The Book Trout as Art Patron

There's nothing that warms the heart of the Book Trout more at the shop than an interesting book quest. I love hunting down books for customers from a few remembered clues ("It had a blue cover and there's something about a dog in the title") or saving a college student a boatload of money by tracking down economical copies of books from an arm-length reading list.

Even more fun is trawling the shelves for unusual requests, such as the other day when Troy Artist/Curator/RPI Professor Michael Oatman came into the shop seeking older science, solar power and space travel books for a project which is being commissioned by MassMoCA, our family's favorite local museum. If understood the scheme correctly, Oatman is designing a rocket ship or airplane that has done some time travel and will be carrying an onboard library of vintage science and technology books that museum visitors will be able to handle and leaf through in the final exhibition. Oatman picked up a couple of boxes of interesting books with cool retro jacket art and illustrations, and amusingly dated titles. I am on the lookout for other books that fit this particular criteria to collect for him and cannot wait to take my daughters over to MassMoca next year(?) to check out the finished installation. Maybe they will think having parents as used bookstore owners is not so uncool after all.

Art Gallery Happenings

Last Saturday, our village had two art exhibition openings at our local galleries. The new Gallery on the Hudson, managed by local artist Sue Reynolds, opened at 92A Broad Street, just upstairs from our bookshop, with an exhibition of paintings by Reynolds and New York City painter Tom Vincent. The gallery will be open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 11 -5.

Next door at 96 Broad Street, Riverfront Studios had a party to celebrate the opening of their new exhibit "Uncorrupted Horses", curated by Skidmore Professor James K. Kettlewell. Kettlewell will be leading a discussion of how he curated this show at the gallery on July 25th starting at 6 p.m. This exhibit features sculpture, paintings, multi-media and other work with equine themes by Chloe Kettlewell, Pernille Dake, Dahl Taylor, Jean Haines, Aggie Zed, Paul Kant, Rita Dee, Al Goldfarb and Lloyd Kelly. Gallery hours are: Wednesday through Saturday 11-5 and Sunday noon to 5.

Meet the Staff Artist

Our book trout logo was designed by my excellent daughter, Leigh, a high school freshman and very talented artist. I must brag that she just won Best in Show at an exhibition, The Young Artists Palette Project, sponsored by the North Country Arts Center in Glens Falls, New York. This impressive art exhibit featured wooden palettes decorated by high school students. There were fiber art palettes decorated with home-grown, home-dyed wool, sophisticated self-portrait, a couple of frogs on lily pads and a great palette decorated with painted rabbits. Leigh's mixed-media design involved a wooden figure holding a palette covered with painted organs, antique anatomical images and a graffiti-like vibe all over. Look for more Leigh designs on this blog in the future. And my Book Minnow also wants to let everyone that she will work cheap, so drop a line to Mama Book Trout if you need some graphic design work.