Two of my favorite weekends in Beacon are Beacon Open Studios, and the City-Wide Yard Sale. They both present an opportunity to explore all of Beacon to find interesting things you have never seen before - and probably never will again. Beacon Open Studios has opened today through Sunday, May 21-22, 2016, so get your walking shoes on because you have a lot of exploring to do. If you're looking for a place to park all day, check out the Free Public Parking Lot Guide we made for you, with pictures and cross streets for all of Beacon's free lots.
Beacon Open Studios is the reason why you're seeing the big red dot everywhere - from people's yards to galleries and storefronts. Artists of all kinds - painting, jewelry, sculpture, mixed media - open their homes or take over a space to let you meet them and view their work. To find these studios, pick up a brochure from most any shop or restaurant in town, or the studio's headquarters, 2 Way Brewing Company down on Beekman Street, on the way to or from the Beacon train station.
Anna Bergin is my current obsession. Pictured below in layers of color, Anna popped up in a PopUp Shop this past winter with chocolate baker 5 Hens, which was a perfect match because Anna's paintings look like totally edible cupcake frosting. The texture of the paint she mixes herself is thick and chalky - like sugary frosting. Painted with oil and ash in shades of pastel, these paintings are captivating. Hold on a minute. "Ash"? Yes, Anna mixes the paint pigments with actual ash from her fireplace. Says Anna: "I take the ash from my fireplace during winter and campfires during summer months. It's part of what I think is neat about it, using what we burn." See her work now at 2 Way Brewing Company and Spire Studios. And be sure to sign up for our newsletter in case she pops up in another PopUp Shop.
Photo Credit: Katie Hellmuth Martin
Beth Weintraub, a printmaker, has eye-catching artwork on display. This piece on the left currently hangs in 2 Way Brewing Company right now as part of the Beacon Open Studios exhibit, and she's at Spire Studios, too.
Photo Credit: Katie Hellmuth Martin
Beacon Open Studios usually includes at least one hands-on art event for the kids, and this year, one of them offers an opportunity to play with clay from Beacon Craft Workshop, another regular in our Kids Classes Guide. Find the event on Saturday in the upstairs classroom at the Howland Cultural Center, 477 Main St, Beacon.
This beautiful wood scrap sale from Wickham Solid Wood Studio, down at the very end of Main Street by The Hop, is a not-to-be-missed sale. If you are a collector of wood to make anything - shelves, tables, surfaces of any kind - this is one wood workshop you need to stop into.
And for the jewelry collectors in the house, there are several in-home or jewelry studios open this weekend, a rare occasion indeed. Be inspired by this work space from laiannaferruggia.
Behind most great artistic projects in Beacon, you'll find BeaconArts. Founded over a decade ago to serve as a promotion engine for galleries, and later businesses of varying kinds, BeaconArts is connected to just about everything happening in Beacon, specifically two big events opening this month: Beacon Open Studios (BeaconArts is a Fiscal Sponsor) and Constellation (BeaconArts is a Community Partner).
As BeaconArts is one of our Sponsor Spotlight partners here at A Little Beacon Blog, we take pleasure in highlighting two great happenings a month for them, and this month, the focus is on two major Things To Do that you can start planning for now: the city-wide Beacon Open Studios, and Constellation's boat and walking tours launching to Pollepel Island to see the stars making up a constellation installed on Bannerman Castle.
Starting May 7, Running Through October 2016!
Melissa McGill’s land art project CONSTELLATION continues to light up every night at sunset and launches its second season of sunset boat tours. See the installation up close, tour the Bannerman Castle ruins on Pollepel Island, and watch the project come alive while on the Hudson River aboard the Estuary Steward. Tours begin May 7 and run through October 2016, departing from Beacon, NY, steps away from Dia:Beacon. Need some food? Stop into Homespun's location at Dia. Individual and group reservations are now available online. More information about the project, schedules and tickets, including artist-led tours and programs, can be found here.
Beacon Open Studios Happens May 21-22, 2016!
Beacon Open Studios is a weekend-long event where the artists of Beacon, NY, open their studios to the public. Studios will be open all over Beacon to visit and a free catalog with map will be available to guide you around town. Looking for free parking lots? We have a Guide for that that includes all pictures of locations of free public parking! For some artists, this is one of the only times you can not only see their works IRL (in real life), but visitors can go inside of their studios! Not all artists show from their workspaces, however; some partner with local restaurants and shops.
Here is a random sampling of artists you can find, of which there are over 50! Catalogs will be available throughout town for you to pick up and plot your artist hop! You will definitely want to have A Little Beacon Blog's Restaurant Guide open on your phone for ideas on where to fuel up.
