American Sabbatical 002: 8/28-30/96

8/28/96.. Vermont.

We rolled down out of the Green Mountains onto the Champlain plain at Burlington. Seth and Klara are talking about settling there this winter, so we wanted to take a look. Young town with a lake and mountains. Pretty good choice, I’d say. It was fog and drizzle in the early morning hills, but the sun was out in the valley, and summer hot by mid-day.

Shelburne Barn (Bryce)

We went south along the lake to the Shelburne Museum where we received a shock. Entrance fee (even with our senior citizen discount) was $15 per. Ouch. I begged off and went outside to paint the big round red barn, while Peggy did the tour. She griped to the guides and they gave her a free pass for me, so I could see the circus.

Shelburne is a very strange museum. A motley collection from all periods of Americana, with some Impressionist classics thrown in, all viewed in reconstructed Victorian buildings. In fact, you could only look at the Manets and Cassats from the doorways of period bedrooms and parlors. The circus is a collection of splendid carved carousel animals and about a million carved and painted circus performers, 8-12 inches tall. Great fun, but for $15?

We supped on bread and cheese and tea and headed up the lake to the KOA campground (thank you Bilfil) at AuSable Chasm (thank you Ktextor), getting in just before dusk and a shower, so we were all snug and tented down for the night.

Having sweated off our breakfast in the company of Quebecois tourists we set out on our next quest : the Rockwell Kent collection, supposedly at Plattsburgh. But the campground phonebook said there was a “Rockwell Kent Legacy” at a number in Ausable Forks, just up the road. So we tracked it down (thanks to the local postmistress) to a farm along a back road. Behind the farmyard (all painted black and white) rose a chain of Adirondack peaks, looking for all the world like one of Kent’s Greenland landscapes. The place was called “Asgaard Farm”. But there wasn’t a soul in evidence. After driving all over we stopped a woman walking the road and she told us that Kent had indeed lived there and his widow still did, but no longer gave openhouse tours, and Kent’s paintings were at SUNY Plattsburgh.

Just west of Plattsburgh the Champlain Valley vegetation changes into the arboreal forests we know and love. The oaks disappear and big spruces darken the slopes. Lake Placid, Tupper and Long Lakes are postcard visions of the North Woods, but the roadsides here aren’t cluttered with the detritus of free enterprise, like down home. This is a great parkland, so commerce is crowded into the towns, and the highways are just for eyesfull. Our road, to the Goodnow Flowage, winds and dips through paper company acreage and descends to a spectacular gem. Right now the full moon is shining down the length of the lake to this beautiful cottage and I’m going to bed. G’night.

Today was Rockwell Kent Day with serendipity on our side. We had seen a Rockwell Kent Gallery in Plattsburgh mentioned in small print under a reproduction in an art book, and this spurred us to come to Plattsburgh, New York. We knew nothing more. Had he lived here? Worked here? Had a daughter at SUNY? Ideally, we would have done research before, but on everything?

At our KOA campground I looked in the phonebook and found “R. Kent Legacies, Asgaard Farm” and a phone number. That sounded perfect. I asked where the exchange was and was told Ausable Forks. We looked on a map and headed there. No signs for the illustrious painter anywhere on Main Street, Ausable Forks, so we stop in the Post Office and ask. “Oh, yes, cross the little bridge, follow the river, look for a sign in a mile and a half”. We did so. Sure enough, there was the legacies sign. In we go, pitted drive and no signs!!! Onward to a beautiful plateau of fields with a spectacular view of mountains to the west. We agree that it was a Rockwell Kent landscape. But where was the gallery? The museum? The crowds? No one around. Beautiful white barns with cupolas, lawn chairs, even a barbecue. Small blue bungalow. We follow dirt track to rather run down small house. No one anywhere. Had we missed it??? We took the main farm road out to the pavement. Taking pictures. We drove on hoping for enlightenment. It came.

We saw a greyhaired woman walking and stopped. “Can you help us?” We told about our Kent quest. She had known Kent before his death and his fourth wife Sally still lived there. Sally’s second husband had organized tours hence the “legacies” sign, but he died and there were no longer tours. The big house had burned down while Kent was still alive, and they saved some things. Sally now lived in the small blue house we saw. She had broken both hips, was infirm. There were some Kent works in the house, but the better works were in Plattsburgh. Our eyes lit up. Oh, yes, they’d given many works to SUNY PLATTSBURGH. (Actually Kent had tried to give his works to a museum in MAINE !!! Robert Henri brought Kent to Monhegan and he'd felt akin to the place, but the museum didn’t like his politics and had refused the gift, so he gave them to The Hermitage in St Petersburg). Our lovely informant told us the folks in Ausable Forks hadn’t cared for Mr. Kent because of his views (was it the fourth Mrs. Kent or his politics we wondered). He apparently was enamored of Soviet Russia in the 1930’s, and he became so suspect during the McCarthy era in the 1950’s that he lost his passport. He also had a period in which he painted in a very Soviet social realism style.

On to Plattsburgh. Follow SUNY signs, ask the first person we see. We get directed through buildings, up, down to...The Rockwell Kent Gallery, a marvel. 26 major Kent paintings including several of the farm in Ausable Forks with the mountain view we had just seen. We ask the woman on duty about him. “Asgaard” means “of the meadows.” Logical. Some paintings we have seen in books, others never. He has wonderful colors and skies. Several oils of Monhegan, one very depressing allegorical work showed Kent and his wife in despair in a bleak Newfoundland house. Three landscapes showed the view we had seen from our car an hour before. We also saw illustrations, prints, posters. Kent ran for Congress for the American Labor party (something for me to research). Asking more questions, the attendant got involved. She showed us many news clipping, then took us behind scenes to show us artifacts in storage, a stone used for a Kent lithograph with a copy of the print. Also dish ware he had designed for Macy’s in the 1920’s. Designs of lower Manhattan, clipper ships. Another amazement, since I recognized one dish ( a picture of a kneeling Greenland Eskimo woman) from my childhood. In a phone call my father corroborates this memory. We had had a Kent dish, where on earth had it gone??? Another family mystery.

Kent’s kayak from his time in Greenland is hanging from the roof. No postcards (apparently a copyright problem). We bought note cards and a t-shirt and started back to the car, stopped at a huge Kent poster mural (maybe 6 X 10) and headed out. A fabulous series of events.