Event Calendar
D. Jack Solomon
November 5 through December 10, 2011HOH presents a retrospective of work by D. Jack Solomon. At left is Mell O Drama #6 (detail), 2006, 18 X 50 acrylic on canvas. An opening reception with the artist is on Saturday, November 5, from 6 - 8 p.m.
Photo Exhibition
Africa: A Journey of the Soul and Spirit
Thalia Cunningham
Hudson Opera House
Saturday, October 8 through October 30
Gallery Hours: Monday through Friday 12:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Reception with the artist is on Saturday, October 22, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
J. Thalia Cunningham, MD, FACEP, is an emergency physician, travel writer, photographer and playwright.
Cunningham has traveled to 115 of the "official" destinations of the Traveler's Century Club, an international organization for people who have visited at least 100 countries.
Cunningham's predilection for spending time with insurgents - both in the emergency department and abroad - has proffered continuous opportunities to enter intimate worlds and thoughts of a diverse array of the human race. Her first-hand knowledge of people in crisis situations influences her work as both writer and photographer, allowing her to explore and confront some of society's most painful issues and to serve as catalyst for further reflection and discussion.
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A Conversation with
David Franck
Sunday, October 9, 1:00 p.m.Join us in a conversation with photographer David Franck about the creative and technical techniques used in the creation of his new work, Surreal Landscapes in Color.
Hudson Valley-based photographer David Franck fashions surreal landscapes into colorful, larger-than-life like imagery. His works have explored everything from Chagall’s use of scale to Gordon Matta-Clark‘s surgical deconstructions. Most recently he has taken on the Hudson River Valley, with an emphasis on the historical perspectives of painters such as Thomas Cole and Frederic Church.
All his images are shot on slides and manipulated by hand without the use of photoshop or other digital formats. His images have taken up residence in the private collections of well-known collectors, rock stars, and artists. His work appears in larger scale in sculpture parks and public buildings.
David Franck
Lonny Kalfus
October 1 through October 30, 2011This exhibition features recent panoramic landscapes by David Franck and photographic collages by Lonny Kalfus. Opening reception with the artists is on Saturday, October 1, from 6 - 8 p.m.
David Franck Artist StatementFor many years I have been exploring the intersection of painting and photography. My goal is to combine the techniques of painting via collage, abstracting color and texture to complement and contrast what already exists in nature. I want the illusionary element of photography to have a larger role. For too long photography has suffered from the just one moment instance of reality; one single vanishing point. Seductive colors are a pathway into the images. I'm striving toward a photograph whose construction method and appearance reveal multiple moments and perspectives simultaneously.
Each image reflects is a transition from the familiar to the unknown, from public too private. Each image forms a new view of a given site. By manipulating colors and perspectives I can summon an image which is at once a view of a photographic reality, yet one that does not exist. The illusion of permanence challenges the transitory nature of light, space and reality. A photograph of a dream. A dream that began as a photographic reality. By creating an abstracted version of reality, increasing natural or unnatural colors, I can free the medium from the inherent confines of a single vanishing point.
Lonny Kalfus Artist StatementGrowing up in Brooklyn, NY during the '50s and '60s, Lonny Kalfus remembers his parent's growing collection of fine art along with his father's penchant for bringing home odd cameras. His own first camera was the now discontinued Miranda, from which he began making his first photographs during the turbulent late sixties in New York. He credits his wife, a painter and graduate of FIT, for exposing him to the world of art and he points to British photographer Bill Brandt and Hungarian photographer Laszlo Moholy-Nage as early photographic influences.
Currently a leading photographer for corporate America, Lonny Kalfus has lived and worked in and around New York City all of his life. His modern graphic images capture the city's grandeur, as well as an endless supply of urban peculiarities and details from around the globe. His more recent work reflects the rural landscape that surrounds him in his new home, an old farmhouse, located in Columbia County, New York. Many of his rich color images, created by cross-processing color transparency film, evoke a retro technicolor feeling that gives a timeless feeling to the scenes he photographs. Furthering the sense of toying with time, Lonny enjoys revisiting his photographs by capturing the same scenes during different seasons.
Pre (History)
Maureen Cummins
Quinn Cummins-Lune
August 20 - September 24, 2011This exhibition features recent drawings by Maureen Cummins and her nine-year-old son Quinn. The twin bodies-of-work reveal ways in which these two artists are inspired and influenced by one another's art, both thematically and visually.
Opening reception with the artists is on Saturday, August 20, from 6 - 8 p.m.
This exhibit, Pre(History), grew out of intersecting art-making and inspiration between myself and my nine-year-old son Quinn Cummins-Lune. Quinn has grown up watching me combine text and image in prints and artist's books, and freely integrates both these elements in his own art-making, creating complex typologies that arise out of his fascination with Natural History. At the time that he began the current series, Quinn's Book of Ice-Age Animals, I was involved in researching my own family history and origins, and was beginning to think about how to incorporate an archive of old family photographs into my work. Inspired by Quinn, I developed a series of prints that would act as visual and textual corollaries to his drawings, creating a larger body of work that explores both human and animal evolution.
Quinn Cummins-Lune (b. 2001) is a native New Yorker and a third-generation artist. He has been producing works on paper since 2006. His drawings, which often take the form of multiples, are heavily informed by his knowledge of and interest in the animal world. His current series is based on research into ice-age mammals.
