In the monumental work of bluestone sculpture known as Opus 40, some walls are listed. Mined from the earth in 37 years by Harvey Fite, a man of singular vision. This is normal, because the professor of Bard College, who had worked for a long time, designed to assemble each stone of the walls with only the hand, a hammer and a chisel, each piece being placed without mortar.
While Harvey left the earth half a century ago, his 6.5-acre sculpture remains in the open, under sky and cloud, waiting in a forest watched over by the towering peaks of the escarpment of Catskill walling the way west.
Opus 40 is run by a non-profit organization originally formed in 1978 by Harvey’s wife, Barbara Fite, and is a nine-person board of directors, brought together for the purpose of “supporting the legacy of renowned artist and stonemason”.
Jonathan Becker, the current Chairman of the Board (and Vice Chairman of Harvey Fite’s alma mater), was only too happy to announce a year-end 2021 donation of $300,000. from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, intended to match a $300,000 grant earlier in the fall received from the National Parks Service/Save America’s Treasures program.
Conservation is the name of the game, with Opus 40 flush with this charitable infusion, Becker expects to “achieve a multi-year program of sculpture repair and conservation at Opus 40”.
The New York State Council for the Arts has also gotten into the donation game, donating an additional $49,500 specifically for operating expenses beyond revenue generated from ticket sales.
All of this funding bodes well for a very good Spring-Summer-Fall 2022 season for Caroline Crumpacker, since 2018 executive director of every moving piece of the 57-acre sculpture park’s daily operations, breathing or inanimate.
Crumpacker took office in 2018, having run the Millay Colony for the Arts, in Austerlitz, one of the world’s oldest artist residencies for writers, visual artists and composers.
“It was really nice. I worked there for twelve years. And then, I had talked with friends, ”explains Crumpacker. “I didn’t know what to do next. I wouldn’t mind being closer to home, and I heard about the job posting here, which I guess was circulating around Bard, and that was it. I didn’t know much about it. As in, I just thought it was this beautiful place. I haven’t really thought about Fite’s story and heartbeat.
The green fence
There is a scattering of buildings on the property, the most prominent of which appears to be an old wagon barn far up the hill from the quarry, painted the color of burnt umber and built high up. Long rusty chains with links as thick as a man’s wrist are scalloped all the way around the exterior of the barn, attached to eye hooks, cast iron wheels and cogs. It was the garage Fite had built to house his trucks. He built a second floor inside as a quarryman’s museum, a showroom for his tools.
Chains and cogs are attached to hand-cranked winches to transport the stone.
Fite’s house still exists. He built it himself on the edge of the quarry. A long, flat, two-story rectangle with roofs sloping at the lowest permitted angles in an area where fear of snowfall haunts many roofers.
Around this house last summer developed an argument so noisy that it ended up attracting the attention of The New York Times.
Fite’s son-in-law owns the house and his grandson has partnered with a local businessman to run the Fite house as a bed and breakfast.
The bed-and-breakfast quickly turned into the less innocuous reality of an Airbnb. As will happen with such establishments, a few spectacular parties were thrown that had all the trappings of what was once referred to among the boxy crowd as “raves”. Loud music, fire dancing in the dark of night. If the party goers weren’t taking drugs, they should have been.
The idea of bed and breakfasts developed further when the Fite house started offering Hip Camping.
“Like you’re renting out part of your lawn,” Crumpacker explains. “They were basically Hip camping. So we came in the morning, there was a guy like in his underwear doing the dishes in the little pots. Which is good if you are on top of a mountain, go there and wash in the river. But the people are there. And there were tons of them like right there, like right behind the house, right next to the sculpture. That’s when the council really started to worry. Yeah, they get real accountability. So we tried to talk to them, and it got out of control. I really wish we could have figured something out.
Liability issues have come to the fore. After all, there was a twelve-foot drop in a bluestone quarry near the house.
And so it was that a forest green hurricane fence with opaque green fabric was erected around the perimeter of the house. Erected with the blessing of the Opus 40 Board. The fence drew the ire of the Fite clan and vocal opposition objecting to the aesthetic effect of the fence.
In the print media, the fence grew, as did the protests against it.
Caroline Crumpacker recalls:
“The New York Times story was fairly even-handed, but I felt the coverage in Hudson Valley One was one-sided. The fence wasn’t the perfect solution, but it was a tasteful green fence that created a barrier to keep Airbnb guests from falling into the quarry while protecting the sculpture grounds from further degradation. There were about eight people who came out to protest, and reading the Hudson Valley One article made it seem like the opposition was much bigger.
