ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — On a recent Friday morning, those passing through Pittsford on the Erie Canal path might have heard the faint sound of a fiddle. Playing on the canal's edge was Clara Riedlinger. After some time, she put down the instrument and began fiddling with her camera. “This is a Mamiya RB67, which is actually for studio portrait photography primarily,” Riedlinger said. Riedlinger, however, was using it to shoot landscapes around the Erie Canal. “Just exciting that so many people are as entranced and excited by this idea as I am,” Riedlinger said. The idea here is to celebrate and appreciate the Erie Canal, especially as it nears its bicentennial. To help with that, the New York State Canal Corporation began an artist-in-residence program, which, in collaboration with the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse, selects artists to capture the beauty of the canal. “The Erie Canal artist-in-residence program is designed to bring new audiences to the canal and to ask our existing audiences to look at it in a new way. Through the lens of art we are making visible lesser-known stories about the canal,” said Angelyn Chandler, Vice President of Planning for the New York Power Authority, which oversees the Canal Corporation. Riedlinger was one of those selected for the program. Her project, she says, mixes art and history. “It dramatically changed the course of American culture, I think,” Riedlinger said. While transporting goods and to and from the Great Lakes, the Erie Canal carried our country into a new age and in doing so sparked bursts of spiritual fervor along its banks that left many disillusioned with religion. This is how our region came to be called the Burned Over District. Riedlinger's photos act a bridge – or perhaps a canal - connecting us to this time. “I think of it as almost time travel almost between those people back then and now. How can we experience the same feeling in the same locations regardless of how much that landscape may or may not have changed over time?” Riedlinger said. Later in the morning Friday, Riedlinger, herself, became the subject matter. Judit German-Heins, another artist chosen to take part in the artist-in-residence program, rolled up having driven in from the Hudson Valley. She then began to piece together the kind of photography set-up used at the height of the Erie Canal. The resulting tintype featured Riedlinger carrying a fiddle and a mission to spread what she calls the “magic” of the Erie Canal.