A mockup of what a Rondout Valley tourist map might look like, from the Valley of the Giants website.
Pop artist Maria Reidelbach -- the force of nature behind Kerhonkson's "Gnome Chomsky," the world's second-largest garden gnome -- has a vision for southern Ulster County. It involves a dozen 15-foot-tall concrete characters, looming over Route 209 and luring legions of tourists to the towns, farms and roadside attractions of the Rondout Valley.
Reidelbach lays out the case for creating the "Valley of the Giants" on the project's website:
Once several giants have been made, the Rondout Valley becomes the Valley of the Giants—a beautiful, picturesque, enchanted land populated by charming, surprising, folkloric gigantic creatures.
Promoting the group as Valley of the Giants has huge potential, beginning with maps and tours. A tour of the Valley of the Giants will take visitors not only up and down the length of the Route 209 from Ellenville to Kingston, but off the beaten path to less traveled roads. A Valley of the Giants web site will promote all the Giants to weekenders and other travelers and a mobile phone version will entice tourists on the fly. GPS games can revolve around the Giants.
Would people really visit the Rondout Valley just to get a look at a giant concrete statue? Well, this intrepid blogger did -- as part of an effort to see every "World's Largest Somethingorother" with her family.
Chomsky is adorable. You can sit at his feet and get great photos. Since he wears green and red, I was hell-bent on getting the perfect Christmas card shot. Poor kids. I was ruthless. “No candy apples until you both smile at the SAME TIME!”
(Naturally, she's been to the world's largest kaleidoscope in Mt. Tremper, too.)
The Times Herald-Record reports today that the next giant to be built will probably be a 14-foot cement miner in Rosendale.
Not everybody is happy with the idea of kitschy concrete statues representing local art. A SUNY New Paltz art professor tells the Times Herald-Record she thinks Valley of the Giants is schlocky -- and makes a snippy comment about another ubiquitous local art tradition:
Beth Wilson teaches art history at SUNY New Paltz, and she doesn't think concrete sculptures do justice to the quality of local artistic talent.
"It's a half-step away from these 'everybody paint a cow' ideas," she said.
She thinks art should draw people to the region based on its merit rather than its size.
We're not sure if any Catskills towns have "everybody paint a cow," but we've got cats in Catskill, horses (and now lighthouses) in Saugerties, Rip Van Winkle statues in Windham, bears in Cairo, and tugboats in Esopus. (Have we missed any?)
11:05am update: The Times Herald-Record's Michael Novinson emailed us to point out that, in fact, only one of the planned giant statues will be a gnome. The rest will be other fanciful non-gnome creatures. We've changed our headline accordingly.
