ArtSpace

By Sue Stovall

The artist Leroy Young in his remarkable calendar of prints said of this month, "February came and went as I watched February come and go." Not truly Winter and certainly not yet Spring, isn't it so that we tend to regard February not so much for it's own merit but as a time in which we wait. If this "waiting-month" is a natural part of our year, may I suggest that a wonderful way to spend it is to look leisurely and long at the superb art that is on view in the museums, artspaces and galleries throughout our region.



Carrie Haddad, the owner of Carrie Haddad Gallery, chose the title for her upcoming show "Fall in Love" because she loves Valentine's Day and the whole romance that happens in what she refers to as "this little month of February." From February 13 to March 16, Ms. Haddad will be showing five artists whose work she is in love with and several of whose work has been highlighted previously in this column. The artists to fall in love with are photographers Valerie Shaff and David Halliday and painters Dan Rupe, Judith Lamb and Donise English. Some of the works are romantic, like Mr. Halliday's soft focus, sepia toned landscapes and Judith Lamb's sweet little still lifes that look good enough to eat.



Valerie Shaff is showing a new series of fish photos recently shot in Nassau that explore the underwater love thing. Dan Rupe's recent paintings of houses and buildings in the city of Hudson are sure to please fans of both architecture and cityscapes. Donise English, who will be showing for the first time at Carrie Haddad Gallery, is going to shower viewers with the colors of love in soft abstract works made with beeswax and oil.



Ms. Haddad's exhibitions are always a delicious treat and this one is no exception.



The Carrie Haddad Gallery is located at 622 Warren Street in Hudson and is open Thursday through Monday from 11 am to 5 pm. For more information please call 518 828 1915.



In what promises to be an exciting exhibition at Delaware Valley Arts Alliance Gallery, the work of photographer Dana Duke and the ceramics of Judith Leire is being highlighted together from February 22 through March 14.



In Dana Duke's photographs, the viewer is enticed into considering the beauty and order of pure disorder. "Enticed" is surely the appropriate word because Mr. Duke's photographs are as seductive as they are interesting.



"Finding beauty in the most mundane and unnoticed subject matter is my main source of visual stimulation," said Mr. Duke. "Many of the irregular orders, which emerge from pure disorder, produce dynamic patterns that can mesmerize the viewer. What appears as total chaos can provide a wonderful, complicated web of surface beauty. So much can be missed if we look only at the obvious, ignoring the uncanny kinds of structures that subtly and intricately underlie our everyday lives."



Mr. Duke studied with Paul Caponigro and attended Rhode Island School of Design to study under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. In New York City, he worked for noted photographers Arnold Newman and Brice Davidson both of whom crossed the boundaries between fine art and commercial photography and influenced Mr. Duke to earn a living as a photographer while simultaneously following his fine art. Since the 70s, he has been pursuing his personal interest in abstract surface exploration while traveling the globe for major magazines, corporate clients and advertising agencies. His work has appeared in over 200 publications worldwide and is in numerous corporate collections.



Ms. Leire's ascent into ceramics was not at all straight forward. In fact, she came to work with clay serendipitously. She was set to sign up for a watercolor class when she was told that the teacher had retired and the class cancelled. She had free time and a ceramics class was available. Thus began her journey with clay.



"Ever since touching clay for the first time," said Ms. Leire "I have had a passion for its texture and the ‘natural pattern' that becomes revealed during the creative process." Spending most of her time in the country surrounded by nature has been a big influence on her work, which she describes as "functional." She uses both hand-building and wheel throwing to create her stunning trays, vessels and vases. "I roll slabs, stretch, cajole and at times imprint textures upon clay," she continued. "The clay is a canvas and the interaction between me and the clay results in designs and patters that form abstractions."



Delaware Valley Arts Alliance Gallery is located on 37 Main Street in Narrowsburg, NY. The opening reception is Saturday, February 22 from 2 to 4 pm. For more information, please call 845 252 7576.

Another wonderful show of photography by the noted 19th century photographer Carleton E. Watkins is now on view in the Elting Gallery of The Yager Museum at Hartwick College through April 6.



According to Professor of Art History and Interim Director of The Yager Museum Fiona Dejardin, who curated "Oneonta's Native Son: Carleton E. Watkins, Photographer," the exhibit contains 20 remarkable large-format, albumen, gold-toned photographs and 10 glass stereo cards of Mr. Watkins' work.



The photographer was born in Oneonta in 1829 and left his home to accompany Collis P. Huntington, a founder of the Central Pacific Railroad, to California during the gold rush. He traveled extensively throughout California, Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Montana and British Columbia taking photographs of the natural landscape. His 1860s photographs of Yosemite were instrumental in persuading Congress to establish American's national park system. While his work was praised by leading writers of the day, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mr. Watkins died destitute and forgotten in the Napa State Hospital for the Insane in Imola, California in 1916.



