In the Wheelhouse
What are you good at? I mean — really good at? It’s a question we should all ask ourselves now and again. Not that it’s a mistake to venture out of your comfort zone. You can learn a lot about yourself that way. But you can learn even more by finding your own sweet spot, to stay in your wheelhouse, as the saying goes (the allusion is to the enclosed steering cabin of a ship). And dwell there, as long as it takes to make wonders happen.
Upstate Diary has been in its wheelhouse for seven years and counting. Since it was first published, this upstart magazine has charted the imaginative contours of the Hudson Valley and beyond, profiling “creative lives in private landscapes.” It’s a publication about people and the magic they make, presented with wit, visual flair, and deep humanity.
Now the same team, led by editor Kate Orne, steps off the page with Art + Nature + Home. The project is set at Foreland, a converted mill dating back to the 1830s, a perfect backdrop for objects that are contemporary in spirit yet rooted in tradition. And a well-chosen title, too, for the value of these three things has been amply proven in the turbulent year past. As the company of others was withdrawn from our daily lives, what has been left? Home, of course — we have become newly intimate with our own domestic spaces. Nature, for those fortunate to have it on the doorstep, has been a salvation. And perhaps above all, art — whether we’re looking at it, making it, or just thinking about it.
I love those plus signs in the title, too, suggesting an equation to be solved. Indeed, each object in the exhibition feels just like this: an answer to the problem of how to live well. In general, the forms these artists create have an admirable simplicity. A clarity and strength of form. A vivid expression of intrinsic material qualities. An unswerving commitment to individual vision.
Of course, none of this comes easily. It takes a lifetime to arrive at such resolve. This is an exhibition of great things made by great people, doing what they do best, day after day, year after year. It comes at a time when, thank goodness, we can be in one another’s company again. Some kind of new normal can be glimpsed, now, just on the horizon. It’s a good time to be reminded of what really matters. Art + Nature + Home equals… well, come and see.