Saranac Lake people captured in portraits
Posted: Monday, December 29, 2014 3:32 pm
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Posted on Dec 29, 2014
Diane Leifheit, whose yearlong project "Face to Face: Drawn to Saranac Lake" is nearing completion, works on a portrait of Saranac Lake resident Gloria Volz at Adirondack Artists Guild in the village. Leifheit has built a collection of more than 180 portraits that will be displayed, once framed, at Saranac Lake Free Library.
SARANAC LAKE — Few people sit for portraits, Diane Leifheit says.
That observation led her to undertake a project to capture as many faces as possible over the course of the past year.
Leifheit estimates she has put in about 600 hours on the project she calls "Face to Face: Drawn to Saranac Lake." The aim, she said, is democratizing the portrait.
"Anyone who wanted to sit for two hours for me could do so," she said.
She works in pastels, a very fast medium for her.
Leifheit, who at 42 went back to school at Pratt Institute in Manhattan for art training, did many of her portraits in the front window at Compass Printing, where customers coming and going would see her at work, as did passers-by on the street.
She also set up at the Adirondack Artists Guild on Main Street.
"Not only was (the project) a democratization for portraits," she said, "but it was eye-opening to the process of art."
ALL AGES
Over the past year, at no charge, Leifheit did more than 180 portraits of Saranac Lake residents and visitors who came to the area for all kinds of reasons.
The youngest is Tennessee Carr, who was born in 2014.
"He was sleeping when he came in with his mother," she said.
The artist's oldest subject was 90.
Leifheit is also including a portrait of a Portuguese water dog named Bean, whose owner offered him up rather than sit for a portrait.
FRAMING NEEDED
Each subject receives, at no cost, a digital print of the artist's finished piece.
Although the venture was more then she anticipated, she is glad that she did it, finding it very satisfactory.
Part of the project was funded by a decentralization grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.
The portraits, each measuring a square foot, will be displayed at the Saranac Lake Free Library, but not until they are framed.
Leifheit is applying for grant funding and soliciting donations for that.
Her fiscal sponsor is Pendragon Theatre in Saranac Lake, where donors can send contributions.
"The theater gets a little (of the money)," she said, "I get the rest."
