Tag Archives: South Mountain Road

Visual artist Doris Laughton finds inspiration in New City

Posted on September 2, 2015 | Leave a comment

Doris Laughton in her studio in New City. (Photo: Carucha L. Meuse/The Journal News)

Doris Laughton in her studio in New City. (Photo: Carucha L. Meuse/The Journal News)

I had the great opportunity to finally get to chat with Doris Laughton, a wildly creative multimedia artist and notable neighbor on South Mountain Road in New City.

Her “splat” sculptures have earned her the nickname of “splat lady,” but her work — with her art and her dedicated stewardship of her unique home, designed by 20th century painter and potter Henry Varnum Poor, who also lived on “The Road” — goes well beyond that. The house has been owned and occupied by artists for all but a couple of years in the five-plus decades since it was built — first Judith Freedman Deming, who was Poor’s niece and a  founder and longtime proprietor of Fiberworks in Nyack, and, since 2008, Laughton.

Go to lohud.com to read the full interview with Laughton.

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Posted in Art, Interview, lohud.com

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Free staged reading of High Tor on High Tor premieres today

Posted on August 21, 2010 | Leave a comment

Julie Andrews and Bing Crosby in the 1956 TV version of High Tor. The new production of High Tor on High Tor uses music composed for this teleplay.

The free staged reading of Maxwell Anderson’s thought-provoking play High Tor starts today (Saturday, Aug. 21) at High Tor State Park — the patch of open space in north New City, N.Y., on the mountain from which the play takes its title.

The 1936 comedy-fantasy, written by a resident of the High Tor neighborhood along South Mountain Road, helped fuel an interest in land preservation in the area that is going strong today.

Click here for a video interview with Terri Thal of the West Branch Conservation Association, Rockland’s land trust, which is producing the play to call attention to open-space preservation issues that persist today and here for a LoHud blog item and photo gallery related to the show.

The free show is being staged at 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Parking is free. Seating is provided. Come early and have a picnic in the beautiful mountainside park. Click here for directions and more details.

Click here for a fun item about the vineyard that once occupied part of High Tor, and some details of the West Branch Conservation Association’s successful battle to save it from development.

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Posted in Free, History, Music, News, Theater

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Revival of Maxwell Anderson’s ‘High Tor’ play to be performed on the slopes of High Tor

Posted on August 12, 2010 | 3 comments

See A free reading of the play that helped save this rockland County peak from destruction

In just 10 days from today, on Saturday, Aug. 21 and Sunday, Aug. 22, we’ll get a chance to see a performance of High Tor, a play that really did change the world.

The West Branch Conservation Association, Rockland County’s Land Trust,  is producing two performances of Maxwell Anderson’s New York Drama Critics’ Circle Best Play Award winner for 1937 on the on mountain the play was written to save and from which it takes its name.

Write what you know

The old adage for writing is that you do your best when you “write what you know.” That’s what famed playwright Maxwell Anderson did in 1936.

Maxwell Anderson, left, accepts the 1936 New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1936, a year before he won it again, this time for "High Tor."

Anderson was a resident of South Mountain Road in New City, an area that had become artists colony over the years, attracting creative folks such as Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, John Houseman, cartoonist Milton Caniff — along with Burgess Meredith and Alan Jay Lerner, who lived just over South Mountain in Pomona. Continue reading →

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Posted in Free, History, Music, News

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