Adirondack Moments

How might we account for the creative outpouring that marked Georgia O’Keeffe’s years at Lake George, an interval that stands among the most prolific of her seven-decade career? A survey of her work from this period reveals an astonishing abundance: roughly two hundred paintings on canvas and paper, accompanied by numerous sketches and pastels.

Lake George functioned for O’Keeffe as a potent site of artistic stimulus. Many of the botanical subjects that would come to define her oeuvre first took shape in this site. As a retreat from New York City, it afforded not only sustained contact with the natural world but a deep sense of place, an anchoring essential to her developing modernist vision. Yet it was not solely a refuge; Lake George also operated as a social nexus, animated by a continuous circulation of visitors.

Within this multifaceted setting, O’Keeffe pursued new subjects while reckoning more deliberately with thoughts of selfhood and artistic independence, including the imagined prospect of a studio of her own. This presentation examines the forces that shaped her Lake George years: her evolving subjects, the shifting social dynamics around her, and the ways in which the site itself nourished her creative practice.

Yaritza Martinez Pule joined the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in 2022 as Curatorial Assistant after completing a Fulbright research grant. Previously, she was a curatorial research fellow at Museo Franz Mayer in Mexico City and a curatorial assistant at 80WSE Gallery, a gallery affiliated with New York University where she co-curated and organized exhibitions with the Institute of Fine Arts, the Costume Institute, and Steinhardt’s Department of Art. In addition, she was a visiting scholar in the archives at Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. She holds an MA from New York University where she concentrated her research on the historical and cultural dimensions of textiles, and a BA from Marquette University with a focus on Art History, Digital Media Studies, and Spanish and Latin American Studies, completing a part of her art history education from King’s College London. Most recently, Yaritza curated A Circle that Nothing Can Break, an exhibition examining the ways in which Georgia O’Keeffe’s unique vocabulary of round forms intersected with feeling, memory, and lived experience.

In preparation for a landmark exhibition on the Black Experience in the Adirondacks, Albany Public Library and the Adirondack Experience will host speaker Adam Stewart at the Albany Public Library, also offered as a live-stream Zoom. Adam will offer reflections on the time he spent as a kid in the Adirondacks with Brother Yusuf Burgess. With Project Curator Charles Clark III, we invite the public to join us before the program to share their photos or items that connect them to the Adirondacks.

Adam Stewart is an educator, youth mentor, and outdoorsman whose work bridges classroom learning, community engagement, and environmental stewardship. Adam lived in Albany until 2020, during which he served in several youth and community-focused roles. He worked for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation as an Assistant Director for DeBruce and later as a Coordinator for NYSDEC’s Campership diversity Program. He also supported youth at Equinox House and taught science and math at The Doane Stuart School. In 2020, Adam relocated to Syracuse, where he earned his master’s degree in Special Education from NYU. He now teaches in a 4th-grade co-teaching classroom, specializing in inclusive education. Since 2015, Adam has served as a board member for John Brown Lives!, a human-rights and environmental-justice organization committed to storytelling, outdoor education, and community liberation. His passion for the outdoors informs both his professional work and personal life, as he is a hiker, camper, and advocate for connecting youth—especially those from underserved communities—to nature.