The Arts

In America, Cornell St. Studios Fall Art Show
Come celebrate Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America with Cornell St. Studios this October. The gallery will be exhibiting an eclectic collection of artwork that pays a special tribute to a beautiful country that offers so many inspiring visions. Whether it be a drawing of an American steamboat or a photograph of a scenic landscape, the show will be a representation of America. And, with 30 local artists (of all different ages and backgrounds), there will be a wide range of mediums on display including photographs, watercolors, embroideries, oil paintings, sculptures, drawings and much more. Each of the artists has their own style and unique way of displaying their work, which makes traveling around the spacious Cornell St. Studios a very interesting experience.

Among the 40 fine artists in this show are the featured group the Quintet Photographers Capturing Life. Artists Madelyn Livoti- Garstak, Daniel Paul Potter, Marilynn Potter, Thomas Vaillancourt, and Renee Zernitsky formed a body of 70 photographs that capture moments in time of nature, people and the experiences they have encountered traveling and living in the United States. They say this collection of work not only expresses their love of photography but also reflects their individuality. In addition to the featured group, the show contains many talented artists who are also excited to share their individuality and deepest inspirations with viewers.

Cornell St. Studios opened its doors in December 2007 and owner Kenneth Darmstadt is currently working on developing a darkroom offering studio hours and classes. Also available are dance/art studios and office space for rent by the hour, day, week, and month. In America marks Cornell St. Studios’ seventh art show. The opening is on October 10 from 6 pm to 9:30 pm, and will include live music by Joey Eppard, David Haight, Fire Child and Anthony Masington. There will also be hors d’oeuvres , and of course lots of art to enjoy. The show will be on display until November 30. All are welcome, and please bring a friend!

A suggested donation of $10 for the opening reception is greatly appreciated. This will cover volunteers, food and all the hard work put into this show. Cornell St. Studios is located in the Darmstadt Overhead Doors building at 168 Cornell Street in Kingston, NY. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 9 am to 5 pm. Please contact the gallery at 845 331 0191(ask for Ken or Renée) for more information, or e-mail: rdarmstadt514@gmail.com.

Sublim(e)inal Abstraction at Windham Fine Arts
Windham Fine Arts’ fall exhibit, Sublim(e)inal Abstraction, strives to address that peculiar moment that can happen when you spend time in front of a work of art, that perhaps isn’t directly referencing the reality “out there”…. What moment is that? The Sublime, the Liminal, the Subliminal. What of that moment, when you look and look, and recalibrate your interior, with or without the words to describe the transition? Do you cross between the nonverbal experience, the sensational and trip up into and over the consciousness and struggle to verbalize what just happened? Leaving aside the art history and the post-modern arguments over the following terms, such as the “Sublime,” let us simply refer to the feeling of inspiration or awe almost too exquisite to bear, experienced in time and place. Liminal refers to thresholds, the space so permeous to both entry and exit, the transgression of some boundary physical, psychological, spiritual, worldly and unworldly, interiors and exteriors. And the place where some agent works below the threshold of sensation or consciousness, where apprehension of some mystery occurs without all the jargon, the verbiage, the fumbling through the “not this, not this”—that is the Subliminal. Kya Espenscheid, John D. Greene, Satish Joshi, Michael Kessler and Deidre Leber (artists who have contributed to this exhibit) all dance through these spaces, these processes.

WFA is very pleased to introduce to the east coast the work of Kya Espenscheid. Kya lives and works in Milwaukee, WI. Using various media, Kya gives over to the experience of creating expressive forms. Whether using thick swirls of color, saturated paint on canvas, bubbling forms rising to the upper edge of paper, or more delineated structures on rusted steel, her work is lush and bold. Espenscheid earned a degree in Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Milwaukee. She has created murals and custom fine art throughout the U.S. and Canada.

For John Greene, the use of materials that come from the earth—such as copper or lead, which are very durable yet transform over time—is essential. He also frequently employs beeswax for its characteristics of both translucency and opacity. While earthy, the works in this exhibit also have a meditative quality, as if some transcendent experience known only to the artist is being played out on the canvas. Greene has shown extensively on the East Coast and lives in upstate New York.

Satish Joshi’s series of carved wood block prints combine his attraction to working in both two and three dimensions. Satish carves wood with organic line movements that can feel like reeds, tall grasses, the sweep of receding ocean on sand. He then paints and prints the relief resulting in individual monoprints on paper that are at once bold and delicate in design and color relationships. Satish was born in India in 1945. He graduated from the New Delhi College of Art in 1968 with an honors degree in painting and printmaking.

