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Johnnycake Books

Gilded Moon Framing

Berkshire Museum

Roe Jan Library

Close Encounters With Music

Gallery on the Green

Darren Winston, Bookseller

Close Encounters With Music

Benchmark Realty

The RE Institute

Barrington Stage Company

Galleries & Museums

Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College

Austerlitz, NY

Millay Colony for the Arts

Beacon, NY

Dia: Beacon

Chatham, NY

Joyce Goldstein Gallery

The Park Row Gallery

Ghent, NY

Omi International Arts Center

Great Barrington, MA

Childs Studio Arts

Daniel Bellow Gallery

Geoffrey Young Gallery

Iris Gallery

Sanford Smith Fine Art

Sherry Steiner Studio

The Vault Gallery

Hillsdale, NY

Architecture for Art

Housatonic, MA

Front Street Galley and Studio

Lauren Clark Fine Art

Hudson, NY

BCB Gallery

Carrie Haddad Gallery

Carrie Haddad Photographs

Columbia County Council on the Arts

David Dew Bruner Design

Davis Orton Gallery

Gallery 135

Nicole Fiacco Gallery

Hudson Opera House

J. Damiani

John Davis Gallery

Limner Gallery

Terenchin Gallery

TK Gallery

Tom Swope Gallery

Tishu Gallery

Tishu Gallery

Kent, CT

The Kent Art Association

The Morrison Gallery

Ober Gallery

Scott and Bowne

Lakeville, CT

Argazzi Art

Morgan Lehman Gallery

Tremaine Gallery at the Hotchkiss School

The White Gallery

Lenox, MA

The Barn Gallery at Stonover Farm

Church Street Art Gallery

DeVries Fine Art, Inc.

Hoadley Gallery

The Lenox Gallery of Fine Art

Millbroook, NY

Art in the Loft

Chisholm Gallery

Mabbettsville Gallery

Millerton, NY

Eckert Fine Art

New Milford, CT

Gregory James Gallery

North Adams, MA

Brill Gallery

Eclipse Gallery

Gallery 51

Kolok Gallery

Mass MOCA

NAACO Gallery

studio21south

Pawling, NY

Gallery on the Green

Pittsfield, MA

The Berkshire Museum

Ferrin Gallery

The Lichtenstein Center for the Arts

The Storefront Artist Project

Poughkeepsie, NY

Barrett Art Center

Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College

Mill Street Loft

Rhinebeck, NY

Gazen Gallery

Albert Shahinian Fine Art

Salisbury, CT

Joie de Livres

Spencertown, NY

Spencertown Academy

Stockbridge, MA

Norman Rockwell Museum

Tivoli, NY

Tivoli Artists Co-op and Gallery

Torrington, CT
Artwell Gallery

Tyringham, MA
Rural Intelligence Arts
Naoussa Gallery

Washington Depot, CT

Behnke Doherty Gallery

KMR Arts

Williamstown, MA

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

The Harrison Gallery

Williams College Museum of Art

Art Intelligence

In the Galleries

NAACO Gallery, North Adams, MA. Rural Intelligence Arts  Brooklyn Accents: The Photography of Robert Colantuono and Ceramics of Marie DeVito.  Celebrating the work of two Brooklyn-born artists who have made this area of New England their home. (“Fall Water Reflection,” photograph by Robert Colantuono). Now through May 28.

McDaris Fine Art, Hudson, NY. Enough: Dawn Breeze’s deftly expressive series of paintings, based on and partly produced with natural media, was inspired by the artist’s residence in Iceland. 623 Warren Street. Now through May 26.

Rural Intelligence ArtsBehnke Doherty Gallery, Washington Depot, CT. Just Beneath the Surface:  The Grid Series. Paintings by Michael Quadland, an artist,  psychotherapist, and writer who uses abstract forms and evocative colors in layered surfaces.  May 16 through June 24. Artist’s reception May 18.

Rural Intelligence ArtsLocal, Lenox, MA. 6,000 Miles of Portraits, From Afghanistan to France by Aurélien and Molly de Saint André. This is the first time these photos, shot with a pinhole black box camera, will be shown. May 19 – June 22. Opening reception, Saturday, May 19 at 5 p.m.

The Re Institute, Millerton, NY. Join Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts at the Re Institute for its own “Flash Mob,” where a plurality of artists’ creations, concerns, and media coalesce. Including works by Lawrence Lee, Thomas McDonell, Monica Moran, Gail Leboff, and many others. May 19 – June 16 . Opening reception: May 19, 3 to 6 p.m.                         

