Join us in the Steinberg Room on Wednesday June 11th at 7PM for our latest collaboration with Inquiring Minds Bookstore! Local author and artist Cynthia McVay will discuss her new memoir with photographs A Field of My Own: A Memoir of Place. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the program. Register if you would like to receive an email reminder the day before the program.


"Pull on your boots and take a walk with Cynthia McVay and her dogs-consummate hosts and guides, in a riveting landscape rife with adventure and discovery. In A Field of My Own: A Memoir of Place, lifelong creative and environmentalist McVay chronicles her intimate, two-decade relationship with a flagging orchard in the Hudson Valley. As a single working mother seeking a weekend escape from New York City, one blustery winter day, she falls in love with a meadow and her life is forever altered. She renovates the modest cottage, builds a pondish-pool, creates pollinating, native gardens from orphans and strays, learns to forage and runs the tractor. A decade in, as architect and general contractor, she moves an enormous hand-hewn Amish barn to the property to make her sustainable home. Snarky contractors, an alcoholic partner, puzzling neighbors, concerning caretakers, black rat snakes and coyote chases are minor setbacks; each day brings joy and serenity. This generous, honest and engaging memoir is packed with useful know-how. McVay's writing is vibrant and her photos evocative."

 

"For all of us who have fallen in love with the Hudson Valley, and for those yet to fall under its thrall, this book is essential reading."

- Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author, Our Country Friends


AUTHOR BIO

"CYNTHIA McVAY was a strategy and management consultant for McKinsey and independently for two decades, advising household names, nonprofits and startups. She served as Latin American Program Officer for the World Wildlife Fund and inaugural Director of Innovation for the Peace Corps. She holds a BA from Harvard in biology and studio arts, and an MA in international studies (Brazil/Portuguese) from the University of Pennsylvania and MBA from Wharton, as a Fellow of The Lauder Institute. Cynthia serves on numerous boards including the Rauch Foundation, Center for Large Landscape Conservation, John Burroughs Association, Harvard Club of the Hudson Valley and Rondout Rowing Club. She splits her time between the Hudson Valley and St. Croix, USVI."


ARTIST STATEMENT

"My art and writing draw on my life as a naturalist and observer of texture, form, patterns, rhythms and color moving through space and time. I have worked in a variety of media over the years, including sculpture, photography, paper collage, multimedia, as well as installation works and often in multiples. Many of my most recent  Abstract Expressionist work is  painted with oil sticks on canvasses I found with pre-existing sketches, another artist’s unfinished paintings. While barely visible artifacts in the final product, those marks are referenced, explored and brought forward in color and shape. Similarly, the raw, unfinished edges pay homage to the absence of clear beginnings and endings. After years of creating art that was more design- oriented and intellectual, the liberating oil sticks encouraged me to draw from an emotional reservoir and my deep connection to the natural world. Influenced by the likes of Frankenthaler and Mitchell, years of sunsets and waters and fields burst abstractly onto the canvas."


You can find Cynthia McVay's website here.