Maureen Cummins was born in 1963 and is a native New Yorker. She received a BFA from Cooper Union and went on to study with master printers and binders in New York and California. In the early '90's she set up a printshop in a turn-of-the-century warehouse in Gowanus, Brooklyn, and for the past two decades has been producing books, prints and other works-on-paper. Her work is held in over one hundred public collections throughout the US, including The Brooklyn Museum, The Fogg Art Museum, The National Gallery, Walker Art Center, Kyoto Institute of Technology, and the Biblioteca Alexandria.
Warren Street
June 11 through August 14Curated by Richard Roth, Warren Street is a show of painting and photography with Hudson's main thoroughfare as subject and the Lynn Davis Warren Street Project (courtesy Historic Hudson) as centerpiece.
Also included in the show are Edward Avedisian, McWillie Chambers, George Crosby, Teddy Cruz, Lynn Davis, David Franck, Enid Futterman, Tom Froese, Rodney Alan Greenblat, Phyllis Hjorth, Nancy Hagin, Chad Kleitsch, Melora Kuhn, David Lee, Reggie Madison, Roger Mason (photo above), Richard Minsky, Lee Musselman, Seth Nadel, Bruno Pasquier-Desvignes, Ken Polinskie, Lucio Pozzi, Tom Roe, Dan Rupe, Margaret Saliske, Randall Schmit, Barbara Slate, Bill Sullivan, Earl Swanigan, Benjamin Swett, Tony Thompson, Jim Wright, and Arthur Yanoff; many are creating new work.
Opening reception with the artists is on Saturday, June 11 from 6 - 8 p.m.
Industrial Devolution
the idled machines of national braid mfg. corp
photographs by
Alain Bourgeois
May 7 through June 5, 2011Alain Bourgeois is the youngest son of renowned sculptor Louise Bourgeois. Throughout a varied career as a criminal lawyer (in which he served sequentially as prosecutor, defense attorney, felony trial judge and law enforcement agency Commissioner) he has pursued a passion for photography. For the last decade, he has worked as a full-time photographer. He has had solo exhibitions in diverse galleries in New York City, Connecticut, New Mexico and Florida, and his work can be found in private collections as well as in the archive of the Musee Carnavalet in Paris.
In the words of celebrated photography critic A. D. Coleman, "Bourgeois follows the approach pioneered by Eugene Atget and Walker Evans, paying homage to these forbears while demonstrating the ongoing vitality of this mode of documentary photography. Like them, too, he emphasizes spaces and artifacts that have lived a full life in the world and show their age and experience -- buildings, details, man-made objects that reveal their undeniable decrepitude, what the photographer refers to as 'senescence.'"
In the current exhibition, Bourgeois has turned his attention to the idled machinery of a failed Queens, NY manufacturing company. In their hurtful silence, these stilled machines - some of which had been in service for over one hundred years - bear witness to the industrial "progress" of the 21st century and the dislocation it has caused to the workforce and enterprises that fueled the rise of the U.S. economy.
Opening reception with the artist is on Saturday May 7, from 6 - 8 p.m.
A Survey
Gloria Garfinkel
April 2 through April 30 The Hudson Opera House presents a solo exhibition of works by Gloria Garfinkel. The exhibition will be on view from April 2 through April 30, 2011.
Garfinkel’s body of work is a provocative extension of both
contemporary and historic painting traditions, combining color and
pattern in a powerful way. Her work is inspired loosely on the culture
and color of Japan and South East Asia. When she first saw a small
Hiroshige print, her visual world became entranced with layering,
mystifying, taking apart, and revealing. Garfinkel’s art is
both beautiful and entrancing - always offering the eye new delights
while challenging the brain and soul to see more and to live more
with each encounter.
Gloria Garfinkel has had solo exhibitions including the Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art, the Mary Ryan Gallery, the Schiller-Wapner Gallery, and the Suzuki Gallery, all in New York, Brattleboro Museum and Art Center; the Haggerty Museum at Marquette University in Milwaukee; the Emerson Gallery Museum at Hamilton College in Clinton NY; and at Porto Seguros, São Paulo and Brasilia, South America. Her group exhibitions include The University of Pittsburgh Art Gallery; the DeCordova Museum, Boston; Art in the Embassies, Norway; Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo; and many others.
Her works are in the permanent collections of the New York Public Library; the Albright-Know Museum; Worcester Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Haggerty Museum at Marquette University; Reader's Digest; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Warton & Garrison; Marsh & McLennon Co; Price & Rhoads and many others. Ms. Garfinkel lives and works in New York City.
The exhibition is curated by Elizabeth Stevens, and a full-color
catalog will be available with an essay by D. Dominick Lombardi.
Seven Circles, painted aluminum wall sculpture, 36 x 78 x 1.5 inches, 2008
15th Annual Juried Art Show
Exhibition
Columbia County Council on the Arts
February 19 through March 26 Painters, sculptors, photographers and paper/mixed media artists exhibit in the CCCA Juried Art Show Exhibition. Opening reception is on Saturday, February 19th from 5 - 7 p.m.
Juror: Felicity Hogan, Program Officer for the New York Foundation of the Arts Learning/Consults and Education Director at Cuchifritos Art Gallery in NYC.
Media: Sculpture / Painting / Drawing or Printmaking / Mixed Media (including Fiber and Installation Work) / Photography & Video. For more information, call 518-671-6213 or visit www.artscolumbia.org
Sponsored by
China Jorrin
January 15 through February 12A photography exhibition of panoramic prints by China Jorrin. The photos show a glimpse into the abandoned buildings from the Hudson River Psychiatric Center, Poughkeepsie, New York. Its grand buildings were designed by Messrs., Vaux, Withers and Co., and the grounds by Frederick Law Olmsted.
