On for the weekend

A new exhibit opens today at the Howland Cultural Center. “Changing Expressions” - a celebration of Latino-American Artists is a group show featuring many local artists. The opening is happening today from 3-5pm.

Tonight at 7pm, Open Space will host a reading and book signing by left-wing political cartoonist and Beacon local David Rees. Note that this event is not suitable for children.

Tomorrow in Peekskill: HVCCA is hosting a free arts day. Admission to the museum is free all day from 12-6pm. Here's what's planned for the day:
2:00pm: Docent Tour of ORIGINS exhibition led by HVCCA President / Co-Founder Dr. Livia Straus.
3:00pm: Special music performance by the Westchester Symphonic Winds clarinet and saxophone quartets.
4:00pm: Gallery talk with HVCCA’S 2008 Artist-in-Residence Karen Sargsyan.
Also at 4pm, a ceremony will be held at which the museum will receive at $20,000 grant from Consulate General of the Netherlands New York (CGNY) for the Public Tile Program.
About the program:

The Public Tile Project is an arts and education initiative that unites the
students of the Hudson Valley with their Dutch heritage. The project
incorporates over 1500 individual tiles/artwork created by students from over 30
schools etc commemorating historic events, persons, geographical history, flora
and fauna of the region in the style of Dutch Delft tile painting. When fully
installed throughout Peekskill, the tiles will become a permanent marker along a
1 1/2 mile historic trail beginning at the Museum and ending at the river. The
final installment of the tiles will culminate with a ceremony during the Dutch
Quadricentennial Saturday, September 12th, 2009.

Clara Gould Art Fund, Hudson Invitational Exhibit and Talk at Van Brunt....and touching hands.....

Van Brunt Gallery and the Howland Cultural Center are hosting an event to launch the Clara Lou Gould Fund for the Arts. This fund, named for Beacon's previous Mayor of 18 years, Clara Lou Gould, under the auspices of the Community Fund of Dutchess County and BACA, will "fund Beacon projects not generally supported by other area arts organizations, including individual artist’s projects, unique exhibitions, performance or public art projects, arts education programs, and community projects that promote area artists and arts activities and that draw attention to the valuable role of arts and culture in our community." Tickets for Friday's event are $100. For more information, and to order tickets online, click here.


Part of the events for the evening will include a preview of the Hudson Invitational exhibit at Van Brunt. The exhibit, which is being presented by Van Brunt Gallery in association with Curcio Projects, and which is co-curated by Jennifer Mackiewicz, relates to the Sitelines Art Fair program that was scheduled for last May but cancelled shortly before.
The art fair was/is intended to highlight contemporary art venues, both commercial and non profit, active throughout the Hudson Valley.

The panel discussion that is accompanying the Hudson Valley Invitational Exhibit is scheduled for Sept 14 at 3pm - at Van Brunt Gallery - and it will touch upon the topic of the present and future of the arts in the Hudson Valley.

The discussion will be moderated by Almanac Weekly Art Critic Paul Smart. Participating panelists include: Benjamin Krevolin, board president of the Dutchess County Council on the Arts, Norm Magnusson, known for his allegoric paintings, his faux historic roadside signs, and his Funism.com website, Tom Roe, founder of Wave Farm in Greene County and a leading proponent of the new Transmission Arts movement, currently on view at the SUNY Purchase's Neuberger Museum. Also on the panel are Sparrow, author/poet/critic, Robert The, Kingston-based conceptual and book artist with a background in philosophy, Christina Varga, Woodstock gallery owner and Brian Wallace, curator at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY-New Paltz. The panel will be streamed live on free103point9 Transmission Art Radio via a link at www.free103point9.org, or tune in by pasting http://comm.free103point9.org:8000/vanbrunt.mp3.m3u into your media player. to have

I've written a bit in previous posts about how I though the art fair could potentially set certain conditions serve to feed and connect the region's artists and venues in a way that would bridge the distance between the HV art communities. By that I mean that the corollary events and projects that would pop up around a successful fair might create a gravitational force that would draw more people into a collaborative relationship. I'd heard of gripes about why this thing was happening in Beacon. Why not? Of course, there's no reason that it couldn't happen in Peekskill, Hudson or Kingston, it just never has. Of course it hasn't happened in Beacon yet either. A possible remedy to assuage this griping might be to organize the fair as a series of contemporaneous events that would be happening in a number of communities up an down the river. However, I think it would prove to be a poor strategy for it would simply disperse the energy of such an event over such a large footprint as to dilute the potential impact of a shared moment and place and it would reinforce the art community breach as exists now. If maximum impact, participation, and variety desired effects, I think a better solution would be to hold such an event in a different city every year. Logistically, this would be more difficult, but the potential for collaborative creativity, as well as dynamic, evolving presentation could create that cultural gravity and excite and equally dynamic of artists/venues to participate. To some extent, the concept would be that of an annual nomadic convention, or model of the Olympic Games.