BeaconArts is a sponsor of A Little Beacon Blog, and this article was created for them as part of our Sponsor Spotlight program.
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Blog can bring you coverage of local happenings and events. Thank you
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The letter blocks at the top of the train station are the first hint that major creativity and involvement await visitors and prospective new residents when they exit the train to head up to the town of Beacon. Where did these letter blocks come from? Who designed and built them? Was it a city commissioned project? Those have often been my questions since I moved to Beacon in 2010, and it’s time we found out. Art awareness is especially high during the spring and summer months with projects like Beacon Open Studios, Windows on Main, and Beacon3D, so we wanted to explore the origins during this high-art season.
Like most notable projects that just appear around Beacon, the “Welcome to Beacon” sign was not a city-funded art installation. However, it has roots in city leader George Mansfield and others. To find out the origins of the “Welcome to Beacon” sign, we first went to BeaconArts for a clue. Kelly Ellenwood, Vice President of the BeaconArts Community Association, referred us to Kalene Rivers, co-founder of Open Space, an exhibition space created to explore passions for art, culture and design. Kalene and her partner Daniel Weise had a history of organizing and curating public art in Beacon like Electric Windows.
Open Space was approached years a go by city councilman George Mansfield when he was running for his first term, after he had placed a large campaign sign in the very spot that the letter blocks are currently installed today. The owner of the property gave George permission to place his sign there. According to Kalene, “After the election, George had the idea to continue to utilize the space for art. Partly inspired by a ‘You Are Beautiful’ project, we decided that an eclectic ‘Welcome to Beacon’ sign would be wonderful in this location. George and I invited fifteen artists to create the first round of letters back in 2010.”
If you have been familiar with Beacon since then, you will know that in 2014, the “Welcome to Beacon” sign got a total refresh with new designs for each letter. Personally, the blocks inspired the first design for A Little Beacon Blog’s original logo (has since had its own redesign), so I was especially interested in the new design and who the creators were behind each look.
Kalene, with the ongoing permission of the property owner, again asked fifteen new artists to participate. Says Kalene, “Heidi Harrison and Chris Janks graciously volunteered to assist in the production, and the second round of letters were completed in November of 2014. George Mansfield and Patrick Freeman come down to the site on a cold morning and carefully installed the new sign. We had an unveiling on November 15th and it has proudly welcomed people to Beacon ever since.“
We have the names of each artist behind a letter in a spread below. If you follow the #BeaconNY community on Instagram, you may have gotten to know the styles of a few artists, and you have probably guessed which artist did what letter. Before you read the names, see if you can guess which artist did which block! Otherwise, satisfy your curiosity right here!
The original yarnbomb by Diana Currie on the
Dummy Light before it was mysteriously removed.
Over the weekend in Beacon, people were ravenously refreshing their Facebook feeds to see where "the yarnbomber" was going to strike next. A "yarnstorm" had formed after an art installation by Diana Currie that was part of Windows on Main Street 2015 (#WOMS2015) had been taken down, inspiring local knitters to band together to take to the streets at night to put more yarn up throughout the city. If you were in line to get coffee at a cafe or to support a local bake sale, people were discussing where they had been lucky enough to spot a yarnbomb before it was taken down. Diana's installation, a gray and blue yarn cozie for Beacon's famous Dummy Light, which is on the endangered species list as far as tech things go, was one of over 30 art installations created for the 11th annual Windows On Main Street exhibition. The theme this year was "Industrial/Metal", and the artists went to work creating their expressions in various windows throughout Beacon.
The Wall Street Bull got covered in carefully stitched yarn in 2010 by artist Agata Oleksiak aka Olek.
But Why Would Anyone Knit A Dummy Light?
Yarnbombing is a thing, but if you have never seen it before, it can be shocking. Yarnbombing has its own Wikipedia page which credits various people with starting the movement in Houston back in 2005, although it could be the 1990s. The first time it came on my radar was when I lived in New York in 2010 and read an article in the New York Times which covered the history of yarnbombing right after the Wall Street Bull got blanketed in a camouflage pattern of fuchsia, purple, black and teal by the artist Agata Oleksiak aka Olek. When A Little Beacon Blog announced we were a media sponsor of Windows on Main 2015, we titled the post "#WOMS2015 Has Blogbombed A Little Beacon Blog" because a website can't be wrapped in actual yarn, but it can be wrapped in pictures. We would love to get yarnbombed though!
Yarnbomb on Dummy Light disappears after 48hrs.
Artists rush to react, first with a sign from Keith Decent,
then with replacement knitted pieces.
So What Happened?
The knitted piece got mysteriously taken down within 48 hours. I am speculating here to say that not everyone knows about yarnstorming or yarnbombing, and when one or a few people saw the knitted cozie on the Dummy Light, they felt uncomfortable about a landmark being graffitied in yarn, and took it down.
