducks and this swan.  To hear him describe his creative process click this link and then click on the file called "Copy of 2020 Jan Joe Dibble".

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1M82ULcHHucNOhP5CrRP2yzliWEft7P-S

Birds are not the only decoys carved by folk artists.  Joe has turned his hand to making fish decoys for ice fishing (see correction note below).  But in this photo he holds not a decoy but a finely sculpted carving of a trout he caught, even replicating the fish's spots as well as its colors.     

    

Joe is also an avid wild turkey hunter and an equally avid student of their behavior.  He has recorded them a number of times in detailed pen and ink drawings (no photo available at this time).

Joe Dibble's work will be featured in an exhibit of folk art made from wood planned for September at Hanford Mills Museum.  At present "Folk Art In Wood" is still intended to be an in-person exhibit.  It will open in early September and be on view until early October, ending with Hanford Mills' Woodsmen's Festival.  

There will be several folk artists' works for you to examine, each unique in their own way, and each notable for the artist's creative approach.  In addiiton to works of contemporary artists, there will be a few examples of carved wooden works by past folk artists, one of which will be the well-known Lavern Kelley.  As part of the exhibit there will be a lecture by Sydney Waller, a Cooperstown gallery owner who is the curator of the Kelley estate and acknowldged expert on his carvings of farm vehicles and farm equipment.

Dates and times will be announced here on Catskills Folk Connection's blog, and through our usual advertising by post card, e-mail, radio, and newspapers.  If you would like to be on Catskills Folk Connection's mailing list call Ginny Scheer at 607-326-4206 or e-mail at vscheer@juno.com.  

If gathering restrictions prevent an in-person exhibit, Catskills Folk Connection will present exhibit materials here on the blog and in other media if possible.  This installment of Meet the Folk Artists is  the beginning of our effort to expand our capacity to use electronic media to communicate with our audience - people like you who care about folklore, folk art, folk music and dance, and folk stories.  Either in person or on line, we'll make sure that you'll encounter many expressions - both old and new - of the everyday experiences of ordinary folks in the Catskills.

  

(Correction note:  the author is responsible for the incorrect statement that appeared here about decoy fishing for trout.  Decoy fishing and ice fishing for trout are not legal anywhere in New York State.)

      

Catskills Folk Connection's 2019 Folklife and Folk Art Programs

Catskills Folk Connection's 2019 programs were successful in spite of funding delays caused by the federal government shut-down in early spring.  Once substitute funding was secured, CFC went on to complete it's usual offerings, with a couple of adjustments.  Presentations totaled seven square dances, two festival foodways programs and one Catskills Folk Lyceum lecture plus field work for a 2020 folk art exhibit.  Scheduling constraints postponed work on the vernacular architecture project (Roxbury's Six Stone Houses) and a second Lyceum lecture on historic preservation, both of which will be pursued later.

2019 Square Dances

Several square dances were in venues CFC has used before: at the Pine Hill  Community Center with its excellent dance floor, at the Bovina Community Hall - a well-known square dance venue, at the Walton Grange which is favored by a cluster of dedicated dancers, and of course at Roxbury Arts Group's Fiddlers! event.  Other dances took place at new venues with access to new and differennt audiences:  at the regional Catskills Visitors Center, as part of the street festival Celebrate Roxbury!, and in collaboration with an agri-tourism project at a goat dairy farm in Andes, NY.

The community halls and grange were well attended, attracting the usual local enthusiasts plus some visitors to the region.  The visitors' center and the Roxbury celebration were festival settings in which the audience strolled in and out.  That was fine for listening to live music but made it hard to maintain a square dance.  The highlights of the season were at the goat farm in Andes and at Fiddlers!  The goat farm owners had worked hard to provide a good dance floor on the hay mow level of their barn.  Support and advertising from a regional economic development group, plus the good food the farmers' offered, attracted many new potential dancers, resulting in the largest dance of the season: four squares dancing simultaneously all evening.

