Winter Storm Nemo

Winter Storm Nemo is barrelling towards the Northeast of the US today, with a confluence of cold air from Canada and a Nor'Easter, whose moist air originated off the coast of Florida. Boston is predicting up to two feet of snow and blizzard winds... here around the Finger Lakes, we expect eight inches. Continental scale weather is upon us.

Meanwhile, progress on the house is steady. We hope to be hooked up to gas and electric supplies this week, after a tunnel is dug between the house and the supply. With most of the internal paintwork completed, attention has turned to the basement, which we intend to turn into a gallery in due course. The concrete walls will be insulated and sheet rocked and the ceiling rafters spray painted...

Nicholas

I still love this view of the side of our cottage when I drive home from work at night, the lighthouse always welcoming, the wall light illuminating the snow-covered, pyramidal evergreen bush, the little white mailbox, the red flag raised if mail has arrived for us...the crescent moon above seems the perfect accompaniment to this winter's eve.

But, of course, this is not the home I am most excited about...and so very much is about to happen 5 minutes drive up the road...

As we wrote earlier, we have made the decision to build the art gallery in the basement...well, this is the view from the 40 foot expanse of windows centred in the western-facing wall. We had not been downstairs to date, as there were no stairs....the stairs are still not installed, so we climbed down the ladder with Ralph, our fabulous designer/builder, to finalize the dimensions of the work he and his crew are about to undertake.

Basically the photo above, is the view from the 4-foot hallway which will be created along the western wall, looking north to south. And this is presently the view from the bottom of the stairs.

 The internal posts supporting the steel i-beams will be clad in drywall creating exhibition space, but the walls will not run the entire width of the room, allowing the amazing views to be part of the beauty of the home gallery.

Here is the view from the southern wall looking back the length of the room. The dark space at the end of the room will be a completely contained small cinema room to show Nicholas' films, it will have a full finished wall and eventually a platform for 2-level seating...and, if I have my way...an old-fashioned popcorn machine!!!

The 2 other posts will have 10 foot wide walls, centred in the 18-foot wide room. Display on both of these internal walls will create nearly 40 feet of exhibition area in the centre of the room, with 4 foot "halls" on either side...the end walls will provide a further 30 feet and the wall separating the gallery from the furnace/storage room will add, yet another, 30 feet. Nearly 100 linear feet to hang artwork in a home gallery is really a dream come true for us. 

I can't imagine what joy it will be to be able to rotate the artwork, have a mini-retrospective of his work from 1979 to the present, to take time to pause and reflect on the expression of spirit and creativity in this form...blessings abound.

Judy