This video documentary about the late pastel artist, Cornell alumna Elsie Dinsmore Popkin, BFA '58, is an entertaining narrative by the artist about her life while an art student at Cornell in the mid-1950's. The artist appears in an informal interview describing how she creates her art and what the creative process and Cornell University mean to her. Vintage photos from her years at Cornell, 2002 video taken of Popkin creating her floral pastels in the Cornell Plantations, but mostly her art, are interspersed throughout this production.
Her colorful and vibrant pastels, many presently on long-term loan from the Popkin family, are now hanging in Cornell University's Statler Hotel Loews Lobby gallery. These seasonal campus views and Lake Cayuga vistas were drawn from the windows of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art's fifth floor where the artist was interviewed for this documentary. The centerpiece of the art display is the Hotel-owned three-paneled pastel behind the front desk which has been welcoming visitors since late 2005. Additionally, there are landscape and garden views created while the artist was in residence at Cornell Shoals Marine Laboratory on Appledore Island.
Created in 2003 for Popkin's 45th Cornell Reunion and updated in June 2008 for what was to be Elsie's 50th Reunion with the class of 1958 just three years after her untimely death in Jan 2005, this video stands as a memorial to a talented Cornell-trained artist.
Produced by Phil ('62, B.Arch. '64) and Maddy ('65) Handler, Fly on the Wall Productions.