Members of Fiddlin' Future play at Roxbury Arts Group's Fiddlers! 

Fiddlers!, an annual concert and dance highlighting a popular Catskills instrument, attracted enough dancers for one or two squares during the time devoted to dancing.  The greatest success at Fiddlers was the participation of a youth fiddle group, called Fiddlin' Future.  They are from the Adirondacks and are associated with Jackie Hobbs and the Old-Tyme Fiddlers Association there.  The youthful fiddlers took part in the dancing, joined the Tremperskill Boys on stage to play for dances, and at the end of the entire event were the stars of the jam organized with the event's professional concert performers.  In the Adirondacks, at least, we can say that the future of square dancing and traditional fiddle music is in good hands.

2019 Festivals: Focus on Foodways

Outdoor festivals are excellent for reaching large numbers of people, many of whom may be new to Catskills Folk Connection. They offer opportunities to engage the audience in displays and demonstrations of Catskills Folk Connection programs and to offerfcommunicaition about future events.  Because at festivals the audience is in motion, strolling by in shopping mode, some of our programs work better than others.

Meridale Dairy Fest

Mary Ann Warren shares wild leeksoup made from leeks she harvested in the Catskills forest.

Food traditions catch the eye, and tastings offer time for the tradition bearer to describe the tradition or for the folklorist to describe other CFC programs.  In 2018 and 2019 at the two-day Meridale Dairy Fest tradition bearer Mary Ann Warren, taught by her family to dig wild leeks, was able to share tastings of potato - wild leek soup at CFC's booth.  She is also a caterer and so is qualified to serve food tothe public.  With the advent of certified community kitchens in our regionsCatskills Folk Connection may in the future be able to help tradition bearers from other cultures to serve samples of their traditional foods.  How about sauerkraut?

Cauliflower Festival

At the Cauliflower Festival folklorist Ginny Scheer reported on food traditions she learned from her late husband, Walter Meade, a native of the Catskills who was an outdoorsman and nature photographer.  Walt's family was poor when he was a youth and especially during the Great Depression adapted many foods in response to the scarcity of meat. 

Ginny shared Walt's recipe for "fall soup" that made use of less-important parts of beef left over from fall slaughtering, "johnny cake and milk" that was Walt's family's Sunday supper, baked custard made from locally-sourced eggs and milk, and what Ginny called "Hunter's Bisquick."  A good student, Walt used to skip school - with his mother's approval.  He hunted small game, especially grey squirrels, that would add protein for the family's diet.  Sometimes he would be away at dinner time or even overnight.  So Katherine, his Mom, would pack for him some flour with salt and baking powder and some butter to carry in his pocket so he could make a supper of wild game and biscuits baked on a hot rock.  Fall soup, custard and johnny cake and milk were some of Walt's favorite foods as an adult.  As so often happens, the hardship diet of the past becomes the comfort food of the present. 

Catskills Folk Lyceum

A "lyceum" was the 19th century's equivalent of "adult educatiion."  Traveling speakers, like itinerant painters and dancing masters, moved from village to village to share their messages.  Sometimes they were religious, sometimes political or scientific, but all sought the attention and sometimes allegiance of the adult listeners.  So "lyceum" seemed a good word to choose for Catskills Folk Connection's lecture series. Our events are held in a range of locations  around the region - like the traveling speakers of over a century ago and they seek to draw attention to the important traditional expressions and practicesof the diverse cultures of the Catskill Mountains.

Ryan Trapani harvesting bark.

 2019's Lyceum featured a dynamic speaker from the Catskill Forest Association, its Executive Director, Ryan Trapani.  He spoke knowledgeably from his own experience about foods that can be gleaned from the Catskills forest.  Most commonly thought of as food from the forest are berries and other fruit.  Ryan discussed many of these, including blueberries, raspberries and blackberries, but also the less commonly known thimbleberry.  He gave similarly detailed attention to nuts, roots, tree bark and products from the trunk used for food and medicine, a wide variety of "greens," plus mushrooms and finally fauna.  Everyone in the audience left with a sense that food from the forest was plentiful and various, not rare or exotic.  Catskills Folk Connection's foodways presentations at festivals have focused on one of the wild edibles - wild leeks - featured in Ryan's talk.  Perhaps with Ryan's assisstance and knowledge of local tradition bearers we can present more wild foods in the future.  

