AMENIA — Spectators gathered at Keane Stud in Amenia Sunday, Oct. 6 to watch the $125,000 Grand Prix final at the Silo Ridge Masters showjumping competition.
Brian Moggre, of Flower Mound, Texas, took home the prize money and a champagne soaked jacket Sunday afternoon.
Moggre rode 15-year-old gelding Vivre Le Reve around the ring, receiving no penalty points in the first round.
Four riders competed in a tie-breaking jump-off: Sloane Coles of Virginia; Darragh Kenny, representing Ireland; Daniel Bluman, representing Israel; and Moggre, the champion of the weekend.
The show jumping competition was the first of its kind at the expansive Keane Ranch. Pedro Torres, owner of the farm and racecar driver, said the ring finished construction just days before the event started on Thursday, Oct. 4.
Torres said a horse show had been a long-time dream for him and Judy Garofalo-Torres, his wife. They built Keane Stud so Garofalo-Torres could train show jumpers. Torres said there are a lot of show jumpers local to the Northeast U.S. and there’s demand for more competitions in the region. Silo Ridge Masters also serves as a fundraising event for the Silo Ridge Community Foundation and the Amenia-Wassaic Community Organization.
Speckled colors on the ridges of the Amenia valley provided a scenic backdrop for the four-day long event. Visitors remarked on the location, saying the views from the top of the hill were breathtaking.
Anticipation began to build as representatives of regional press organizations were invited to Media Day on Thursday, Oct. 3. Reporters met riders and their horses, some from area and regional stables and others coming from countries whose flags circled the competition rink.
Caroline Mawhinney of Wellington, Florida, competed in the $125,000 Grand Prix class at Silo Ridge Masters on Carsey Z, an 11 year old Belgian warmblood. The rider ranked 14th at the international competition in the scenic Harlem Valley.Nathan Miller
The Silo Ridge Masters event marks the first year of a local equestrian center joining the competitive Hudson Valley Show Jumping circuit for their fall calendar. An equestrian training program led by Judy Garofalo-Torres is included in the programs at the Keane Stud Farm in Amenia. Silo Ridge served as a sponsor for the show jumping competition. The proceeds would benefit the Silo Ridge Foundation and the Amenia Wassaic Community Organization.
Student riders were the feature of the day on Oct. 3, putting their horses through their paces as they confidently jumped the obstacles and kept to good form. Many of the students’ adult riding coaches would be competing into the weekend, in preparation for the finals on Sunday.
This year the competition would be a 3-star show, explained Lindsay Brock, press officer, noting that shows can be up to 5 stars. The differing levels determine the height and difficulty of the obstacles being jumped and the size of the prize purse.
Warmblood horses are ideal for jumping events, due to their hardy nature and temperament.
Already planning for next year, Brock said that Silo Ridge would like to go to 5 stars.
Christian Coyle of Christian Coyle Show Stables, Sherman, Connecticut, originally from Ireland, had horses and riders competing in the event. He said that he has been involved with competitive show jumping for 40 years and was pleased that the Silo Ridge event was relatively close by.
One of Coyle’s riders, Camellia Ford was once a student at Kent School, studying under Michael Page. Ford said she would be riding 9-year-old Jetties. She added that all horses turn a year older each January, rather than being fussy about their actual birth month.
“It’s a matter of trust between horse and rider,” Ford said about building the essential relationship. “It’s a partnership with the horse, with another sentient being,” explained Tiffany Foster, competing from her home stables in Vancouver, British Columbia. She operates an equestrian training center and most often brings some of her students to compete in show jumping competitions.
A three-time Olympian, Foster is ranked as the world’s top female rider in the sport, although she said that she is ranked 21st among all riders. The 20 who rank higher are all men she explained.
“We’re all here because we love horses,” Foster said. “It’s a physical thing; it’s hard on your body,” she added in speaking about the demands of competitive show jumping.
Foster rode “Northern Light” during Sunday’s final Grand Prix competition.
Two uprooted locust trees still lie in the yard in front of Animal Farm Foundation’s original kennels where they fell on a fence during a storm on Thursday, June 19.
“We saw the storm getting stronger,” Ortiz said. “We started talking, ‘we should check for trees.’ That’s when I looked outside the Kubota and I just started screaming ‘run!’”
A branch from a tree just above their utility vehicle had split. The two men ran from the vehicle, but the falling branch caught Nunez and struck his back.
The fallen branch caused some soreness and bruising, Nunez said, but no broken bones. After a short hospital visit, doctors sent Nunez home to rest and heal. He has since returned to work, helping to repair the broken fences and clean up the storm damage that still lingers.