In the end, disgruntled holiday neighbors and passing campers presented a petition to the city council. A cease and desist order was issued to the B&B and the fence fell. Since then, the Fite house has been practically empty.
what will happen
“I really don’t want to make it the centerpiece of the article,” Crumpacker says. “But I think because it’s over there, I would reference it. Make sure my reference is correct. And move on. It’s like: Opus 40, rebirth in the spring, you know? We’re gonna talk of what is going to happen this year and why it will be exciting.
Crumpacker now sets the tone.
“We were hoping to reopen for the end of March, just around the equinox, but there has been so much mud, ice and snow that there is just no way. We expect the weather to stabilize, but certainly by early to mid-April. Once it opens again, we have a bunch of things planned. Every Friday is a community thing, lots of collaborations, performances and sculptures, in partnership with an array of local groups.
“Woodstock Radio, Hudson Valley Stories Workshop. We’re doing a panel with Unison Arts, a band from New Paltz. There is a performance of Antigone in the works with the Bard College Drama Department. And that’s just the beginning. The Bindlestiff Circus will be a thing. Juggling, trapeze, music, you know, a circus without trained animals.
Last season, Upstate Films went out for several nights and set up a giant inflatable movie screen held down by guy wires attached to sandbags in a grassy glade near the Harvey Fite sculpture.
“It was a big deal,” Crumpacker recalled. “Sound passed through a mixer to the speakers, so guests could set up a picnic blanket anywhere from the screen and watch the movies from the grass. But it took so long to set up and take down just one weekend night that we decided this season to do two full weekends with Upstate Films, three nights each, two little mini film festivals on the weekend of July 4 and during Labor Day Weekend. I love working with Upstate Films.
Live concerts are also scheduled on Saturdays, all outdoors with the mountains in view during the warmer months. Billed as “Stockade Saturday Cabaret,” the event will recognize both the rotating line of musical acts and the 1976 Dodge pickup truck converted into a cocktail bar on wheels parked near the grassy lot. Supplied by Kingston’s Stockade Tavern, the truck has been retrofitted with a custom-built underbody truck bed ice cooler to run six lines of chilled pre-mixed cocktails to taps on the side.
A variety of food options will be available.
“Last year it was Papa’s Best Batch Foodtruck which served barbecue brisket, sliders, salmon, macaroni and cheese. That’s not nearly all. The menu was outrageous. Vegetarian and vegan options are also available.
The schedule of groups and genres offered will be diversified. A sample of the musical program includes the Hungry March Band, described as a joyous processional marching band that roams freely among the sculpture; Duloney Turkish Music, which will perform music from the former Ottoman Balkan region; and the Milagro Verde Cumbia group, which, as its name suggests, will be steeped in popular rhythmic traditions that began in Panama and Colombia.
A daydream
“We are going to do three years of repairing and conserving sculptures. This year, the focus is on repairing three distinct areas. Registration walls. These expert stonemasons, The Standing Stone, LLC of Vermont, is the primary group leading the conservation effort. And they’re going to do a whole restoration project.
They will mainly work weekdays. But actually, I think it’s going to kind of add to that, because people can come and watch them do it. I was afraid that they would feel irritated by the public but they are really into it. And they said they would be happy to have specific times of the day when they would talk to people and just answer questions. True craftsmen practicing an art form lost for love of art. They are affiliated with this place called the Stone Trust, which is an organization dedicated to the preservation of dry stone. And, basically, they’re going to certify the dry stone as they work.
Tours will be available, but one can roam freely among the vast sculpture itself, walk the stairs and curved dry stone ramps, through the wooded paths and outlying glades and half-suggested outdoor sculptures until as one wanders up to the great half-ton carved blue stone center of it all. An incredibly balanced trapezoidal stone stands lengthwise on a short pedestal-like chimney, raised atop the entire sculpture, the center of Harvey Fite’s daydream.
From this upper platform, the separate pieces of chiseled stone gradually flow together like water, pouring from one level to another in whirlwinds of organization or descending suddenly down the stairs. Rectangular pools of water await at the bottom or earthen pools from which birch trees rise. The sense of movement in the design is odd. There are no handrails. Rocks underfoot are jagged and chipped.
The suggestion of a deal plan is easier to recognize from a distance. That’s the way to see it, all flowing together. The impact is then clearly seen, like an ordered flow of stopped magma. Harvey Fite has seen it all in 37 years.
Information on the timetable and admission prices are available on the Internet at Opus40.org.
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