Painting with snails and other unconventional Long Island hobbies

Hobbies. Most of us have had a few over the years, but perhaps none as unusual as making art using living snails as brushes or scuba diving for lost fishing lures.

Some pastimes provide opportunities to help others learn, to meet new people or simply to enjoy one’s self. Others can even generate enough cash to cover expenses — not a bad bonus for doing something you love.

That something to pass the time might involve doing more unconventional things. Consider the personal passions of the following Long Island hobbyists:

Painting With Snails

LAURA KLAHRE, SOUTHOLD

You read that right: Laura Klahre loves to paint with snails. The Southold entrepreneur is co-owner of Blossom Meadow Farm in Cutchogue with her husband, Adam Suprenant. Klahre, 51, also teams with local land snails, which she dips in paint and allows to crawl across paper to make original artwork.

“I was weeding one morning when I noticed some snails beneath a row of red raspberries,” she recalled. “‘You should be doing art,’ I remarked to the snails, and it wasn’t long before I figured out how to help.”

Following up with some research, Klahre discovered there are 115 kinds of land snails in New York State. The ones she had uncovered are rotund disc snails, which measure almost a half-inch, live for up to 3½ years and are common on Long Island.

“I dip them in Turner brand watercolors and then allow them to crawl around on . . . watercolor paper,” Klahre said. “The snails are nocturnal, so I have to do this early in the morning or they’ll all fall asleep and just leave blotches on the paper. Each snail paints for one morning, then I remove it from the paper, wash it off and release it back into the wild. No snails are ever hurt in the process.”

Klahre sells original snail artwork, snail cards for snail mail and the couple’s award-winning jams at Coffee Pot Cellars in Cutchogue and through her website. The snail art comes with info about the little, shelled gastropod mollusks to help educate anyone who might want to search for and identify snails themselves.

“I also think this art subconsciously reminds everyone to slow down, like a snail, and enjoy the good things in life,” she said.

‘Calling’ Contra Dances

CHART GUTHRIE, CALVERTON

“Have you ever tried contra dancing?” asked Chart Guthrie, 69, of Calverton. “It’s a lot of fun.”

He should know. The retired state Department of Environmental Conservation regional fisheries manager has been “calling” contra dances for more than 30 years.

Contra dancing has mixed origins from English country, Scottish country and French dance styles, and has been around since the 17th century, Guthrie said.

“It’s a little like square dancing except contra dances are done in double lines with partners across from each other,” he explained. “Partners dance a set of figures (like a do-si-do) with one other couple, then move on to repeat the same figures with the next couple down the line. A caller walks the dancers through the figures, then calls the dance until everyone knows the figures.”

Popular in New England, contra dancing held on with square dancing in many small towns through the early 20th century. The dances were rediscovered and revitalized in the 1960s, he said.

Guthrie, the president of the Long Island Traditional Music Association, is probably best-known as the dance caller at Old Bethpage Village Restoration and the association’s dances at Brush Barn in Smithtown held the third Sunday of each month.

He said he first learned to dance in fifth grade, when his class demonstrated square dancing at a school carnival. “I thought that was the greatest thing in the world,” he said. Guthrie went on to learn folk dancing, ballroom dancing and, while a student at Cornell University in Ithaca, contra dancing.

“When I moved to Long Island, there wasn’t any contra dancing here,” he said. “So, once a month I would go to New York City and get my fill.”

Making Afrocentric Quilts

JOAN HODGES, HEMPSTEAD

Joan Hodges’ quilts typically tell a story. “I’ve made them for over 20 years,” said the Hempstead resident, 83. “It’s a hobby and a labor of love, and most are intended to inspire others to learn more about the subjects featured in their design. I’ve made about 30 quilts altogether.”

Hodges said her quilts have an Afrocentric look and feel, although their topic might not be Afrocentric itself. For example, she recently completed a commissioned quilt for a family reunion. “The family would print special T-shirts for each reunion, so I made a T-shirt quilt by sewing together one shirt from each year,” she said. “They were very happy with the result.”

The quilts Hodges sews are usually 30 inch-by-30 inch “crib quilts” to celebrate the birth of a child, or full-size 60 inch-by-30 inch “wall hanging” quilts. It takes a week to make the baby quilts and a month to design the larger versions. Ideas for the quilts, she said, “Just kind of come to me — but they often sit in my brain a while before I decide to make them.”

Hodges began drawing figures on wool at age 5 and moved on to making dolls and sewing different things as she grew. Eventually, she entered the sewing industry, making items ranging from coats and shoes to sailboat sails at a factory in Brooklyn. Later she drove a school bus.

The longtime activist for women’s and civil rights draws from her experiences speaking up for people, fairness and love. She said she participated in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. More recently, she attended a march in Washington, D.C., for women’s rights. “Being involved in my causes is often how I get my inspiration,” she said.

Hodges’ favorite quilt is a 54 inch-by-60 inch piece celebrating women and their accomplishments. It features scores of women — “different people of various races and cultures on this quilt,” she said.

They include Mother Teresa, Bella Abzug, Mary McLeod Bethune, Maya Angelo, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Shirley Chisholm, Hillary Clinton and Florence Nightingale.

Hodges shows her quilts at libraries and through presentations for the Freeport Union Free School District. She added she also donates quilts for organizational fundraisers and has given away some as gifts, but retains most of them.

“I had a wonderful time making these quilts,” Hodges said. “I hope they’ll end up in a museum one day so they can continue inspiring people long after I’m gone.”

Diving for Fishing Lures

HOWARD RUBEN, CUTCHOGUE

Howard Ruben loves to scuba dive and is an avid saltwater angler. The retired environmental analyst and compliance officer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has managed to tie both of those interests into a single hobby.

“I collect fishing lures while scuba diving around the Shinnecock jetties, and then either use them to restock my own tackle bags or sell it at local craft fairs” said Ruben, 71, of Cutchogue. “When I started diving there in the 1980s it wasn’t so much of a public place. Once the area became parkland, however, a lot more stuff seemed to be ending up in the water, which is the main reason I first began taking home what I found on the bottom. It was really an environmental thing and it still is — especially with lead sinkers,” which refers to weights used to sink a fishing line.

Ruben notes he has also found fishing rods and reels, boat parts, anchors, landing nets, tools and a surprising amount of diving gear. “Just about anything anyone walks on the jetties with or takes on a boat can wind up on the bottom here,” he said. “Lures are just what I find the most.”

Among the usual suspects that Ruben says show up regularly in his hauls of lures are diamond jigs measuring 3 to 5 inches long, various types of hard-bodied and soft-plastic swimming minnows, and even surface poppers that break off from anglers’ lines and eventually become waterlogged and sink to the bottom. Most have their colors rubbed off by the sand, so Ruben performs a little restoration magic by cleaning them up, repainting as needed and replacing the hooks.

“The whole process is a blast,” said Ruben, a longtime outdoors enthusiast. “I love collecting the lures, restoring them to some degree of their former glory, and meeting people when I bring them to the fairs. For me, the whole routine is ideal — and should I happen to make a little money in the process, it simply goes back into sustaining this crazy hobby.”

Ruben said he has figured out places where lures tend to settle, usually among rocks on which they had become snagged, or in pockets of slower current where they would drop down to the sandy bottom. “Some days I might come back to the surface with as many as 25 or 30 lures plus plenty of sinkers as well,” he said.