The CHS Art Club took their annual field trip to Frederic Church’s home, Olana, this year with a tour of the mansion and its grounds. Enjoying the vistas outside, students took advantage of sketching the view as the Hudson River School artists did. The tour of the grand castle began in the front parlor and took the students through all the rooms as well as the bedrooms upstairs where the Church family slept. They saw the studio where Frederic Church painted, the actual brushes and palettes that he used, and the magnificent paintings he made that adorn each room of the house.
After the tour, they went to the educational center where they used their small sketches as practice for a larger watercolor painting, very much like what the Hudson River School artists would have done.
They then walked the Skywalk over the Rip Van Winkle bridge and back to Main Street where they visited the “cats” there, including the cat that the Art Club created that sits near the Chamber of Commerce.
The trip was a well-deserved outing for the art club, a reward for all the projects they worked on during the year, including the Cat’s Care Room logo, the frame for the NHS’s dance, the signs for the Budget Vote, and the numbers for the top ten students of the Class of 2024.
