Hamilton Public Library news

By Vi Ransel

(Hamilton, NY – April 2012) The crowd at this year’s opening reception was larger than last year’s, perhaps reflecting our getting back to interacting with our neighbors in the warm embrace of community-based entertainments in tough economic times.

Once again, Ed Vollmer provided a mellifluous musical background, his guitar’s notes as bubbly and enveloping as a brook full of water playing its individual drops over stones in a shallow waterfall.

Although the exhibit, as usual, showcases a wide variety of artwork – as unique as Sandy McKinnons’s steer skull as canvas, as arcane as Laura Smyrski’s quilling and as every day, yet surprising, as the Lambrecht siblings’ popcorn and paper sheep – almost half the offerings are paintings – in oils, pastels, acrylics and watercolor.

Some of these were done by artists who’ve had their own successful shows at the library this past year, like Joyce Halliday-Smith and Charlotte Blanchard. Others are the artists’ personal take on nature, our village, and other people and places.

Be sure to look for the surprise in Robyin Jaycox’ watercolor “Eye of the Beholder.” And note the photographic precision and command of her craft, in particular the barn, on display in Halliday-Smith’s oil “Future Champions.”

The show also features photographers, working in both B&W and color.

Another 20 percent of the exhibit consists of crafts, the best of which are meticulously executed and entirely hand-worked – Joan Ford’s “Fancy Feather Basket,” Paula M. Curtis’ “Smocked Frock” and Susanne Farrington’s “Collander.” Crafts are also represented by jewelry makers, quilters, a wood carver, a felter, a scrapbooker, a doll maker and a textile artist.

One of the standouts, and I do mean 3-D, is Jean Deming’s “Chance Encounter at the Edge of the Forest,” composed of water-and-weather-worn pieces of “found wood” which Jean “met” and chose by chance at the forest’s edge.

This spring we also see some of the youngest artists to date, and four of them, five years old and under, treat us to a little “hand jive.” Sophia Acompora (5) has created “Trees” made of spices and silhouettes of hands. And hanging just under that forest is a flock of brightly-colored sheep by Nathaniel (3) and Kaytianne (2) Lambrecht, and Nicholas (3) Burdick, whose “Spring Lambs” use silhouettes of their hands for the sheeps’ bodies and popcorn for their wool. Sophia’s elder sister Caitlyn (7) works in clay. You can see her “Nativity Scene” in the side room.

Immerse yourself in this exhibition of your community’s creativity during the library’s regular hours.

Vi Ransel is a volunteer at the Hamilton Public Library.