Kate McGloughlin's "Requiem for Ashokan"

The Ashokan Reservoir, Shokan, NY

My people were forced to leave their land and the beautiful farm and gristmill they owned to make room for the reservoir that was needed to provide drinking water for the other half of my family, who came to New York from Ireland with the thirsty multitude that descended here in an enormous wave.

I knew my great grandmother, Bessie Bishop Davis, and I can tell you she never got over the loss. She was 98 when she died and was still pissed that they “stole her home”.  So, how can a place that holds this much grief be a place that provides an equal measure of peace and inspiration to so many people?  There’s more to it than the ever-changing aesthetic hit of mountain, water, and sky. I think the story, itself an elegy, lays a thick layer of beauty-born-of-tragedy on this place, and I’m sure that’s the real thing that people respond to when they visit the Ashokan Reservoir.

Kate McGloughlin, painter and printmaker

I

There she was in a nest of driftwood, bleached

Far downstream and ripped from her rightful place

Vessel and provider

White and swollen, sideways and mistreated 

Off her blocks and useless 

No other from her tribe to lay eyes on

No nod of reassurance or familiar 

II

Cruel edges of noon, sharp focus

Glaring reflection, no ripple

Stillness only, bearing witness

Of this incarnation 

Adrift, no hope of return

III

In the tired hour, pushing

Tossing about on white horses

Made by the northeast wind on water

Rock gently, displaced mother

Waiting to be claimed

IV

The moon knows her longing

Light blue and holding 

The old trees loosed by the same

Rage of nature, gnarled and bared

By another turn of the sun

Emptied

It's fullness emptied by drought and thirst

Weathered shards of lost wood drifts,

Nesting on the shoreline,

Fishing boats as eggs

Held close in safety

Where water meets earth

Light breaks the calm surface

That belies the century old loss

Uncovers history, ourstory 

The traces of past mark the

Place where their hearts were left behind

Aching for their own long ago

Dragging feet, trudging out 

Spitting bitter and salt

Tears mix with the sweat

Feel the heft of dead family

Rising from earth to the new

Eternal rest

Reservoir Sketches

I

Coal skuttle dropped

In thin air, chunks flying east

In winter, form a transient V

II

Upended brooms

Jab skyward from the snow

Afternoon light warms their wiry selves

Maggie's Water

Here in this place without right water

The white of his collar never quite white

And Willie sick again at his stomach

They had so much at home, always,

Every day from the sky and the

Bog, thick with it

Never more than a quick drop in the well

To collect more to carry in 

And that brook, I remember—

I hear it in my dreams,

Drowned only by a memory of the roaring sea

I never knew it would be the water

At home that I would long for

And the mention of thirst—

Quench, then numb me 

The Thirst inside me too great

To quell from this tap

I ache for home and the knowing,

Here in the crowd, I'm hated

For nothing, really, just being other

As I wither, will these children

Know the ripping away it took

To give them a better life?

These Apple Trees?

Yes, they have value

My grandfather planted them

To feed us

To prepare us for later

Something to sell

Something to sweeten

Something to eat and remember him by

Fourteen acres of Pippins

And Vanderveers and others

I now care for, 

My turn to climb and prune, 

Debug and harvest -

Generations have witnessed the transformation

Every full turn of the sun

The slaying of these trees—

Tender blossoms in May

Growing offspring in Summer

Ripe fruit in September

Quiet nubs in Winter—

Hastens my own Winter, 

Withers my own growing,

My roots also torn, 

Grubbed, then burned

Artist’s Statement

Requiem for Ashokan began to materialize in September 2016, during an intensive, seven-day drawing and painting residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. It continued at another 10-day drawing and printmaking residency at the Artists Association of Nantucket in February 2017, and was completed at home in The Graphics Shop at the Woodstock School of Art in Woodstock, NY, and at the Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY.

At each place I had the good fortune to collaborate with other fine artists, namely, Patti FitzMaurice and Mary Emery, and to finish the handmade book with Chris Petrone. This work is imbued with their spirit. Both residencies were offered to me to complete a personal project that tells the story of loss surrounding the devastation my ancestors endured during the creation of the Ashokan Reservoir, and was spurred on by long talks and walks at the Ashokan with author Gail Straub. The generosity and visionary spirit of each of these artists helped make this work possible.

Requiem is being exhibited at the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum in June 2017, and includes written text, a handmade artist's book, and audio files narrating both sides of the story from both sides of my family—the settlers and the immigrants. The invaluable role these art institutions play in bringing work to fruition cannot be overstated, and I will remain grateful to each for its contribution. Read more about the exhibit here.

Painter and printmaker Kate McGloughlin lives and maintains a studio in Olivebridge, NY, near the site of the Ashokan Reservoir. During her 25-year career, she has exhibited worldwide in many notable galleries and four museums. McGloughlin is president of the Board of Directors of the Woodstock School of Art, where she teaches printmaking, landscape painting, and directs the newly renovated Printmaking Studio. She graduated from the University of Arizona with a BFA in Drawing and Painting and studied printmaking with Robert Angeloch and others. As co-founder of Destination Arts Creative Workshops, she travels and paints all over the world. McGloughlin is the youngest artist represented in the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum’s permanent collection.