and he enjoyed painting and that's what he did for his living and he was a teacher to other artists so in his traditional we try to provide a gallery space for other artists to exhibit their work and we here in the northern vermont artists association here show here for the month of december this is a this is a collection of about thirty three different artists all though there are over one hundred  and so i thought my painting of the lobster roll was really something that kind of captured the spirit of what he did he really looked for the value strong value changes and so i think that i would say that that's exactly what i was trying to is point out the different look at objects you know barnes and silos and whatnot i'm more interested in the shapes and the colors textures t the group a gallery has been very very supportive of my artwork and i've had a chance to show a variety of things and this is just a little history of our organization even though we have been around for seventy five years no one had ever bothered to write down our history and i was a history major in college so i felt was important to do that so i some fellow members dug through the archives at the fleming museum and they found all this stuff and so i compiled a massive scrapbook of information out of which i called it down to these things  just going to give you the bullet points here are going to zation was founded by this guy right here harold sykes knight born in one thousand nine hundred three in massachusetts you learn to be an artist in france when during world war one after the war he got there just in time for the warden and so he fortunately didn't have to worry about getting shot so he spend his time wandering the french countryside doing watercolors and so forth and then he came back to america he settled in burlington a show this is from thirty three but there was no newsletter then so he would advertise it in the burlington free press he put in the rules and parameters and so forth it cost one dollar to be a member and the show the first show was at ethan allen club it had eight hundred visitors even though it only lasted three days yeah the size limit was forty by fifty inches and they were only interested in modern in recent work and he put this disclaimer in the paper he said if it is necessary to reject any work the society is confident that the artist will abide cheerfully by the decisions of the jets which the show to just be a one time only affair but the free press wrote nice articles about it right here probably because our most famous a contributor was maxfield parrish and these this picture in this picture pictures that he contributed in our early shows and if anybody if you know your art history you know the maxfield parrish was one of the top artists in america in the one nine hundred twenty s famous for his parish blue that he put in all th pictures someone once estimated that every house in america had a calendar with maxfield parrish pictures in it he wasn't actually a vermonter though he lived in new hampshire and somebody asked him why he said so i get good use of a mont so this was the write up about the first show that they had while the same year nine hundred thirty one the fleming museum opened and you v m and so the following year in thirty two harold knight met with horse eldrid who was the assistant director at the fleming museum and he arranged to start having the shows there and they continued to do that for forty years horace eldridge was an interesting character not only was he the now these early shows were judged by night himself and he would occasionally ask other people to help him but he did most of it himself and some of the early members  isabel clarke mills and these were all prominent people in the burlington art scene in those days in those days they would exhibit the amateurs and professionals in separate categories and the professionals would win bronze plates as prizes whereas the amateurs would get ten dollars for first prize five dollars for second prize and three dollars a third prize here's another maxfield parrish that appeared one of the early shows now this article is about the show being reviewed by one of the top guys at the new york city art gallery one of the interesting things i found when i started reading all these old articles is that everyone was always pleasantly surprised when they went to the n b a shows they always went in tongue in cheek like oh yes here's a bunch of amateurs who don't know what they're doing but they were always remember amazed at the high quality of work and so they'd always write these lengthy articles about how great our work was sincere courageous are now they only did one show and a year in those days it wasn't called the work nor the monarchist association it's just the amount artists in those days they didn't become an association till later in one thousand thirty three we had a joint show with a southern vermont artist organization which was founded in one thousand twenty nine they beat us by a couple years and they're still going strong too of course now years later harold knight was interviewed by vermont life in one nine hundred fifty s and they asked him to talk a little bit about what sort of people painted for them or them are associated and he said it would be interesting to list the everyday occupations of many of the north or mount group surely it would include those who lay down the plough to pick up a paint brush housewives of snatch a moment now and then ministers professional men not forget the youthful aspir invade often had student artists in the show some as young as fourteen years old one of the most remarkable members in those days was an invalid who painted her sick bed by holding the paint brushes with her we had an interesting policy in the thirty's if you held i didn't like people to actually sell the work during the show so he wouldn't sell anything out of the show instead he would give the artist's name and address to a potential buyer and you'd have to go buy it afterwards but during the world war two he got the idea of raising money for the red cross so many artists during the war years would donate proceeds from sale of smaller paintings to benefit that knight ran the place till one nine hundred fifty seven but he continued to be active in the n b a until he died in one nine hundred eighty and after he left it was taken over by a fellow named frank stockwell who was the head of the so he ran it so you in the fifty's i believe her brutally or nine sixty one nine hundred sixty four robert vogel took it over and some of you may know robert he's still going strong he joined us in one nine hundred forty six and he's still exhibiting with us today back to put pieces in the in the wing building show that we had he's our longest continuing member still going strong was president barber smale for a while barber smale who passed away a few years ago one thousand nine hundred eighty s the one who started our tradition of having our shows at the university mall which had just opened then now we continued at the fleming for forty years as i said until one hundred seventy two this is the last review written of our last show the fleming what happened was in seventy three horus eldrid retired and somebody else took over and he had a show which he toted was the very first show of vermont artists you completely ignored the fact the n b a had been there for forty years and horse eldred's wife was so incensed by this that she wrote a our home i nine hundred eighty three we were kind of in a crisis because by then all of the original members were dead and there weren't too many young people who felt that were relevant so the membership really did windell and the last president henry finney took over need three he resigned and that looked like it might be the end but then k petri came along let it go so one of the first things they did was they reorganized it and took over as president and she created the newsletter which really started bringing the membership together because prior to that it was all word of mouth or under lydia's presidency that we made our connection with brian morell gallery one thousand nine hundred two we had our first show there and the connection was that alton bryan sr and mary bryan were members of the n b a back in the forty's and fifty's and salt and remembered what a great organization it was and so he invited us to stay there and we continued having shows there up until very recently when the new administration decided they didn't want to host our shows anymore it's a day to day we are at the visions of a gallery now under lydia and she in one thousand nine hundred two she invited me to give a lecture because in those days we used to have a lovely dinner parties once a year some of you may remember those and they would have guessed speakers and i was a guest speaker that year and somehow i ended up being the vice president of their position shortly thereafter and then lydia wanted to get out so suddenly i became so that's the whole thing in a nutshell a little bit about our philosophy when they first formed in one thousand thirty one harold night and his followers said our motto should be to encourage t study improve the practice elevate the standards and advance the cause of creative art and the nation state the mission even in the early days was to be a bridge between amateur and professional so as we expanded in shows beyond just the june show we wanted to give non jury dop to these for people who are just starting out and they would have journeyed opportunities we want to make connections between people who had never exhibited before and other people who are seasoned pros and one of these k petri did she also encourage the growth of the essex art league around the same time the early eighties and there's a lot of crossover in our membership  thanks to her and so that's that's about all i had to say i'll answer the questions and welcome a look around yeah yes yes i probably should bring that up yes  right who were prominent artists in the fifty's and sixty's in the sto area if you go to the helen de art center you'll see a lot of their work there and just about anybody who's involved in the visual arts in vermont at one time or another has cycle he's got a special subtlety about recognizing those special places in the woods that you like to visit