Finding Color in Corning
This Tiffany window once graced a mansion in Hastings-on-Hudson. Now it's at the Corning Museum of Glass.
“I returned to New York wondering why we made so little use of our eyes, why we refrained so obstinately from taking advantage of colour in our architecture and our clothing when nature indicates its mastership.” — Louis Comfort Tiffany
Mr. Tiffany certainly had a point.
It’s late February in Western New York. In the bleak late winter landscape, you can be hard pressed to find any color. Unless you consider muddy brown fields and yellowing corn stalks color.
This February break, my family did not escape to Floridian blue skies or green palm trees. With no white snow, Western New York this time of year is nothing but grey.
So, we decided to go to the Corning Museum of Glass for color.
I came across the above quote by Louis Tiffany in front of one of his gorgeous windows that had been salvaged from a mansion on Hastings-on-Hudson.
This quote made me think – we really are afraid of color.
How many of us take the safe route and dress in black or beige because we don’t want to stand out from the crowd? Yes, we see models wearing bright fuschia or tangerine. But in our closets, we always go back to black.
Tiffany’s quote holds true to the home as well. My in-laws are in the process of selling their home. Most rooms have been repainted to – you guessed it – eggshell white.
That’s a good thing for my husband’s childhood room, which was brown. Um, my mother-in-law referred to it as s*&t brown. In this case, repainting was a wise move.
But I was sad to learn that they had to paint over the crimson dining room as well as the hand-painted grey and silver squiggles my father created on their kitchen walls.
Color in and on a house was also the talk of my street when homeowners who since moved away painted their home dark purple. That really stood out on a block of beige, tan, and grey homes.
When this house came on the market to sell, potential buyers were scared off and could not get past the purple hue of the home. During an open house, my husband and I took a peek inside. The colors continued inside as well: a brick-red dining room, cobalt blue kitchen and an orange bedroom. And, in the bedroom, the lady of the house proudly displayed her collection of 30 different shades of nail polish.
I actually loved how these soon-to-be ex neighbors embraced color.
Finally, the house sold. The first thing the new owners did was repaint the house. To grey.
But, I digress. Back to CMOG, as we Western New Yorkers call it.
When you think of Corningware, certainly this image comes to mind:
Your typical casserole dish. Very practical. Very white.
At the Corning Museum of Glass, the visitor learns that glass is science. It is everywhere in our everyday lives: light bulbs, windshields, windows. Fiber Optics. Casseroles. Glass insulates our houses, we can cook in glass, conduct scientific experiments with it. Tempered glass is used for shower doors and car windshields so they will not shatter into sharp shards if they break.
But, step into another section of the museum, into the more contemporary galleries, and the mundane is left behind.
Artists worldwide have taken this medium, and with it practical objects, and stretched both glass and our imagination to rethink the most practical of objects.
Imagine asking your kids to set a table with a top like this:
Or placing flowers in vases like these
Or putting your feet up at the end of the day on a glass-beaded ottoman
Some artist visualised the human torso in glass:
Still others beckoned us to take a gondola ride suspended along an invisible river:
On our way home, we left all this color behind and re-entered the grey, rainy late winter afternoon. But, we were treated by Mother Nature to one last blast of color:
In Defense of Newt’s Moon Colony
written by the daughter of one of my neighbors. hysterical must-read. To the moon, Alice!
Speak trippingly on the tongue – the complete works of Shakespeare in 90 minutes at Pittsford Mendon HS
Make use of
time, let not advantage slip.
William Shakespeare
As a columnist who has to write ahead, I am always thinking two weeks into the future. But, in the whirlgig of time, I was not in time on writing an advance for a great high school play taking place this weekend. But this sounds too auspicious of an event, and I had too good a time looking up Shakespeare quotes not to share. Thanks to all my friends on Facebook who fed me with witty Shakespearean quotes and sources for this post:
The Sutherland High School players present a fall comedy, The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged. This parody incorporates all the plays written by William Shakespeare into one show and will be on the SHS stage October 27, 28, and 29 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available at the door for $10 each.
“This is different from anything I’ve ever done before,” said Colin Perinello, a senior who will major in musical theatre next fall at a college to be determined.
“In one sentence, I have to use a high falsetto voice when I say Juliet’s line, then have to drop to a deeper voice in a Scottish accent when I am the narrator. Sometimes, I mix up my voices and roles, so what comes out is a twisted Juliet with a Scottish accent. Let’s just say it is a very humourous outcome,” he said.
In our world of 140 character tweets, it’s refreshing to know that there are still high school kids out there who will put on puffy shirts, tights and kilts and learn the poetry of Shakespeare. But, in this age of short attention-span theatre, this play indeed makes “use of time” to “let not advantage slip” as snippets of all 37 Shakespearean plays are squeezed into this upcoming 90 minute performance.
This weekend, I’m planning on seeing the movie Anonymous, a movie with a premise that Shakespeare never wrote a word. Shakespeare: was he or wasn’t he? But in the end, does it matter?
