The New Year!

I always had the dream of starting some thing like Banner Hill since attending my first woodworking class. That was at Bergenfield High School, Bergenfield, NJ back in...well, let's just leave it there.

This dream began to take form from one of our pre-1850 reclaimed and restored timber frames that is now part of the school. I remember standing on the top plate setting rafters thinking, where am I going to get the people to help me teach? I have since been as much surprised as humbled by the wealth of talent hidden, but not really, here in the northern Catskill Mountains. Humbled because these artists all have their own following locally, nationally and internationally. And, the leave me no doubt that the passion they bring to their work is part of the fabric of their life. Inspiring. Surprised? Perhaps by my own ignorance that time had past these Catskill Mountains by. However, the same beauty the drew Thomas Cole and Frederick Church also drew many of the artists that bring their gifted talents here to Banner Hill.

I must say we have put together an impressive schedule of classes and artists for 2011. We have design programs this year that will be multi-dimensional. If you come to build a Japanese floor lamp you will not only be working in wood but making the paper shade that will fit into it. We will have another paper making course where you make the paper, print on it, make your own frame, gild it for a finish. We will also continue to offer concentrated programs in furniture design and building, ceramics, a kiln building class, portrait painting and painting workshops in the skill and techniques of the original School of Hudson River painters. And, we doing have the landscape and vistas to go with it.

So, challenge your creativity and imagination. Visit BannerHillLLC.com for course offerings. Our website is constantly updated.

Kip Christie
Banner Hill School of Fine Arts and Woodworking