Opening reception with the artist is on Saturday, January 15th from 6 - 8 p.m.
Artist Statement
I became intrigued by the Hudson River Psychiatric Center when I was a student at Bard College in the mid-eighties. (The hospital was opened in 1868, just outside of Poughkeepsie, New York; its grand buildings were designed by Messrs., Vaux, Withers and Co., and the grounds by Frederick Law Olmsted.) When I first saw the hospital, all the original buildings were still open, but the patient population and staff had greatly decreased. When I moved back to the Hudson Valley in 2004, the older buildings were closed, and the remaining patients were moved to a newer, smaller building on adjacent grounds. In 2004, I began volunteering at the hospital, and taught photography to eight patients. It was through this work that helped me gain access to the original buildings. From 2005-2007, I photographed the interiors and some of the grounds of hospital. The first time I entered the main building, I was struck by the smell (mold, decay) and the sound (smoke detectors whose batteries were running out creating a constant beep that would sound from all different directions). There was a feeling of chaos with all the desks, filing cabinets and other office furniture and equipment scattered throughout the hallways and rooms. As I went through building after building, room after room with the site manager, I began to see the incredible patterns that the decay had left behind. The peeling plaster, the water damaged walls. Although I found beauty in these hallways and rooms, I mostly felt great sadness for the people who walked through those doors and became patients, changing their lives forever. All images were taken with Hasselblad Xpan Panoramic and Rolliflex film cameras. All prints are from scanned negatives developed on photographic paper.
Artist Bio
China Jorrin was born and raised in New York City; both parents were photographers. She was given her first camera at six; she used it to photograph the kids on her block in Chelsea. She studied filmmaking at Bard College. After graduating, she worked in the film industry for several years, then left the States to live in Europe. There her focus shifted from film back to photography. She assisted fashion photographers in Paris, then worked as a photographer in Prague for The Prague Post. When China returned to New York City, she freelanced for The Associated Press.
Clients have included Nickelodeon, The Ms. Foundation, The United Nations, Columbia University, Bard College Prison Initiative, and The Soros Foundation/Open Society Institute. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, and Bomb Magazine.
Hudson Sister City Pallisa, Uganda
and the Wildlife of East Africa
Saturday, December 18 through 23 A photography exhibition with works by photographers Carol Gans and Susan Saltman from Hudson Sister City Pallisa, Uganda. Photo at left by Carol Gans.
Cynthia Carlson
Paintings & Works on Paper
November 6 through December 11 An exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Cynthia Carlson. An opening reception with the artist is on Saturday, November 6 from 5-7pm. At left is a detail from, Istrice Spina e Giocattolo, 19.5x27.5, 2006, gouache on paper.
Ms. Carson holds an MFA from Pratt Institute, School of Art and Design and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work in held in many public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Queens Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Princeton Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, as well as numerous private collections. She has completed numerous public commissions across the United States, including the Los Angeles Metro Rail System and the Baltimore/Washington International Airport. Her awards include Rockefeller Foundation Award, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Natural Trust Artist-in-Residence, and The MacDowell Colony Fellowship. She has taught at Queens College, City University of New York and at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, as well as presenting numerous visiting artist lectures and workshops.
"Cynthia Carlson's work has a pervasive, unbridled energy, like the artist herself. Most of her paintings, drawings and installations (with some exceptions; the Monument and Memento Mori Series, and Vietnam: Sorry About That project), seem hyperactive and jumpy - they just won't sit still. Coming from Chicago, a city steeped in its own rich and singular artistic tradition, she was influenced in part by the artists who formed The Hairy Who, as well as by others with whom she shared what she calls "funky Surrealist tendencies". Carlson's work has a comedic feel - its repetitive themes are quotidian and zany. She shares these aspects of her work with the late Ree Morton, a close friend with whom she taught in Philadelphia: their lives and work were intertwined.
Both artists learned early on to be self - sufficient; neither brooked elitist behavior or had time for privileged introspection, and each was unburdened by formalist dictates: they thoroughly understood them, but were free to pick and choose their stylistic preferences and mix them as they saw fit. It has been virtually ignored that Carlson is a pioneer in the Decorative Art Movement, and in feminist artistic practice. Carlson did not set out to engage as a feminist, though she did not avoid it - her methods were simply appropriate to her temperament and suited her needs. She had been working with heavily impasto paint and was looking for a more efficient way to apply it. Carlson was one of the first artists to cover surfaces with stylized paint squiggles squeezed on with a cake decorator (as did sculptor Pat Lasch, whose father was a conditor), creating highly colored, witty, all - over patterns and dimensional units in installations in museums and galleries throughout the country. She first showed this work at Hundred Acres in Soho, in 1976. Shortly afterward Carlson fabricated a ginger bread house at Art Park, a site - specific institution on the banks of the Niagara River. Its entire surface was slathered with delicious - looking patterns and dabs that would certainly have seduced Hansel and Gretel. And yet there was and is a rawness to Carlson's work - it may be decorative, funny, or colorful (like her recent crazy quilt of cat toy paintings), or seem to whirl like a dervish, but it has an edge, a sense of something not altogether nice.
This is especially so in her most recent body of work, based on the quills of a porcupine! While the familiar rhythm and energy are present, and we recognize the almost comic book rendering of the subject matter, the scale is so much larger than life that the paintings are threatening and put the viewer at a decided distance. It is this constant "nice/nasty, come here/move back, have fun/no don't" conversation that disturbs and makes us look closely at this artist who continues to forge new territory as she dances to her Windy City beat."
