Journal Painting: Kiluea Kulaniapia (Hawai’i). Solander box by Wyvern Bindery, London

JLM atop Ellafjallajokuk, Iceland

JLM at the summit of another volcano: Kilaeua, Hawai’i. July 1, 2015

JLM signing prints, November 17, 2017. Publication date for Hudson Highlands: North River Suite Volume One., Needlewatcher Editions.
2017 Pollock Krasner Grant recipient James Lancel McElhinney will discuss the practice of plein-air Journal Painting, as the revival of historic expeditionary art, unpacked as limited-edition books and archival digital prints. The talks will take place in Suite 9D (Building 9), Garnerville Arts and Industrial Center, 55 Railroad Avenue, Garnerville, New York. (Rockland County). The facility is located thirty minutes north of the George Washington Bridge. McElhinney’s talk will be one of a number of activities taking place as part of the annual Garner Arts Center annual Arts Festival.

Admission to the talk is free to all attending the 2018 Garner Arts Festival.
Tickets to the festival can be purchased here: http://garnerartscenter.org/arts-festival/

Map of the facility:

McElhinney (MFA Yale) has been described as a Visual Historian. He is the author of several books on painting and drawing, who has conducted many art-world oral history interviews for the clients such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Frick Center for the History of Collecting, Rauschenberg Foundation, Newington Cropsey Cultural Studies Center, Vermont Studio Center, to name a few. He is the owner of Needlewatcher Editions, LLC.

Its first publication Hudson Highlands: North River Suite Volume One. (2017) has been acquired by West Point Museum, Boscobel House and Gardens, Hudson River Museum, Yale Beinecke Rare Book Library, Huntington Library, Museum and Gardens (CA), Newberry Library, Chicago, Avery Library, Columbia University, University of Denver, and other notable public and private collections.

On January 17, 2018 I was invited by the United States Capitol Historical Society to deliver a lunchtime lecture on soldier-artist Set Eastman (1809-1875), and a series of paintings he produced between 1870 and 1875, entitled The Principal Fortifications of the United States.

Link: https://www.c-span.org/video/?439843-1/artist-seth-eastmans-military-fort-paintings

My article on the subject will be forthcoming in the Summer issue of The Capitol Dome magazine. Eastman came to my attention in the early 1990s when I was in the midst of exploring and painting Civil War battlefields threatened by residential development and sprawl commerce. Little-known among painters today, Eastman gained renown first as “the pictorial historian of the Indian”, illustrating Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s massive ethnographic study of the indigenous peoples of North America. Eastman and his wife collaborated on a trade book about Native American life and lore in what is now the state of Minnesota. Mary Henderson Eastman’s 1849 Dahcotah, or Life And Legends Of The Sioux Around Fort Snelling, found its way into the library of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was one of the principal inspirations for his epic poem The Song of Hiawatha.

Fort Knox, Maine. 1870-1875

Rower in a single scull on the Schuylkill River below Columbia Bridge

The working title for the project had been River of Champions, but a Philadelphia curator wisely cautioned that it sounded a bit too much like a breakfast cereal. A longtime member of the University Barge Club shared the acronym OTW, which in the parlance of the amateur rowing community, means “on the water”. The expression signifies more than just getting into ones scull. It denotes the three-mile stretch of unbroken water that flows from East Falls to the Boathouse Row. The river was known to the indigenous Lenni-Lenape as Tulpehanna, or “turtle river”.
When Dutch explorers in 1616 failed at first to discover its confluence with the Delaware (Lenapewihittuck), concealed behind a barrier of wooded islands, they named it Schuylkill, or “hidden creek”. They had not idea that its watershed rose in the foothills of the Alleghenies, 135 miles to the northwest.

The sport of crew and single scull rowing began during the colonial period, when ferry-men carrying goods and people from ship to shore began to organize races to test their skills in competition. This was nothing new in 18th-century Philadelphia. Barge-men on the River Thames had been racing for centuries, as had gondolieri in the Regatta di Venezia.

Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697-1768), detto Canaletto. Regatta on the Grand Canal. 1740. National gallery, London.

With the completion of the Fairmount dam in 1821, a body flat water stretching upstream afforded rowing enthusiasts the perfect venue for their sport, free of tides, shoals and sawyers. The first oarsmen on the Schuylkill were tradesmen and members of the working class. After the first regatta in 1835 rowing began to attract athletes from all walks of life.

Nicolino Calyo. The First Schuylkill Regatta. Gouache on paper. 1835.

Twenty-three years later the Schuylkill Navy was formed, as an umbrella organization for all the barge-clubs, a governing body to vet competitors and oversee regattas. Boathouse Row today has become familiar landmark, on the left bank of the river just above the dam.