Meeting House Gallery, New Marlborough,  MA.  Moments of Focus: Photography show judged by David LaSpina of Bard College at Simon’s Rock. May 25 - June 17. 5/26 reception, 5-7 p.m.   Sculpture on the Green, June 22- July 8,  and Transformation, which showcases the multi-media work of 30 artists. June 22- August 19. Opening reception 6/22, 5-7 p.m. New Marlborough Artists, including Maria Gay, Abbe Stahl, Brian Mikesell, Shawn Fields, Pamela Hardcastle, and others. August 23 - Sept. 23. Opening reception 8/23,  5-7 p.m.

Noble Horizons, Salisbury, CT.,Save the Date pic  hosts an outdoor sculpture show featuring Joy Brown, Stanley Marcus, Michael Melle, and seven other sculptors from the region.  Multiple works from each artist are sited throughout the open lawns, woods and ponds of the bucolic campus. Opening party 4-6 p.m. May 27; show open daily through October 8.

Rural Intelligence ArtsChilds Studio Arts, Great Barrington. Mary Childs’ gallery will open the summer season with an exhibit of handblown glass by Vermont glassblower Randi Solin. Opening reception, Saturday, May 26, from 5 -7 p.m.. Through June 27.

Rural Intelligence ArtsGallery on the Green, Pawling, NY,  opens the season with an exhibit of photographs by Lynn Karlin. Raw Art:The Pedestal Series will run thru June 16. Artist’s reception May 19 from 5-7 p.m. Some of the proceeds will be donated to the Pawling Farmer’s Market.

Rural Intelligence Arts John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY. Paintings by Ben La Rocco entitled “Autistic’s Card.”  (At right: Orange Bull, 2011, oil on canvas, 21.25 x 25.5 inches.) Now through May 20.

Salmon Falls Artisans Gallery, Shelburne Falls, MA. Connecting people to fine art and craft made by over eighty regional artists. Open year round. 

Lenox Library, Lenox, MA., hosts Brushes for Books, a multi-gallery art and antiques event, opening in the library’s Welles Gallery and including seven other galleries that will display a range of framed artwork, sculpture, and antiques. A portion of proceeds from all sales will go the library. Through June 17. Reception at the Welles Gallery, June 1, 5:30. $25.

At the Museums

Williams College Museum of Art, Rural Intelligence ArtsWilliamstown, MA.  Teaching with Art: Life and Death in Ancient Rome: jewelry, coins, sculpture, household objects, military accoutrements, and grave goods,assembled from the museum’s collection of antiquities. Through August 19. Asco: Elite of the Obscure, A Retrospective, 1972–1987,  the first retrospective to present the wide-ranging work of the Chicano performance and conceptual art group Asco. Through July 29.  Ongoing: Art Re: Art, which features 30 works from the museum’s collection that take art as their subject.

Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA. Rural Intelligence ArtsCurrent exhibitions: Candid Birds: Photography from the Berkshire Museum Camera Club, featuring vibrant images of birds in flight and in their natural habitats (through July 1);  David Henderson: A Brief History of Aviation, an installation of architectural sculpture by David Henderson (through May 13); Taking Flight: Audubon and the World of Birds, with more than thirty original Havell prints from The Birds of America, John James Audubon’s revolutionary work of science and art that launched the artist’s reputation (through June 27).

CCS Bard, Annandale-on- Hudson, NY. Rural Intelligence Arts Matters of Fact revisits a number of key encounters from the institutional history of the Hessel Museum of Art: between collector and artist, curator and exhibition, art and art history. Including works by Robert Mapplethorpe and Felix Gonzalez-Torres (with whom Marieluise Hessel had a special affinity); Anish Kapoor and Ulrich Rückriem; a component of Passions and Cultures: Selected Works from the Rivendell Collection 1967 – 1991, one of CCS Bard’s inaugural exhibitions; and a special presentation by CCS Bard graduate students. Now through May 27.

MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA. Rural Intelligence Arts Oh, Canada , the largest survey of contemporary Canadian art ever produced outside Canada, features work by more than 60 artists who hail from every province and nearly every territory in the country, spanning multiple generations and working in all media. May 27 - April 1, 2013. Also on exhibit: Invisible Cities, featuring the work of ten diverse artists who re-imagine urban landscapes both familiar and fantastical. Apr 14 - Feb 4, 2013

Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA.Rural Intelligence Arts Everett Raymond Kinstler: Pulps to Portraits: Highly-regarded as a prominent American portraitist, Kinstler created illustrations and portraits of noted celebrities such as Katherine Hepburn and Tony Bennett and artists such as Alexander Calder and Will Barnett, on view in a lively installation that explores the process of capturing likenesses of his subjects for posterity. Now through May 28. Upcoming: Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered, organized by the Delaware Art Museum, the first comprehensive, critical assessment of the influential artist who is often referred to as the grandfather of American illustration. June 9 through October 28.

Dia:Beacon, Beacon, NY. Jean-Luc Moulène, Opus + One is the first comprehensive North American exhibitionRural Intelligence Arts devoted to the work of the Paris-based artist.  The installation will comprise objects and images created over the past two decades and will be accompanied by a new project at the Dan Flavin Art Institute, in Bridgehampton, NY, as well as a major publication.Through December 31.

Hancock Shaker Village, Pittsfield, MA.  Rural Intelligence Arts A living history museum that includes eight historic buildings, heirloom gardens, 22,000 examples of Shaker furniture, crafts, tools, and clothes, as well as farm animals and hiking trails Open daily 10 to 4.  Now through Oct. 28.  Opening May 26:Promising Venture:Shaker Photographs from the WPA. , the Federal Art Project’s cataloging of Shaker furniture, architecture, and craft by WPA photographer Noel Vicentini.

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. Rural Intelligence Arts Nature in America: Taming the Landscape. From the late eighteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries, the artistic representation of the American landscape provided a window into the thinking of painters and photographers and revealed their unique understanding of the natural world.The exhibition brings together paintings, drawings, photographs, and prints from the permanent collection and selected loans including works by Thomas Cole, George Inness, Carleton Watkins, John Twachtman, and Edward Steichen. June 29 through August 26.

Omi International Arts Center,  Ghent, NY.  Rural Intelligence Arts Stanley Whitney: Six Paintings. Whitney, who paints geometric forms that are both formal and playful, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996 and is the 2012 first-annual recipient of the Robert De Niro Sr. Prize for achievement in painting. Now through June 3. Also: Alice Aycock, A Simple Network of Underground Wells and Tunnels. A land art sculpture, originally constructed by Aycock in 1975, has been reconstructed at Art Omi under the artist’s supervision, a primal architectural experience of moving beneath the earth from light to darkness. Opening reception June 2, 1 - 4 p.m.

At The Olana Partnership, Hudson, NY, Life after LIFE: Preserving Olana, an exhibition about past and future projects to restore the landscape, farm complex, house, and collections that Hudson River School artist Frederic Edwin Church spent four decades creating. In the Sharp Family Gallery.  Opening May 19. Through October 31. Also: Olana’s Dynamic Landscape, photographs by renowned architectural photographer Peter Aaron, in the Coachman’s House Gallery. Opening reception May 19,  4:30 p.m. Artist’s talk 5 p.m.

The Clark, Williamstown, MA. Rural Intelligence Arts Clark Remix immerses you in a gallery filled with more than 80 paintings, nearly 20 sculptures, and more than 300 decorative arts objects from the Clark’s permanent collection. The exhibition is both a physical reality and a virtual space, featuring a dynamic salon-style installation and two new digital applications that offer exciting ways to engage with the collection. Now through January 2014.

Wilderstein Historic Site, Rhinebeck. Modern Sculpture & the Romantic Landscape: Outdoor sculpture exhibition juxtaposing the site’s romantic landscape and Queen Anne mansion with contemporary art by a talented group of emerging artists. June 3 through the end of October.  Preview party benefit Saturday, June 2, 5 p.m. $25 and reservations are requested.

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Dia-fied: Blinky & Co. at Beacon and Bard

Rural Intelligence Arts
by Scott Baldinger

“Art is not innocent (Oscar) Wilde says ... Violence can be done in its name. Indeed, the twentieth century brought forth many Dorian Grays: fiendishly pure spirits so wrapped up in aesthetics that they become heedless of humanity.” This quote, from a recent New Yorker article by Alex Ross about the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Grey, reminded me of the somewhat dissolute (though definitely not, from any account I’m aware of, similarly sexually oriented) German artist Blinky Palermo, who died in 1977 at age 34 in the Maldives under not completely un-Dorian-like circumstances (most likely a drug overdose).  Palermo’s “fiendishly pure,”  monochromatic yet stunning aluminum panels that form color patterns suggestive of the West German flag, seem to be, in the sunlit, grandly spacious exhibition galleries of Dia:Beacon, a complete sacrifice to aesthetics—the engagement of the eye over any emotive or coolly ironic expectations.

