Adirondack Life
These days, the term ‘Adirondack Life” seems to be everywhere, a film at the AC, the magazine, photography shows, and so it may become cliché. For those of us living this Adirondack life, it equals a unique and amazing experience. I suppose you could live here without listening to the birds at all hours, looking at the stars at night, or peering through the fog on the lake in the morning. For me, as an artist, I try to look for these things all the time and capture them through photographs, prints, and most recently poetry.
I have had the pleasure and opportunity to live in the Adirondacks for two years now as a year round resident: a real Adirondack life. For every year I can basically remember, I think of Adirondack Life Magazine of being my connection to the Adirondacks when I didn’t live here, when I was more of a seasonal Adirondacker.
The first year I moved up here, I sent in photographs for the yearly photo contest to Adirondack Life. Applying gave me the twinkling idea that I might win, and I anxiously looked in the mailbox everyday, waiting for the issue with the winners. I didn’t win anything, and I didn’t expect to, I knew there were so many really talented photographers who knew what they were doing, my background is in the arts, and my masters is in printmaking, so I left it at that.
When I found I was going to curate a show of covers from the magazines and calendars for Adirondack Life, I felt an excitement that I was going to be part of this iconic Adirondack Life I had always looked up to.
My journey working on the show, started by emailing with the Director of Adirondack Life, Betsy Folwell, who I found to be kind, helpful, and a wonderful soul ushering the life of the Adirondacks to those who aren’t able to be in it everyday. Even then, the magazine brings new topics and ideas to us who live here and think we’ve seen it all. Thank you Betsy!
If working with Betsy wasn’t reward enough, I had the job of contacting many of the photographers I have been looking at and looking up to for many years. Not to be too star-struck, but everyone was so kind and you could tell that they respected the magazine and everything it represents. It was a joy to open each photograph as it arrived at the AC, carefully wrapped with care, and I couldn’t wait to see what cover it was. This was the most fun show to assemble, and I felt a full circle of life in the Adirondacks completing. This was like winning a prize in Adirondack life.
Many of the covers were ones that I remember receiving in the mail, and to be standing in the gallery in Blue Mountain Lake, in the center of the Adirondacks, holding the actual photograph and placing the cover beside it; a joy.
Each day I walk into the gallery, I get that feeling of ,“WOW”, I got to put this together. There may be many Adirondack Life’s, and this one literally brings it all together in images of the natural landscape that surrounds us everyday. If you’re reading this, I recommend going to the AC and checking this show out, it will be up until June 12th, and I think you might just feel like you are part of Adirondack Life.