Hydrographic Survey of the Schuylkill River. 1866

Few rowers venture upstream past Falls Bridge, three miles to the north, but there are stretches of the river where one can find oarsmen and women on the water. A rowing center exists along the flat water below Conshohocken, in Montgomery County. A few stalwart souls will launch their boats in the tidal estuary at Forgotten Bottom, below Grey’s Ferry, near Bartram’s Garden.

William Bartram (1739-1823). Zoological studies. Natural History Museum, London.

Following the success of Hudson Highlands, as the next volume of North River Suite goes into production, I now embark on a new project that celebrates another river.
Made famous by William Birch and Thomas Eakins, the Schuylkill has for nearly two centuries been the heartbeat of amateur rowing in America. Last year’s exhibition at Independence Seaport Museum “Breaking Barriers” corrected the misperception that rowing is a sport reserved for elites, by revealing how amateur rowing today promotes diversity, inclusivity, health and community.

A wonderful article by Fine Art Connoisseur Editor in Chief Peter Trippi unpacks the story behind the genesis of Hudson Highlands in the magazine’s March-April issue, now on sale at Barnes & Noble and other locations. The same issue features articles on Thomas Cole, Wilhelm Schadow, a new murals arts project in Washington DC, American Realism in European collections and other engaging articles.
To subscribe, follow this link: http://streamline-hub.com/fac-landing/FAC-Landing1.htm

Read a PDF of Peter’s article:

Download (PDF, 3.2MB)

Hudson Highlands: North River Suite Volume One was published on November 17, 2017. Four months later, the majority of the edition has found its way into private and public collections including West Point Museum, Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Newberry Library in Chicago, Boscobel House and Gardens, Garrison, New York, with other museum and library acquisitions pending. A limited number of copies (10) will be offered at the original price pf $1,500.00USD through April 6, 2018. Copies after April 6 will increase in price to $1,800.00USD. The final five copies will be offered at $2,500.00USD.
Please address enquiries regarding purchase to

ed******@ne***********.com

Preview:

Download (PDF, 2.07MB)

Hudson Valley Sketchbook in view at Antipodean Books, ABAA New York International Book Fair, Seventh Regiment Armory, 631 Park Avenue. March 8-11, 2018

Four months after the publication date, only 20% of the limited edition (ten copies) remain on sale. So far this was accomplished without the help or intercession of art dealers. Other public collections that have acquired copies include West Point Museum, Highland Falls, New York, Huntington Library Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, Boscobel House and Gardens, Garrison, New York and Newberry Library in Chicago. Other museum acquisitions are pending.
The publication date price of $1,500.00 will be honored through April 6, 2018. On April 7, the price will step up to $1,800.00. The final five copies of the edition will be offered at $2,500.00
To purchase one of the last remaining copies, open this link down to the bottom of the page.
The publisher accepts payment by check, credit card and PayPal. New York State residents add *% sales tax. Shipping is included.
Enquiries:

ed******@ne***********.com

Hudson Highlands, a suite of seven archival digital prints of painting-journal page-spreads James Lancel McElhinney’s North River project has been published in a limited edition of fifty signed, numbered and dated archival digital prints, loose-bound in a fine cloth-covered clamshell box which also contains a title page, descriptive chapbook and colophon page. The project received support from a generous grant from the Pollock Krasner Foundation. Nearly half the edition was sold prior to publication, via subscription.
Exhibited by Bravin-Lee Programs at Untitled Miami from December 6-10, 2017, Hudson Highlands is now available for purchase. Details below.

James Lancel McElhinney is a visual artist, author, oral historian, and publisher. McElhinney attended Tyler School of Art, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Yale, where he earned an MFA in painting. McElhinney is a recipient of a 2017 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and a visual artist fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1987. McElhinney is listed on the Master Artist Council of the Arthur Miller Foundation. From 1991 to 2003 McElhinney created a series of artworks exploring historic battlefields as flashpoints in new conflicts between historic preservation and commercial development. Since 2005, painting in book-form, has afforded McElhinney greater mobility. Identifying with expeditionary artists such as John-James Audubon, George Catlin and Seth Eastman, McElhinney regards his paintings as interventions, encountering the landschaft as a palimpsest of simultaneous narratives; terrain organized by memory and desire, human activity, conditioned by topography, climate and hydrology. McElhinney has conducted numerous oral history interviews for the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Columbia University Center for Oral History, The Frick Center for the History of Collecting, the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, South Carolina Center for Jewish History, Vermont Studio Center and VoCA: Voices in Contemporary Art. He is the author of numerous articles, essays and books including Classical Life Drawing Studio (2010) and The Visual Language of Drawing (2012), both with Sterling Publishing and Art Students League of New York on Painting, Ten Speed Press, Crown Publishing 2015.