Additional 2019 folklife activities will be presented in upcoming posts.

Folk Art in Stone at CCCD

Carved blue stone fish by Richard McCormack

Carved mini-fireplace by Mark Swanberry

A two-month exhibit of folk art in Catskills bluestone is coming to an end in Arkville at the Erpf Gallery, part of  The Catskill Center.  It is on view through June 7, Monday - Friday 9:30 - 4:00 pm, at 43355 State Highway 28, Arkville, 12406.  There is a last chance to visit the exhibit on the weekend on Saturday, June 1, when the gallery will be kept open just for exhibit visitors.

Catskills Folk Connection organized the exhibit which features two folk artists from Schoharie County, Mark Swanberry and Richard McCormack.  Both artists come from artistic families and work as landscapers, but they carve and embellish their stone works differently.

Swanberry started carving stone plaques and bird baths.  He developed a series of stone lanterns and mini-fireplaces (complete with tea lights), both of which bear details in copper.  Recently he found a way to reproduce his stone carvings in repoussé copper on stone. 

McCormack is a draftsman and carves large stone figures, especially fish, in a linear style.  He embellishes slabs of bluestone with paintings of rural scenes, carving the stone to act as a frame.

"Folk Art in Stone" is the first in a series of exhibits of folk art in a number of media.  In 2020 Catskills Folk Connection will present an exhibit of folk art in wood, followed in 2022 by and exhibit of folk art in metal.

Catskills Folk Connection endeavors to conserve the diverse cultures of the CAtaskill Mountain Region through documentation and presentations such as this exhibit.  It is supported by Roxbury Arts Group, and is funded in part by  the New York State Council on the Arts Folk Art Program, by Gov.  Cuomo and the NYS Legislature, by an Aciton Grant from Humanities NY and by the O'Connor Foundation.  For more information contact Ginny Scheer 607-326-4206 or vscheer@juno.com.

Note that blog articles about Catskills Folk Connection's programs from September 2018 through April, 2019 can  be found at an alternate blog site: www.catskillsfolk.blogspot.com.

July Square Dance at Phoenicia Methodist Church

Toe-tapping traditional fiddle tunes will make you want to kick up your heels on Sunday, July 29, from 2 to 5 p.m. when John Jacobson and the Tremperskill Boys play for an old-time square dance.

In spite of the heat, dancers enjoy "Marching Through Georgia"
at the high-ceilinged Walton Grange in June.

The dance will be held at the United Methodist Church Hall, 25 Church Street, Phoenicia, NY  12464, located about two blocks off Main Street.  From Route 28, at the west entrance to Phoenicia, follow Main Street across the bridge, skip the left turn on Co. 214 and take the next left which is Church Street.  Approaching from the east, turn right on Bridge Street Extension and on Bridge Street, cross the bridge and turn left at the four corners, which is Main Street.  Then just after the gas station, turn right on Church Street. 

Catskills Folk Connection's square dances are designed for new dancers of all ages as well as experienced dancers.  Perfect for family fun.  All dances will be taught; and you need not bring a partner.  Refreshments will be available.

Should 90 degree temperatures return, don't worry.  The Church Hall is air-conditioned.

Admission: Adults $7; children 12 and under are free.

Catskills Folk Connection is sponsored by the Roxbury Arts Group, and is funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts Folk Art Program, by Gov. Cuomo and the NYS Legislature, by an Action Grant from Humanities NY, and by the O'Connor Foundation.

For more information, contact Ginny Scheer, Folklorist, at 607-326-4206 or vscheer@juno.com.