Barbara Zucker August, 2008
Phenomena
October 2 through October 30HOH presents group exhibition titled Phenomena featuring works that explore the natural world. Artists include Guy Beining, Thomas Huber, Ingrid Ludt and Claudia McNulty. An opening reception with the artists is on Saturday, October 2 from 6 - 8 p.m. The exhibition will be on display in the Center Hall Gallery of HOH from October 2 through October 30. The gallery is open everyday from noon to 5pm, closed national holidays.
Artist and poet Guy R. Beining was born in London and arrived in New York City in 1940. Throughout his youth he lived mainly in Connecticut. From 1951-1954 he suffered bouts with rheumatic fever, which caused him to have to take school courses later from the University of Indiana (1955-57). He attended the University of Florida between 1958-1960, enjoying classes with Barry Spacks and novelist Andrew Lytle. Beining settled in New York City, where he remained until 2000. A 1965 novel, rejected by Athenaeum Press, drove him to write poetry. He first chapbook was printed in 1976, followed a year later by City Shingles, published by Sun & Moon Press as a chapbook.
Thomas Huber In my paintings I juxtapose various unrelated media and imagery which I build up to create a unified picture. I start by creating a thickly sculpted gesso ground that I gouge into and add collage of found lists, doodles, diagrams and other personal notations (mostly made by others). Over this base I use water and ink to create fluid drawings derived from natural forms and biological structures. The mixture of flowing water and other materials help to determine the progression of the images, creating a liquid ecosystem of overlapping organic forms. I then use various inks, acrylics, oil pastels, venetian plaster, photo transfers, waxes and varnishes to create layers that flow in and out of each other to reveal recognizable and semi-recognizable images.
Ingrid Ludt was born and raised in the Fingerlakes region of New York. She received her B.F.A. in Design from Rochester Institute of Technology and her M.F.A. in Painting from University at Albany, State University of New York. Ludt has been the recipient of several awards from New York Foundation for the Arts. She has been an Associate Fellow at Atlantic Center for the Arts, a Resident Artist at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony and a participant in the Summer Arts Institute at Women's Studio Workshop. In 2008 Ludt was a Visiting Artist and Guest Lecturer at Middlebury College. Her work has been shown at Art Omi International Arts Center, The Arts Center of the Capital Region, Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany Center Gallery, LBIF for the Arts and Sciences, Contemporary Artists Center, Storefront Artist Project, Nurtureart, Inc. and A.M. Richard Fine Art. Ludt currently lives and works in Albany, NY and Boston, MA.
Claudia McNulty graduated from Boston Museum School/Tufts University with a BFA. She also attended Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Her work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions including local galleries such as the Athens Cultural Center, Brik Gallery, M Gallery, Columbia Greene Community College Gallery, North Point Gallery, A.D.D. Gallery, and at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY. Her solo shows include Hofstra University, Spencertown Academy of Art, and the Guggenheim Pavillion at the Rensselaereville Institute.
Faunal Respirations
Installation / Performance by Ryder Cooley
Saturday, October 9, 6:30 - 9:00 p.m. Ryder Cooley will create a phantasmal world inhabited by drawings, animals, sounds, props and projections in the 2nd floor theater at HOH. An ambient performance with live music on singing saw, accordion, voice and ukelele. Visitor can arrive and depart at any point during this performance. This will be the third installation designed by Ryder for the historic 2nd floor theater of the Hudson Opera House. The first performance, Phantom Serenades, was created for Winter Walk in 2006, and a subsequent performance, Sea Shanties and Aviary Songs, was presented for Winter Walk 2007. C. Ryder Cooley is an inter-discliplinary artist, musician and performer. Weaving together chimeric images with found props and forgotten objects, she creates cinematic performances and installation spaces. Currently she is based in Hudson, NY and plays in the band Fall Harbor.
Jonathan Wallen
Portraits from Rwanda
August 21 through September 25, 2010 HOH presents a photography exhibition by Jonathan Wallen featuring portraits shot during his travels in Rwanda. An opening reception with the artist is on Saturday, August 28 from 6 - 8 pm.
Local Self-Portraits
June 12 through August 14, 2010HOH presents a show of self-portrait paintings, photographs and sculpture curated by Richard Roth. The artists' styles run the gamut, from primitive to photo realist, documentary to minimalist to abstract expressionist. What they have in common is geography: They all live and work, exhibit work, or spend their leisure time in Hudson or Columbia County.
A limited edition, full-color catalogue for the exhibition is available for purchase, sponsored by Stair Galleries of Hudson.
Artists include Marina Abramovic, Richard Artschwager, Donald Baechler, R. O. Blechman, McWillie Chambers, Mihail Chemiakin, Lynn Davis, Judy Glantzman, Musho Rodney Alan Greenblat, Nancy Hagin, Phyllis Hjorth, Ellsworth Kelly, Dylan Kraus, Annie Leibovitz, Barbara Lehman, Reggie Madison, Gerard Malanga, Maria Manhattan, Richard Minsky, Sedat Pakay, Ken Polinskie, Lucio Pozzi, Eric Rhein, Dan Rupe, Edwina Sandys, Barbara Slate, Tim Slowinski, Ed Smith, Bill Sullivan, Earl Swanigan, Benjamin Swett, Franklin Tartaglione, Tony Thompson, and Arthur Yanoff. Opening Reception with the artists will be on Saturday, June 12, from 6 - 8 p.m.