Rural Intelligence Arts Born Peter Schwarze, Palermo adopted his new name in the sixties, the legend goes, at the suggestion of a fellow art student who believed he resembled an ex-con and fight fixer who’d been gaining notoriety in New York at the time. (Both of them were studying with the artist Joseph Beuys, who, by some accounts, is credited with giving Schwarze his name.) For young Europeans like Schwarze/Palermo, rakish New York epitomized the “confident flash of things American,” as the critic Peter Schjeldahl notes.

Rural Intelligence Arts“Artists take us out of our conventional thinking, almost in an outlaw way.They move us to places where we’re not always comfortable or willing or to go,” says Manda Weintraub, an art dealer and lawyer who accompanied me on a recent trip to Dia-Beacon. Despite the Palermo exhibition’s extraordinary scale and polish (photo, left, by Bill Jacobson), there is a feeling of cosmic playfulness, if not mischief, that comes across, not only when looking at Palermo’s work, but from just Rural Intelligence Artsbeing at Dia:Beacon.  Art there is narrowed into components, small and large: thin strings creating almost invisible walls by Fred Sanback; wood boxes configured into repetitive series by Donald Judd; massive wall murals drawn in barely legible pencil by assistants following the instructions of Sol Lewitt, or primal, monolithic stone or steel sculptures, multi-ton objects by Rural Intelligence Arts Michael Heiser and Richard Serra, left. In addition to works that are fun to look at, such as the the warren of rooms devoted to Agnes Martin paintings, these architecturally contextual creations expand the definition of enjoyment by simultaneously toying with, defining and expanding our understanding of what art can be. Set in Dia-Beacon’s massive, pure white galleries in a former Nabisco box factory, the artworks are ocular exercises and spatial games that bolt deep down into our retinas. The message seems to be both manifold and simple: Keep your eyes open to the whole, move beyond your minds’ narrative expectations, look up, down and all around you—all perhaps in the end for no purpose other than to be able to confirm that, to paraphrase Duke Ellington’s remark about music, “If it looks good, it is good.” 

Rural Intelligence ArtsThe Palermo retrospective has been divided between Dia-Beacon and Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies Hessel Museum, a newer, more traditionally elegant space that, like a doting younger sibling looking up to an older, more raffish family member, tries even harder to épater la bourgeoisie with a companion exhibition, If You Rural Intelligence ArtsLived Here, You’d Be Home By Now. As if the wonderful Palermos here were not enough.  Curated by Lynne Cooke it is, “an exhibition about the life of the art object in domestic spaces.”  Combining neo-geo paintings from the decoratively inclined 1980s (Valerie Jaudon), amusingly cranky Cindy Sherman photos, furniture by Paul Evans, Frederich Kiesler, Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouve with sometimes 2.5 -3.0 dimensional work by Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, and others, its challenge to easy viewing is perhaps best expressed by a large black-and-white text painting by Christopher Wool that spells out, “AND IF YOU DON”T LIKE IT, YOU CAN GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE.”  Despite the violent temperament the Wool work expresses, it, too, looks good, so it must be.

Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964-1977
Now - October 31
Dia-Beacon
Beacon
Thursday-Monday, 11 a,m. - 6 p.m.
Admission/$10; students & seniors/$7

Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964-1977
Now - October 31
If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home By Now
Now - December 16
Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson
Wednesday - Sunday, 1 – 5 p.m.
Admission/free

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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/06/11 at 04:09 AM • Permalink

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Cutting Edge Exhibit Down by the Riverside

Rural Intelligence Arts by Betsy Miller

Picture Shirley Bassey singing her hit song This is My Life in one of her dramatic costumes.  Now imagine her singing the same song at different points in her career, all captured on video that has been fragmented by an artist, who further fractures the images with disco ball mirrors and projections on uneven brick walls.  This is a rough description of a kaleidoscopic piece by Conrad Ventur, one of 51 artists who will be participating in NADA Hudson, an art exhibition taking place at the Basilica on July 30 and 31.

