Stock Your Shelves and Stuff Your Stockings at The Rogue Carrot

Dawn Bennett at The Rogue Carrot

ALFRED: A small, local business is more community than address. Sometimes it’s an interconnected weave of many families, farms and workshops and it brings income, warmth and nourishment to its village and neighborhood.

            Dawn Bennett is looking forward to her 5^th Christmas at The Rogue Carrot, a small, natural grocery store and artisan outlet on West University Street in Alfred. She hopes you’ll stop in to see her because she offers much more than groceries and to entice you she is hosting a special event on Thursday, December 20. It’s her Stock Up & Stuff your Stockings Sale. It starts at 10 am but some of the best deals coincide with the Alfred Art Walk from 5 to 8 pm that day.

            Bennett said, “When you shop at the Rogue Carrot you support many local people. We have local honey, maple syrup, art, pottery, garlic, eggs, meats, milled flours and baked goods. We even have home baked dog treats in cheddar cheese, chicken, bacon and peanut butter, made just the way elves make them if Santa freed some up to live in Alfred.”

            The Rogue Carrot opens at 10 on December 20. During the day there will be grocery items offered at 20% off. Thursday is always Fish Day and Italian Bread Day as well as restocking day.

            At 5 that evening StoneFlowerPottery will present 25 pieces of pottery priced at $5 each. This is meant to help people on a limited budget find handmade, last minute gifts with a home town touch. Included will be soup or cereal bowls, vases, lace print plates, and other functional items.

            Bennett will serve free hot beverages and cookies from 5 pm until they are scooped up. Enjoy nibbling while choosing from among these stocking stuffers: Dr. Bonner’s soaps, cookies, brownies and other individually wrapped treats, chocolate covered cashews, almonds and/or espresso beans or chocolate candy bars.

            You can find tins of slippery elm lozenges or purchase licorice sticks for 25 cents each. These are not candy strips but sticks from the woody tropical plant that gives us licorice. 
           Other small gifts are mommy vases, small jars of honey and jars of hot chocolate mix. Handmade small items are earrings, many from upcycled materials, as well as bracelets and necklaces.

            If your gift giving aims beyond stocking stuffing, choose mugs or bowls made by any of the local potters represented on the shelves or select an Alfred tote bag or T-shirt (adult or child). To be remembered on laundry day all year long gift someone wool dryer balls to thump their clothing dry or buy some warm flip-top mittens in a bright color.

            Look at your house or a friend’s house for colors and compliment them with a hand woven rug made by an Amish neighbor. Suitable for any décor would be The Power of Goodness edited by Nadine Hoover or a book written and illustrated by Cyan Corwine. You can read, bake or eat while listening to Emma Tyme’s CD.

            Need more enticement? How about some hand blown glass tree ornaments? There’s an ATM onsite to help you enjoy this special sale. It starts on December 20 but some of the groceries and pottery will remain at 20% off until The Rogue Carrot closes at 1 pm on December 24. The store will be closed to give everyone there a break and to allow for the dreaded inventory but you’ll find them open again at 10 am on January 11.

            After you shop, be sure to read the joke at the end of your receipt. Stop by 14 ½ West University, check The Rogue Carrot on Facebook or call (607) 587-8840 and help make this Christmas warm for local businesses.

Missing the Gentle Hands of Bruce Greene

Bruce’s Hands

ALFRED STATION: The leaves are gold and red among pumpkins turning orange but inside some hearts the world is blue. As Allegany Artisans dust off their signs and clean their studios, many will pause to think of two long time members, Charley Orlando and Bruce Green, who will not be adding their warmth and welcome to the 27^th Annual Studio Tour on October 18 & 19.

                Much has been written about both of these generous men. Both were treasured in their families. Both were teachers whose voices wove permanently into the lives of hundreds of students. Both created objects now found comfortably within thousands of homes across the country, working into family traditions as well as everyday life. Both helped to build their communities with a generosity that is less and less common.

                Susan Greene spent some time with me in the home that she and Bruce filled with memories and history as she described to me the hero of her life, her husband, Bruce Greene.

