From My Easel: A Celebration of Pennsylvania's Black Moshannon State Park
The following text is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, From My Easel: A Celebration of Pennsylvania's Black Moshannon State Park. The book features five years (2004-2009) of my plein air paintings from within the park. All of these pieces are small format works done on location with my field easel and a small, portable set of pastel sticks. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of each book will be donated to the park.
I'm finishing the book this month with the goal of having it available from my web site later next month. I may get hung up on obtaining an ISBN for it, so please be patient and bear with me. I'll post updates here as I wade through this process (pant, pant). Regardless, I'm having a lot of fun with this project and since we're in the midst of a snowy winter I thought that this excerpt would be "seasonally appropriate." Enjoy!
Black Moshannon, No. 11 9 x 12 Pastel on paper, 2006. Collection of Bette Hostrup and Leo Bostjancic.
Black Moshannon, No. 12 9 x 12 Pastel on paper, 2006. Collection of Barb Pennypacker.
Pastel is a tactile medium and an artist holds the sticks directly in hand to control the application of the color. A multitude of effects can be achieved by varying the sequence of color, pressure of application, and direction of the sticks. Because of these subtleties, wearing bulky winter gloves while working with pastel is impossible. I've tried nipping the thumb and index fingers off of old gloves to work during winter, but pastel sticks take on the ambient air temperature and this approach has not worked well for me. To make matters worse, even during the height of summer I've been known to wield icy cold hands and feet because — as my husband says — I have "circulatory challenges." Thus, it's rare for me to paint outside during the winter.
But in early 2006, the temperature bolted to near 65 degrees for several days. I seized my opportunity and added these two pieces to the series. "Black Moshannon, No. 11" was painted from a location along the Star Mill hiking trail. Its successor captures the same composition featured in the very first piece of this series, a view looking across Black Moshannon Lake from Beaver Road. Although winter often gets a bum rap as a desolate time of year, I regard it as a time of renewal.
In 1895, the Pennsylvania Legislature began restoration of the state's devastated woodlands by establishing the Department of Agriculture with a Division of Forestry. Two years later, the Legislature enacted policies that gave the department the authority and responsibility to extinguish forest fires. In addition, the first state forest reserves were established at the headwaters of the Delaware, Susquehanna, and Ohio Rivers. Five years after the formation of the Division of Forestry, 110,000 acres had been acquired for the state's forest preserves.
Dr. Joseph Trimbel Rothrock was the state's first Commissioner of Forestry. Born in McVeytown, Pennsylvania in 1839, Dr. Rothrock studied botany at Harvard University and subsequently earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1877, he delivered a series of lectures in Philadelphia to highlight the depletion of Pennsylvania's forests and in 1886 he became the first president of the Pennsylvania Forestry Association.
In an effort to educate concerned citizens about the threats to their forest resources, he traveled the deserted woodlands of northern Pennsylvania and took pictures that he made into lantern slides to show at his presentations throughout the state. He also published Forest Leaves, a bi-monthly publication of the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, through which he argued for restoration of the state’s natural resources. The February, 1900 edition of this magazine recorded his remarks during a January 24, 1900 address to the New Century Club of Philadelphia where he articulated his philosophy about the recently acquired state forest lands:
"The time will come shortly when a recognized function of the reservations which the State is now acquiring will be to restore to health and usefulness men who otherwise would have ended their lives prematurely by disease, after having become charges upon the bounty of the Commonwealth. Surely, if it is worth the while of the State to lavish its money on hospitals and asylums for the restoration to health of those who are already ailing, it would be a wise and nobler thing to prevent invalidism by providing rest amid healthful surroundings, and restoration to usefulness of those who might be saved or could be saved."
posted by Sarah Pollock Studio @ 1:20 PM
