Ceramist and sculptor Judy Sigunick lives and works in a rambling house on a mountain with her husband, Phil. Located in Cragsmoor, the house is a former hotel, with the oak bar in the former lobby still intact and a marble sink, where waiters once refilled diners”™ water glasses, taking up a niche in the wall in the living area.
The house is jampacked with boxes, books, papers, Phil”™s landscape paintings, their daughter”™s artworks ”“ one of which was influenced by a trip to South Africa ”“ and various sundry materials destined for art-making. Judy”™s studio, a skinny L-shaped room with large windows, has a kiln, shelves of her pots and fanciful animals, clay figures with delicately proportioned heads and hands, several witty “flat people,” each with 3-D hands and head rising out of a cartoon body inscribed across a row of tiles, and a dramatic brown cloak made out of used coffee filters.
Sigunick, who got her Master of Fine Arts degree from SUNY New Paltz when she was in her 40s (in a previous life, she had been a social worker), currently is an adjunct professor at Dutchess Community College. She has shown widely, done several public commissions and curated a number of shows. She is obviously a gifted, original artist. But lately, as the town of Ellenville”™s official director of visual arts, she has discovered other talents ”“ a flair for coming up with good ideas at meetings, an ability to speak comfortably before a crowd, a knack for making connections between seemingly disparate worlds.
Though the Sigunicks have spent much of the past 30 years avoiding Ellenville, nowadays Judy frequently makes the drive down the mountain to meet with town officials and business leaders, hang prints, paintings, and photographs in empty storefronts and organize and participate in events, such as the collective painting of a community mural and an upcoming panel of artists hosted by a local radio announcer and poet.
Five years ago, Sigunick was asked by the head of the Ellenville Chamber of Commerce to plan an event for the annual blueberry festival, and that”™s how it all started. She ended up organizing an art exhibition of local artists in a room at the Hunt Memorial Building, which was in serious disrepair but whose historic significance had inspired a group of citizens to found a committee to save it. One thing led to another: another show at the Hunt building, the organization of Ellenville”™s first exhibition of artworks in empty storefronts last summer, and the offer of a salaried position by the town officials.
An industrial village on the skids, Ellenville is anything but a cutesy art town. That makes this summer”™s pithy, high-caliber storefront show, called 10x10x10, that much more exciting, with some artists riffing on the possibilities of the storefront as well as the area”™s rural traditions. The criterion for acceptance is that each artist has been previously profiled by Judy in a column she writes for the Ellenville Journal, to help educate the community about the art. Examples are Michael Asbill”™s grid arrangement of windows pried out of old bungalows, Karlos Carcamo”™s upside-down models of boarded up houses, and ”“ most movingly ”“ an installation by a local son that recounts disturbing events from his childhood. The piece consists of videotaped narrative scenes utilizing carved puppet characters arranged in handmade fabric sets, a model of the façade of his childhood home and a wall trophy depicting the head of his father.
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Storefront transformation
The way the installations in the 10x10x10 show transform the storefronts into compelling tableaux is an example of Sigunick”™s philosophy that the arts are meant to be woven into the rough woof and warp of the community, rather than a means toward gentrification. “I don”™t want any part of the community to be ostracized,” the artist, who was raised in an arts community in Chicago, explained.
Sigunick is talking to the owner of a local market about possibly having an artist design her menu boards. A physician couple who work at Ellenville Regional Hospital approached her six months ago about putting healing art on the hospital walls, which has resulted in three shows so far. Sigunick recently met with representatives from the Wawarsing Council of Agencies to come up with ways local artists could contribute to social services, such as providing art therapy classes for people recovering from addiction. And she”™s talking with village officials about having an interested artist transform a crusty, decayed motel sign, which they plan to remove, into a work of art, in situ.
She is also planning to develop an arts center, located on the empty first floor of an Ellenville building owned by businessman Hal Brill. Brill purchased $6,500 of pottery equipment to help launch the center, and a local artist has set up a $1,000 scholarship fund, but Sigunick said thousands more dollars are needed for operating costs. Her idea: set up five artists in the storefronts, who, in exchange for getting free studio space, would commit to teaching or doing some other type of community-benefiting exchange. She is also exploring a tie-in with the farmers”™ market, such as selling crafts produced by artists at the center.
“Ideally, I”™d love for somebody with $100,000 to invest in this small-town community. There are so many kids with special needs,” Sigunick said. The biggest challenge is “finding people to commit. You can”™t make other people do it, whether it”™s reaching into their pocketbook or calendar.” She added that artists “are the odd people out. A lot of business people don”™t get it.” But they”™re starting to, thanks to Sigunick”™s energy, dedication and creativity in bringing the visual arts to town, thereby helping make it whole again.
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