The Arts

Without Title: New Work by John Greene and Lizbeth Mitty at Windham Fine Arts

On January 5 Windham Fine Arts presents an unusual show entitled Without Title, featuring new work from John Greene and Lizbeth Mitty. At first glance their work seems as though it could not be more dissimilar but the theme of hidden images is a constant in both artist’s work. Greene’s encaustics seem abstract at first glance but sinuous curves of mountains, valleys and rivers emerge through layers of translucent pigmented wax. Lizbeth Mitty’s debut show at Windham will feature large scale oil paintings depicting the tangle of steel and concrete that makes up the urban landscape. While the images painted are representational something about the geometry and patterns made by light shining through bridges and overpasses creates an impression that becomes more abstract the longer it’s looked at.

John Greene has always been an artist, maintaining a studio in the West Village in New York City while he worked by day on Wall Street. In 1987 he retired and began to paint and sculpt in earnest studying at both the National Academy and The Sculpture Center in New York City. In the twenty years that he has been immersed in his new career he has found himself continually finding new challenges, exploring new directions and experimenting with new materials. For Greene painting is about the process of creation, the joy of applying color, scraping it off. The use of lead and copper in some of the work gives his surfaces the illusion of depth and reflection. His favorite medium, beeswax, is a contradiction; it’s durable, permanent and opaque and transparent all at once. Greene’s work invites keen and repeated viewing making the viewer a partner in the images which emerge.

Lizbeth Mitty uses the unique perspectives in her paintings to encourage the viewer to examine her work from all angles. Shadow shapes playing across roads and parked cars create patterns becoming an image within an image. The use of intense color makes the work even more high energy and urban. Where Greene’s work has a Zen quality, in contrast Lizbeth Mitty’s images jump off the canvas with an energy that demands attention, the subject of her paintings are not primarily place as much as a state of mind. Mitty comes to Windham after many successful shows nationwide. Help welcome both artists at the opening reception on Saturday, January 5 from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. Without Title runs through February 4.

Windham Fine Arts is located at 5380 Main Street in Windham. Gallery hours are Thursday through Monday from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm. For more information, call 518 734 6850 or check the Web at www.windhamfinearts.com.

Teen Visions '08 in Poughkeepsie

More than 125 works of art by high school students from The Art Institute of Mill Street Loft will be highlighted in the sixth annual Teen Visions exhibition at the James W. Palmer III Gallery at Vassar College. The juried show will include paintings, drawings, photography, and sculpture from more than 50 art students who participated in the Art Institute’s Summer Intensive and Fall 2007 courses.

Teen Visions '08 opens at the Palmer Gallery on Thursday, January 24 with an artists’ reception from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. The students’ work will be on display through Saturday, February 9. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

“Each year we are charged with the task of selecting 120 pieces of art from over 2,000 entries for our Teen Visions exhibition,” said Todd Poteet, Director of the Art Institute of Mill Street Loft. “The caliber of the student work continues to rise and impress us. It would be easy to mistake these young artists as professionals, but they are only 14 to 17 years old, some of them having just started their studies in the arts!”

The Art Institute’s goal is to prepare students to compete and to obtain scholarships to top schools, to excel in the program of study they choose, and to become working professional artists in their prospective fields. Since 2000, Art Institute graduates have received offers of more than 11 million dollars in merit-based scholarships to the nation’s major colleges, universities, and art schools. The Art Institute of Mill Street Loft is a year-round portfolio development program for motivated students, ages 14 to 18, interested in pursuing a career in the visual arts. For further information, please contact Todd Poteet at 845 471 7477.

Delhi Fine Arts Gallery Launches A New Focus On The Fine Arts

Delhi Fine Arts and Antiques Gallery celebrated its Grand Opening on December 8 with its inaugural exhibition, A Sensuous Journey: Artists & the Landscape, Delaware County NY. The exhibit commences a new celebration of the unique and beautiful landscape of the western Catskill Mountains and the many professional artists in the area who find inspiration and artistry in both the rural and the wild areas of this historic region. Professional artists whose interest has been kindled by this distinct character of the area include Elissa Gore, Ralph McRae, David Ryan, Gail Bunting, Bill Lee, Karen Graves, Jane Carr, Marie Cummings, B.Turner McCann and Joe Kurhajec.