                Bruce Robert Green was born in 1939 and worked pretty much ceaselessly until September this year.  FDuring

During 40 of those years his were the hands that created Hillbottom Pottery in Alfred Station.

                For 24 years he guided Alfred Almond’s high school students as they gained critical thinking proficiency, planning skills, social behaviors, self expression methods and the myriad lessons of math and science needed to employ various mediums of art in their coursework.

                Susan said that she and Bruce were in concert in their beliefs and attitudes. Both felt that much of the work they did was an act of worship. Bruce valued creating things with his hands and worked with gratitude and respect.  This generous, gentle man and his wife found objects created by long-gone hands and brought them into their home to honor the lines, the designs, the craftsmanship, the color, the utility and the labor of their involved.

                “These look like things but they’re not. These are memories. They represent a place we saw or they stand for a conversation Bruce and I shared.” Susan said while showing the collection that she and Bruce gathered over decades.

                How does she most remember Bruce?  As many others, Susan remembers her husband as a teacher. Teaching was important to him. Students were important people and they knew it. It’s why so many came to celebrate his life at the memorial service at the Alfred Station Seventh Day Baptist Church. It’s why several of them created a “Teacher Quilt” to warm him in his last days at the Hart Comfort House.

                It’s why his voice still guides them in their lives and careers. Though their careers are not art-centered, they are always Mr. Greene-assisted. One past student became a ceramic engineer who feels that Mr. Greene put art into his personal and high tech life. Another said that art is communication and so is useful in all fields.

                Bruce and Susan both saw making art as a vulnerable act. She worked with elementary students giving them background information and confidence to move toward creative works. When they met Bruce in junior and senior high school, they felt secure in making creative leaps. Art was part of life for students of all grade levels at Alfred Almond Central.

                As a teacher, he was a gentle man but he had expectations and presented structure with lots of room for exploration. His interactions with students gave them room to find happiness and made them aware of their environment.

                As a potter he was pragmatic. He spoke, at times,of his love/hate thing with clay. He’d get tired of a design or a process but he always pressed forward because of the pride he knew with the making of  attractive, appealing, appreciated objects. 

                He felt that he was given the role to bring beautiful, satisfying things into people’s lives. He didn’t want a lot of “ballyhoo” about it but he enjoyed that sense that so many potters have of being written into someone’s life by virtue of the favorite mug or the morning cereal bowl.

                In this way, Bruce Greene continues in many lives. A mug handle connects him with a person, a place, a time and his memory is honored by this.

                Bruce felt that there is good and God in handmade things. Artisans know that there is beauty in a piece of wood, a silver wire, a ball of clay or an old can and as they pass that material through their hands they bring out this beauty. This creative act, the Greenes know, connects with the idea of creative people having been themselves created.

                During his last months, Bruce’s brain was under assault and his body suffered from it but he pushed himself to do things so that there would be greater room in Susan’s life to finish the book she published in January. She didn’t know how hard the struggle was for him until the spring because he didn’t complain. He just helped. This she sees as heroic and typical. He was always ready to help anyone.   

                His studio still holds his clay tools and some of his last pots. The Allegany Artisans have agreed to an exception in their policy to allow Susan Green to sell this pottery during the hours of the 2014 Studio Tour on October 18 & 19, from 10 am to 5 pm.       

                There will be 39 other studios open and hosted by 46 members of the Allegany Artisans ready to show what their hands have created. You may want to establish a connection in your life with something handmade and humbly presented.

                Call the Allegany County Office of Tourism at 1-800-836-1869 or write to AlleganyArtisans@gmail.com to request a brochure listing all participants.

               

Wearable Prints, 1760-1860, History, Materials, and Mechanics was published by Susan W. Greene in January, 2014.  It is available on Amazon.

When I suffered a hip injury years ago, Bruce Green taught me to throw standing up. Bruce stacked things on the floor to stand on and made measurements and sketches. Thus armed, Rick Hardman did a bit of welding and carpentry to change a foot operated wheel into a hand operated model. The modified machine has what Bruce called a “belly bar”. His invention makes it possible to lean into the clay with steady pressure easing the stress on back and hip. 

