PLATTSBURGH — “Echoes If We Listen: Native, Women and Black Patriots in Focus” is the new America 250 exhibit opening Thursday at the Clinton County Historical Association.
Curated by Randi Christodoulou, the exhibit features original paintings by her father, Clyde Rabideau; period and replica artifacts; artificial intelligence-generated images; and a video with Paul Frederick Productions and AI imagery.
“On behalf of Clinton County Historical Association, we are very proud to have this exhibit that talks about a story that hasn’t been told here before,” CCHA President Geri Favreau said.
“It’s talking about people that were involved back in that time that maybe have not been thought about over the years, but they were a very big part of it, and people need to understand these three groups of people. It’s not all about the men on the boats. It’s also about the people who supported them besides that.
“I can’t say enough about Randi, her creativeness and what she’s able to put together, and her father, who just stepped up to do this. We would like people to come and learn from this story about the Native, female and Black Patriots.”
GETTING STARTED
CCHA Director Helen Nerska came to Christodoulou with a lot of research done by Penny Clute, Jacqueline Madison and Nerska.
“They did all of the background research and the whole foundation, but when she came to me, she said this is sort of sad. The subject matter is solemn. These three groups of people have contributed in a way that hasn’t been recognized, but we don’t want to make it too sad,” Christodoulou said.
“I had to start thinking in my head what would be the feel and the look, and I thought about where the sky breaks. I was envisioning sun coming in through the clouds.
“Helen wanted me to dig deeper, so then I came up with echoes. We are still hearing echoes, if not the voices, of the people that may or may not have passed already. That’s where ‘Echoes If We Listen’ came from.”
The exhibit’s palette is a wash of grays and blues — somber, solemn colors.
“Keeping the memory of something but also releasing, almost like a boomerang coming back. This was so hard for me, though,” she said. “We literally had nothing to go on besides research. Helen had also picked three people for each group up here.
“If you have nothing, you have to build it from something. It was hard. It took me a year to do it. I wanted to have some objects in here to keep it interesting. Even those were hard to get.”
WORKING TOGETHER WITH FAMILY
Christodoulou and Rabideau were on a family vacation at his brother’s cottage outside of Quebec City when she started talking about the exhibit and hit him with, “Dad, will you do this?”
“I said, ‘Yeah, well, sure, but we need some subject matter, so what are we talking about?’ She said, ‘Well, we need a Native American. We need a woman. We need an African American.’ I said, ‘Who do we have for models and subjects?’” Rabideau said.
But Christodoulou couldn’t find any models.
A BLACK PORTRAIT
“Last year, a friend of mine, Carlton Browne from the Browne family in town, he passed away … I said, ‘Could you get me a photograph of his face?’ So, I got his face there,” she said.
“Carlton was a little skinnier, but I kind of beefed him up in this picture.”
A FEMALE PORTRAIT
Rabideau captured a fierce Molly Pitcher as the female Patriot.
According to battlefields.org, Mary Ludwig, born 1754, married William Hays, a barber who enlisted in the Fourth Pennsylvania Artillery. She followed her husband on his campaign perming tasks like washing clothes and sheets. This may be where the nickname “Molly Pitcher” cam from, referring to the buckets of water the women carried for cleaning.
When Hays was wounded at the Battle of Monmouth, Ludwig took his place on the artillery, already aware of the basics from watching her husband operate it in Valley Forge.
“We had to figure out how we could fit her on this size canvas and have the fact that she was a muzzle loader for a cannon,” Rabideau said. “We wanted her to have a defiant pose, so there you have it.
“That face is based upon one of my daughters, who often looked at me defiantly. It was easy to do.”
A MOHAWK PORTRAIT
The Mohawk warrior portrait is based on research and verification with Haudenosaunee experts to ensure historical and cultural accuracy.
“The powder horn is there, the knife is there and in the left hand is a traditional mallet that they would make out of a hard part of a tree. They would sculpt it and make that into a club. The loincloth, of course, and then they always carried a pouch. It usually had decorations,” he said.
“I had to do a lot of research on the tattoos. It turned out, yeah, there was a lot of tattooing going on, which kind of surprised me. How did they figure that out? Who knows? The other part was the earring. I did research, and sure enough, all the old photographs had them in earrings.
“There is a traditional headdress (gustoweh) there — shaved head partially and the feathers and so forth. We had to past muster with one of the local curators on the reservation, and he passed it. So there it is. It was a lot of fun.”
RETIREMENT PASSION
The large-scale acrylic portraits were a first for Rabideau, whose recent painting foray started two and a half years ago when he was inspired by an artist attending the Adirondack Plein Air Festival in Saranac Lake.
“His name was Vlad Duchev. He rented an Airbnb from me. I went over and visited him because he had a problem with his oven, and he was out painting and I just watched him and was entranced by the whole thing. He was doing a landscape painting,” Rabideau said.
“I said, ‘Gee, I love these things. Boy, I would love to buy one.’ He goes, ‘Well, make me an offer on this.’ … He sold that painting to me and gave me two others as a token of friendship.”
Rabideau stared at Duchev’s paintings for two years while telling himself he can do that until he bought cheap paint, brushes and canvasses.
“I texted and email him and told him I was going to get into it. He kind of mentored me by text message back and forth for the first year,” he said. “Then, you just go online, practice and do it.”
Rabideau now paints almost every night in his studio located in the basement of his Saranac Lake residence.