Hard to Say Goodbye — A photo album from the winter expedition

From Santa Cruz to Ithaca

Dec 29, 2025

My partner Jon was invited this winter to do an artist’s residency at the new Inlet Valley Arts Center in Ithaca, New York.

We’ve had such a blast, that I made a “photo album” I think you’ll get a kick out of it.

It begins in November, just before Thanksgiving, with the night’s first snowfall. Of course, we ran out into the parking lot in our California flip-flops.

Notes:

I’ve not lived in a rural winter spot before; everything was a marvel. I kept using words I never use, like “enchanting” and “fairyland.” In one Ithaca day, you can have snow, rain, sunshine, all in 12 hours. Santa Cruz, our home, seems so far away.

Little things I didn’t realize: When it’s white with snow outside, you can see the animals clearly. We could track deer and hares easily. A red fox checked us out in the morning, his bushy red tail. And the bright scarlet cardinals in the trees!

It’s so quiet when the first blanket of snow comes in. Heaps and heaps.

We stayed at the Grayhaven Motel, which artists Mark and Alexis Grimm unearthed from obscurity a few years ago and turned it into a beautiful motel on the edge of a college town, surrounded by forests, creeks, and marshland. They have converted/rebuilt surrounding buildings (the spot started as an early 20th century electricity shop) into new purposes: an old-school print shop, a gallery, a sound studio, etc. —All in service of artists who want to do things a little differently.

We spent one day, as you’ll see above, at the Corning Glass Museum. The Louvre of glass. Corning has floors of glass artifacts from pre-history. They showcase outrageous contemporary experiments. They run schools for glass artists (glassholes!) who are making incredible things right in front of you. They show you the complete science of glassmaking and its history in invention and industrial use. There are rooms I don’t even know how to describe. GLASSSSSSS.

Meanwhile, Jon brought his Saori loom from California and set it up in a Inlet Valley studio so he could do a weaving every day, collecting all materials we encountered in nature, in the trash, everything we touched, which he could incorporate into the weave. That’s the beauty of a Saori. He taught anyone to weave on it, who walked in.

At one point, Jon wove in a desiccated mouse. If a material was on the premises, or from one of our adventures— like dumpster diving in Corning— it WENT IN.

Jon also built what we jokingly called a “painting machine,” a rollable frame that he could install 25 yards of white canvas, in a scroll-like fashion that he could then unfurl to a “new page” every day. He would pull out the painting machine from the shed onto the snowy trail behind the motel, scroll ahead to a blank canvas, and begin painting with materials and dyes he found on the property, using quills from birds who live here, anything and everything.

We threw one open house with a group of local artists, and a solo going-away show. This was also different from Santa Cruz. Each occasion in Ithaca, an eclectic group of art nerds braved the weather, came into a gallery which has no heat, no bathroom, it’s a 1920s haunted mansion under construction— and hung out for 2 hours, partying and weaving and touching everything. They didn’t know us; they just like to investigate. They seemed to be having the time of their lives. I felt like I was in a snow globe of very very inventive minds.

And you know what? We all need it, bad. The persistent curiosity, the real life wall-breaks, the life of the mind. I don’t know how I would have finished 2025 without it.

For the party, yesterday, we asked our newish Ithaca friends to come and pick out a weaving they’d like to take home. You’ll see many of them in the video. The smiles on their faces! Every art show should be like this. Take it all away!

I Don’t Know How To Say Goodbye

I’m so sad to pack up; I wish we lived a twinkle away instead of a day’s air travel.

Goodbye, Mark and Alexis, thank you for embracing us. Goodbye and love to Kenzie, Kathleen, Michelle, Jess, Mustafa, and all we lived and worked with at the Grayhaven.
To the artists we worked with: Werner Sun, (who took us on the amazing Synchrotron tour you’ll see above) and Melissa Zarem, Blake Fall-Conroy, and Jessica Warner.
I did a screening of The Celluloid Closet, to talk about what it was like to make a documentary of Vito Russo’s masterpiece. I wish I could “do” a movie every week.
Love to my dear Cornell comrade, Human Sexuality librarian Brenda Marston, who is the reason I came to Ithaca 10 years ago with the On Our Backs archives.
I love my Cornell women: Denise Green, Catherine Kueffer Blumenkamp, Abby Cohn, Beth Anderson — all a constant source of friendship and inspiration.
Jason Blumenkamp, our beloved Old King Cole, you and Cat are our family here, too. See you out West next time.
Hey, I got to meet Rachel, the cheesemonger at Wide Awake Bakery! There was a line to get slabs of her butter and the hour just flew by.
You haven’t lived until you’ve visited the Lab. I met some of their staff at Thanksgiving. 3rd generation ornithologists.
State Bakery, Bar, and BBQ, where the grill kills fascists.
David Ost, one of Jon’s oldest friends, had us over for a big feast before he went back to his heart-home, Poland.
My labor organizer sister, Martie Voland, drove down from Portland, ME, to donate her grandmother’s Girl Scout uniforms to the Cornell historical Costume collection.
Love to my Celia Petty, who has known me since I was a teenage pinko and we were in the I.S., traveled from Rochester to Ithaca. I showed her “Office Space” for her first time! “Good Evening Sir, my name is Steve. I used to be addicted to crack but now I am off of it and trying to stay clean. That is why I am selling magazine subscriptions. “
I drove home in my first snowstorm from a long day at The Aurora Spas… talk about being spirited away.
I’ve never seen a barbershop like Alexis’s Narrative Space - a bit of Gilded Age magic. Jon is now coiffed.
Next week… I made great meals while I was out here. “Ithaca Gumbo.” The dairy was so good, the cider, the cookie crazies, all of it. The bread! I’ll share some recipes next week, eh?