The removal of the yarnbomb set off a hailstorm in Facebook, both on people's personal feeds, and in various groups dedicated to things or passions in Beacon. The trouble with combining Facebook and passions is that the public forum became a very "loud" yet silent place of opinions and name-calling that one might never actually say out loud directly to another person.
Whoa - Sounds Dramatic - What Happened Next?
Conversations happened quickly and in many different threads. One man who is credited with igniting the negative talk, later rescinded his comment after learning that yarnbombing is a form of well-received artistic expression. He later gave suggestions that the yarnbombers consider knitting an American flag. Instead, fly-by-night yarnbombers decorated Beacon with cozy wraps or adornments.
Artistic expression can incite emotions, and emotions were running wild. Name calling started, someone called everyone "artsy tartsy," and that's when the tote bags and iPhone covers got made.
The Conversation Took To The Streets
Knitting brigades formed and the yarnstorm grew. Signs, made by another artist, Keith Decent, accompanied new yarnbombs which brought the art installation to a new level. Dialogue was happening between the artist, the community who took up arms - I mean yarn - and folks who were working through their own understanding of art.
Local reporter Brian Cronin (also a contributor to A Little Beacon Blog) was on the case, filing a special weekend report about the yarn bomber as events unfolded. Normally yarnbombing is a peaceful, colorful, comforting expression to the object on which it covers. The greatest part about its name is that people who do it are so harmless, that they get to call themselves "knitting ninjas" in books like "Knit the City: A Whodunnknit Set in London" by Deadly Knitshade, which is a graffiti knitting collective founded by Lauren O'Farrell from London, who pushed the yarnbombing movement from simple 'cozies' to the innovation of the 'stitched story'. The stitched story in Beacon became a live action page turner. Here are a few of the developments, as told through Facebook screenshots:
The reaction to name calling in Facebook.
Another attempt at wrapping the Dummy Light.
This time camouflaged as yellow street paint.
But it was still spotted and removed.
I felt lucky when I spotted this wrap, which lasted a few days.
Other artists who were inspired by the Dummy Light showed support.
This Dummy Light necklace from Caiming Cung Jewelry was wrapped in knitted yarn.
The Strangest Part Of All...
Diana has another installation up at Dogwood. It is two curtains with half a heart on each. When the curtains are still, the heart is formed. When the wind blows, the heart splits. I had seen Diana at the Dogwood prior to Windows on Main opening, and she very subtly told me that her art was up on the Dogwood exterior, and that it was a giant statement to the brouhaha that happens in Facebook groups. She did not want to make a big deal of the meaning, as it could launch a series of ironic dialogue. We discussed this phenomena of unfiltered commenting happening all over the country in many different kinds of groups, not just local ones.
The fact that 45 crochet squares of gray and teal that took 15 hours to make is the piece that started this interactive conversation is surprising. Yet for Windows on Main, a project that happens with the support of BeaconArts, the crocheted installation is a success. Not only did it start a dialogue, which is what art installations aim to do, but the dialogue became a running commentary of comments, of knitters going out into the night to put up more wraps and signs, of people getting joy out of spotting the yarnbombs and signs, of people removing those yarnbombs, and of memorabilia being created. I even put up a blanket! I don't knit, so I called it "yarning" and wrapped a pink and white blanket around the Dummy Light. It was only there for 12hrs, however.
In Other Beacon Trivia...
Diana's installation on the Dummy Light is across the street from 1 East Main, a former electric blanket factory and the location of the street art event put on by Electric Windows in 2010, where street artists painted canvases live while the public watches and eats from nearby restaurants. Those paintings are still in the windows as of 2015.
For a link to a lot of photos in the Windows on Main exhibit to see the amazing pieces of work by all of the artists, visit Windows on Main's Facebook page. There are also pamphlet maps all over the city to show you which artist is in which shop or location.
Watch Olek install her knitted blanket in 2010 on the Wall Street Bull at night. Truly fascinating!
Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming
Now that it all seems to have lifted (or been lifted - no pun intended!), we can all get back to our regular weekends of drinking beer on the back porch, grilling hot dogs, roasting fresh corn, and having pie from the Beacon Pie Company. And if you think you are missing a weekend festival, you probably are, so best to check A Little Beacon Blog's Annual Events Calendar of things happening in and around Beacon, NY.
It is time! Windows On Main is popping up in storefronts all over Beacon, and when they aren't yarn-bombing lamp posts, they have blog-bombed A Little Beacon Blog, where we are serving as an Official Media Sponsor! Expect to see plenty of art here at the blog and in our Instagram and Twitter feeds.