Heather Hubbs, Director of NADA, the New Art Dealers Alliance, says of the membership, “They are art professionals who share resources, networking, and education opportunities.” The exhibition in Hudson will include sculpture, installations, videos and performance pieces and will occupy nearly 8,000 square feet of indoor space, the theater and over 10,000 square feet of outdoor space as well.  Artists from the U.S., Canada and Europe will be showing, several having developed site-specific works for this show.

Rural Intelligence ArtsThe site was suggested by NADA Vice President James Fuentes, who heard about it from one of the artists he represents, sculptor Bill Stone, a co-owner of the Basilica. Other principals in the Basilica are Stone’s son, the filmmaker Tony Stone, Tony’s partner, the musician and performance artist Melissa Auf Der Maur, and Bill’s wife, Nancy Stone, a ceramicist.

“It made a lot of sense,” says Hubbs.  “The Basilica is across from the Hudson train station.  The town is close by, walkable, and has a large number of art galleries.  We think it’s an easy way for folks to get out of New York City for a couple days and see some great art.” 

Auf Der Maur is hoping to build this event into a destination “like Art Basil Miami.”—a lofty ambition considering that NADA Miami, in its 8th year, attracts 20,000 people annually whereas Art Basel Miami draws 46,000.

Rural Intelligence ArtsThough they’ve already held several events at the Basilica, the co-owners consider the NADA art fair to be their official “soft opening.”  They’ve done a lot of prep—installing a crowd-sized restroom, to name just one upgrade.  But there is still plenty to be done, including a planned exterior landscaping that promises to link the picturesque 19th-century industrial site to its view, a glorious sweep of the Hudson River and the Catskills.  “Nancy [Stone] has an incredible garden in Germantown,” says Auf Der Maur.  “She’s planning on making the surroundings here just as spectacular.” 

The Basilica has a number of events scheduled for the remainder of this year, including the Hudson MusicFest in August, film nights with Director Q & As, and fundraisers for the Opera House and Walking the Dog Theatre.  At the moment, however, the owners are focusing on NADA Hudson, which is expected to draw thousands of people to their doors.

Rural Intelligence Arts“I read a statistic that 70% of the artists in the New York Art Biennial were from New York State and of those, 50% were based upstate,”  Auf Der Maur says.  “That says a lot about the New York art scene. We think the art world is gravitating towards Hudson.”  Using the Basilica as a hub for this creative community is exactly what the owners have in mind. “We have an incredible investment in this waterfront property.  With our blood, sweat and tears, we are hoping to build a beautiful creative community down here.”

NADA Hudson
The Basilica
110 S. Front Street, Hudson
Saturday & Sunday, July 30 & 31; 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Admission/free

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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/18/11 at 07:54 AM • Permalink

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Impressions of a Revolutionary: Pissarro’s People

Rural Intelligence Arts by Robyn Perry

A kind-looking man with a long flowing beard and piercing eyes, Camille Pissarro, father of French Impressionism, was not French at all.  He was born into a Sephardic Jewish family on the then-Danish colony of St. Thomas in the Caribbean, and remained a Danish citizen all his life.  He was also a radical anarchist.

“Pissarro’s People,” showing June 12 – October 2 at the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute of Art in Williamstown, explores how Pissarro’s outsider status and revolutionary philosophy was a driving force behind the Impressionist movement of the late nineteenth century.  Curator Richard Brettell, an international Pissarro expert and, for many years, a grateful summer visitor to the Berkshires from Dallas, paints a new portrait of the Master that, for the first time, reveals his muse.

In 1863, a group of painters who would become the Impressionists (including Monet, Renoir and Pissarro) broke away from the strict rules of the French Academy of Fine Arts, the star-maker machine of the time, and filled their own salon exhibition with “refused” paintings.  Their show was better attended than the academic salon, if only because people came to mock the work on display.  “Impressionist” was an epithet, a curse.  Over the next twelve years, the initial independent salon was followed by a series of eight more Impressionist exhibitions (Pissarro was the only artist to exhibit in all nine), and dealer Paul Durand-Ruel exported the work to London and New York, because, as he said, “The American public does not laugh.  It buys!”

