Seasonalife's Founder - Duane A. Schweitz

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The Full Story (The short story)

Artist Duane Schweitz is on a heroic quest to illustrate and document, "the triumph of the American Dream." That, as Duane defines it, is "the ability to live in peace, and express yourself and your soul."

It is a passion that has sent the artist around New York State in winter, spring, summer and fall, consuming most of his time and energy for more than a year. It started when Duane moved to an historic house in Pittsford, New York, and photographed his new home for a Christmas card. It was in the midst of December, and winter had tossed drifts of white onto the windowsills and hung the eaves in an icy blue.

The following year, Duane wanted a house photo for a Thanksgiving card. A single father, he had decorated the porch with the symbols of harvest and Halloween, and he took the second picture standing in the exact spot he had chosen almost a year before.

Seeing the two photos side-by-side, Duane was struck by an inspiration so much greater than he ever expected. He saw how the cycle of the seasons clothed his house in its finest attire, and in its well-loved perfection, created an interplay of time and timelessness. As the idea took shape in his mind's eye, he set about to turn a moment of vision into an enduring tribute to the greatest feat human beings have accomplished: our ability to live near each other in the quiet enjoyment of well-tended homes that express our best values. He would capture the elusive beauty of the changing seasons by photographing every house in the Village of Pittsford four times – in spring, summer, fall and winter – and all from the same angle and spot. The unchanging geometry of the houses would stand in contrast to the very different colors and shapes that time created. It was to be his tribute to the quiet little villages where people love to be.

With single-minded determination, he turned to the task he had set himself, taking along his assistant, Jennifer Tronolone, to help him document each photo. He photographed every single house within the village, and then came countless hours of computer work, as he coaxed the details of the selected photos to reveal themselves.

In the course of his labors, he developed a system to standardize certain production processes that made it possible for an already-ambitious project to encompass a much larger number of homes. Buoyed and enthralled by the process, the artist ranged further afield, finding in many other villages both their own unique characters and the fundamentals that they all shared. He quit his job as vice president of a major advertising agency to devote himself to the project, which is now bearing fruit in the form of the first public viewing of the first completed village on Friday, November 16, 2007. And, although the four-season portraits of each house will be available for purchase on Seasonalife.com, the dedicated web site, Duane's primary purpose was never commercial.

"My only intent was to make people smile when they see pictures of their homes or any of these homes," explains Duane. "I would like to see Seasonalife become the best possible invitation to people who crave the 'roots and wings' kind of communities."

This is not the first time Duane has pursued an inspiration on the grand scale. In 1976, he had his first taste of documentary representation when he drew a map of the shops in Bar Harbor, Maine. A successful commercial venture, it gave him the idea to do the same in Lake Placid, New York, in time for the 1980 Winter Olympics. He left his growing graphics business in Rochester, rented a studio in Lake Placid, and immediately took to the streets to draw from life.

The inspiration soon became an obsession as the artist fell under the spell of the small town, with its unique history and breathtaking beauty. He resolved to record not just a few buildings, but the entire village of Lake Placid, with every house, shop, church and school carefully depicted in miniature.

"I felt that I was creating something for the ages," Duane remembers. "I called the map a 'cartographic artifact' because I felt that in drawing the pictures to such a high degree of accuracy in relative size and placement, I was documenting a very specific, exciting time in the life of a sleepy upstate community."

When completed, the Map of Lake Placid garnered Duane the appreciation of a town that had become accustomed to the stranger who sat outside, putting pen to paper, and an acclaim that eventually brought President Gerald Ford to meet the artist.

In the ensuing years, Duane was employed as a vice-president and art director for a highly successful and visible Rochester advertising agency, Jay, Inc. When ad giant Interpublic purchased Jay, Duane stayed on, providing ideas and insights for an increasingly national clientele.

But when his muse beckoned, as it had done before, he devoted himself entirely to his art, discovering in villages the way people interpret and represent themselves to the world. He found unending beauty and meaning in the ability of proud people to express – through their homes – a paradoxical blend of individuality and community. And so, once again, he set out to record and reflect in his art the highly intellectual delight and deeply emotional meaning of village life at its best.

The gift of a Seasonalifetime™.