A limited number of copies are available
Retail price (Through April 6, 2018) : $1,500.00. After April 6: $1,800.00
(New York State resident add 8% sales tax)
To pay by check: Needlewatcher Editions.PO Box 142, West Haverstraw, New York. 10993
To pay by PayPal, send payment to

ed******@ne***********.com











. Click on the link below:

Inquiries by art-dealers and booksellers, please write to

ed******@ne***********.com

Look inside the companion chapbook:

Download (PDF, 5.47MB)

Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA

Interior. Huntington Library, San Marino CA

Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven CT

Yale Beinecke Library. Interior

Newberry Library, Chicago

Newberry Library

It is with great pleasure that I can share that Hudson Highlands, North River Suite, Volume One has been acquired by Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New Haven, CT, Newberry Library in Chicago, and by The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA. These acquisitions by the Beinecke Library and by the Huntington are deeply gratifying to me, because Hudson Highlands. North River Suite Volume One now resides with so many historical works by artists in these collections whom I admire.

Only ten copies of the limited edition of fifty remain. These will remain on sale at the current prince of $1,500.00 until April 6, after which date the price will be $1,800.00. The final five copies of the edition will be offered at $2,500.00. For information about how one may purchase a copy, scroll down to the bottom of this post, or send an email to

ed******@ne***********.com











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ed******@ne***********.com

Hudson Highlands, a suite of seven archival digital prints of painting-journal page-spreads James Lancel McElhinney’s North River project has been published in a limited edition of fifty signed, numbered and dated archival digital prints, loose-bound in a fine cloth-covered clamshell box which also contains a title page, descriptive chapbook and colophon page. The project received support from a generous grant from the Pollock Krasner Foundation. Nearly half the edition was sold prior to publication, via subscription.
Exhibited by Bravin-Lee Programs at Untitled Miami from December 6-10, 2017, Hudson Highlands is now available for purchase. Details below.

James Lancel McElhinney is a visual artist, author, oral historian, and publisher. McElhinney attended Tyler School of Art, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Yale, where he earned an MFA in painting. McElhinney is a recipient of a 2017 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and a visual artist fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1987. McElhinney is listed on the Master Artist Council of the Arthur Miller Foundation. From 1991 to 2003 McElhinney created a series of artworks exploring historic battlefields as flashpoints in new conflicts between historic preservation and commercial development. Since 2005, painting in book-form, has afforded McElhinney greater mobility. Identifying with expeditionary artists such as John-James Audubon, George Catlin and Seth Eastman, McElhinney regards his paintings as interventions, encountering the landschaft as a palimpsest of simultaneous narratives; terrain organized by memory and desire, human activity, conditioned by topography, climate and hydrology. McElhinney has conducted numerous oral history interviews for the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Columbia University Center for Oral History, The Frick Center for the History of Collecting, the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, South Carolina Center for Jewish History, Vermont Studio Center and VoCA: Voices in Contemporary Art. He is the author of numerous articles, essays and books including Classical Life Drawing Studio (2010) and The Visual Language of Drawing (2012), both with Sterling Publishing and Art Students League of New York on Painting, Ten Speed Press, Crown Publishing 2015.

A limited number of copies are available
Retail price (Through April 6, 2018) : $1,500.00. After April 6: $1,800.00
(New York State resident add 8% sales tax)
To pay by check: Needlewatcher Editions.PO Box 142, West Haverstraw, New York. 10993
To pay by PayPal, send payment to

ed******@ne***********.com











. Click on the link below:

Inquiries by art-dealers and booksellers, please write to

ed******@ne***********.com

Look inside the companion chapbook:

Download (PDF, 5.47MB)

One more day to see Hudson Valley Sketchbook 2012-2016. Antipodean Books, Booth D29. ABAA New York International Antiquarian Book Fair. 643 Park Avenue. Many thanks to David and Cathy Lilburne of Antipodean Books for exhibiting the painting-journal at what one exhibitor described as the best book fair on the planet. I am deeply grateful to them for the privilege of showing with them at this amazing venue. Please visit them and peruse all their offerings today until 6pm.

A peek inside the book:

Download (PDF, 1.41MB)

On view at now, at Antipodean Books. Booth D29, ABAA New York International Antiquarian Book-Fair. 643 Park Avenue, between 66th and 67th Streets. March 8-11, 2018

Description:
3.5 x 5 inches. Watercolor sketchbook. Thirty-three page-spread paintings in archival aqueous media. Covers affixed with various labels: Recto: White mailing label. Handwritten in black “Hudson Valley Journal March 15-2012, 2016” Signed by the artist in orange Micron (Japanese) pen. Green Boscobel House and Gardens label dated in ballpoint pen “9/16”. Verso: Orange Moleskine label, Metropolitan Museum of Art entry sticker dated 0702 (2016). Gold stamped octavo-sized Solander box, with inset and green lift-ribbon. Cover title: “Needlewatcher”. Spine: “Hudson Valley Sketchbook”. The box was produced by Cat, at Wyvern Bindery, London in 2016.

Download (PDF, 1.41MB)