October in New York: East Hill Farm/Folk Art Guild Open House
Last Sunday morning, though I could have slept in, I woke up early. I woke up my family too. I told them we were about to take a trip into the country. No, we weren’t going through a corn Maze.No, there would be no pumpkin catapult contests. But I promised them, they would enjoy it. They were going to have a good time. Because I SAID SO!
Life has been way too hectic lately. I feel like I have barely seen my three children since late June. It seems like no sooner did my older son and daughter return from sleep-away camp and I washed all their laundry, the summer ended and so began the school grind. Homework and tests. Track meets and band practice.
But last Sunday morning, we had this glorious sunny perfect day. And we had no school and no work. I just wanted one chore-free day of me not nagging anyone spent out in the country. One day of me not badgering anyone to stop texting friends while I am talking to them or stop playing games on the computer.
So off we went.
The ride along Canandaigua Lake had the whole family, plus a friend of my son’s, singing along to “American Pie” on the radio and marveling at the colors of the trees that dotted the hills
as we whizzed past withering cornfields.
To reach our destination: the East Hill Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Farm and Folk Art Guild in beautiful, Middlesex, NY. There, we got a chance to see where our vegetables were grown all summer.
East Hill Farm is a project of the Rochester Folk Art Guild, a nonprofit organization and community of craftspeople and farmers. Since 1967, they have grown food and produced handmade practical folk art on a 350 acre farm. East Hill Farm uses old fashioned, chemical-free, hands-on organic methods to grow fruit, vegetables, herbs, eggs, pigs, and chickens for the community and for sale through our CSA and markets.
For the past 20 weeks, our family took part in a great experiment of owning a CSA share. Each Friday since mid-May we were presented with a portion of vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers organically and lovingly grown by a group of young entrepreneurial farmers. Whether it was spring’s excessive rains or July’s excessive heat, we shared in the farmers’ risky dance with Mother Nature.
The farm had limited cell phone service so we got a chance to sample the simpler, slower style of life. We actually got a chance to catch up, share and talk as a family. How many times are family members distracted from each other by screens: laptops, DS games, cell phones, iPods?
Well, on this day in October my teen-aged daughter actually sat and talked to me. She sat and reminisced with me about the first time she used a pottters wheel this summer at camp as we watched a master potter throw and mold a clay jar before our eyes:
How many toys, clothing, dishes do we buy that are made of cheaply made mass-produced?
At East Hill Farm, in the woodworking shop, bare-footed craftsmen showed off their lathes.
And my kids played with real wooden toys.
Made in the USA.
Then, in the weaver’s studio, my son got to try his hand at a loom, using wool that was dyed by an apprentice, the same young woman who brings us our week’s worth of vegetables. Thank you, East Hill Farm farmers. It’s been a great summer.
Brick by Brick
I remember as a kid going to the Statue of Liberty and learning that the base of the statue was funded by pennies collected by NYC schoolchildren. This week, I watched this four-part series of all the different people that are working together to rebuild the World Trade Center.
Rebuilding, on small and large projects, are ways for communities to come together. This september, as we remember the 9/11 attacks, and the destruction from Katrina and now Irene, let’s think of how we can help Americans rebuild from disaster. Here are are more examples I wrote about in my weekly colum
Taking a Blogging Break over Passover Break
Even though I’m back in “old country” Staten Island, that is, I feel a bit out of my element not being in my own space to have the space to blog.
For the next two days, it’s all about the Seders – cooking for them, helping to lead them, eating the fest…. and cleaning up. Definately not enough time to collect thoughts for another blog post.
But, I am sure the week will leave me with plenty of material. Stay tuned for photos from my latest visit back home, including updates from Ground Zero, eating in perhaps what is the country’s only Glatt Kosher Vegan Chinese restaurant, and an amazing US Ranger talk at the continent’s largest African Burial ground.
Happy Passover and Happy Easter!
Swirls of Color or Standardized Dots? Keep Arts in Schools
What picture inspires you more.
This?
Or this?
If public school budgets continue to shave and slash away at the arts, the black and white dots of those “No Child Left Behind” standardized tests are all that will be left of our children’s public school education. Teaching to the test leaves no room for imagination, creativity, real thinking or problem solving. What it has resulted in is burned-out stressed-out teachers and students.
This is according to an independent documentary called “Race To Nowhere” that is sparking a grassroots movement to reshape how we educate our public school students. I look forward to seeing a screening of this independent movie in Rochester, NY, at Nazareth College on April 4. The movie screening is being sponsored in part by a private Jewish day school, Hillel Community Day School.
The film challenges parents, educators, and policy makers with this question: Are we doing right by our children? Is the pressure to succeed in standardized tests really preparing our children to become capable, inspired and motivated individuals ready to tackle college or the workforce?
When school budgets get tight, the arts are the first to get cut. In fact, schools in the Rochester area are seeking to reduce some of their arts budgets by 50 percent.
Is music, art and sculpture really that expendable? Is painting, singing, and playing an instrument such a frivolous part of a child’s education that it should be considered a fluffy extra that can be easily eliminated from his academic career?
