Bold & Artful

In the early days of Sports Illustrated, when it was home to great sports writers, photographers and illustrators, its art director — the late Harvey Grut — commissioned an eight-page spread of Canada geese hunters from Robert M. Cunningham, an up-and-coming painter and illustrator. And so began a career that made Cunningham’s work famous in other magazines, on arts posters and on a series of U.S. postage stamps celebrating the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, NY. In 1998 he earned a place in the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame. Now as a memorial to Grut, who lived at Noble Horizons with his partner, Robert Julien, for many years before his death, the NH gallery is presenting a small exhibition of Cunningham’s acrylic paintings. Included are sports pictures from the 1980s and ’90s as well as images from Eleuthra and even New Preston, near Cunningham’s home in Warren, where he lived until his death in 2010. What will strike you at Noble is the intense color of Cunningham’s palette: bright green and blue and yellow, stark white, slashes of crimson. In the Bahama paintings, these colors are laid in horizontal bands — sky, sea, sometimes land — behind figures such as a native fisherman in his boat. There is no shelter from the blazing, intense Caribbean light. The two pictures of the small shopping heart of New Preston are about antique buildings in stark light and shadow. No cars or people interfere with the careful compositions. Best, I think, are the handful of sports paintings. Cunningham’s bold strokes of color are here laid in smaller blunt, angled strokes that give momentum to pictures such as “Kayaking.” But in a pair of track paintings — “Two Men Jumping Hurdles” and “Time Runner”— the boldness is toned down, the runners given an impressionistic and gentle heroism. And do note the wonderful extra-dimensional touch Cunningham achieves by placing the time runner’s left, forward foot outside the picture plane. Nice. “Robert M. Cunningham” continues weekends at Noble Horizons’ main building through April 3. Hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

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Walking among the ‘Herd’

Walking among the ‘Herd’

Michel Negroponte

Betti Franceschi

"Herd,” a film by Michel Negroponte, will be screening at The Norfolk Library on Saturday April 13 at 5:30 p.m. This mesmerizing documentary investigates the relationship between humans and other sentient beings by following a herd of shaggy Belted Galloway cattle through a little more than a year of their lives.

Negroponte and his wife have had a second home just outside of Livingston Manor, in the southwest corner of the Catskills, for many years. Like many during the pandemic, they moved up north for what they thought would be a few weeks, and now seldom return to their city dwelling. Adjacent to their property is a privately owned farm and when a herd of Belted Galloways arrived, Negroponte realized the subject of his new film.

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documentaries

Fresh perspectives in Norfolk Library film series

Fresh perspectives in Norfolk Library film series

Diego Ongaro

Photo submitted

Parisian filmmaker Diego Ongaro, who has been living in Norfolk for the past 20 years, has composed a collection of films for viewing based on his unique taste.

The series, titled “Visions of Europe,” began over the winter at the Norfolk Library with a focus on under-the-radar contemporary films with unique voices, highlighting the creative richness and vitality of the European film landscape.

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norfolk library

New ground to cover and plenty of groundcover

New ground to cover and plenty of groundcover

Young native pachysandra from Lindera Nursery shows a variety of color and delicate flowers.

Dee Salomon

It is still too early to sow seeds outside, except for peas, both the edible and floral kind. I have transplanted a few shrubs and a dogwood tree that was root pruned in the fall. I have also moved a few hellebores that seeded in the near woods back into their garden beds near the house; they seem not to mind the few frosty mornings we have recently had. In years past I would have been cleaning up the plant beds but I now know better and will wait at least six weeks more. I have instead found the most perfect time-consuming activity for early spring: teasing out Vinca minor, also known as periwinkle and myrtle, from the ground in places it was never meant to be.

Planting the stuff in the first place is my biggest ever garden regret. It was recommended to me as a groundcover that would hold together a hillside, bare after a removal of invasive plants save for a dozen or so trees. And here we are, twelve years later; there is vinca everywhere. It blankets the hillside and has crept over the top into the woods. It has made its way left and right. I am convinced that vinca is the plastic of the plant world. The stuff won’t die. (The name Vinca comes from the Latin ‘vincire’ which means ‘to bind or fetter.’) Last year I pulled a bunch and left it strewn on the roof of the root cellar for 6 months and the leaves were still green.

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the ungardener

Matza Lasagne by 'The Cook and the Rabbi'

Matza Lasagne by 'The Cook and the Rabbi'

Culinary craftsmanship intersects with spiritual insights in the wonderfully collaborative book, “The Cook and the Rabbi.” On April 14 at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck (6422 Montgomery Street), the cook, Susan Simon, and the rabbi, Zoe B. Zak, will lead a conversation about food, tradition, holidays, resilience and what to cook this Passover.

Passover, marked by the traditional seder meal, holds profound significance within Jewish culture and for many carries extra meaning this year at a time of great conflict. The word seder, meaning “order” in Hebrew, unfolds in a 15-step progression intertwining prayers, blessings, stories, and songs that narrate the ancient saga of the liberation of the Israelites from slavery. It’s a narrative that has endured for over two millennia, evolving with time yet retaining its essence, a theme echoed beautifully in “The Cook and the Rabbi.”

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books