Getting Ready for the Next Show

We are breathless with anticipation! Stay tuned here for news on the opening of Jessie Mann on Memorial Day Weekend. Jessie is gracious enough to give our Project Space the opportunity to show her latest paintings.

TONIGHT! The Knit Wits!

The KNIT WITS!! ARE HERE tonight! 6pm - knit your heart out :) All are welcome - beginners encouraged, in an off-beat, Medusa kinda way...


Also, for sale, Kate's beautiful local wool from Sheepy Valley farm. See the projects below to see how beautifully it knits up. You'll get addicted to this stuff fast, and at $7.50 per 200 yd skein, how could you go wrong?

This Weekend's Opening Reception

Come one come all to see Rodolfo de Florencia's show at MGS Projects. We will have live music and refreshments for all. Rodolfo is a remarkable painter, who is visiting us from sunny Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he works and makes his home. He is no stranger to the art world, he shows all over Latin American and made a series of paintings especially for us! See you Saturday 4/9 at 6pm. Kids welcome.

Mascot Time & Farm Fresh Photos

We love Medusa's own canine son, Tucker, so much, that we decided to give him some face time on the blog for all of you to enjoy. Extra large thanks to Laurel and Scott for sharing him with us.

Also, here are photos of three farm-fresh dishes made by a customer who only obtains his ingredients from the Medusa General Store. We agree  that "buying local is better for everyone!"

Warmer weather, here we come!

After a few tantalizing breathes of spring, cabin fever has hit with a vengeance.  To stave off the worst of it, the Medusa events committee has put together an amazing assortment of celebrations, festivities and galas, interspersed with the occasional funshop and get-together.  And that's not even counting the gallery openings coming up on April 9th, Memorial Day weekend, and the 4th of July!

On the heels of a remarkable 1st opening featuring the amazing Allison Nowland Ward, our MGS Projects gallery space welcomes Rodolfo de Florencia.  Spicing up our pallette with a little international flavor, de Florencia hails from Mexico and is bringing a fascinating, and brand new, series of work entitled GENIUS.  Complementing the evening, the Traditional Strings, an amazing local string band from around the hilltowns, will play for us, and the Store will provide some light refreshments.  Festivities start at 6pm - and as always, it's free and open to the public!

We're planning to celebrate Easter with a little pagan egg decorating on Saturday, April 24th, as well as an Easter Egg Hunt in the playground for little ones and a village treasure hunt for the rest of us.  With a little luck, we'd like to reinvigorate the Fall art series with a spring natural materials series, featuring such possibilites as natural clay, fairy gardens, natural dying and felting, and cap it all off with Withy Lanterns and Flaming Balloons and a kid-designed and organized Talent Show on Memorial Day weekend.

Also of notable mention in May is a Walk/Run for Ovarian Cancer Research, hopefully happening on May 7th, and the amazing MedusaFest, on May 21st!  

As hinted at previously, we are considering a 4th of July Barbecue and a Fall music series, featuring local artists, but while I'm at it, I thought I'd mention a newcomer to our calendar: movie night!  Brainchild of the incredible Laurel Herendeen, movie nights would be organized under the umbrella of the Rensselearville Library, and feature both kid and adult movies.  Tentatively, we planning for it to be at the Firehouse, starting sometime this fall.

An the Medusa Council on the Arts has a sibling, don't forget: our sustainable community initiative.  Plans are in the works to finalize our 501c3 charter as we are planning a more generalized and still nebulous GO Local! campaign, as well as some field research at Morning Fog Farm, in Berne.  And I am rapidly, and with just as much excitement as you can imagine, racking up speakers and participants for our Climate Change Conference slated for June, 2012.

Go do a spring dance for me, please.  And as always, be a believer!!

It's still snowing...! And raining.

But we are still planning, too!  On the heels of an enormously successful first-ever gallery opening, showcasing the amazing fine arts photography of Allison Nowlin Ward, we are looking forward to several delightfully busy months ahead.

As the official events committee for Medusa is predominantly women, and we tend to think nonlinearly, in loops and circuitous maps, providing an easy road map is nearly impossible.  But here goes...

We have another gallery opening on April 9th - this time it is the work of Rodolfo de Florencia.  Angela Cappetta, our esteemed (and adorable) curator, describes him as "an international sensation".  If that seems like an unlikely fit for our sometimes sleepy village, there's also this:

"From his studio in Cuernavaca, Mexico, he creates large, heady paintings which encompass the full ancient Mexican experience. Fastidiously made and heavily influenced by a Victorian sensibility, Florencia's brush is filled with longing, desire and curiosity to paint dream-like representations of the real world as only he sees it."

Longing, desire and curiosity is what we're all about in Medusa, so stick April 9th on your calendar, grab your kids and your spouse and whoever else you can fit in the car, and join us for a few (hopefully) warm April evenings admiring art and engaging in passionate discourse.  We're even having MUSIC this time!  That's Medusa.

We have several additional openings to remember, too - Memorial Day weekend will showcase the work of one-time Rensselaerville resident Jessie Mann, which we'll be celebrating with festive homemade flaming balloons, and our curator will be presenting her work on July 4th weekend.  My favorite holiday is accompanied by a chicken barbecue showcasing local chicken (I hope!) and brand new Wild Thymes sauces!  I'm shivering with anticipation!