Joining this exhibition at The Yager Museum in the Van Ess Gallery is one titled "Tom Zetterstrom: Portraits of Trees." The show focuses on the environment and its preservation and runs though April 6. An ardent environmentalist, Mr. Zetterstrom's photographs demonstrate how ecosystems are interconnected and interdependent. While being an important educational tool, these photographs are also artistically exquisite and make clear Mr. Zetterstrom's passion for trees, particularly the American elm. He was a major force in founding the Elm Watch, which protects Elms through an "Adopt an Elm" program. In conjunction with the exhibition, Harwick College will plant an elm tree on Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22.



The exhibition is part of the college's year-long, in-depth look at sustainable living, a set of interrelated, consciously undertaken practices aimed at making decent forms of life possible on this planet through and beyond the foreseeable future. Hartwick's academic and co-curricular programs on sustainability are designed to explore, identify and understand the meaning and consequences of those practices in terms of the environment, economics and social justice.



Mr. Zetterstrom will visit Hartwick College on Thursday, March 6 to give a gallery talk about his work. His presentation is scheduled for 7 pm.



The Yager Museum at Hartwick College in Oneonta is open Tuesday through Sunday from noon to 4:30 pm. Admission is free. For more information, please call 607 431 4038.



February seems to be unfolding as a month for landscape exhibition whether they be of photographs or paintings. At Deborah Davis Fine Art, Inc. is a fascinating show highlighting the work of three Hudson Valley artists appropriately titled "Landscapes of the Hudson Valley." This show of paintings by F. E. Green, Barbara Messina and Jeremy Rugge-Price will run through February 24 and should not be missed.



F. E. Green says that he was drawn to the Hudson River Valley to paint because of its "type" of light, its history of landscape painting and the ever-changing atmosphere experienced when painting on site. His paintings embody a romantic quality that is meditative and captures the shifting atmospheric conditions of the region and expresses his relationship and love of the area.



Barbara Messina paints the Hudson River-Catskill Mountain landscapes that surround Hudson, NY because, as she says, she has memories from childhood of the natural beauty of the region, which she wants to capture. For her, the landscapes of the Hudson Valley prompt a sense of history, of future, of timelessness and an awareness of and connection to mysterious regions she imagined as a child.



Jeremy Rugge-Price was born in England and now lives in the Hudson Valley. He spent much of his childhood around the dunes and fishing villages of East Anglia and learned to paint from two English artists that he admires a great deal - Edward Seago, a past master of landscape painting and Matthew Alexander, one of England's premier impressionists. His landscapes emphasize the special effects of light and shadow as well as incorporating the beautiful skies that are such a distinctive part of the region.



Deborah Davis Fine Art is on 345 Warren St. in Hudson, NY. It is open from 11 am to 5 pm Thursday to Monday and by appointment. For more information please call 518 822 1890.

The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz presents an ironic twist of landscapes in an exhibition of paintings by Sandow Birk—a California artist who combines classical technique with frank and sometimes, brutal imagery. "Incarcerated," his show of landscapes surrounding maximum-security prisons, will run through March 15.



Included in this exhibition are recent paintings of many Hudson Valley penal institutions: Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg; Green Haven in Stormville; Downstate in Fishkill and Shawangunk in Wallkill. Each stark edifice is juxtaposed against a bucolic landscape of sweeping hills, majestic trees and dramatic, sunlit skies.



The prison paintings have struck reviewers as a sobering sociological critique. At first glance, they recall the works of Hudson River School and Luminist artists, evoking 19th century Transcendentalist naturalism, yet their subject matter represents a nadir of social degradation and failure. Mr. Birk's work is social commentary and an investigation into the evolution of American landscape painting.



The Samuel Dorsky Museum is open on Wednesdays from 1 to 8 pm and Thursdays through Sundays from 1 to 5 pm. Call 8452573844 for more information.



The Greene County Council on the Arts (GCCA) Catskill Gallery is showcasing through March 8 the work of three exceptional artists—Kristen De Fontes, Catherine Day and JoAnne McFarland. This show is very interesting because the prints, photographs and collages of these three artists are diverse in their forms, concepts, stylistic approaches and use of materials. Their commonality lies in the beauty of their simplicity and in the awareness and facility of the artist's touch. The result of their convergence is an exhibit rich in texture, subtle in tonality and fanciful in nature.



Kristen De Fontes is a printmaker who works primarily in woodcut. She uses specific pieces of wood for the quality of the grain, which she then alters, resulting in a piece responding directly to every mark she makes.



Catherine Day's work focuses on the landscape once touched or formed by the human hand. In her photographs, she captures a haunting presence—what was once occupied is now barren, only ghosts remain. She uses a plastic camera, reinforcing "the fragile oddness of the substantive in slow disintegration."



