The region’s storied history and love affair with art are forever intertwined. But how does that legacy fair in an increasingly accessible world?

By Cerulla Daemon      

 

A few years ago, at an indie film premiere in Los Angeles, the talk at the pre-screening, meet-the-director party eventually wandered around to who had traveled the farthest to attend. While I didn’t win the distance medal, mentioning “Bucks County” had an immediate and surprising effect.

A few extra heads swiveled in my direction and the remarks were variations of “Bucks County’s a serious art place.” Or, “New Hope, right?” Film buffs from a neat cross section of the country taught this resident that the county’s name is well-known and synonymous with art.

Several years of scouring art blogs and national trade magazines, reading critical reviews in the leading newspapers and attending even a handful of the scores of invitations to openings received each month, all in search of art-related topics, have revealed the unsurprising fact that most sources cover what is happening in the cities.

But from time to time – and with greater frequency it seems – the hometown comes into play. This occurs in articles that originate as far away as San Francisco and causes a little burst of pride each time. Yet, it’s a commonplace experience to ignore what’s in your own backyard and eagerly plough the fields of seemingly more important crops farther away.

Creative confines
Any Bucks Countian will tell you that you can’t take a simple walk around most of its towns without being lured into studios and galleries unless you wear blinders. If the town is New Hope or Lambertville, NJ, an entire day of walking wouldn’t put you inside all of the galleries on offer. I’ve tried it on a bet.

If you spend most Sundays (and any free day) doing laps around Lake Galena’s marked-off track, alternating with runs on the towpath, you either dodge easels along the way or get on a first-name basis with many artists, no matter what the season happens to be. This is ideal if your profession involves keeping tabs on all things art, but even if you don’t make your living in that way, it’s a fact of life here.

Working and exhibiting artists are all around us. We love it, and the tourists flock to the area because of it. The result is that you take it for granted as part of your daily backdrop until something nudges you to see that you are stepping over the treasure in front of you to take the train to First Friday in New York City or Philly. Or a plane to LA, only to be told how lucky you are to live in art-rich Bucks County.

Freedom redefined
With all of this in mind, a more insistent poke in the form of an email from a blogger posing questions about my backyard art scene seemed like a good time to do a little digging, to see just how long this creative flurry has been going on.

It turns out that this has been the case for … well, ever. Or at least since the founding of the county. And, if anything, it’s increasing in volume and scale.

During Colonial times, while some notable Pennsylvanians were drafting the Constitution in Philadelphia, others, equally prominent, were busy painting the landscape of Bucks County into history. Before the invention of photography, paintings from the 18^th and 19th centuries give us a clear, early description of the farms, buildings, parks, Delaware River and Canal – places we drive by every day.

When impressionism took hold of the art world, reaching across borders into every Western country and all across this one, Bucks County rose to the challenge full bore. Founding an art colony, the 90-plus artists of the New Hope School embraced the concept of “globalism” before it was fashionable.

They took the art venues of the major American cities by storm and also showed in the key Euro expositions, many of them bringing back more medals than Michael Phelps in all of his Olympic performances combined. In fact, some of them won every award given out back in the day. Bucks County artists’ work was routinely covered like Justin’s or T.I.’s (or Britney’s latest comeback) album in newspapers both local and in the New York Times, the Post and more. They spanned three generations and lasted through more than half of the 20^th century.

Art without borders
Cycle forward to the present and it becomes apparent that the reach of Bucks County-created art has only broadened. In today’s art world, there is no one, clear style. Contemporary art (art created from the late 1960s/‘70s to this very moment, also called post-modern art, although that is really more of an attitude than a concept) is now happily fragmented into a number of abstract and representational approaches. And each of them is sub-divided into yet more categories with avid followers for every one.

This eclectic world allows for wide artistic freedom – even the choice to reach back to an older mode for personal expression. It goes without saying that non-representational art has been taken to fantastically uncharted places by some artists. As you would expect, the groundbreaking frontiers are being blazed in the largest cities. But that was always true.

Pick an era and you’ll find that Paris or New York City decided which edge of the envelope to push. But Bucks County has never been an insular place. Its citizens, including artists, have always traveled widely, plugged into the latest trends and brought them back. And its ideal positioning between Philadelphia and NYC has seen emerging city artists nosing into this area, to see what is happening here, mingling and often staying.

While travel is now is as easy as a frequent-flyer-miles weekend, even the homebound find the latest art happenings just a keyboard or iPhone away. The truly instant global reach of the Internet translates to no artist left behind. Conversely, collectors who have never set foot in our area clamor for art from this region. As do the foremost auction houses, like Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Framefinders.

This is true not just for painters but for area artists of all mediums across the board. Woodworkers, ceramists, photographers, sculptors, jewelry and textile artists and more log on not just to view trends outside of the region but most have Web sites or a Facebook page that pull in fans, ratcheting up the local stock.

Some names of art mini-movements today sound as colorful as the work looks. Installation art, neo-geo, giclée, Brit-art, outsider, magic realism – the list goes on. Other artists work in modes that are throwbacks to earlier periods, and many use an amalgam to find their own, personal expression. But for every idiom you can find in an international gallery or biennale, there is an artist in Bucks County working in an equally, if not more interesting, style. It may take a little serious exploring but the end result is well worth the effort. And pride in our region’s extended creative tradition is the capstone.