Elissa Gore is, perhaps, best known for her distinctive pastoral and atmospheric landscapes of the Catskill Mountains. Ralph McRae’s oil paintings are a heartfelt celebration of the rural beauty that absorbed the Hudson River School painters of the 19th century. David Ryan’s depictions of the surrounding countryside present the undercurrent of a simple beauty in constant flux. Gail Bunting prefers to call herself a naturalist. Her unique style and her use of egg tempera enables her to execute the most accurate and yet charming representations of nature. The vistas of the upper Delaware and Susquehanna Valleys are the inspiration for Bill Lee’s pastel landscapes. Both realistic and abstract in form, his work is both uncommon and familiar. Raised in the foothills of the Catskill mountains, Karen Graves’ love of the woods, streams and landscapes of the Catskills is evident in her watercolor paintings. Jane Carr uses the jewel-like quality of egg tempera color to catch the effects of light and atmosphere in the long hollows of the western Catskill Mountainss. Her paintings capture how profoundly the landscape is altered by farming, animals, buildings and weather. Marie Cummings focuses on the creative potential of watermedia. The deep, rich, bold hues are intense and exciting; her palette, brushes and paper are tools for play. B. Turner McCann has an uncommon ability to express how completely the land permeates our consciousness through wood turnings that express both the heft and delicacy of the natural world. Joe Kurhajec’s ceramics seethe with the untamable, deliriously feral ballast of the natural world of our dreams.

A Sensuous Journey runs through January 13. Delhi Fine Arts is located at 84 Main Street in Delhi, NY. Winter hours are Friday through Monday from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm. For more information, call 607 746 2664 or visit their Web site at www.delhifinearts.com.

The Boudoir Project at Galerie BMG

The subjects are women; women of diverse ages, social backgrounds, cultures, lifestyles, shapes and sizes. They came to the studio of fine art photographer Charise Isis to commission a boudoir portrait, either as a gift to someone they love or as a gift to themselves. “Boudoir”, as described by Isis in this context, refers to one’s private sanctuary; not a physical sanctuary, but one that exists somewhere within us, that which we often keep to ourselves or share only in intimate relationships.

In the process of photographing, Isis discovered that the women were revealing to her camera more than just their bodies. Arriving with their own issues of body identity and insecurity, the women came to discover the sensual essence that lies within them and makes them a beautiful and individual being. Isis witnessed the liberation that each one of them experienced, a positive shift in the perception of self, a level of deeper acceptance and esteem, the pure joy of doing something to free the feminine spirit and mystique.

She felt compelled to open a dialogue about women and body image and to present beauty and sensuality that stretches beyond our society’s very narrow ideals of what beauty is. The end goal is to help break down the stereotypes that we are constantly fed by the media. With permission of all the women, she decided to create an exhibition, and eventually a book, which would defy society’s impossible, even warped, standards of beauty and perfection. The Boudoir Project will have its premiere exhibition at Galerie BMG in Woodstock, NY. It is a lush, evocative collection of portraits capturing the inner beauty and sensualit y that lies within each of her subjects. The women have become, if even for a brief moment, goddesses and heroines, captured forever by Isis’ camera.

Charise Isis resides in Kingston, NY. Before working as a photographer, she worked for many years as an exotic dancer where she documented the strength, beauty and creativity of her colleagues. These images appear in American Stripper, her first book scheduled to be published soon. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, the Griffin Museum of Photography, Massachusetts, Art Galerie, Siegen, Germany and the Seattle Erotic Art Festival.

The Boudoir Project” will be on display from January 4 through February 18, 2008, with an artist’s reception scheduled on Saturday, January 5 from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. A percentage of the proceeds from photograph sales will be donated by Isis and the gallery to Ophelia’s Place, an eating disorder outreach and education program, based in upstate New York.