Michael Kessler is widely known for art that is not representational, but extremely evocative of nature. His works are almost lyrical musings on the processes of nature , created in dozens of layers of whisper-thin acrylic paint applied in an invented process that results in rich colors, loops and topographical ridgelines under a smooth finish. He has won both the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and the Pollock/Krasner Award for painting.

Deidre Leber’s small works in this show are the only ones with a specifically recognizable reference to the figure. She works in subtly balanced colors, deftly interweaving many layers with the palette knife. Leber’s recent work has explored the female form in water. Leber’s work describes an element that is referenced but not depicted in the other works in this exhibit. The hint of human immersion within the environment reminds us that we are both of the “world” and its elements and also capable of abstraction from that experience. Leber has an MFA from Brooklyn College and lives in the Hudson Valley.

For each of these artists, process is imperative. Words like “surprise,” “discovery,” “subconscious,” “elemental,” “threshold” and “joy” pepper the language they use to describe what they do. To each, the play of paint and subconscious exploration matter immensely. They each take great pleasure in the unintentional discoveries that occur while creating. And yet, none are undisciplined. Contrary to a popular perception about the “free spirited artist,” the most productive, artistically successful and self-sufficient ones are those who make the consistent time and space to apply themselves to their craft, whether the mood or the muse is present or not! Muse, vision, eros are indeed native, but there is an elemental submission to the superego that allows these artists to consistently create a visual body of work for the rest of us to appreciate!

Sublim(e)inal Abstraction runs from October 3 through December 6. An opening reception will be held on October 10: please RSVP at info@windhamfinearts.com or call 518 734 6850. Windham Fine Arts is located at 5380 Main Street in Windham, NY. Gallery hours are Friday, Sunday and Monday from 12 to 5 pm, Saturday from 12 to 7 pm.

FilmColumbia Celebrates its 10th Year, October 22-25
FilmColumbia, celebrating it’s 10th year from October 22-25, has lined up films and events for the 2009 season.

Among the fifty plus features, documentaries and shorts to be screened at venues throughout Main Street in Chatham are: the Chilean film, La Nana/The Maid, which won the Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance; The Men Who Stare at Goats, starring George Clooney; Terry Gilliam’s latest film, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, which features Heath Ledger’s last film role; The White Ribbon, winner of Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival; Pirate Radio, starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Kenneth Branagh; Fish Tank, winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival, and That Evening Sun, starring Hal Holbrook and Audience Award winner at the SXSW Film Festival.

As well as the film lineup during the four day film festival, there will be panels, script reading and FilmColumbia’s White Tent Dance Party on Saturday, October 24. Details to be announced.

For more information and to reserve tickets for the festival, which sell out each year, visit www.filmcolumbia.com. In 2008, 6,000 tickets were sold.

At Bard College: American Symphony Orchestra Begins its 2009–10 Season, Three World
Premieres by the American Ballet Theater, and New Albion Weekend with Terry Riley
The American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director, announces another year of exceptional orchestral music. This year will mark the first of a two-year Beethoven Celebration. Highlights of the 2009-10 season include Beethoven’s first five symphonies—some of the most beautiful symphonic music ever written. All concerts are preceded by a 6:45 pm preconcert talk, given by a music scholar, in the Sosnoff Theater.

The season kicks off on Friday, October 16 and Saturday, October 17, 2009, with a concert featuring the Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21 and the Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36 by Ludwig van Beethoven. Other works will include the U.S. premiere of The Show Goes On, Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, by Shulamit Ran featuring Laura Flax on clarinet; and the Concerto for Timpany and Orchestra by Harold Farberman featuring Jonathan Haas on timpani.

The season continues on Friday, February 5 and Saturday, February 6, 2010, with works by Bruckner and Beethoven. The final concerts of the season will be on Friday, April 23 and Saturday, April 24, with a program featuring works by Shostakovich and Beethoven.

Don’t miss this opportunity to hear one of the most exceptional orchestras in the northeast. Of their performance at the 18th Bard Music Festival (Elgar and His World), as the festival’s resident orchestra, The New York Times wrote: “ … the [American Symphony] orchestra, superbly responsive to Mr. Botstein’s driven interpretation, sounded exceptional.”

From Friday, October 2 through Sunday, October 4, the American Ballet Theatre returns to the Fisher Center for its second annual weekend on the stage of the Sosnoff Theater. The acclaimed ABT dancers will perform world premieres by three visionary choreographers, plus two classic ballets from ABT’s repertoire, to live music. Clive Barnes of the New York Post said that “One of the most beautiful sights in dance is American Ballet Theatre in full flight.”