In the spirit of cross community interaction, a panel talk was held last Saturday as part of the recently completed 2008 Windows on Main St. project. The talk, which looked at the aspects of artists working in the public sphere, covered WOMS in context with the Peekskill Project, represented by Michael Natiello, and the 10x10x10 project in Ellenville with the creator of that project Judy Sigunick . The talk was scantily attended, and virtually all in attendance were either on the panel, or in some way affiliated with the projects discussed, but what occured, was an excellent discussion about the artists' experiences of working among the public in traditionally non art locations. Basically was a sharing of the obstacles, the rewards and the discoveries common among the projects. It was also enlightening to learn about the artists' activities that so closely parallel one another, demonstrating some wonderful affinities.

The fact that Sunday's talk at Van Brunt will be streamed live on the internet (thanks to Free 103point9)alone is exciting. I'd like to see more talks/art events in the area streamed or otherwise shared more profusely online. It's hard to make it out to too much, and there's not a lot out there that represents the goings on in the various communities. I wish there was more.

Learning from losing and moving in tribes

It was a largely out of town audience that benefited from the Howland Center's refreshingly cool geothermic climate control for Sunday evening's screening of Beautiful Losers. The film was presented by Open Space and follows the circle of artists embodying the DIY ethic (one to which I fully subscribe) who congregated at the Alleged Gallery in NY's East Village in the early 1990's.

The film traces the history of the group through to the development of the exhibit of the same name that travelled about the country in 2004-05.

The film is fun, interesting and for me, as Kalene Rivers said in her pre-screening introduction, inspiring.

In casting about on the net for Beautiful Losers info, I discovered that Beautiful Losers is also the title of a novel from the '60's by Leonard Cohen. From the book's listing on Amazon:

One of the best-known experimental novels of the 1960s, Beautiful Losers is
Cohen’s most defiant and uninhibited work. The novel centres upon the hapless
members of a love triangle united by their sexual obsessions and by their
fascination with Catherine Tekakwitha, the 17th-century Mohawk saint.
By turns vulgar, rhapsodic, and viciously witty, Beautiful Losers explores
each character’s attainment of a state of self-abandonment, in which the
sensualist cannot be distinguished from the saint.

Although I'm not sure about the whole love triangle bit (although you know what happens with close knit circles of creative types, or any types for that matter), the last sentence could easily apply the youngish artists depicted in the film. The manner in which their work is carved from and wallpapered onto every surface of their physical and psychic environment and, consequently, ours blurs the borders of high and low, real and fake, random act and polished intention. Much of this is done in the public domain, as it were, whether it's obvious or not, and irritating a desire for Asserting their vision on the street scape, and vice-versa are utterly immersed.A wonderful aspect of this genre of street art is its marriage of personal expression and personal preservation in that it is both out on the fringe in method, but it's also enveloped in a raw form of marketing and merchandising necessary for the survival of the young, impoverished artist. It's a way of life, and at least at some level, it doesn't carry so much of the stigma of selling out one's vision for financial gain, as in other corners of the art world, because it's not based on a pretense of higher purpose. I know this is not absolute, and that there are rifts along this line within this world, which is discussed by Barry McGee in the film, but there is an inherent relationship between creating and consuming a form of culture of one's choosing which is not being provided elsewhere which translates easily to commerce as that is a form cultural missionary work. How else are you going to remake the world in your vision, if the world is not providing you with what you want to see, wear and represent. That's a pretty central tenet of the whole street art phenom. Eventually, homemade becomes prefab. Mike Mills discusses this in the film when he says that these artists and their peers have reached the upper levels of art departments in advertising and merchandising firms, and have thereby influenced the tone in which the rest of society is entreated to consume. Where once they defiled the billboards, some are now designing them - awaiting defilement from a new generation. It's a beautiful circle of life.
Waiting for the film to begin, Keith Zahra was telling me of upcoming plans at the gallery., Keith said that he's continually learning something new from the exhibits that have been coming through the space, including the current exhibit. The Native American Lowbrow exhibit on view now with work by Chris Pappan includes, in addition to the painted portraits of Native American porn stars, several drawings on ledger paper. The significance of these ledger drawings goes far beyond one artist utilizing available material, but invokes a tradition that hearkens back to the Plains Indians attaining paper in the Nineteenth Century, in the form of ledger books carried by soldiers, missionaries and traders. The presence of this newly available material influenced the manner Native Americans transmitted their visual culture:

In the mid-nineteenth century, warrior-artists developed a new genre of
figurative arts using bound ledger books and paper to depict heraldic images of
life on the Plains-both before and during this tumultuous period of history.
While these nineteenth century warrior-artists documented the impact of
conflict, captivity, and cultural domination in their ledger drawings, their
twentieth century descendants continued to use visual narratives on paper as a
stepping stone into mainstream American fine arts practices. Today, many
contemporary artists look back to the ledger drawings of their forefathers to
create art that critiques America's contested histories while also reconciling
themselves with the cultural genocide of a past that has left severe scars in
the lives and memories of many Plains peoples.

Excerpt from wall text in the exhibit Picturing Change: The Impact of Ledger Drawings on Native American Art at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2004

Fast forward 150 years and still flowing is that current of of creative inventiveness, continually forging fresh means in which to transpose visual expression, piggy-back like, onto the hulk of society's continual walk to work.

One Final Note, Dan Weise, of Open Space has been down in the Dominican Republic teaching a class on street art, murals, and, it seems, a bit of web/graphic design. Check out the diary of his trip here.
So, imagine a case where a lowered brow, constricting the aperture through which knowledge and ideas are received by the consciousness, increases the pressure of that flow to the level of a powerful jet, thereby severely expanding the mind. And permanently so.

Beautiful Losers screening at Howland Center, July 20, 6pm

Marc Schriebman pities all of the less-than-beautiful losers of the world.

*Note that Marc's only affiliation with the film is that he was standing next
to this flyer when I came upon him on the street.

Open Space is hosting a screening of the film Beautiful Losers at the Howland Cultural Center on Sunday, July 20 starting at 6pm.

Beautiful Losers Synopsis:

Beautiful Losers celebrates the spirit behind one of the most influential
cultural movements of a generation. In the early 1990's a loose-knit group of
likeminded outsiders found common ground at a little NYC storefront gallery.
Rooted in the DIY (do-it-yourself) subcultures of skateboarding, surf, punk, hip
hop & graffiti, they made art that reflected the lifestyles they led.
Developing their craft with almost no influence from the "establishment" art
world, this group, and the subcultures they sprang from, have now become a
movement that has been transforming pop culture. Starring a selection of artists
who are considered leaders within this culture, Beautiful Losers focuses on the
telling of personal stories...speaking to themes of what happens when the
outside becomes "in" as it explores the creative ethos connecting these artists
and today's youth.

Seating is limited. Tickets are $8 and you can purchase them Here.

Art-Yoga Retreat, Jan 26 at Howland Cultural Center

Carrie and Stacey Ward Kelley will be leading an all day Art-Yoga Retreat next Saturday at the Howland Cultural Center.

When: Saturday, January 26, 2008 9am-6pm
Where: The Howland Cultural Center, 477 Main Street, Beacon, New York
12508 (845) 831-4988, www.howlandculturalcenter.org
Cost: $135 Includes art materials.
Pre-registration is required and space is limited.
How: In order to register call Stacey at 845-401-8798 or email us at
cwkyoga@yahoo.com. For more information about this retreat and other
classes, workshops and retreats visit us online at www.giraffeandturtle.com

Who:
Giraffe and Turtle is the virtual yoga-art studio brainchild of Carrie and
Stacey Ward Kelly. The Ward Kelly’s offer classes and workshops to adults
and children in the visual arts and yoga as well as adult retreats in Yoga, Art
& Shamanic journeys in the Hudson Valley, NY area and the San Francisco Bay
area.

January 5, openings at Go North and Howland Cultural Center

On Saturday, the Howland Cultural Center at 477 Main St. will be hosting a reception from 3-5pm for the new exhibit, "I See...You See", a show of photography by eleven artists.
The participating photographers are: Dina V. Cozolino, John Cozolino, John Fasulo, Linda Hubbard, Russell Johansen, Zack Joyce, Mike Jurkovic, Peter McGivney, Susanne Moss, Robert Rodriguez, & Barbara Stephens

From 6-9, nearly next door, Go North will be holding a reception from 6-9pm for the opening of Erica Hauser's "Paint Job", an exhibit of recent paintings and drawings.
The gallery Press Release:
Erica Hauser’s work is indelibly linked to travel in its various forms. Driving around upstate New York, wandering through woods and along sidewalks, unearthing old photographs or digging in antique shops is how Hauser finds inspiration for her paintings and drawings of old trucks, cars, and handmade signs. The beauty and subtle humor she finds in these abandoned objects translate into an appealing sense of familiarity for both herself and the viewer. Hauser explains that painting allows her to transport others back to a particular place in time, whether to imagine a story, appreciate the details, or slip into nostalgic reverie.