Galerie BMG is located on Tannery Brook Road in Woodstock. Winter gallery hours are Friday from noon to 5:00 pm, Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm and Monday from noon to 5:00 pm or other times by appointment. For further information, please contact the gallery at 845 679 0027 or visit www.galeriebmg.com.

At the Catskill Mountain Foundation (map)…

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Live in Barcelona at the Mountain Cinema
January 4, 5, 6, 2008, 7:30 pm
Mountain Cinema, Doctorow Center for the Arts
Main Street, Hunter
Tickets: $15
Reservations: 518 263 2063 (tickets may be reserved in advance but must be purchased at the door)
Live in Barcelona captures Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at the peak of their form, performing a dream set of new songs, classic hits, audience favorites, and seldom-heard rarities. This is the first time an individual Springsteen concert has been released in its entirety.

In the Gallery: Best In Paper
January 19-February 10, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 19, 4-6 pm
CMF Gallery, Hunter Village Square, Main Street, Hunter
Featuring paintings, drawings and monotypes by contemporary artists of regional and national acclaim.

In the Gallery: Outside the Box
February 16-March 16, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 16, 4-6 pm
CMF Gallery, Hunter Village Square, Main Street, Hunter
Outsider Art show featuring forms of creative expression that exist outside accepted cultural norms.

Call 518 263 2063 or visit www.catskillmtn.org for information about Catskill Mountain Foundation (map) events.

Vassar Libraries Establish Archive of Renowned Women’s Studio Workshop Artists’ Books

The Vassar College libraries have become an official repository for the collection of artists’ books produced by the non-profit Women’s Studio Workshop (WSW), which since 1979 has grown to become the largest publisher in the country of these hand printed and hand bound works. The Women’s Studio Workshop is based in nearby Rosendale, NY, and its artists'’books gain their first Hudson Valley archive with this Vassar partnership.

While there is no fixed definition of an artist’s book, it is always a work of art in itself, created for its own sake. The objects incorporate a wide range of media, which at the Women’s Studio Workshop may include hand drawn, sewn and painted images, handmade paper, letterpress, silkscreen, photography, intaglio and ceramics. Artists have produced 160 of these books with the WSW, through annually juried international competitions.

The workshop’s first shipment of 22 artists’ books was recently made to the Special Collections section of the Vassar libraries, which houses all of the college’s extensive rare book holdings, including a number of private press and artists’ books. Vassar will acquire nearly the entire existing body of the publisher’s books over the next five years, and simultaneously Special Collections will add the new books WSW produces each year.

“Our publishing legacy is appropriately placed at Vassar College because of its outstanding library, origin as a women’s college, academic prominence and important role in the region,” said Tatana Kellner, WSW Artistic Director and co-founder. “For Vassar, we see this archive as an unparalleled teaching collection because of the different kinds of media, format, binding and structure that the books display. The books are also a record of the political and sociological concerns of women since 1979, and they document the artistic activities of the longest continually operating, women’s alternative arts space in the country.”

Vassar was the first college founded with an original art collection and gallery, helping to establish the college’s curricular standard for studying primary sources. That’s a key part of why Vassar’s Ron Patkus, Associate Director of the Libraries for Special Collections, wanted the college to archive the Women’s Studio Workshop’s catalogue of limited edition books.

“Vassar students and faculty are gaining access to an important publishing collection from a local institution, while the Women’s Studio Workshop gains a haven in the Hudson Valley for its artists’ books,” said Patkus. “At the same time, the college is very excited to make all of these exceptional and varied works more accessible to our region’s artists and broader public.”

The Women’s Studio Workshop is a visual arts organization with specialized studios in printmaking, hand papermaking, ceramics, letterpress printing, photography, and book arts. WSW’s grants, fellowships, residencies, and internships allow artists to work in their studios or to learn new skills through a Summer Arts Institute.

The non-profit encourages the voice and vision of individual women artists, provides professional opportunities for artists, and promotes programs designed to stimulate public involvement, awareness, and support for the visual arts.

