Spread Your Wings, Flaunt Your Antlers at Landis

Local artists Chan­dra Burkhart and Jen­nifer Cerut­ti recent­ly com­plet­ed an ​“inter­ac­tive pho­to op” project at the rear of the Arboretum’s his­toric Barn. The project, fund­ed by a Schoharie Area Long Term (SALT) Com­mu­ni­ty grant, fea­tures two larg­er than life nature-themed murals that have already become a big hit with vis­i­tors, young and old, to the Arbore­tum – and fod­der for social media!

Jen­nifer Cerut­ti, grad­u­at­ed in 2018 as an art major from Skid­more Col­lege, with a con­cen­tra­tion in both graph­ic design and pho­tog­ra­phy. She works as a design­er for Price Chop­per / Mar­ket 32; she also owns her own free­lance agency.

Jennifer’s min­i­mal­ist work depicts two huge white-tailed deer antlers with the rings of a tree. She chose white to con­trast with the deep red of the Barn.

Jen­nifer was intrigued by the ​“out of the ordi­nary” chal­lenge of the project, as well as the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with paint again. ​“Once I set­tled on my idea, the tough­est part was actu­al­ly get­ting it on the barn!” she said. ​“The tex­ture of the wood and the paint brush wasn’t what I expect­ed.” Jen­nifer report­ed that she stayed late at night to fin­ish the mur­al using the head­lights from her truck – and warm­ing up in the truck every now and again.

Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Fred Breglia point­ed out that the Arboretum’s founder had a great affec­tion for the deer in the woods and fields around his home­stead.

Chan­dra returned to col­lege at a ​“turn­ing point” in her life to pur­sue ​“what made me hap­py”: art. She grad­u­at­ed from Hud­son Val­ley Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege in 2018 with a degree in dig­i­tal media. She said, ​“I enjoy the tech­ni­cal side of my art – pho­tog­ra­phy, dig­i­tal manip­u­la­tion, graph­ic design, web design – as much as I enjoy get­ting my hands dirty with paint­ing, sculpt­ing, and, of course, gar­den­ing.”

Chan­dra used a vibrant palette of deep black and bright oranges, yel­lows, and white, to repli­cate the monarch butterfly’s vibrant col­oration. ​“I had a lot of chal­lenges with work­ing out­doors for about three weeks,” she not­ed, ​“from lady­bugs fly­ing into the wet paint, cold­er days and paint­ing with gloves on, to rain cut­ting my work­day short.” She said that her goal was to cre­ate some­thing ​“icon­ic,” some­thing that would help vis­i­tors appre­ci­ate the small­er things in nature – writ large.

Vis­i­tors to the Arbore­tum may notice that many of our plant­i­ngs encour­age mon­archs and oth­er native pollinators.