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2024 Featured Installation Event!


Moving Mountains: The Mustard Seed Project

With 2024 Artist-in-Residence Serena Kovalosky


For artist studio and program dates, please click here.


In a temporary studio at the Slate Valley Museum, artist Serena Kovalosky is inviting visitors to pull up a chair, have a chat, and immerse themselves in the creative process during her 2024 residency, which focuses on her sculptural project Moving Mountains: The Mustard Seed Project. 


Kovalosky was inspired to create work from mustard seeds when a mustard plant grew in her yard last year during her eco-gardening project. She let the plant dry in her yard, and then carefully plucked it from the earth and moved it to her home. The artist was inspired by the historic symbolism of the mustard seed and became determined to create a unique sculptural piece using the plant and mustard seeds themselves. 


Kovalosky also wanted to share the concept and process – the journey – with the public in a public space. 


“Serena’s exploration of seeds, plants, and movement dovetailed naturally with our stories of Slate Valley immigrants,” explained the museum’s executive director, Sarah Kijowski. “We were happy to offer her a space to create her work here at the museum, and we believe that our audience will truly appreciate the opportunity to be a part of her process and the works that she guides and creates here.”


Now through October, Slate Valley Museum visitors will be welcomed to watch Kovalosky in her meticulous, six-month journey of placing tiny mustard seeds from around the world, one by one, on the branches of a foraged mustard "tree" as a contemplative exercise in how “impossible” goals are achieved – one tiny step (seed) at a time. 


While visiting, guests will learn about the inspiration behind Kovalosky’s concept while embarking on their own seed journey by stringing dried vegetables and seeds. Their work will form a community-created art installation that explores perspectives of cultural identity through plants and food inspired by the museum’s ongoing exhibition, The Dream and the Reality. 


To view the artist's scheduled in-studio dates, please see her website here.


In addition to her time in the studio throughout the season, Kovalosky will also offer monthly “Seed Journey Sessions,” specific times and dates for visitors to visit and learn about a specific plant or seed. 


“My project is intended to offer a relaxing environment and the opportunity for the public to participate in the co-creation of a community installation,” notes Kovalosky. “It’s one more lens they can use to explore and understand the stories in the museum’s ongoing exhibit, The Dream and the Reality, which really talks about the many immigrant groups that came to our region to work in and around the slate industry.”


Kovalosky will share surprising stories of how plant seeds and recipes traveled the world and influenced cultures as participants string dried vegetables with historical links to each of the ethnic groups that came to the Slate Valley quarries from the 1840s to the present. Glass seed beads in red, black, green, gray, and purple will also be strung for the installation as a visual representation of the Slate Valley as the “colored slate capital of the world.”


To make the program accessible for visitors young and old alike, Kovalosky and the museum will also provide larger pony beads, which are less challenging to string than some of the smaller and more intricate materials that will be used in the programs. 


“Our goal is to make sure that anyone who wants to string beads can do so,” explained Museum Director Kijowski.  


Serena Kovalosky’s culminating mustard “tree” sculpture and the community-created “Seed Journeys” installation will be exhibited at the Slate Valley Museum’s Holiday Festival in December with the 2024 theme of “Peace on Earth.” 


Learn more about the project on the artist's website by clicking here.


Photo: Courtesy Serena Kovalosky.

New Paragraph

Shanty 
 
With the industry ready to take off, many workers were recruited. In 1850, the first Welsh immigrants arrived in Fair Haven, and in 1852 thirty Welsh settlers arrived in Middle Granville. Several slate companies were formed. The biggest problem early on was the transportation of the quarried stone. In order to solve the problem, the Rutland and Washington Railroad, which had started in 1845, extended its lines to Poultney, VT and later to Salem, NY and Eagle Bridge, NY. This move allowed the industry to continue to grow.
Blacksmith Shop
 
Immigration of workers to the Slate Valley increased with three hundred recruited from Wales in 1891 when the industry began to boom. And immigrants continued to come to the area through the 1890s and early 1900s - from Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Italy, Ireland, Hungary and later Canada. Many were already skilled quarrymen as the Welsh had been when they first arrived in this country. Many were skilled in other types of mining as well.

The site of the present Slate Valley Museum and adjacent streets became home as row houses were built similar to those in Wales. Nearby homes were run as boarding houses, particularly by the Slovaks who waited to send for their families until they were established. They felt at home in a valley between two mountains, much like their native land.

The arrival of these peoples brought a great diversity of cultures to the Slate Valley. Although native languages and customs were often maintained in homes and neighborhoods and among church congregations, by the 1900s children were encouraged to become part of their "new country."

Enjoy Our Driving Tour!

Our Slate Valley Driving Tour booklet provides you with detailed maps and many points of interest to ensure you can take in the heart of the Slate Valley. The driving tour take about 2 hours and covers about 45 miles. The tour starts at the Slate Valley Museum and loops you back to Granville after covering the heart of the Slate Valley through New York and Vermont. 

Slate has been used for many purposes in the Slate Valley over the past 160 years. Slate roofs, foundations, sidewalks, wall cladding, sculptings, and landscaping are visible throughout the entire tour, but only a few examples are noted in this booklet.

There are many places along the driving route to stop for gas and meals, as well as many places to picnic. However, please keep in mind that many of the sites on our tour are private property, please view them from the road. Quarries are dangerous and unstable, do not enter the sites or climb on slate piles. 

If you are interested in touring the West Castleton Railroad and Slate Company Historic Site at Lake Bomoseen, please pick up a Slate History Trail brochure at the museum before departing. These brochures are also available at Lake Bomoseen State Park.
TAKE THE TOUR
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