By Marianne Christy

Loretta Lepkowski reads her tribute to Mirnie. Photo by Gary Lee

It was party time at VIEW on Wednesday, March 11 as friends, family, fellow artists, and past and present arts center staff gathered to celebrate the 90th birthday of Mirnie Kashiwa.

The event took place in Gould Hall where guests visited with Mirnie and enjoyed lunch. Prior to blowing out candles on the two birthday cakes, VIEW’s Executive Director Jennifer Potter-Hayes offered her best wishes on behalf of the arts center.

Artist Roger Hyndman presented Mirnie an original etching of a mountain lion, a depiction of a lioness sculpted from a fallen century-old yellow birch tree in Mirnie’s back yard which she named Ah-Nah.

The name Ah-Nah, translated as “mother” in Algonquin, was chosen by Mirnie because of its connotations of nurturance and tenacity and how it emulates the qualities of the arts center in Old Forge.

As she said in the past, “To me, this parallels those qualities in the Arts Guild and its endeavor over the last years to make a ‘home’ for Nature’s inspiration to expressiveness and to adaptability of design in the arts and sciences.”

A final tribute was presented by artist/writer Loretta Lepkowski: an essay that provided a loving overview of Mirnie’s pioneering contributions to the arts and pre-school education in the Central Adirondacks.