Local Self Portraits brings together the work of 34 painters, photographers and sculptors from Hudson and the surrounding area, demonstrating that the 19th-century birthplace of the Hudson River School continues to attracts some of the world's most accomplished artists.
Two of the artists, Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Artschwager, have been awarded the Smithsonian's prestigious Archives of American Art Medal. Artschwager, whose career began in the early 1950s, shows the lithograph he created for the Archives in 2009. Kelly is known for stunningly simple lines and compositions, but the artist has also made dozens of self portraits in a wide range styles since the 1940s; the two-color lithograph in Local Self Portraits was made in 1988.
While Kelly, Artschwager and several other artists in the exhibition have been in the area for years, there's also new talent in town. One of the more recent arrivals is Marina Abramovic, the world-famous performance artists who has been sitting quietly opposite random visitors to her retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art every day for the past several weeks. Abramovic intends to establish a foundation for performance art in what was once the 1,500-seat Community Theater in Hudson; her self portrait, executed with the help of a studio assistant in a helicopter, is from The Lovers, a 1988 performance piece which required her to walk through 1,500 miles of spectacular scenery on the Great Wall of China.
Abramovic's emotions are not immediately evident, but the opposite is true of Judy Glantzman's Kiss My Faces, a panel of four small oil paintings depicting faces in dire and touching need of being kissed. While Glantzman is very much a painter, some artists seem able live on line alone: R.O. Blechman, for example. The creator of 19 covers for The New Yorker and the winner of an Emmy for his animated Soldier's Tale on PBS, Blechman shows his many parts with characteristic good humor: pencil over one ear, halo, trophy, dunce cap, fiddler. Musho Rodney Alan Greenblat adds color to sunny, good-natured line and depicts himself as a mild-mannered Buddhist saint with hindrances and temptations coming from all directions. Donald Baechler, who once lived next door to Greenblat, distills himself down to a black flower and the cosmic matrix using tea and gouache.
The show takes in many other points of view as well. Hudson's most collected artist may be Earl Swanigan, who sells his paintings on the sidewalk along Warren Street, has been painting for 30 years. The dozens of portraits of President Obama Swanigan produced around the time of the last election exude idealism; his self portrait is more guarded, with a grave expression and piercing eyes. Dylan Kraus, the youngest artist in the show, paints himself with eyes closed completely, but he knows where he's going: he begins a four-year program at Cooper Union this fall.
Annie Leibovitz who has been called the world's most famous photographer, has a country place nearby and a piece in the show, as do three of her male contemporaries: Benjamin Swett, Gerard Malanga, and Sedat Pakay. Pakay, a student of Walker Evans at Yale and creator of a PBS documentary on his former teacher, has a vast archive of portraits from his years at Holiday and other magazines. In his self portrait, made in Istanbul he was 18, he peeks out from behind flashy Jean Shrimpton sunglasses and a bunch of grapes. Malanga, chief assistant to Andy Warhol and an actor in many of the Pop artist's early films, shows a miniature construction based on a photograph he took of himself in 1973.
Clemens Kalischer
Photography Exhibition
May 8, 2010 through June 5, 2010 Clemens Kalischer, a freelance photographer, was born in Bavaria, Germany. He left Berlin with his parents in 1933 for Paris, where he studied until WWII. After escaping from France, he came to the US in 1942. He studied at Cooper Union and the New School in New York. Over the past six decades, Clemens has built a body of work notable for its high quality and open-armed embrace of the varied human condition.
His work has appeared in leading magazines such as The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, Country Journal, Moment, Vermont Life, Du, Boston Globe Magazine, in addition to several alternative magazines including: The Sun, In Context, Jubilee, YES, Orion, Ploughshares, Food & Water, and Common Ground. He has taught photography at The Stockbridge School, Indian Hill, Berkshire Community College, and Williams College. He has run the IMAGE GALLERY for over thirty years, presenting artists including: Alice Neal, Lucio Pozzi, Gunther Grass, Howardena Pindell, Paul Caponigro, Eugene Richards, as well as many young, new artists. He has curated exhibitions at The Berkshire Museum; ZONE, Springfield, MA; Brattleboro Museum, Vermont; and Mt. Holyoke College.
photo: Times Square, New York, 1949
An opening reception with the artist will be on Saturday, May 8, from 5 - 7 p.m.
Storied That Add Up
Stephanie Brody-Lederman
April 3 through May 1 Stephanie Brody Lederman exhibits her series of recent paintings, rich in poetry and metaphor at HOH. Based in New York, in recent years she has spent time residing and working in Paris. Her paintings are layered with paint revealing the passage of time and the subsequent resulting changes. The combination of seemingly disparate words and images serve to make paintings that pay homage to the associative way the head and the heart ponder personal experiences.
Above is Red Light, 2009, 40 x 48, oil on canvas.
From her Artist's Statement: In my work I use simple, almost child-like images and words, to hone issues of personal truth and humanity. My art distills the quixotic emotionals that are inherent in daily life. I explore formal elements of design, the technical application of paint and mixed media and conceptual issues of content and language. My paintings and works on paper explore familiar images which initially appear naive and direct. On closer observation there is a rigorous interplay of word and image, revealing complex psychological content. Dogs, trees, rivers and lanterns inhabit these canvases. Paint is layered to reveal process and textural variation. One senses a narrative inherent in each work, inviting the viewer to become engaged with the art.
read more...
Opening reception is on Saturday, April 3 from 6 - 8 p.m.