Stop the Pottery -Time for TV

Being president of the Allegany Artisans is one of those jobs pointing in more directions than a porcupine’s quills.
Last Wednesday was like that. I was trying not to skid into panic mode over the Studio Tour (just 11 days off) and was making one of my to-do-list/calendars that would map my way through the studio and end with all pots dried, bisque, glazed, priced and displayed when I remembered that one of my points of duty involved calling Lea DiCenso, executive producer at AM Buffalo. I had talked with her a week earlier and she said that hosting the Allegany Artisans on the show this year unlikely but she never knew what might happen. She has managed to feature the Artisans every year for a while now. We couldn’t complain about a year off.
I dialed expecting voice mail. She answered. I expected her to accept a few photos and information for WKBW’s website but she jumped into business mode. There was a cancellation. 6 minutes were available on Thursday – 18 hours hence. Could I make a few things happen?
My first use of the to-do-list/calendar was to flip it over to take notes from Lea while swallowing concerns for pottery. Pots could dry while I was on TV on Thursday.
I started mental calculations and plans. Sarah Phillips agreed to throw her gardening aside and go with me. She would pack up some paintings. I started taking tracking down 6 photos – 300 dpi – horizontal orientation.
Lea needed a poster that would work on TV. She had rattled off pixel dimensions that I immediately forgot. (Don’t tell her that.) The Allegany Artisans always have a vertical poster and she wanted horizontal. Sarah and I brainstormed options and I remembered that Hope Zaccagni had sent a pdf of part of the brochure for our website. Rick dropped what he was doing to work on that. If he cut off the top and bottom and photo-shopped the Tourism phone number and website over the group photo, we could call it a horizontal poster.
Hope Zaccagni designed the brochure so had all the photos but she was in meetings all day but Steve Walker had some and so did Kandace and Alec and so did I. Mine were from 2008 but a Bruce Greene teapot is timeless. WKBW had jpgs in a couple of hours.
Russ Allen agreed to drop off a wooden train and Bob Chaffee promised a carved plate and a never-wrinkles table cover. I packed my Pete Midgley vase from the mantle, Hope’s drawing from the dining room and chose a shirt that would show off my Jim Horn pin in googly-eyed splendor.
In the morning Sarah and I drove to Buffalo. Security at WKBW is strict. There are lots of doors but visitors go to the front door and call the person who is expecting them. Inside there are reception areas, offices and rooms filled with monitors, keyboards and blinking lights all held together by miles of cables and wires.
AM Buffalo is a live show and the studio has a few areas – the jackpot drawing set, the sofa set, the rolling table and the kitchen. There are 5 cameras aimed in different direction. Each wears a monitor for the text above its unblinking eye but there are no people behind the cameras. The people are off in those equipment-filled rooms. At least I expect they are during the show. When we arrived just after 9 a.m., the crew that came to work at 4:30 that morning was having lunch.
Sarah and I set up our art and talked about it. Linda Pellegrino laughed at my cow bank while Lea insisted it was a pig. Mike told me to bring in the table and clay demo stuff that Lea said to leave in the car. “Ask Lea,” I said, not wishing to be stuck in the middle of anything.
As if Sarah and I had a smidge of Linda’s experience and ease we were given a 2 minute sketch of our 6 minute show. It was my 3rd show and I knew not to try to prepare. What I hoped to say would never fit with what Linda would shoot out as a question.
I set my inner monitors to keep with the conversation and mention as many artisans as possible. Push the phone number. Name the website. Keep breathing. Try not to look doopy. Don’t cough. Don’t sneeze on Linda.
Seconds later the segment was over. Linda said it was easy to go on air with us. We were so confident and at ease. Could have fooled me.
I stopped at the Allegany County Tourism office on the way home. Patience Regan jumped out of her chair saying I should have warned her before getting myself on some big TV production. She had 18 phone calls in just 2 hours. Whether or not you caught us on WKBW, come to my studio for great pots, Jim Horn’s pins, and refreshments. Sarah says to see her in Rushford for paintings, silk scarves and better refreshments.
Of course there are more choices. Visit www.AlleganyArtisans.com to find all 36 locations and all 47 artisans offering locally made, quality work during the 22nd annual Studio Tour.