with different eyes: a performance
Channel: sam truitt
Date: 2022-07-14

The memoir, WITH DIFFERENT EYES: A Covid Waltz in Words & Images, by Paul Smart and Richard Kroehling, is available at a 20% discount off the cover price of $30 via writing publishers@stationhill.org with "WDE discount" in the subject line: Order now! 

The book was designed by Anja Aronski, formerly of Taschen and now working freelance in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. It was printed by the masters at Grafica Premier in Toluca, Mexico, using all their magic.

The work started off as newspaper stories and a daily blog in the late winter of 2020 when the coronavirus began to spread. Smart, a renowned Hudson Valley journalist of 30-plus years, reported on the unfolding pandemic. A temporary lockdown, New York on Pause, workers sent home. Schools closed and playgrounds taped off. Vicious politics and then George Floyd was murdered. Protests spread, met by an increasingly belligerent institutional response. Violence spiraled as Trump doubled down on his bid for reelection. Through it all, Smart looks deep into his own bereavement for recently-passed parents, even as the lockdown seemed to offer refuge as well as the hope for real change—an epochal forbearance—arising from collective retreat. In turn, Richard Kroehling, filmmaker, installation artist and the co-maker of With Different Eyes, started painting, playing with images. He dove into his own stew of loss, regret and undiminished hopes, even as  the national angst and confusion deepened his palette. He  shared his evolving imagescape with his longtime friend, who was simultaneously sharing his blog entries. A pandemic year passed. Trump lost. Then another year rushed by with more violence, more bitter partisanship, more confusion. Smart and Kroehling worked with publisher friends at Mountains and Rivers, a new publishing entity formed to bring out books by writers and artists of the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains, to bring their creation to print.