14th Annual Juried Art Show Exhibition
February 20 through March 27, 2010Painters, sculptors, photographers and paper/mixed media artists exhibit in the CCCA Juried Art Show Exhibition.
From the HOH Studio Exhibition
January 16 through February 13, 2010An exhibition of works created in art workshops at HOH. Selected works by participants from the Life Drawing Studio, Open Painting Studio, and Creative Drawing Studio will be included. Sketch at left is by Maj Kalfus. An opening reception with the artists is on Saturday, January 16, from 6 - 8 p.m.
Paintings 2004 - 2009
D. Jack Solomon
November 7 through December 19, 2009 HOH presents paintings by D. Jack Solomon from 2004 through 2009. At left is Mell O Drama #6 (detail), 2006, 18 X 50 acrylic on canvas. An opening reception with the artist is on Saturday, November 7, from 6 - 8 p.m.
Columbia County African American Family Exhibit
October 9 through October 31An exhibition of family photographs documenting the northern migration of African American families and their experience in Hudson and surrounding towns in Columbia County. Exhibition curated by Operation Unite as part of the Quadricentennial Celebration. Opening reception, Friday October 9, from 6 - 8 p.m. Photo, Detective Vivian Austin.
Tony Thompson
Forty Years of Drawings and Small Works
Boston - New York - Hudson
October 3 through October 31 Gallery Talk with the Artist Saturday, October 17, 2:00 p.m.
The exhibition includes work first exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, at P.S.1, Artist's Space and galleries in New York City, and work completed since the artist moved to Hudson in 1989. At left, mold poured acrylic paint on moire taffeta 14 x 14, 1985.
Opening reception with the artist on Saturday, October 3, from 5 - 7 p.m.
Artist Statement
Reflecting on forty years of work
Looking over forty years of work, a small selection of which is exhibited here, some consistencies suggest themselves:
There is an interest in materials being themselves - not being forced into unnaturalness by a human hand. Paint is presented as paint, paper as paper and likewise wood, fabric, rubber and clay. Paint, for instance, in addition to it's ability to depict other objects and scenes can pour, smear, drip, run, hide, mix, puddle, glue, etc.
The work is frequently done as part of a series that investigates all the ways two materials can interact, all the possible variations of their encounters, each one suggesting the next.
In addition to all the ways different materials can combine there is an interest in how the same material in a nearly identical shape can combine with itself, as in the tape and hand pieces. For me these pieces are able to call attention to the individual tape or hand unit and what it can become in interaction with itself at the same time.
Working directly on the wall rather than on a paper or canvas support reinforces the object quality of a configuration. Perhaps this is sculpture. When a piece of paper or board is used it usually acts as setting for the configuration rather than participating with it.
The traditional landscapes appear to be a break from my abstract concerns. They recall my earliest work, painted well before the period covered by this exhibition. But even then, a loose plein aire approach indicated an interest in the paint itself and in the brushstroke. This is still the case though the manifestation in the landscapes is less extreme than in the abstract work.
The photo drawings represent one of my attempts to combine representational and abstract ways of working without vitiating either. Here again I am working at combining paint with another material, in this case with photographs of the landscape or of my own or others paintings.
My statement from a 1979 exhibition at Artist's Space continues to sum up my approach to painting:
Its fun to do tricks and one is tempted constantly by the accessibility of illusion. I try to keep in mind that even the most subtle deviousness is ultimately less mysterious than simply being. It seems that the more something is a simple, meaningless, physical, presence, the more it points to a reality beyond the physical.
For more information, visit www.tonythompsonpainter.com
Let It Be in Sight of Thee
Hudson River Photography
by Carolyn Marks Blackwood
On Exhibition through September 27 Gallery Talk with the Artist
Saturday, September 26, 2:00 p.m.
Carolyn Marks Blackwood has spent many hours on the river, on patrol with Riverkeeper and also aboard the Coast Guard icebreaker Penobscot Bay. At HOH Carolyn exhibits the series of photographs drawn from her exploration of the Hudson River. The exhibition is presented as part of the Hudson Quadricentennial Celebration.
Artist Statement
When I first saw my little house in Rhinecliff, on the 100 foot
cliff, with its 180 degree views of the Hudson River, my first thought
was, "This is where I want to die." Now, I don’t want
to rush things and certainly hope I have many more years on my perch,
looking southwest to the Town of Esopus, then straight across at
the old Town of Kingston, the Kingston lighthouse, and into the
Kingston Rondout, where the Esopus Creek flows into the Hudson-
then Northwest to the Catskill Mountains and far beyond...It just
felt like the place I had always been looking for.
This is the place where I first heard the Hudson River Ice breaking
on the shore below, where I watch barges and freighters and mighty
ships pass- some taller than my cliff! Bald Eagles and Red Tail
Hawk are in abundance and Great Blue Heron fly back and forth each
morning and evening in their own version of rush hour. I am bathed
in beauty every night and day. I thank my lucky stars.
This show is the culmination of my three year fixation on the river
and was created to help celebrate the 400th anniversary of Henry
Hudson's sail. I wish to thank Gary Schiro for all his help in making
this show possible. I also wish to thank Alex Matthiessen, the Director
of the Riverkeeper Organization, who has allowed me to photograph
from the Riverkeeper Boat. John Lipscomb, the captain of the Riverkeeper
boat is a Hudson River Historian and poet in his way. He lives and
travels on the River most months of the year, protecting it and
its inhabitants. He teaches me so much whenever we travel on the
river together. I would also like to thank the Coast Guard for allowing
me on their boats, but especially Lt. Marshall Griffin, Captain
and Lt. James Collins, and the crew of the Penobscot Bay Icebreaker.