World Premieres at this performance will include a work choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky, ABT Artist in Residence, featuring music by Domenico Scarlatti; a work choreographed by Aszure Barton, featuring music by Maurice Ravel; and a work choreographed by Benjamin Millepied, featuring music by David Lang. ABT will also perform Jerome Robbins’ Other Dances (1976), featuring music by Frédéric Chopin.

And on Friday, October 9 and Saturday, October 10, Minimalist pioneer Terry Riley and a stellar roster of instrumentalists perform works from Riley’s Book of Abbeyozzud and more, including Dias de los Muertos, Cantos Desiertos, Cancion Desierto, Darshan, Tango Ladiado, The Moonshine Sonata, Piedad and Las Puertas. Performers include Terry Riley, keyboards; Gyan Riley, guitar; Tracy Silverman, strings; David Tanenbaum, guitar, and William Winant, percussion. Izvestia has called Terry Riley “…the greatest composer pianist since Prokofiev.”

All performances take place in the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on the Bard College Campus. To purchase tickets, log on to fishercenter.bard.edu, or call 845 758 7900.

Catskill Gallery Association Announces October Studio Tour in the Village of Catskill
The Catskill Gallery Association is pleased to present our Second Annual Catskill Village Artist Studio Tour, Columbus Day Weekend, Saturday, October 10, 2009. Launched in 2008 as part of the CGA’s ongoing Saturday Studios program, the tour will feature open studios of artists located in the Village of Catskill and will highlight the importance of the village as a center for contemporary art.

The first tour’s success involved approximately 200 visitors to eight studios, eight galleries and two museums, including the Greene County Council on the Arts and the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, the latter of which will start the tour with its historic studio space. This year’s program includes artists’ studios in the surrounding area of Catskill as well as the Village itself.

This year’s artists include the following, with more to come: Julie Chase and Dina Bursztyn, Tasha Depp, Edith Marcik and Terence Barrell, Linda Law, Lee Anne Morgan, Portia Munson and Jared Handelsman, Fawn Potash and Susan Wides

The tour will take place from noon until 5 pm; from 5 to 8 pm, visitors are invited to join CGA galleries and special Main Street locations for a street-long post-tour reception, enjoy refreshments and conversation with area artists as you visit exhibitions and special installations. Participating galleries include: M Gallery, Union Mills, Brik, The Greene County Council on the Arts, Play of Light, Gallery 42, City Pictures and Day and Holt

The tour is free. All participants must sign up at either the Thomas Cole National Historic Site or the Greene County Council on the Arts to receive a button and a map of tour sites. All studios and galleries will be marked on the map and signed with small flags/numbered signs. Some sites may not be handicapped accessible. It is not necessary to sign up for the gallery openings or evening events.

For more information, visit www.catskillgalleryassociation.com.

Greene Room Players’ KIDS! and Company … They’re Back!
Here is a fantastic way to celebrate autumn in the Catskills! This extravagant event is a dynamic musical revue that showcases the best of young talent from the Hudson Valley Region. The Greene Room Players, a not-for-profit organization, with director Linda Nicholls, thrill audiences time and again with their fast-paced, high-energy musicals. For over a decade, previous sold-out performances have wowed spectators of all ages with selections from Broadway shows, movies, pop and standards. KIDS! and Company 2009 is sure to continue the Greene Room Players’ long tradition of professional quality, uplifting entertainment. If you have never seen a KIDS! performance, you can’t imagine what you are missing. It must be experienced! An ear-to-ear smile, lingering long after the curtain closes, is a guarantee.

KIDS! and Company 2009 is one show you won’t want to miss. Over 40 of the Catskill Mountains’ most talented kids are going to sing, dance, and knock your socks off with their incredible showcase of Broadway and popular tunes! Spectacular medleys, (including Transylvania Mania, just in time for Halloween) will be performed by these remarkable young voices.

This fundraising event will be held on October 22-24, 2009 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, October 25 at 2:00 at the Doctorow Center for the Arts (map), (located in the Hunter Movie Theater) on Main Street in Hunter, NY. Tickets are available at the door, but can be purchased in advance in several locations. Call 518 589 6297 for more information.

Covered Bridges, New Works by Inverna Lockpez, Featured at Chace-Randall Gallery
Chace-Randall Gallery proudly presents Covered Bridges, new paintings by Inverna Lockpez, from October 2 through November 8. A reception for the artist will be held on Saturday, October 3, from 5 to 7 pm.