Landscape, Drawing and the Devil in the Details at Greene County Council on the Arts’ Mountaintop and Catskill Galleries

Greene County Council on the Arts opens its annual members’ landscape exhibition on January 12, 2008 at the GCCA Mountaintop Gallery in Windham, NY. Landscape 2008 features paintings, drawings, photographs and other artworks created by many local and regional artists. The public is invited to the opening reception on Saturday, January 12 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm at GCCA’s Mountaintop Gallery, 5348 Main Street, Windham.

A wide range of stylistic approaches is offered in this exhibition, from naturalistic representation to abstracted views. All works are available for purchase. Photographer Daniel N. Marcus, watercolorists Monica Restaino and Karen F. Rhodes, painters Marianne Van Lent, Mary Mundy, Heather Martin, James Cramer, Karl J. Volk, Penelope Koburger and Peter C. Liman are some of the participating artists. Landscape 2008 continues through February 23, 2008.

Artists explore drawing as the work itself in Drawn to the Edge at the GCCA Catskill Gallery, opening January 26. Drawing is frequently considered the bones or foundation of a work. This exhibition explores the outer limits of drawing using the medium as the message and encourages the question: “What is drawing?” The answer to that question is as individual as the artist. This juried group exhibition features contemporary drawings, with an emphasis on large works of art.

Catskill artist Ann Gibbons proposed the exhibit and is both curating and jurying the show with assistance from GCCA Visual Arts Director Erica Potrzeba. Ann incorporates found objects and ephemera in her collage works and enhances the collage with drawing and marking in pastel and graphite. She has exhibited extensively both locally and nationally, including one-person exhibits, invitationals and juried shows. She has also curated several well-known exhibits in the Northeast. Her education includes degrees from the University of Hartford Art School, Wesleyan University and St. Bonaventure University, as well as private studies with a diverse selection of art instructors. Artwork by Ann Gibbons will be on display in Drawn to the Edge along with pastel drawings by artist Sarah Barker and drawings from a select group of local and regional artists.

The first in this year’s Second Floor Solo series of one-person shows at the GCCA Catskill Gallery is a deep dialogue with nature in Giovanna Lepore’s The Devil in the Details. This exhibition explores Lepore’s expressionistic interpretations of the natural world and man’s interactions and interferences with it. The exhibition opens on Saturday, January 26 and continues through March 1. The public is invited the opening reception on Saturday, January 26 from 5:00 to 7:00 pm.

Lepore’s current and recent works stem from a love of and a concern for the environment. She paints primarily in acrylics, which has enabled her to paint at a pace more compatible with her thought processes. But she also acknowledges the irony in “depicting ideas inspired by the natural world in a plastic medium.”

The GCCA Mountaintop Gallery is located at 5348 Main Street in Windham. Gallery hours are Friday through Monday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. For more information, contact the gallery at 518 734 3104 or visit www.greenearts.org. The GCCA Catskill Gallery is located at 398 Main Street in Catskill. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm and Saturday from noon to 5:00 pm. For more information, call the gallery at 518 943 3400 or visit www.greenearts.org.

New Mythology in Stone Ridge

Running through January 13 at the Pearl Arts Gallery in Stone Ridge, New Mythology brings together four artists who explore elements of storytelling through their artwork; each creating their own reinvented histories and mythologies.

Dan Green has lived and worked in New York’s Hudson River Valley since 1973. He is both a fantastic painter and comic book illustrator. His recent paintings examine simple objects, from toys to tools; revealing an essence of mystery often unnoticed, hidden by familiarity.

Denny Dillon resides in Stone Ridge, NY. She is an actress/comedian and artist, and her work is an extension of her wit and humor, a playful improvisation. She has assembled a series of “art boxes,” little treasures of America’s past. Filling each of her boxes with Ephemera of days gone by, old postcards, miniature people, she creates tiny worlds inside a box, like Alice through the Looking Glass.

Carol Zaloom lives and works in Saugerties, NY. She is known for her wood block prints, illustrations, and her transformation of ordinary objects, such as baseballs, into painted artifacts. She finds the leather of a baseball an inviting canvas. Exploring ancient cultures through her medium of painted baseballs, she positions them as imaginary artifacts that reveal the ancients at play.