If it's textiles that thrill you, though...  Last night - and for every Wednesday forever after -Kate Hendersen is leading a knitting circle at the Store.  We think it's going to be a large crowd, and amazingly fun.  And I'm providing the coffee - so, several Medusa sized hats are not out of the question by next week.  Everyone's welcome, from beginner to old-hand - starting at 6pm!  Kate's also generously stocked us up on her Medusa grown wool as well, in several vibrant colors.

May21st - are you sitting down? - is promising to be the best MedusaFest ever.  There are lots of great minds thinking hard on how to thrill, entertain and, most importantly, FEED, all of you, so save that Saturday for a helping of local flavor.  We're thinking of doing something extra-special at the Store that day to honor Medusa, too.

I've been brainstorming with a few others, trying to develop a series of art fun-shops around natural materials.  I'm hoping that we'll have a 4-6 week series starting at the end of April through Memorial Day.  We love the idea of sharing pigments and dyes and natural clay - embracing the arts with what's freely available in our local woods and streams.  It's going to be messy - what better way to celebrate the spring??

Never the least, because feeding all of you good food is a high priority of mine, but almost last: we have lots coming in this week, from UNFI and Albert's.  As I've been promoting on Facebook, we've got Annie Chun's potstickers and miniwontons coming in, as well as a great price on Udi's bagels and breads.  Bhuja! is coming back, too, as well as lots of chocolate covered pretzels and raisins.  Strawberries, kiwis and pineapples from Albert's, as well MacroVegetarian's Hunan dumplings.  Hopefully, with warmer weather, my MacroVegetarian fans will return in force and I'll order some more of their stuff - healthy and incredibly delicious, and (my favorite) you don't have to cook the damn things.  :)  Oh, and for everyone who's been going through terrible withdrawal - Angie's Kettle Corn will be back in on Friday.

And that's supplemented with some amazing stuff from Ryan's, who's proving to be a really Medusa-worthy vendor.  Maybe someday we'll even get them to deliver!

Lastly, a few dear friends of ours have been struggling with some sad news of late - and I was hoping we could all keep them in our thoughts.  We're told Jon Chase is home - and doing a lot better.  The news last week was pretty scary, and we're glad for this bit of blue sky.  A good friend of mine lost her brother last week - a tragedy that was completely unexpected.  Please keep Lara and her family in your prayers.  And Ken Briggs, who organized his band, Nite Train, to play at the winter carnival, also lost his brother a few weeks back.  Life is so fragile - such news is a reminder to hold your loved ones a bit closer, I think, and embrace this amazing, and often brief, life with renewed gratitude.

Much love to all of you.

A spring to remember!

It's just pouring snow here, as I write this.  But we have such amazing things afoot for the coming months!

Don't forget:  February 12th is the first inaugural Winter Carnival in Medusa!  On our short list is sledding (we have a lovely sledding hill BUILT behind the Firehouse!), skating in our Pavilion and ice fishing up at Sikule Pond; tons of kid crafts and local vendors; great food, music, and fun!  It is OUR midwinter break.  And we're planning to make it an every-year tradition!

Also at the Carnival, we, for the first time, will be unveiling plans for the newly formed (and about-to-be-incorporated) Medusa Council on the Arts.  Our time has come - to share our own beautiful expressions of creativity, but also (are you sitting down?) to have the opportunity to welcome world class art to our awakening Helderberg hamlet.

Our amazing curator, Angela Cappetta, is an inspiration to us all.  A renowned fine arts photographer, she has put together a series of art shows from late February into next year, involving an eclectic mix of photography, painting, and sculpture that promises to inspire and amaze.  Her challenge is not easily met, either.  We've asked her to come up with gallery works for the store that are accessible to everyone as well as representing examples of world class art.  We think she's done it and we cannot wait to share this with you.  You also might have caught her recent article in New York City's Common Creative.

The work of Allison Nowlin will open our gallery on February 26.  In Angela's words, Allison's art expresses the "rich light and deep, tonal palette demonstrating her personal view that the dusty, obscured and darkened state of the world is a lovely and eloquent place to visit---but not to live."  Amazing stuff, Medusa, and I am so grateful we have these amazing works to share.  We are planning some music for that evening, which promises to be a special affair.

Now for those of you who know my store intimately, you might be wondering, where on earth could this art go?  Well, breathe easy - the threatened renovations are here.  We have completely deconstructed the warehouse area (hopefully dear Ernie and Ruth Bell will forgive us!) and are moving all of our coolers and freezers back there.  We'll be reconfiguring the front entry, with slightly less shelving and more cafe tables.  And that's just the beginning!  Keep your fingers crossed that all the renovations come together quickly and as inexpensively as possible!

New openings every 4 to 6 weeks throughout the year. If you are interested in showing your own art in our gallery, please contact Angela's gallery blog and follow the call-for-entries links to apply.

Many of our openings will coincide with Medusa events, including MedusaFest and an amazing July 4th extravaganza.  We are also hoping to have a local music series coming this fall, as well as a number of irresistible art-centric activities.  And don't forget - we have a Hilltowns Climate Change Conference coming in 2012 - if you'd like to participate, or even just argue with me about the realities of climate change, I would truly love to hear from you!  Please drop in the Store for the latest details.  And get yourself on Facebook, so I can keep you in the loop on the blow-by-blow details of our renovations!

As always, be a believer!  And come love Medusa!