Excitement is building for this year’s On the Trail of Art, which will be held Saturday, June 10, 11am to 6 pm and Sunday June 11, 9am to 4pm at General Jacob Morris State Forest. Nearly 150 local students will be joined by over 35 professional artists for our third annual “gallery in the forest”. Strolling musicians, plein air painters and performance artists are also in the wings.

On the Trail of Art is about connections – student artists with professionals, art with the natural environment, communities with each other.

Students have the rare opportunity to exhibit their artwork side-by-side with professional artists and visitors are able to view the enormous amount of talent resident in the Valley. Students from Edmeston, Gilbertsville-Mount Upton and Morris Central Schools participate using materials supplied by Golden Artist Colors.

To celebrate art in nature, BVA works with the NYS DEC forester to transform a forest into an art gallery for the weekend and then restore the trail to its original state. Trees define the gallery spaces and, as visitors walk along the trail, exhibits unfold and beckon viewers onward. Individual pieces, nestled among the foliage, create surprising finds.

The event brings together a variety of communities – artists with their public, nature lovers with art appreciators, residents with natural resources in their area. Attendees, drawn to see the artwork, are often surprised that the state forest trails exist and express their desire to return for hikes. Visitors comment on the depth of talent exhibited by the students and a new understanding of the number of artists who live and create in the area.

An addition to this year’s program is a special exhibit at Earlville Opera House. Following the weekend event, a dozen student artist pieces will be selected by a panel and displayed along the main stairway at the Opera House through July 8.

On the Trail of Art is made possible with public funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and administered by The Earlville Opera House.

This year’s location was chosen for its beauty and ease of walking and, most importantly, to promote it as a new trail being developed in partnership with BVA and DEC. Our gallery is located in the 1,190-acre General Jacob Morris State Forest overlaying Morris Creek and Thorp Creek – tributaries of the Butternut Creek. General Jacob Morris began settling this area in 1787 and built the Morris Manor on the Butternuts Road (State Highway 51). The Morris family were active in the growth and development of the towns of Butternuts and Morris throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The present State Forest was a gift to the people of the state of New York from the General’s descendants.

The pine plantation surrounding this art gallery was planted through the state reforestation efforts of the 1930s and 1940s. Although these orderly plantations of Red Pine, Norway Spruce and Scotch Pine may look unnatural to us today, they represent an era when establishment of conifer plantations was the best and most appropriate management practice. Able to proliferate on the damaged soil of abandoned farms, thriving in conditions too poor to support hardwood forest regeneration, they stabilized erosion, improved watershed protection and slowly restored the depleted organic nutrients in the soil with their fallen needles and branches. Reaching the end of their natural or biological life, the old plantations are now being removed in managed stages to allow natural regeneration of native hardwood and softwood species. You can also find 49 species of mammals, 19 species of reptiles, 22 species of amphibians and 122 species of birds on the state forest lands.

-Maggie Brenner, Butternut Valley Alliance

It is free to attend On the Trail of Art.  To ensure that everyone has optimum opportunity to view the artwork, we are staggering admission times. Please feel comfortable arriving at any time during your ticket time and stay as long as you would like. Reserve your ticket, and find out more at butternutvalleyalliance.org