What a thrill it has been to travel the river when it is covered
with Ice.
I wish to thank Barbara Rose for seeing something in me I never
could have imagined, and Alan Klotz for being the best Gallerist,
Photo Historian, teacher and friend. I would like to thank my dear
friends who show up to openings and always support my endeavors;
especially Ramon Lascano and Joseph Maresca, beautiful artists in
their own right.
And I want to thank my son Gabriel and my darling Greg for being
there, cheering me on. You have all helped me make my dreams come
true.
Carolyn Marks Blackwood
Beauty crowds me till I die
Beauty, mercy have on me!
But if I expire today,
Let it be in sight of thee.
Emily Dickinson
Water Series and Ice Series courtesy Alan
Klotz Gallery, 511 West 25th Street, NYC.
Carolyn's photographs will also be on exhibition at a Hudson River
show at the Alan Klotz Gallery opening Sept 17th 2009.
For more information, visit www.cmblackwood.com
Myths and Muses
John Musall
May 9 through June 6
Umbra, 2008, oil/linen, 40 x 46
HOH presents a solo exhibition by painter, teacher and lighting designer, John Musall. The exhibition features new works that explore shadows and theatrical light.
An opening reception with the artist will be on Saturday, May 9, from 6 - 8 p.m.
For the past sixteen years I've focused on the play of colored
light on the human figure. It began with dancers I met in NYC at
the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio where I worked, teaching and practicing
lighting design. In the last few years, I've been drawn to more
complex scenarios, often re-synthesizing historical themes, as with
"Judith and Holofernes", and "3 Graces", and sometimes inventing
new settings, as depicted in "The Chair", and "Trinity". As always,
my models are drawn from the performers, artists, and students I
see and work with on a daily basis.
I'm involved in a study of shadow,
researching the historical record and applying it to my work as
a painter, teacher, and designer. I'm interested in what is seen
and what is not seen, as in shadow, the "hole in the light", for
it is in the contrast of light and it's absence that our world is
revealed. There, in shadow and then, emerging into the half light,
what is exposed can have a greater, and more complex meaning, as
in the familiar yin yang symbol, where light and darkness come together
in a great affirming totality, and it is there that I find a reason
to continue to paint.
So this is who I am now: I paint the human figure lit with theatrical
incandescent light. I teach a class in lighting design for performance,
and help mount productions for Theater and Dance departments at
Bard College. I am also the County Supervisor of Hudson's 1st Ward,
which has led me into confronting ideas of service, community, and
also those ideas which divide us, like politics, and the faltering
economy. It is with hope and a desire for truth (Truth equalling
Beauty) that I quote Daniel Burnham, the great Beaux Arts Chicago
architect, who said "beauty has always paid better than any other
commodity, and always will." So be it." - John
Musall April, 2009
John Musall was born in Dubuque, Iowa in 1946.
He studied at the University of Minnesota and Ohio State University
at Columbus, majoring in Fine Art. Trained as a painter, he evolved
as a performing artist, uniting his capabilities as a director,
designer, writer and musician, working collaboratively and as a
solo performer. He has produced and directed for the stage, video,
and film, and has designed sets, lighting and costumes for hundreds
of theater and dance production. For fourteen years he was associated
with the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation as Studio Technical Director
where he designed various projects and taught lighting for performance.
It was his experience there that led him focus on painting the human
figure bathed in incandescent stage light. After moving to Hudson
in 1997, he joined the Dance and Theater Department's production
staff at Bard College. He continues to paint, teach and design,
and produce video works.
His work has been shown at La Mammelle,
San Francisco, And/Or Gallery, Seattle; the Victoria and Albert
Museum, Sidney; the Philadelphia Museum; the Institute of Contemporary
Art, the Painted Bride, and Temple University, Philadelphia, Calvert
Gallery, and Wahington Project for the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the
Greenville County Museum, SC.; in New York at Morris Healey Gallery,
Westbeth Gallery, Gruzen Samton Gallery, and the Cunningham Studio,
the Barrett House Gallery, Poughkeepsie; TSL Warehouse, and the
Hudson Opera House. He has received grants and fellowships from
the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on
the Arts, Art Matters, Inc. and the Judy Willows Prize from the
Columbia County Arts Council. In 2007 he was elected to the Columbia
County Board of Supervisors.
For All Who Are Kept In
For All Who Are Kept Out
Myron Polenberg
April 4 through May 2
Barbed Wire #1, 80" x 80" acrylic on canvas, 2008
HOH presents a solo exhibition featuring new works by abstract painter Myron Polenberg. Opening reception with the artist is on Saturday, April 4, 6 - 8 p.m.
Myron Polenberg is an abstract painter living in the Hudson Valley.
He has spent a lifetime pursuing art and during the last decade
he has devoted all his time to working in the studio. His paintings
range from large to mural-size canvases and relate to the abstract
expressionists. Utilizing heavy body paste paints and non-traditional
tools such as compound taping knives, masons' & plasterers' trowels
and 2"x4"s, Polenberg pushes paint across un-stretched canvas. The
multi-layering of paint achieves a richly colored and deeply textured
surface. In 2005 art historian Neil A. Chassman wrote, "Polenberg
has created a vivacious surface - the large movements of paint are
reminiscent of Franz Kline and have a palpable strength." Polenberg's
paintings begin with an exploration of color palettes, simple forms
and shapes that he sketches on small pieces of paper.
