Monthly Archives: March 2019

If You’re Looking for Art, Try Dansville

If you’re looking for art, try Dansville.

*That may seem like a surprise, since many people know Dansville as a pleasant small town with no particular artistic pretensions. But times are changing, so Dansville is more and more an easy-access venue for art.

*Last week we visited Dansville ArtWorks, a gallery on Main Street, for the 29-piece Fourth Annual Juried Photography Exhibit, along with the Mert Wager Restrospective.

*Photography’s a funny medium to judge or jury. First of all, you’ve got color photos, or black-and-white photos – how do you compare? Likewise how do you rate the relative merits of a landscape, a portrait, and a still life?

*So just to plunge into what really caught my eye – “Tender Moment” by John Adamski seized me. John captured two small fawns with their mother, a thrilling sight and a thrilling photo regardless of its artistic metits. But in this case the centrally-placed mother was alert, closely watching the photographer, with the two young ones carelessly confident in their mother’s care. I found it outstanding.

*Scott Hooker’s photo of spring thaw at Canadice Lake Inlet also got my attention. The main matter of the photo is swiftly-flowing water, but here and there the flow is punctuated by ice frozen around obstacles… water racing forward, and water standing still, impeding the flow.

*Nicole Walker’s nighttime “Rochester Skyline,” with its vivid colors exploding from the dark, unsurprisingly received an honorable mention. First place went to a black-and-white still life called “Screws” – a collection of flat-headed wood screws, arranged like the skyscrapers of a great city. It sounds odd, but it certainly caught my attention from across the room, so for whatever it’s worth I can support the award. Tom Kredo’s the photographer.

*In second place was John Adamski’s “Appalachian Sunset.” A lot of Appalachian sunsets have been immortalized over the years. This one I found very interesting because all that was shaded seemed to form one unbroken field of black. The outboard motorboat, for instance, showed no color and no detail beyond its silhouette, in the blue lake. It was a very interesting piece of work.

*L. Mert Wager, a Buffalo Mohawk lineman, taught himself to paint at the age of 40. His exhibit (paints and prints) starts off with a bang in the person of a red-breasted nuthatch, perching in its traditional head-low position but with sky beneath. That’s the first painting in the exhibit, and it drew me over instantly, and it’s defintely my favorite. I also loved the kookaburra, though I confess to having no idea what a kookaburra looks like.

*“Almost There” really gets across its concept, with a mounted cowboy leading a pack pony as he and his two animals trudge through deep snow. They’re crowding into the right lower quadrant, and ahead of them fenceposts just peek above the snow – they’re almost there. And the other three-fourths of the painting suggest all the terrain that they’ve struggled through to get to this point.

*A man and two horses also dominate “Sugar Time,” in which the man on the loaded sleigh strains forward, even as his horses plod through the snow.

*I don’t hunt, but I really liked the composition in “One Up,” where hunter, dog, and pheasant are all joined together, but each in his own space is a solo performer. In “Still Life Granny Apples,” the composition (logs, apples, blossoms, boughs) is islanded and spotlighted by surrounding white space.

*The photo exhibit is up until April 27, and the Wager exhibit through May. There are also works of numerous nedia for sale by local artists.

*While you’re in town, you might try the Fairy Doors walking tour – miniature fantasy doorways in places in or along Main Street. The library also features changing exhibits, and so does the historical society. On top of that there’s public statuary, in the person of a Civil War soldier. So, to circle back to my original statement, if you’re looking for art, try Dansville.

1910 Pilot Blanche Stuart Scott: “Teaching the American Girl Courage and Independence”

This week while visiting “Space Center Houston” I came upon a space suit labeled Collins and said, “Oh, Eileen!” My son Josh said, “Look again.” Peeking at the other side of the exhibit case, I realized that people from the Finger Lakes are likely to hear about astronaut Collins and think “Eileen” instead of “Mike.”

*More about Lieutenant Colonel Collins in a future blog! But that experience got me thinking about four women, all with strong local ties, who have advanced the cause of women AND the course of aerospace.

*Each one will have her own blog (or two), and this week we’ll start with Blanche Stuart Scott.

*By the age of 13 Blanche was terrifying fellow turn-of-the-century Rochestrians with her father’s one-cylinder Cadillac, and attracting the grumpy attention of the city fathers. She went to finishing school but never got finished, and with a decline in the family’s fortunes suddenly (1910) had to make her own way in the world.

*Blending boldness and automotives with a flair for publicity, she sold the Overland car company on a scheme by which she –a mere girl! – would drive “Overland in an Overland” from coast to coast, proving that ANYBODY could drive.

*This was in fact a staggering challenge, as American roads were dreadful (worse than Siberia’s, according to international drivers), and no road at all linked Denver with Omaha. But off Blanche set, accompanied by a woman reporter and stopping at Overland dealerships along the way. (They also called on Elbert Hubbard at East Aurora. He said, “We believe in women’s work here. You are teaching the American girl courage and independence.”)

