On the rocky shelves of Hunter Mountain, a man with a curly white mullet plays a guitar, surveying the view as snow melts around his feet and blocks of bluestone guard his back. This is the opening shot of Pitor Redlinski’s short documentary about Kevin VanHentenryck and his annual Stone Carving Seminar, which takes place August 17 to 29 this year in Tannersville. Filming is familiar ground for VanHentenryck.
VanHentenryck fell in love with stone sculpting as a young actor in Manhattan, studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He is best known for playing the lead role in the cult classic Basket Case. His revelatory moment came when he watched the film The Savage Messiah at the small arthouse Carnegie Cinema. The film showed a closeup of a sculptor’s hands, working marble, molding it into shape. VanHentenryck was hooked. “The first time I touched steel to stone I had the most incredible experience of my life,” he says. “It was a revelation that this is what I was meant to do.”
He got his supplies from The Sculpture House, only a block away from the Academy, and set up his first workbench under what is now the High Line. “In Lower Manhattan in the mid ‘70s, there was nobody doing stone carving. I had to learn through endless trial and error,” he says.
In 1984, he relocated to the Mountain Top region of the Catskills, as rents were rising in the city. He worked as a professional sculptor and produced handcarved signs for local businesses. The idea for the class came about as he wanted to make discovering the craft easier for others than it had been for himself. For the past 19 years, VanHentenryck has taught a free two-week stone carving course that is open to all.
VanHentenryck is both a self- taught sculptor and a self-taught teacher. He proposed the stone carving class to the CREATE Council on the Arts on a lark, never expecting to get the money. He did. “This program has taken a life of its own,” he says. “And every year we try to make it a little bigger, a little better in some way.” The program takes place in the Catskill Mountain Top area and continues to have a small budget. VanHentenryck maintains the anti-corporate, free nature of the seminar he had initially envisioned.
A diverse group of more than a hundred students, ranging from firemen to four year olds, attend every year, some returning annually for 10 years or more. Some work on different pieces each time, slowly sharpening their skills, while others chip away at one sculpture every year. The instructive part of the seminar lasts half an hour, consisting of three activities to get participants familiarized with the hammer, chisel, and stone. “It’s like roller skating,” says VanHentenryck. “At first, it hurts your ankles and it’s awkward, but you give yourself 20 minutes and you get the feel of it.”
While it may look difficult to mold solid stone into a desired shape, VanHentenryck maintains that the creative spirit of stone carving is present in all of us and that anybody, no matter the skill level, age, or ability, can make something at the seminar. “We get so many people who say they’re not artistic, and that’s not true,” he says. “Everyone is artistic. The creative aspect of humanity is probably genetic in us.”
The documentary is set to premier at the Woodstock Museum Film Festival, which runs from September 1 to 7 at the Woodstock Museum in Saugerties. In the film, VanHentenryck’s music plays as people from all walks of life start their first clumsy attempts with the chisel on soft bluestone. “What’s satisfying is watching people’s faces as they get it,” he says. “Suddenly, they’re carving and it becomes lyrical.”
The Stone Carving Seminar will be in Bluestones Park in Tannersville from August 17 to August 29, excluding August 23, from 10am to 5pm. The class is free and does not require formal registration. Students are required to bring their own safety equipment. You can learn more here.
