At Home He's A Tourist, Part 1--Marc Chagall Stained Glass in Pocantico Hills

Well, my niece was in visiting from Arizona, so I thought it might be appropriate to give her a small taste of the Hudson Valley. It might not be a what a 9 year old was excited about doing. Still there are a number of interesting thing to do here that are a short drive away.

One of these things is the Union Church in Pocantico Hills of New York, which is a small community due east of Tarrytown, NY. So we went, some of us more enthusiastic than others. And at least one person doing a little kicking and screaming....

You see, in honor of John D Rockefeller, the family commissioned Marc Chagall to design stain glass windows for this Church. Additionally there is the Rose Window, which was designed by Henri Matisse. I had been there once before probably 10 years ago, and being a fan of Chagall's paintings I was fairly stunned by the glass artwork set into the walls of this small, unassuming country church.



This is just one example of the windows. Pretty impressive. You don't have to be religious to appreciate something this beautiful. When I go to museums in New York, I always found myself drawn to his art work, even when I didn't know his paintings on sight. He was a master of color. His artworks are vivid, yet I think that there is subtlety here because of slight color variations that create an almost magical effect.

And you can go visit. Of course there are set hours--you wouldn't want to walk in in the middle of a religious service. Check the website in advance. And no pictures. For people far away and those visitors who would like a memento, you can be a virtual tourist at hudsonvalley.org, where the images of the windows are available for viewing and downloading. And Tarrytown is a Hudson river town just a short drive away, with shops, good restaurants, and a few other historical sites, like Lyndhurst, Kykuit, Sunnyside.

An indelible memory I have is coming home from work in a snowstorm and taking side roads north to avoid commuter logjams. I still have that image of driving through Pocantico Hills that snowy evening, and seeing the Union Hills Church illuminated to my right. It felt a little like one of the Warner Brothers cartoons where Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny jump in and out of paintings in an art gallery.

Only I felt like a jumped into a poem by Robert Frost.

I think in the end I at least got my niece a little curious. She was looking at the stained glass with my mom on the computer.