Uprooted locust trees mangled fences, damaged roofs and knocked down power lines all over the 400 acre farm that houses the Animal Farm Foundation’s shelter.Nathan Miller
The powerful storm uprooted and knocked down branches of dozens of black locust trees on the Animal Farm Foundation’s property and on neighboring properties along Pugsley Hill Road and Shaefer Road. Nikki Juchem, Director of Operations and Public Policy for the shelter, was in a meeting with Executive Director Bernice Clifford and founder Jane Berkey when a tree outside the main office building was struck by lightning and fell on the farm’s donkey enclosure.
“It’s really a miracle that everyone was unscathed, as well as the animals,” Juchem said.
In addition to Nunez’s injuries and the damaged donkey enclosure, fallen trees destroyed the fencing that secured the Animal Farm Foundation’s original kennel yard, fencing for a horse paddock, and poked a hole through the roof and into the ceiling of one of the facility’s dog play rooms.
And more was at risk than just the employees, volunteers, dogs, and other animals already sheltered at the farm. The shelter was expecting about 15 more dogs to arrive shortly after the storm.
“We were fixing up the horse barn to be dog kennels,” Juchem said. “Luckily we had all the extra space, because we would have been in a real pickle.”
All the dogs that were being kept in the original kennel building had to be moved to the newly renovated kennels so the noisy repairs wouldn’t bother them, Juchem said. Fosters stepped up to house dogs that couldn’t fit while necessary repairs were being completed, too.
A log stuck on a fence post outside the shelter’s kennel building.Nathan Miller
“Lots of damage but we had a lot of support from the community,” Juchem said. “We had contractors come out immediately to start cutting down trees and helping us out with the cleanup, so we’re doing OK now.”
The cleanup and repair process is ongoing, but Juchem said the total cost is still unclear.
Animal Farm Foundation is a nonprofit dog shelter with a focus on “pit bulls,” Juchem said. “Breed is not behavior,” she said, emphasizing the organization’s guiding philosophy. More information on volunteering, donating to the shelter, or adopting a dog is available online at www.animalfarmfoundation.org
The Animal Farm Foundation will be collaborating with the North East Community Center Farmers Market to bring adoptable dogs to the market every Saturday during the month of August.
Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.
Pearson first encountered the world of alternative publications — magazines filled with experimental writing, artworks in the form of a book, and samizdat literature — as a young writer living in Berlin just before The Wall came down in 1989. Later, in New York City, she spent a great deal of time with artists “who were always making and assembling, whose continuous art-making made the thin membrane between art and life even more porous,” she explained.
Pearson traces the idea of publishing to a 2001 exhibition of artist-poet Joe Brainard. That show led to “The Nancy Book,” Siglio’s debut title in 2008, and she’s never looked back. The book contains over fifty full-page reproductions of Brainard’s dazzlingly accomplished and witty drawings of the cartoon strip character, Nancy. It includes essays and contributions by Robert Creeley, Ann Lauterbach, Frank O’Hara, Ron Padgett, and other poets of great renown, all thrilled to celebrate and remember Brainard (sometimes called “a poet’s artist”) who died of AIDS in 1994. Pearson said, ‘My first project with Brainard was such a good experience, I kept going. “
Since then, Pearson, the sole proprietor of Siglio, has designed, edited, and published over 40 books and other printed editions. Her books are characterized by unexpected juxtapositions of texts and images and collage-like assemblages, as well as for carefully designed and gorgeously printed volumes. Her list includes many “rediscoveries” of unpublished manuscripts and little-known publications. At the same time, she has commissioned new work from an impressive array of artists and writers such as Christian Marclay, Sophie Calle and Cecilia Vicinua among others.
Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.Richard Kraft
Though most Siglio books feature work by artists and writers from the 1960s to today, one standout— “Tantra Song” (2011) — showcases vibrant 17th-century Indian tantric paintings collected by poet-ethnographer Franck André Jammes, their modernist feel echoing Hilma af Klint or Brice Marden. Siglio also frequently draws on the spirit of the Fluxus movement, reissuing works by figures like John Cage and Ray Johnson with editions that honor their playful, ephemeral, and poetic origins.
Siglio also excels at photo-narratives rooted in highly specific, often eccentric concepts. “Memory” (2020), by avant-garde writer Bernadette Mayer, reproduces her journal and daily rolls of 35mm film from a month in the Berkshires in 1971, capturing the texture of each day. “Call and Response” (2022), created during COVID lockdown by composer and visual artist Christian Marclay, pairs his photographs of London’s quieted streets with musical scores composed in reply by his friend Bruce Beresford—each image in dialogue with sound.
Siglio books are sold through it’s website (sigliopress.com), as well as museum or specialty bookshops. (The Lenox Bookstore represents a number of Siglio books; the newly opened Lakeville Books & Stationery has copies of “Tantra Song.”) In all cases, Pearson strives to make “two or three degrees of connection” with each book buyer, including a “special gift” — often a piece of printed ephemera — with each purchase.