Diana Currie's yarn-bombing in-progress
For the past eleven summers, Windows on Main Street invites local artists to create art installations designed around the locations they occupy. This yearly exhibition stimulates interaction between artists, businesses, and the community, and can certainly be credited towards helping shape Beacon, the way that many public art events have built up Beacon that are connected to the fiscal sponsor, BeaconArts.
Diane Landro's artwork in-progress
THEME
This year, for #WOMS2015's 11th annual exhibition, the contributing artists will be creating their window displays based around the theme of Industrial/Metal. Maps are available throughout the city, and art is on display from the far East end of Main Street to the far West end of Main Street from August 8 - September 12.
Ryan Samuelson work in progress
PARTY!
Windows on Main 2015 kicks off on August's Second Saturday with a party from 7pm-9pm at Quinn's located at 330 Main Street. A "Small Works Show," an exhibition by the artists of WOMS2015, will be on display at BAU: Beacon Artist Union, 506 Main St. from August 8 – September 12 with a formal reception held on Saturday August 15 from 6pm-8pm. A Closing Party for Windows On Main at large will be held on Saturday, September 12, 7pm-9pm at Dogwood, 47 East Main St.
WOMS 2015 Coasters- Spot them at all the local watering holes
ARTISTS
Beacon Free Media :: Dream in Plastic
Ed Benavente :: The Carriage Works Building
Erica Blair :: Fabhaus
Jennifer Sarah Blakeslee :: Beacon Bread Company
Riana Casas :: Max's On Main
Diana Currie :: Dogwood
Diana Currie :: The Dummy Light
Jared Deal :: Blackbird Attic
Lena DeLeo :: Mountain Tops
Daisy Farrell :: Gilded Twig
Marcy B. Freedman :: Lauren & Riley
Joseph Gasparino :: Drink More Good
Theresa Gooby :: Barb's Butchery
Ethan Harrison & Chris Janks :: Peoples Bicycle
Erica Hauser :: Utensil
Laurie Hogan :: Bank Square Coffeehouse
Micheal Kriegh :: Quinn's
Diane Landro :: Tito Santana Taqueria
Stephen Lewis & Yali Lewis :: Beacon Instituye For Rivers & Estuaries
Kristen Macauley :: After Eden Gallery
Teresa Marra :: American Gypsy Vintage
Vickie Raabin :: Miss Vickie's Music
Brianna Rascoe :: Nella Bellas Boutique
Marlene Ratliff :: Sacred Journey
Ryan Samuelson :: Terra Luminarium Gallery
Chris Sanders :: The Beacon Bagel
Teresa Schmittroth :: Artisan Wine Shop
Amanda Spinosa & Cory Spraker :: Audioccult
Kat Stoutenborough :: RiverWinds Gallery
Team WOMS :: The Hop
Coulter D. Young III :: LocoMotive CrossFit
Coulter D. Young IV :: Raddish
Keely Sheehan display from WOMSX
Teresa Marra display from WOMSX
Tess Elliot in front of her winning display at Peoples Bicycle last year.
SPONSORS
We are happy to have WOMS2015 blog-bombing A Little Beacon Blog as their media sponsor!
See behind-the-scenes photos of a yarn-bombing in the works, and other artwork in progress on the WOMS2015 instagram account. The big reveal takes place during August's Second Saturday and will run through September 12th.
Team WOMS: Teresa Marra & Diana Currie
The event is organized by Teresa Marra and Diana Currie. WOMS2015 is presented by Rhinebeck Bank and sponsored by The Roundhouse, Beacon Free Media, Beacon Independent Film Festival, A Little Beacon Blog, Kimberly Coccagnia Photography, LocoMotive CrossFit, Utensil, Oak Vino Wine Bar, Spire Studios, River Therapeutic Massage, Gilded Twig, Rogue Social, Quinn’s, BAU: Beacon Artist Union, Dogwood, Art In Context, Kelly Ellenwood, Ryan Pinnetti, Barbara Caprara, and Barbara Fisher.
BEACONARTS BeaconArts, formed in 2002, is a nonprofit membership organization whose mission is to foster and encourage the advancement of the City of Beacon as an arts and cultural center. Members include artists, galleries, specialty shops, restaurants, services, and supporters of the arts. Projects and events include Beacon Second Saturday, Art Along the Hudson, Beacon Open Studios, Windows on Main Street, Beacon Riverfest, Beacon Independent Film Festival, and Beacon 3D. The BeaconArts website and free, weekly email newsletter promote these events and those from members. BeaconArts distributes a quarterly Beacon Guide that shows all member galleries, shops, restaurants and more. The Guide is free and available at Dia:Beacon, the Beacon Visitor’s Center, locations along Beacon’s Main Street, and throughout the Hudson Valley.