JoAnne McFarland's contribution to this exhibit is a series of paper collages that all conform to the shape of a dress. She explores the distinction between what is worn and what is carried, what is decoration and what is armor - all confined to the feminine shape. The visuals she utilizes include botanical prints, newspaper advertisements, sheet music and architectural renderings.



Through March 8 at the Catskill 2nd Floor Gallery, GCCA is having an exhibition showcasing the paintings by Stuart Eichel. It runs through March 8. The theme of the show is "You're Watching the Store," a collective portrait of a disappearing America that once was.

Mr. Eichel worked as an art director and a creative director in advertising and then took a five year break to make pencil crawings of local scenes, which ended up in over 350 galleries throughout America.



The GCCA Catskill Gallery is located at 398 Main Street, Catskill, NY. Regular gallery hours are Monday through Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm. For more information, please call GCCA offices at 518 943-3400.



The Greene County Council on the Arts is also presenting their Mountaintop Gallery's 2003 Annual Landscape Exhibition featuring original paintings, prints, photographs, sculptures and multimedia works celebrating the glorious landscapes of the Mountaintop, Greene County, and beyond. This exhibition runs through March 1.



As the birthplace of American Art, Greene County boasts a proud history of landscape painting dating back to 1826 when Thomas Cole, Father of the Hudson River School of Painting, first found inspiration in this region as a source of passionate beauty and picturesque wonder. The romantic idealism of the paintings of Cole and other followers of the Hudson River School quickly captured the heart and soul of the American public. One hundred and seventy years later, the genre of landscape painting still maintains a powerful hold on the imaginations of those who experience it.



The GCCA Mountaintop Gallery is located on Main Street (Route 23) in Windham, NY. It is open daily from 10 am to 5 pm. For more information, please call the gallery at 518 734 3104.

Three exhibitions of contemporary art, "eXhibition3," will be on view at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College from Sunday, February 2 to Sunday, February 23. Curated by first-year students in the Center's graduate program, the exhibitions will present works from the Marieluise Hessel Collection on permanent loan to the Center.



"Why do we save photographs?" is the question posed by the curators of "Framing the Real." The exhibition shows the work of artists who question our reliance on photographs as a way to capture the "true" version of an event or a person. Whether a photograph by a young, up-and-coming artist like Nikki S. Lee or a painting by Gerhard Richter, all the works enjoin the viewer to see and to think about the photograph itself and whether it succeeds in portraying reality. The exhibition is curated by Stacey Allan, Claire Barliant, Mary Katherine Matalon, Ryan Rice and Yasmil Raymond Ventura.



"Awakenings" assembles powerful and provocative images that question the nature of purity, innocence and development. The artists revisit childhood rituals or symbols through many different approaches, at times playful and alluring, at times ambiguous and reflective. The works examine how a child's life is punctuated by a succession of moments of sexual awakening that will reverberate throughout adulthood. The exhibition is curated by Dave Delcambre, Joanna Montoya, Prudence Peiffer, Aubrey Reeves, Pascal Spengemann and Elizabeth Zechella.



"Instructure" investigates the notion of the body as a "learning machine." Through the works of Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci, Valie Export, Mel Bochner and others, the exhibition explores how physical, architectural and societal impositions become engrained in human consciousness through the medium of the body, often without the mind being conscious of the process. The exhibition proposes that codes and messages become effective only when they circulate through the body: instructions, expectations, prescriptions and structures (both spatial and societal) do not need to be imposed, simply experienced. The exhibition is curated by Tairone Bastien, Mayumi Hirano, Caroline Knebelsberger, Steven Matijcio and Yasmine Nessah.



The Center for Curatorial Studies Museum is open to the public, without charge, Wednesdays through Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. For further information, call 845-758-7598 or visit the Web site www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions.



The Coffey Gallery will show the work of Kingston artist Hendrik Dijk throughout the month of February. Mr. Dijk, a native of the Netherlands, has lived in Kingston with his wife Maria Pichelbauer since 1986. In the 70s, he focused mainly on ceramic industrial design and in the 80s, on photography and from the early 90s until the present on painting. He has shown internationally in London, England; Frankfurt, Germany; Edinburgh, Scotland and Tokyo, Japan as well as several cities in the Netherlands. Locally, he has had solo exhibitions in Kingston at Donskoj and Company, The Loft and the Coffey Gallery. He also had a solo show in Woodstock at the Kleinert James Art Center. He is the founder of the Kingston Biennial Sculpture Exhibition and co-founder of the Arts Society of Kingston.



His work is geometric, Constructivist and geometric illusionist in nature. He finds his inspiration in the Op-art and Minimalist movements of the sixties. His work is dynamic and kinetic, as well as healing and soothing.



Coffey Gallery is located at 330 Wall Street, Uptown Kingston, NY. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11 am to 5 pm.