Kevin VanHentenryck was studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan when he saw a film that changed his life.
“Savage Messiah,” released in 1972, traces the life of French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. For VanHentenryck, watching from a small theater around the corner from Carnegie Hall, the film helped awaken his own creative ambitions.
“They showed a close up of an actual carver’s hands working a block of stone,” VanHentenryck said. “I was so blown away by that.”
As soon as he could afford it, VanHentenryck hurried to an art supply store across from the academy.
“The minute I first touched steel to stone, I had the most amazing thing happen to me,” VanHentenryck said. “This is what I was meant to do. I had angels guiding my hand. That moment powers me still.”
VanHentenryck, 73, lives in Mount Tremper and has a studio in West Kill. He returned to Hunter Town Hall last week for the 19th year of his free stone-carving seminar, welcoming beginners and experienced sculptors alike.
Over two weeks, VanHentenryck and his students spend hours carving creations into pieces of bluestone large and small. The larger sculptures remain on the town hall grounds year-round, while students can take smaller pieces home.
VanHentenryck initially wanted to hold the seminar along Platte Clove Road. Town officials, concerned about safety on the narrow road, offered the town hall grounds instead. The large pieces of bluestone used by VanHentenryck and his students were donated.
“I envisioned it as the world’s first drive-in sculpture park, which I thought was really cool,” he said. “Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, because there’s no guardrail. People would be driving off the edge to see what we’re doing.”
Dena Paige-Fischer, a New York City sculptor with a family home in Jewett, spent the morning of Saturday, Aug. 29, carving a collection of stone feet. Using a palette she also carved from stone, she painted the toenails with pigment derived from rocks.
“I made one foot because I had this rock that was sort-of foot shaped, and then I just became obsessed with making a collection of them,” she said. “Just for the fun of it I started painting the toenails with the pigment.”
“I’m a purist,” Paige-Fischer said. “Everything is made of stone one way or another.”
Kendra Pedersen, who lives on the West Coast, has worked on her piece of bluestone on and off since 2011. She said she carves what comes to her naturally, drawing on her Indigenous roots and the years she spent in the Gila River Indian Community in central Arizona.
“Some of it is coming from the ceremonies I went to and the way of life,” she said.
Originally a painter, Pedersen said she never intended to try stone carving until she met VanHentenryck.
“I drove by, and he’s like, ‘You want to try it,’ and I said ‘No,’” she said. “He encouraged me to try it and the second I tried it I fell in love.”
Next year will mark VanHentenryck’s 20th seminar. He plans to retire afterward, though his students are pledging to keep the program alive.
Paige-Fischer has been learning to sharpen tools in addition to carving, hoping she can help carry on the event.
“I’m definitely going to jump in and help,” she said. “It’s kind of unheard of to have something like this offered for free.”
Pedersen also plans to pitch in, although teaching others will leave her with less time for her own work.
“The only problem with him not being here is that I can’t do the work I want to do,” she said. “A lot of my time is spent teaching other people. But it’s okay. Full circle.”
Pedersen hopes to eventually bring a similar program to the Gila River Indian Community.
“I want to learn every aspect of it,” she said. “I’d also love to learn how to run it and then take it to the reservation and teach it.”
Original photography by Roy Gumpel/The Overlook.
Connor Greco is a staff reporter for The Overlook covering Windham, Hunter, and surrounding Greene County communities. Send correspondence to connor@theoverlooknews.com.