*She completed her trip, possibly the first woman to do so, and was at loose ends until Glenn Curtiss’s publicity man swept down, inviting her to Hammondsport to learn to fly.

*Once there, though, she hit an obstacle in Glenn himself. Having grown up surrounded by strong women, he wasn’t scared by them, but he saw the other side of the P.R. coin. A woman being killed in a Curtiss airplane would probably take his business to the grave with her.

*Moreover, Glenn and Lena Curtiss took Overland’s publicity at face value, and assumed that Blanche was only 18 (she was probably 23). They insisted that she live at their house, and supervised her closely.

*She still used a Curtiss motorcycle to get from his house on the hill to the flying ground down near on the lake near the current school. Since she was short she had trouble getting off, so she’d aim the thing at the hangar, cut the engine, coast in, and jump off, letting the motorcycle come to rest upright against the wall.

*Glenn was one of several instructors she worked with, and legends abound about how he put governors on her airplane’s engine to prevent her from taking off, until one day they were mysteriously omitted and she took to the skies, after which Curtiss tossed in the towel.

*The truth is more prosaic. EVERYBODY used an underpowered biplane for “grass cutting,” trundling up and down the field to get the feel of the controls. Now and then, even with the underpowered machines, pilots would unexpectedly “hop” into the air when conditions were right, and Blanche had this experience too.

*Blanche Scott was never shy about publicity, but even late in life she made clear that she did NOT consider those to be actual flights. Her big day came on September 2, 1910, when she made her planned solo, taking off from the flats near Keuka Lake in controlled flight. Blanche Stuart Scott was the first woman pilot in America. Hammondsport was the birthplace of women’s aviation, and Glenn Curtiss was its godfather.

A Quiz (for Fun) on the Finger Lakes Region

Hey… why not a trivia quiz about our Finger Lakes? Not that this stuff is necessarily trivial, but “trivia” emphasizes that it’s just for fun. The asnwers are at the end.

*(1) Which Finger Lake is the only one that does not have a Native American name?

*(2) What community is the birthplace of women’s aviation, AND the birthplace of naval aviation?

*(3) From 1948 to 1976 the Hale Telescope was the largest telescpe in the world. From 1959 to 1973 the Shane Telescope was the SECOND largest in the world. What Finger Lakes company made the giant reflectors for each of these?

*(4) Which winery is U.S. Bonded Winery Number 1 for its state and Federal District?

*(5) Which Finger Lakes metropolis is home to the Great New York State Fair?

*(6) Is Rochester the Flower City, or the Flour City?

*(7) What Finger Lakes city plays host to linked men’s and women’s colleges?

*(8) What and where is New York’s Land-Grant college?

*(9) What thousand-mile foot trail system wends it way through, and beyond, the Finger Lakes?

*(10) What hurricane was responsible for the catastrophic 1972 flood?

*(11) Charles Williamson and Jemima Wilkinson were two of the founders of white settlement in this area, and they didn’t get along. Which one was strait-laced, and which was wild?

*(12) Which Indian Nation created and lived in the city of Ganondagan, near today’s Victor?

*(13) What huge building project went on in the Finger Lakes (and beyond) from 1817 to 1825?

*(14) What city is the Soaring Capital of America… where some of the earliest army glider pilots trained in World War II?

*(15) Which of these people were born in the 14-county Finger Lakes region? Glenn Curtiss, Mitch Miller, John D. Rockefeller, John Lithgow, Cab Calloway, Tommy Hilfiger, Margaret Sanger, Eileen Collins.

*ANSWERS

*(1) Hemlock Lake… although that’s actually a translation of the original Native name.

*(2) Hammondsport. Blanche Stuart Scott became the first American woman pilot there in 1910. In 1911 the navy took possession of its first two aircraft there, and spent the summer testing them out on Keuka Lake.

*(3) Corning Glass Works, back in the 1930s.

*(4) Pleasant Valley Wine Company (established 1860), near Hammondsport.

*(5) Syracuse. The Fair’s been there since 1890, plus occasionally hosting it prior to that.

*(6) You may have credit for either, or both. Rochester used to be the Flour City when milling grain was a big business, and became the Flower City as it became more residential.

*(7) Geneva, home of Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

*(8) Cornell University, in Ithaca.

*(9) The Finger Lakes Trail.

*(10) Hurricane Agnes, which killed 18 people in the Corning-Painted Post area, plus others throughout the region.

*(11) Pioneer prophetess Jemima Wilkinson was the strait-laced one. She condemned Williamson’s settlement at Bath as “a cesspool of iniquity.”

*(12) The Seneca.

*(13) The Erie Canal, which moved the economic focus from the Southern Tier to the canal corridor.

*(14) Elmira.

*(15) All of them, Katie!