Signs of Life

As I'm sure I mentioned before, I returned from my extended out in Denver late in the evening on Second Saturday, missing the openings, partially due to an unfortunate incident in Scranton involving the SUV in front of me and a beautiful collie. In all of my numerous cross country drives, if any in transit difficulties or headaches occur, they inevitably happen in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the bane of my interstate life, and it always stands firmly between me and my destination. I hope the collie ended up ok; we loaded it into the back seat of a pizza delivery guy's car.

But that's not the point of this post.

Karlos emailed me a couple of days after my saying he had taken photos of the openings including the opening of Hermitage. I was like, what the hell is Hermitage? And he was like, like it's this great new space that opened on Saturday around the corner from the Howland Center. You should stop by. And I was like, yes, I will.

Jon and Christian in the bookstore.

So I did. This past Saturday, I went down and met the two people responsible for the joint, Christian Toscano and Jon Beacham, both artists and both recently relocated to Beacon. Upon entering the house in which Hermitage is housed, you step into a narrow wood panelled room that houses the book store portion of the space. As expressed in the statement below, the book store "focuses on small press publishing in America from the 1950's and 1970's."

Hermitage by night

The exhibition space occupies a good portion of the rest of the first floor and the second floor. Currently, on exhibit through January 1, "Overgrowth," mixed media drawings and paintings by Chris Oh.

Works by Chris Oh.

The place feels great. Clean in spirit and raw in energy, it's refreshing to see a new context for viewing art and experiencing creative intent here in town. I wish them well. Hermitage and Open Space, which sprung up suddenly several months back both have a focused, and unique program which I think will add wonderfully to what is available in Beacon's creative scene.

The view out of a 2nd flr window.
Hermitage is located at 12 Tioranda Ave., and it's open Thurs - Sun 12-6pm, Friday and Saturday til 8pm. The phone number is (845)765-1650.