These multiple studies slowly developed over time take shape before any paint is applied to canvas. In his studio he works on several paintings at once. This allows the artist to step away from a particular body of work and move onto another. Polenberg expresses it in this way: "I'm fortunate to have a large enough work space so I can do multiples of canvases. I tack up anywhere from six to ten directly on the walls. I work with un- stretched canvas. I work on all the canvasses mounted at the same time; while one is too wet to continue, I start on the next. Then somehow miraculously they all get finished. I judge when the work is complete by the texture. My driving goal is about how paint works; it's about the surface."
Myron Polenberg's paintings have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in New York City and the Hudson Valley. Recently the tree paintings were shown in a solo exhibition at the Yellow Bird Gallery, Newburgh, NY. The number paintings were shown in a solo exhibition at The Center Hall Gallery at the Hudson Opera House, Hudson, NY. In September 2007 Polenberg's paintings were shown in a solo exhibition at the H. Pelham Curtis Gallery, New Canaan, CT.
In addition to exhibiting his work, Polenberg's paintings are in a number of prestigious private collections in East Hampton, NY, Princeton, NJ, Old Westbury, NY, New York City, Dallas TX & Hollywood, CA.
Marking Time
Artists from the NYFA Mark Program
February 21 through March 28Artist Talk, March 7, 4:30 p.m.
(sculpture by Lisa Breznak, clay, paint and 22K gold, photo by Howard Goodman)
HOH and the Columbia County Council on the Arts present a group exhibition of the Hudson Valley artists from the 2008 New York Foundation in the Arts Mark Program. Working in a wide range of media and styles 12 artists reflect on the idea of time and how its passage manifests itself in their work.
The artists, Dawn Breeze, Lisa Breznak, Laura Cannamela, Giovanni DiMola, Mimi Czajka Graminski, Tana Kellner, Greg Lock, Karl Saliter, M. Scott Schaffernoth, Carla Shapiro, Matthew Slaats, and Chad Weckler were chosen from across the state to participate in the inaugural year of the program.
This exhibit marks the first time the group will exhibit their work together expanding on the relationships and professional growth produced within program.
An opening reception with the artists will be on Saturday, February 21, from 6-8 p.m.
From the HOH Studio
January 17 through February 14An exhibition of works created in art workshops at the Hudson Opera House. Selected works by participants from the Life Drawing Studio, Portrait Painting Studio and Plein-Air Painting Workshops will be included.
An opening reception with the artists will be on Saturday, January 17, from 6-8 p.m.
Jack Millard
Story Lines
August 23 through September 20, 2008Opening Reception August 23, 6-8 pm
at left: The Threshold, 64"x48", enamel on canvas
An exhibition of new works by artist Jack Millard that explore narrative portraits. Jack has enjoyed painting portraits for many years, but felt the limitations of a single subject. As time went on, the backgrounds in the paintings became more complex by including landscapes and buildings. Eventually, by adding friends, family, co-workers, even adversaries, would help clarify the subject's personality. Finally, he realized that it was groups of people, with their narratives, that he wanted to paint. The implied relationships of the people on the canvas convey a psychological urgency that supercedes technical or formal details.
Jack Millard lives and paints in Chatham, NY. He practiced architecture in New York City where he worked for Paul Rudolph and for Peter Marino. Chairs of his design are sold at Dennis Miller Associates in New York.
His paintings have been shown in Hudson at Carrie Haddad Gallery and Time and Space Limited. In New York City, he has shown at Max Protetch Gallery.
Cassandra Jennings Hall
July 19 through August 16Opening Reception July 19, 6-8 pm
at left: Whales, 30"x40", oil on canvas
Cassandra Jennings Hall, abstract artist born in Orangeburg, SC, spent her first twelve years in the segregated South until her parents moved the family North to New York City. Even as a young child, the pull of her imagination was irresistible. Crayons were her first medium, using the same brilliant lush color that continues to be one of her signature marks.
For the last 15 years, Jennings Hall has been painting and showing her work. Initially, she worked in a hard edge geometric style but became dissatisfied with the constriction of the linear form. She began to create works with subtle surfaces full of rich color, balancing calligraphic lines and soft edged shapes creating paintings which betray a studied simplicity. Another pivotal moment in her career came when she saw the work of Japanese abstract expressionist, Tsugio Hattori who became her teacher and mentor until his death in 1998. Today her art reflects both African and Asian influences in color and style.
Cassandra Jennings Hall's work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, universities and corporations as well as in private and corporate art collections in the New York metropolitan area. Jennings Hall continues to live and work in New Jersey.
Doug Clow
June 14 through July 12, 2008 - Opening Reception June 14, 6-8 pmAn exhibition of his series of small scale, 8"x10", oil on linen paintings by artist Doug Clow. Doug began painting in the early 1970's and now lives and paints in his studio in Hudson, NY. His work has been shown at the Westbeth Gallery in New York City, The Woodstock Artist's Association, the Woodstock Framing Company and the ADD Gallery in Hudson.
He studied at the Westbeth Studios and the Arts Student League in New York City and has a Liberal Arts Degree with concentrations in painting, drawing, and anthropology from Plattsburgh State University.
His range of work travels from a gestural representation to pieces that are completely non-objective. He considers himself to be a formalist and when working thinks about line, form, color, tone and edges.
The Center Hall Gallery is open every day, 12 to 5 p.m. The Hudson Opera House is located at 327 Warren Street. For further information about this exhibition, please call the Opera House at (518) 822-1438.