Ep . #16 Kate McGloughlin - Requiem for Ashokan - The Story Told in Landscape

Kate McGloughlin is a painter and printmaker (and storyteller), and during her long career, she has exhibited in notable galleries and museums around the world. Kate is president emeritus of the Board of Directors of the Woodstock School of Art, where she teaches printmaking and landscape painting, including to Carol, and where she directs the Printmaking Studio. Through her paintings, poetry and prose, Kate’s book, Requiem for Ashokan, The Story Told in Landscape, is her outlet to tell a personal story with universal themes of tragedy, loss, grief, confusion and rage, as well as of migration, shared resources, competition for resources, and the importance of fair treatment by the government.  Kate lives and maintains her own studio in Olivebridge, NY, near the site of the Ashokan Reservoir, which is at the center of our discussion. The Ashokan Reservoir and its aqueducts and tunnels were built to get water to New York City to alleviate chronic and dangerous water shortages in the rapidly growing metropolis, but the cost was borne by the thousands of residents of the Esopus Valley who were displaced from their family homes and farms and mills; taken from them and demolished to make room for the reservoir, which dammed the Esopus Creek and then flooded the valley.