Absolutely not, according to Americans for the Arts. Young people who consistently participate in comprehensive, sequential, and rigorous arts programs are:
- 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement
- 3 times more likely to be elected to class office within their schools
- 4 times more likely to participate in a math and science fair
- 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance
- 4 times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem*
When was the last time your child stood at an easel and held a brush full of paint? Or perhaps, in the spirit of abandoning everything for creativity’s sake, she ditched the brush and instead joyfully found herself up to her elbows in paint, as her hands and fingers glided across the paper.
Indeed, art is messy. When was the last time you let your kid get messy at home with some paint or clay? Overheard once in a preschool hallway: “I’m so glad they paint here at school, because at home, we don’t let him do that.”
Might as well draw a dagger through a teacher’s heart.
Video games and television are not messy. But they don’t do much to fire up the brain neurons either.
Art on the other hand unlocks creativity in children that leads to story telling, pattern recognition, and understanding other cultures. It is simply the expression of life that makes life enjoyable. Art enables quiet kids to tell stories. Art calms and centers otherwise boisterious kids. It is a positive way for them to control the environment around them. A blank piece of paper or a lump of play dough can become a whole universe that they can master.
The above picture was created by a very precocious preschooler who patiently sat, cut and created a composition. Imagine what that same child can do when she gets older in an art class?
If a child is not going to be exposed to the earts in their earliest school years, then where will they get the opportunities? If arts are cut in public schools, there are private arts classes that parents can enroll their chilren in most towns and communities. But they cost money. So, cut the arts in public schools, and access to arts will only be possible to the families who can afford them.
And the rest? GThe only drawing less priveleged kids are going to do in school are the dots and circles they create on a standardized test.
2010 in review
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 7,000 times in 2010. That’s about 17 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 49 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 57 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 42mb. That’s about 1 pictures per week.
The busiest day of the year was October 28th with 2 views. The most popular post that day was What’s a Nice Jewish Girl to do about Halloween? .
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were wordpress.com, facebook.com, networkedblogs.com, en.wordpress.com, and insidecatholic.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for world aids day 2010, world aids day 2010 logo, world aids day logo 2010, halloween jewish, and jewish halloween.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
What’s a Nice Jewish Girl to do about Halloween? October 2010
102 comments and 48 Likes on WordPress.com
RENT, Red Ribbons and Rides: AIDS Awareness then and now July 2010
1 comment
About Transplanted North June 2010
1 comment
A Blessing and a Curse: Israeli advocacy though Social Networking October 2010
3 comments
Remembering the Bullies October 2010
7 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,
Welcome to Canada: Did you bring your Skates?
after a skate, a young couple takes in free samples of beer in a Toronto Brewery
This Christmas vacation, my family took a mini getaway to Toronto. As an alternative to our New York City visits, we love exploring this cosmopolitan city to the North for its great restaurants, theatres, shopping, and museums. Going round and round on an outdoor skating rink in sub-zero (Celsius) temperatures we regret to say was the farthest thing from our minds.
Because our children go to sleep away camp north of Toronto, not only are we having fun getting to know Torontos’ sites but its people. My daughter spent much of our visit not with us but with the family of a friend she made from summer camp. All arrangements were made over Skype through the girls and without one conversation between the adults. All directions were found via GPS. Welcome to long distance friendships in the 21st Century, I guess.
We dropped Jolie off at her friend’s house and were greeted by the girl’s mother. In the small entryway of the house, we made some awkward chit-chat as the girls settled in for a weekend of catching up and shopping. When we mentioned that we were staying at the Westin Harbour Castle, the mom’s first reaction was:
“They have a lovely ice skating rink just a block from your hotel. Did you bring your skates?”
About a half hour later, the father came home after participating in the traditional Canadian Boxing Day, which is the equivalent to our Black Friday for shopping deals and sales. We were introduced and then his wife went down to the basement to get something from their pantry.
In another awkward introductory chit-chat, the father of my daughter’s friend independently asked us the same question:
“There is this great outdoor ice skating rink near your hotel. Did you bring your skates?”
Now, both my husband and I looked at each other with great amusement. We were struck that Canadians make the assumption that we actually – all of us – owned our own pair of skates. And there was this second assumption that – upon our arrival to this vast cosmopolitan city, the first thing we would want to do was skate.
Another inquiry of our skating habits was made as we were checking out of our hotel. As we waited with our luggage, the bellhop looked at me and my boys and asked me in his French Canadian accent: “Do your boys skate? Do they play ‘ockey?” I had to say no and I asked him why he asked.
He then pointed to a well dressed young man standing in the lobby. “Because, ma’am, that young man plays hockey for the Pittsburgh Penguins. He is only 20 and makes over 2 milion a yaear. So, your boys should liarn to play ‘ockey!”
Now, I am sorry to say that I did not recognize this young man, so this brush with fame was completely wasted on me. And I also appreciated this bellhop’s hope that my young sons held the athletic prowess to be hockey stars, but again he was sorely mistaken. I’m afraid, Canada, that we Americans are just not that into skating.
Or are we? Do you skate? And if so, do you own your own pair?
About Me
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Stacy Gittleman 