Ursula Minervini grew up in New Paltz, NY and now lives and works in Baltimore, MD. Her prints and artist’s books have an otherworldly beauty and quirky humor. Each medium illustrates fables of her inventive imagination, shifting landscapes with signs left of things passing.

The Pearl Arts Gallery is located at 3572 Main Street in Stone Ridge. Gallery hours are Thursday through Sunday from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm. For more information, call 845 687 0888 or visit www.pearlartsgallery.com.

Serafin String Quartet in Saugerties

At the January 13, 2008 Saugerties Pro Musica concert the Serafin String Quartet will present a program of classical quartet standards including works by Haydn and Debussy, plus an Americana medley titled “Songbook for Annamaria” that promises to be a real crowd-pleaser.

Since their New York debut in 2004, Serafin String Quartet has consistently received superlatives in the press and ovations in the concert hall. They were lauded in the New York Concert Review for their “excellent music making…uncommonly fine interpretation…and ensemble and intonation…above reproach.” The scope of the Serafin’s performance activity continues to broaden, and their recent engagements include a sold-out return to Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall (September 2007), and appearances on Philadelphia’s Chamber Music Now series, at the Highlands Festival in North Carolina, Schwarz Center for the Performing Arts, University of Delaware, Rutgers University and at Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University. Serafin Quartet has performed recently in New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Vermont, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Michigan, New Jersey and Delaware. They have been guests at Classicopia (VT) and Fanfare festivals (LA), Dartmouth College and Emory University and the Quartet has agreed to a recording project of selected works by award-winning composer, David Laganella.

Devoted to furthering new works for quartet, SSQ has presented world premieres of Green is the Night (Mark Hagerty, 2007), “a fly is in…” (Richard Belcastro, 2006), Four Movements for String Quartet (Drew Hemenger, 2005), and String Quartet (David Laganella, 2004). In 2008 they will share in premiering a new work by Richard Prior (along with the Vega String Quartet). Their repertoire includes recent works by Robert Maggio, Maurice Wright and Peter Flint, and a special program of all American works. In 2007, Serafin String Quartet was named the Weinstock Ensemble In Residence for Lehigh University, where they present a variety of performances and lectures. They appear annually on the concert series at First and Central Church in Wilmington (DE) and held a community residency there for five years. SSQ frequently presents master classes and lecture recitals, including those on Beethoven, Mozart, Interpreting New Music, Chamber Music, The Voice of the American String Quartet and The Development of the String Quartet.

The Serafins interpret and perform traditional quartet masterworks and less familiar works from the 18th century to the present. Reflecting their egalitarian viewpoint, and following the model of the revered Emerson String Quartet, the Serafin violinists share equally the responsibility for playing the first and second violin parts. Collaboration with other artists is a frequent part of the Quartet’s activities, including an upcoming project with the Vega String Quartet, and performances with internationally recognized cellist Jeffrey Solow, and with the brilliant clarinetists Igor Begelman and Marianne Gythfeldt. The artists of the quartet have, themselves, been heralded around the globe for concerts and recordings, receiving critical acclaim in the press. Based in Delaware, the members of the ensemble now reside in Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Serafin String Quartet takes its name from the great Venetian master violin maker, Sanctus Serafin, who in 1728 crafted the violin currently played by Kate Ransom. Timothy Schwarz plays a violin by Carlo Antonio Testore (1741), generously on loan from Dr. William Stegeman. Ana Tsinadze’s viola is of unknown origin, probably Russian-made in the late 19th century. Lawrence Stomberg plays a School of Testore cello (circa 1727) obtained with generous assistance of Dr. William Stegeman. For more information about Serafin String Quartet visit www.serafinquartet.org.

As usual, the 3:00 pm concert will be held in the United Methodist Church at the corner of Washington Avenue and Post Street in the Village of Saugerties. A reception to meet the performers follows the concert. A book of five tickets good for any concert is $40.00. General admission is $12 for adults and $10 for seniors. Students and children are always free. For more information see www.saugertiespromusica.org or call 845 246 5021.