Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art Exhibits “The River That Runs Two Ways”

NEW PALTZ — Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz announces the opening of The River That Runs Two Ways, an interdisciplinary and collaborative exhibition by photographer Eric Lindbloom and poet Nancy Willard. The exhibition will be on view from July 23 through September 20, 2001. The River That Runs Two Ways was originally conceived as book art and published in limited edition by Brighton Press in 1999. The exquisite handmade book contains a selection of panoramic photographs of the Hudson Valley landscape accompanied by poetry. The exhibition, on view in the Print Study Room of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art includes a copy of the book, twelve framed images from Eric Lindbloom’s Hudson Valley Series and framed press sheets of Nancy Willard’s poems.

Eric Lindbloom and Nancy Willard have been exploring the Hudson River Valley surrounding their home in Poughkeepsie, New York, for thirty-five years. The River That Runs Two Ways is the result of many journeys taken and impressions registered by the poet and the photographer in the landscape they know so well. Lindbloom shot the images for the project with a Widelux camera. This unusual camera shoots only panoramic images with a lens that rotates across a 180° plane. The rotation of this lens creates an image with no distortion such as would be achieved with a wide angle or fish eye lens.

The collection of images and poems comprising The River That Runs Two Ways was designed, printed, and bound in an edition of fifteen. The idea of the book as art is a contemporary one that addresses the aesthetic of the page. It has developed and gained increasing visibility during the last twenty years in America. For The River That Runs Two Ways, Lindbloom printed photos archivally and with an extraordinary attention to detail. Text has been handset and printed by traditional letterpress on handmade paper that was custom-made for the project. The books have been bound by hand and housed in a cloth-covered enclosure.

Neil Trager, director of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art notes, “We are quite honored to exhibit The River That Runs Two Ways. Eric Lindbloom’s work is already represented in our permanent collection, and this project furthers the Dorsky Museum’s commitment to photography and book arts. Additionally, both Lindbloom and Willard are mid-career artists who live and work in the Hudson Valley.

“Lindbloom is represented professionally by Gallery 292, a branch of the Howard Greenburg Gallery Center for Photography in New York City,” Trager continues. “Eric Lindbloom and Howard Greenburg met and formed a friendship over twenty years ago as founding members of The Center for Photography at Woodstock. I am proud to say that the collection of the Center for Photography at Woodstock has come full circle and is now under the stewardship of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art.”

Photographer Eric Lindbloom is the author of a number of publications including Angels at the Arno (Godine, 1994), a collection of photos made in Florence between 1979 and 1987, using a Diana camera – virtually a child’s toy with a plastic lens. His photographs are included in many major collections including the Alinari Museum, Florence; the Biblioteque Nationale, Paris; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Nancy Willard is the author of many poems, novels, and award-winning children’s books, including A Visit to William Blake’s Inn, which won the Newbery Award in 1982 and was a Caldecott Honor book. Willard is a lecturer at Vassar College.

The River That Runs Two Ways is on view from July 23 through September 20. Summer hours for The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art are Monday through Friday, 1-4 p.m. and by appointment. The opening reception for The River That Runs Two Ways is Saturday, July 21, 6-8 p.m.

For additional information, call the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art: 845-257-3844 Information is also available at the Museum’s Web site: www.newpaltz.edu/museum. A full schedule of summer arts events at SUNY New Paltz is available online at http://hawk.newpaltz.edu/artsnews.

Images from this exhibition can be found online at http://hawk.newpaltz.edu/news/images/lindbloom.html. Copies of the image at higher resolutions or different sizes are available: call 845-257-3872.

– 30 –