Time spent observing and painting helps Hauser to prolong her experience of these objects and places. A glimpse of peeling paint or automotive rust might be enough to pull her off the road for a closer look. Hauser states: “I am interested in the effects of weather, light, love or neglect upon surfaces, and in the textures of rust, wood, and gleaming chrome.” Hauser’s precise handling of paint faithfully represents these textures and effects of light without overstating the subjects’ nostalgic associations. Her antiquarian imagery registers as consistently cool, tempered as it is by her documentarian’s sense of objectivity, and graciously allows the viewer to time-travel and fill in the backstory.

Hauser holds a B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in NYC, and has studied at the Art Students League and Cornell University. She has shown her work at the Edward Hopper House in Nyack, Washington Sq. East Gallery in NYC, and the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, NY.

"Calling Out" at Howland Center, Dec 15 7pm

The Howland Center will be hosting Calling Out 07: Visions and voices of Beacon. Described as a "a stirring “Intergenerational Evening of Drama, Poetry & Music," the performance includes performances by five women of different ages.

Calling Out cast members include Goldee Greene, with Hedina Cristiner, Dareshanie Graham, Sanaa Shabazz, Sarah-Elisabeth and Michelle Rhone-Collins.
Beacon High School teen performers are Pamela Gadsden and Tatiana Hunter. Gwenno James is production designer.
Most material is written/created by Ms. Greene, Ms. Christiner, Ms. Graham and Ms. Hunter. Additional material provided by Jack Sine, past staff writer of the Beacon Dispatch.
A Question & Answer session + refreshments will follow the show.
Donation: $5.00 Adults Children under 14 free.

Aug 18, 2pm Go North talk presented at the Howland Cultural Center

This coming Saturday, Aug 18, Go North is sponsoring a talk that is being held in conjunction with the gallery's current "Out of Line" exhibit.
The talk "Drafting a Common (Abstract) Language: Seismosis as Conversation" will be conducted by John Keene and Christopher Stackhouse.

“Drafting a Common (Abstract) Language:
Seismosis as Conversation”. Co-authors of the book Seismosis (1913 Press, 2006),
John Keene and Christopher Stackhouse will explore the process and practice of
conversation across and through distinctive generic lines--visual art and
literature--by discussing and reading poems from and selected texts related to
this collaborative project. Issues they hope to touch upon include the question
of formal and thematic abstraction in specific genres, its relation to questions
of race, identification, and authorial agency and autonomy, and the problematics
of interpretation. How can the artist and poet speak to each other, and are
there languages other than the ones they enact through which to enter their
conversation?

Porcine Preview #5, Aug 20 at the Howland Cultural Center

Flying Swine's fifth Porcine Preview staged reading will happen on Monday, Aug. 20 at the Howland Cultural Center. Deborah Brevoort's Signs of Life will be the selected reading.

The Porcine Previews are Free to the Public, and yes, donations are welcome.
Reservations can be made by calling: (845) 454-3222

June 24 panel discussion on printmaking

(l-r) Elizabeth Winchester, Phil Sanders, Lisa Mackie, Patricia Phagan, Paul Smart

I commend Elizabeth Winchester, and bau on the program that has accompanied the bau 30 exhibit.
I haven't seen the exhibit, but I did attend the panel discussion held last Sunday at the Howland Cultural Center.

The panel discussion was called "Still Relevant: Printmaking in Contemporary Art." Discussion started off with Vassar Drawing and Prints Curator, Patricia Phagan giving a brief history of printmaking through the 20th Century.

The panel discussed where the medium of printmaking stands currently, with many University Art Departments dismantling printmaking programs, competition from digital media, and the apparent lack of attention given to art prints by collectors.

Given the name of the talk, I was almost expecting a woeful lamentation by a group feeling marginalized within the greater art world. Fortunately this was not the case. Examples given by Lisa Mackie of the Lisa H. Mackie Studio, and Phil Sanders, Director & Master Printer at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop both gave examples of their interactions with artists of other media exploring various applications of the printmaking process. They also discussed advances in the process including the option of non toxic inks and chemicals now available.

Around 30 people were in attendance at the Howland which is a great asset to the community for just this type of event, and I'm pleased that bau chose to hold the talk there.

This was a great discussion between a group of people who are very knowledgeable and passionate about the topic. It's something we don't get enough of. It also stirred within me that compulsive desire to start pulling prints again.

PS. just a plug for the Howland which is in the middle of a fund drive to go green with a geo-thermal heating and cooling system.