Have you been to the National Soaring Museum lately?
*If you haven’t been lately (or at all), think about a trip up Harris Hill to take a look. I think you’ll get some pleasant surprises.
*The annual dollhouse and miniatures show that used to sparkle up the winter at Curtiss Museum has migrated over to the Soaring Museum, and we stopped in to see it on a February Saturday.
*We’ve been regulars at the show, and even sometime exhibitors, since the 1995-96 season, so we encountered some old friends, as well as making some new acquaintances.
*Right in the lobby we found pieces from the late Marie Rockwell’s collection, such as a southwestern “adobe” house complete with cermaics and needlepoint carpets in Navajo-style designs… an exacting and delightful attention to detail.
*Most of us are accustomed to dollhouses for play, but miniaturists work for showing, rather than playing (though making and showing are forms of play themselves). Scott Hopkins’s camper is open on one side and the top for better viewing. It even includes an outhouse behind the camper.
*Sue McGoun created an amusing upstairs/downstairs house, where the downstairs hosts a pair of stereotypical 1950s parents in 1950s setting, while the upstairs is populated with, and furnished by, today’s 21st-century teenagers.
*Each item shines on its own merits. Stacy Clark’s instricate rosewood “chinoiserie” furniture (exhibited on its own) is inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Pam Burton’s Halloween House was created in a lengthy labor of love. Ron and Shirlee Cornwell created a large farmhouse, but it springs to the fore because of the outdoor Christmas display.
*Long-time area residents might recognize Fritz Meyers’s piece – a large-scale model of the Atlantic gas station in Big Flats, complete with double service bay and two pumps out front.
*Will Parker creates unusual eye-catching model train layouts, including an X-scale figure-8 with windmill and stone cottages – the more you study it, the more you find, and the more you lose yourself in Will’s little world.
*And that’s just (some of) what’s in the lobby! Downstairs there’s a large mansion by Joyce Merletti, and a “community” of three mansions and three cottages, from Marie Rockwell, Lillian Elwood, and Helen Keeton. Undergoing some work in the restoration shop, but accessible for viewing, is a fully-furnished four-story mansion with excellent sightlines through its chock-full interior.
*As if that weren’t enough, there’s a small but impressive collection of Eastern Orthodox icons “written” (that is, painted) by Joyce Merletti. And in the upstairs mezannine hallway are a half-dozen nature paintings by C. F. Lawrence. In “All But Forgotten,” a blue jay perches on a dilapidated “park bench,” surrounded by overgrown grasses and under an overcast sky.
*The female cardinal in “Fallen Silent” perches on an old bell, and even without touching it you can feel the rust on the bell.
*So why is all of this at the Soaring Museum? Is not completely new… NSM has a history (and a future) with quilt exhibits, for instance. The board and new director Trafford Doherty (like me, a former director at Curtiss) are looking forward to more changing exhibits with more variety, connecting the place more directly with the local community, on top of being what I believe is the only soaring museum in the western hemisphere. And more about THAT in a future blog!