In this new body of work, 12 glorious canvasses, Inverna Lockpez once again celebrates the rich history of the Catskill Mountains. This time she paints covered bridges.

Although the bridge structures are at the center of the canvasses, the magnificent Catskill landscape takes center stage. Ms. Lockpez’s use of color and tone transmit mood, and her brushstrokes enhance emotion. We feel in her paintings the roughness of the wood, the grandeur of our forests and the purity and transparency of our water.

Nature and man-made structures are recognizable although Lockpez dissolves the hard outlines of forms into surrounding space. Her canvasses are intimate places where illusion and enlightenment cannot be separated, and where fleeting fragments of nature are captured in painterly brushstrokes.

Inverna Lockpez, a native of Cuba and well-known painter/curator in New York City, built a studio in the Catskills in the 1980’s because the misty mountains with their many creeks and rivers reminded her of her native country. Her accomplishments are numerous: While living in Manhattan she won a major outdoor competition for a 25-foot sculpture under the auspices of The Municipal Art Society. She received grants from The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS), CINTAS Foundation and a CETA award. By the nineties her paintings had already been part of more than 80 exhibits around the country and for her work she received three NYSCA Decentralization Grants administered by the Roxbury Arts Group. Her book, The Noble Barn, was released last year to favorable reviews.

Ms. Lockpez is currently the director of the Catskill Center’s Erpf Gallery, Arkville, and its Platte Clove residency, where her ecological and artistic concerns naturally meld.

“Inverna Lockpez is a painter who not only serves to honor the legendary beauty of these mountains, but will one day be a part of that legend. She is undeniably one of the most important painters in our region. The covered bridge series is brilliant,” maintains Chace-Randall Gallery owner/director Zoe Randall.

Chace-Randall Gallery is located at 49 Main Street in Andes, NY. Autumn gallery hours are Friday through Sunday and Holiday Mondays from 11 am to 5 pm and by appointment. For more information, call 845 676 4901 or visit www.chacerandallgallery.com.

World Premiere of the NEW Colorado String Quartet in Saugerties
The Colorado String Quartet is recognized on four continents as one of the finest string quartets on the international scene. Saugerties Pro Musica is proud to present their world premiere with the newest member of the quartet, cellist Katie Schlaikjer.

On October 18, 2009, Katie was scheduled to perform with pianist Leon Livshin at the Saugerties Pro Musica concert. Instead, as the newest member of the prestigious Colorado String Quartet, she will be appearing on the same day with the other quartet members for their first public performance together! It is a thrilling development for a very talented musician and for Saugerties Pro Musica concertgoers in general.

The Colorado Quartet’s inspiring style combines a deep scholarly knowledge of the quartet literature with energy, passion and a focus on fine details. Members of the Colorado String Quartet are winners of both the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award; their performances are noted for their musical integrity, impassioned playing and lyrical finesse.

The Colorado Quartet was most recently Quartet-in-Residence at Bard College in New York State, where Quartet members taught private lessons, coached chamber ensembles and presented courses on the Literature of the String Quartet. Last season’s Bard Conservatory of Music Concert at Saugerties Pro Musica featured students of the Quartet in a brilliant performance. This year, on November 22 at 3 pm, in the concert following the Colorado String Quartet’s, Bard students will again perform. Then, the Holiday in the Village open house on December 6 will feature the Strawberry Hill Fiddlers.

Tickets for the October 18 Colorado String Quartet concert will sell out quickly! Season ticket holders are guaranteed seating. Season tickets are available for $50 and include all scheduled concerts. That includes performances by jazz pianist Lee Shaw, organist Gregory D’Agostino, the Palisades Virtuosi Trio, the Vinca String Quartet and many other brilliant musicians—one concert a month through next May.

All concerts are on Sunday at 3 pm at the Saugerties United Methodist Church on the corner of Washington Avenue & Post Street. Adults are $12, Seniors $10 and Students with ID are always FREE! For more information, visit www.saugertiespromusica.org or call 845 246 5021.

Jane Carr and Bill Lee at the B Sharp Gallery, Oneonta
The B Sharp Gallery is pleased to present Catskill Landscapes, pastel, egg tempera and watercolor paintings by Bill Lee and Jane Carr. The show will run from October 3 through October 24. An opening reception for the artists will be held on Saturday, October 3, from 4 to 8 pm.

The B Sharp Gallery is located at 736 State Highway 28 South in Oneonta. For more information, call 607 432 2322.