Bears to emerge from hibernation
Cats, horses and dogs to follow
The Daily Mail
Apr. 11, 2009
With winter melting into spring, artists in Cairo and Catskill are working hard to finish the bear statues that will stand and sit in front of various businesses in Cairo.
Each bear pattern includes a butterfly containing a letter or symbol that corresponds to a question about Henry Hudson. Visitors who can answer all the questions will win a prize from the Cairo Chamber of Commerce, which is sponsoring the exhibit.
The Chamber will install the bears all around town, rather than just along Main Street, to encourage people to explore each of the town’s hamlets.
Rip is reborn
Don Boutin is creating two bears that show the natural beauty of spring and summer and a small bit of Greene County lore. His bears will be placed across Main Street from each other this summer.
His “Blossom Bear” shows different brightly colored flowers growing along a white picket fence. These he patterned from flowers and a fence in his own backyard garden.
The other bear, which will stand across the street, will show the story of Rip Van Winkle, the most famous resident of Greene County who never was. Rip’s angry wife and her “to do” list, Rip and his dog and the Half Moon are all portrayed on the bear’s chest, belly and rump.
Boutin placed Rip Van Winkle in promotional materials for a local balloon festival in 1999 and an automobile revival in 2003. In other works, Rip fishes, skis and dozes in a hammock. But Rip’s image as a young man on Boutin’s bear is one of the few, if only, instances where he is without his identifying long white beard.
Boutin’s Rip is recognizable from one painting or poster to the next, but Rip’s eyes and nose are familiar to anyone who has met Boutin.
“Everybody says when I do Rip, he has a likeness to me,” Boutin said.
Although Rip is a popular subject, Boutin also paints custom wall murals and scenes on benches and tables.
He first moved to the area in 1983, when he worked in the lacquer department at Sotheby’s in Columbia County, restoring and painting antiques. He used paint and putty to refurbish pieces and, in some cases, make them look like they were made of marble.
Boutin began painting his living room walls to look like beige stone shortly after moving into his Cairo home. The corners of the room have been made to look like wood and painted vines run along the faux beams. The room is complete with a bookshelf that looks three-dimensional.
He said his wife, Maureen, would sometimes wake up at 3:30 a.m. and find him working on the living room.
Boutin works in an upstairs studio in his Cairo home, surrounded by pictures of Rip, of cats and of flowers.
Toward the end of winter, a large nearly-finished painting of an explorer’s ship whose crew were bears and carried by butterflies — which promotes Cairo’s Quadricentennial — was propped on an easel.
Boutin said he had a very different idea in mind at first — the iconic Titanic. However, his daughter, who is away at college in Rochester, reminded him of an image she recalled from childhood of a ship with butterflies. And so, Boutin redesigned the painting.
Another Quadricentennial-themed painting, this one with Hudson’s Half Moon, adorns the cover of the most recent Greene County tourism guide. Hudson’s crew includes bears and cats. Rip appears, too, sharing a canoe with his own bear-and-cat crew. Friendly natives in their own canoe are paddling toward the Half Moon.
By late winter, Boutin was nearly finished with his two bears but was still planning for the cats he is creating for Catskill’s Cat’n Around celebration. One cat will show scenes from Catskill’s history, including the Catskill Mountain House and railroad tracks.
Boutin said he may borrow some settings from Thomas Cole’s famous works for the cat. He said he likes to incorporate Cole’s Hudson River scenes and mountains into the background of his own works of art.
His other cat will show the favorite, Rip, although the cat and bear will be different.
Boutin is not sure why he started to paint Rip relaxing, with Hudson’s legendary diminutive crew or ever as a mountainside waterfall.
“All of the sudden I started doing him,” Boutin said.
Father and daughter team up
Ken Richards, or Kenny Rich, created five cats for last year’s Cat’n Around exhibit and auction.
This year he will make two cats for Catskill and a rocking horse for Hors’n Around Saugerties — that village’s public art event.
Before work began on these projects, Richards and his 14-year-old daughter, Roxy, began designing their bears for Cairo’s interactive Quadricentennial street art project. Richards said he heard that Cairo was going to start its own project and asked if he could be involved. His daughter, who helped put together last year’s “Country Cat,” asked if she could create a bear, too.
Richards told her that she could submit a design and create the bear if her design was selected by a sponsor. Roxy submitted “Honey Bear,” a life-like bear whose pot of honey doubles as a bank.
“Honey Bear” went to the “Unibearsity of Honey,” Roxy explained, showing where she would print the alma mater on the bear’s red sweater.
Richards said he showed his daughter how to use different brushstrokes and painting techniques and tools, like a sponge and an airbrush, to create the bear’s fur and sweater details. The fur was created using four light and dark shades and the sweater has ribbing at the collar and cuffs.
Roxy said she is dedicating the bear to a friend on Long Island who loves Winnie the Pooh.
Roxy, who lives downstate, said all her friends there know about “Honey Bear.”
“They think it is really cool,” she said, “there is no opportunity like this on Long Island.”
The other bear being created by the Richards family is the “Gummy Bear,” a mate to last year’s favorite “Kit Cat.” The bear will resemble a gummy bear candy bursting out of its wrapper.
By late winter, Richards had only fashioned the foil wrapper around the bear’s neck and limbs and cut a large bite out of the bear’s right ear. But, when it is finished, visitors to the bear will be able to see little gummy bears inside the bear’s chest.
Richards is letting his 10-year-old son, Skylar, paint the bear’s solid-colored limbs and head.
Richards, who is a commercial artist and air-brusher, was just starting to work on his Catskill cat as his daughter was finishing her bear.
One cat is modeled after the 1953 Hudson Hornet hot rod, complete with flame decals and a seat in which a small pet can pose.
Once the body and the painting is completed, Roxy and her father can start giving their animals props, such as the hat and rake of the “Country Cat.”
“That is the fun part …” said Richards.
“… the accessories,” Roxy added.
He said he was trying to figure out how to attach side mirrors and other add-ons to the “Hudson Hornet” cat in a way that they will not get broken.
Richards said he watched adults try to pull the fake bullets and cell phone from his police cat last summer. This year, he said, he will put two bolts in all his attachments. He said he has also given advice to new participating artists on how they can make sure their creations are not vandalized.
Boutin, the Richards family and the other artists creating bears this year were required by the Cairo Chamber of Commerce to hide a butterfly in their patterns. But, they said, there were no other guidelines for the bears.
“That is the cool thing about these — anything goes,” Richards said.
Still time for Hudson artists
The city of Hudson is bringing back its “Best in Show” exhibit, which will open on Warren Street July 4.
The deadline for artist applications is April 24, and a sponsor-artist reception will be held April 30.
Interested sponsors and artists can contact the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce at 518-828-4417, or go online to www.columbiachamber-ny.com.