Rural Intelligence Arts Impressionism is characterized by visible brush strokes, emphasis on the qualities of light rather than form, a concern with daily life, ordinary surroundings, color and movement.  Part of the advance was technical: by the late 19th century, paint came in a tube, enabling artists to take their easels outside, into glittering sunlight.  Reacting to the advent of photography, the Impressionists also intuited that their strength was in more, not less, subjectivity.  The show at the Clark gives back to the work something of its original shock value by coloring content with intent.

Pissarro, primarily known as a landscape painter, did, in fact, paint portraits; he just didn’t paint portraits that lionized his subjects, including his famous friends.  He painted the local washerwoman, workers in the fields and at open-air markets, his family: these were the people he most admired.  With his profound dedication to portraying the world around him, now we might call him a realist.  “Pissarro’s People” links Pissarro’s figurative work with his social and economic ideals.  Not only was he from the New World, he was on a mission to create a new world order, based on individuality, equality, and work, rather than capital or class.  “Pissarro’s People” also makes evident his wide influence among his peers, both Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists.  His revolutionary way of looking at the world shaped protégés such as Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse and Seurat. 

Rural Intelligence Arts
Lional and Joachim Pissarro with Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts

During the course of the show previews, Camille Pissarro’s great grandsons, brothers Lionel and Joachim Pissarro (the latter an art history professor at Hunter College) came to see the exhibition, along with Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, great great-granddaughter of Impressionist dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.  Touring the galleries, Snollaerts pulled out a tiny flashlight from her purse. “Ouvres la bouche!” she laughed, then handed it to Joachim, who inspected the surface of “The Harvest” (1882), below.  He talked of his ancestor’s “technical anarchy,” pointing out that Pissarro was a revolutionary experimenter and innovator in a whole range of media, not just oil on canvas, which only his wealthiest patrons could afford.  He also made lithographs, etchings, drawings, gouache and tempera (all included in the current exhibition), to reach a wider, more economically diverse audience.

Rural Intelligence Arts
For the first time ever, Turpitudes Sociales (Social Disgraces, 1890), a series of pen-and-ink drawings Pissarro created as a book for the civic education of his nieces, hangs alongside his other art, revealing the political zeal that drove him to a new way of seeing.  The revolution to which Pissarro devoted his life and work occurs before the viewer’s eyes.  In addition to images that convey “gaiety, clarity, spring festivals, golden evenings, or apple trees in blossom,” as the contemporary reviewer Armand Silvestre characterized the first Impressionist exhibition, the Clark’s show enables the viewer to see the artist himself.

Pissarro’s People
The Sterling and Francine Clark Institute of Art
Williamstown
Now - October 2

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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 06/20/11 at 01:33 PM • Permalink

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Carolyn Blackwood, the Accidental Artist

Rural Intelligence Arts
It’s not her fault that she trips into careers.  She hadn’t intended to become a lead singer for jazz bands, she just fell into it while in graduate school.  Same with the years she spent as a tv producer in France.  And now photography:  It’s not her fault that the skies over the Hudson River, the view from her office/pied de terre/home-away-from-home in Rhinecliff, are, as she puts it, “biblical.” 

Rural Intelligence Arts “I had been taking pictures for years,” says Carolyn Marks Blackwood, whose real career, Magnolia Mae Films, which she co-owns with Gaby Tana, produced 2008’s The Duchess, and, coming out next fall, Corialanus, directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes with Vanessa Redgrave.  “A few years ago, the Morton Library in Rhinebeck asked me to put 10 pieces in a group show.”  It was there that Blackwood’s images of the Hudson River caught the attention of the esteemed critic and curator Barbara Rose, who asked if she could include some of Blackwood’s work in a show on modern luminism, The Magic Hour, that she was curating at a New York gallery.  “It’s as if I’d been playing softball in a field in Rhinebeck, and somebody said, ‘Would you like to play for the Yankees?’ ”

Rural Intelligence Arts

The Alan Klotz Gallery in Chelsea is now Blackwood’s gallery, where her first solo show in New York opens this week.  It is also where an art director from Knopf happened upon an image of Blackwood’s, which is now on the cover of New Yorker poet Deborah Digges’ posthumously-published book, The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart.  Blackwood has used a shortened version of that title for her show.

“Have you seen the documentary, Bill Cunningham New York?,” Blackwood asks.  “As he’s accepting the order of arts and letters from the French Ministry of Culture, he says, ‘He who seeks beauty will find it.’ ”  Blackwood’s beauty, like Cunningham’s, is all about knowing where and how to look.  Everyone knows that birds are beautiful.  But in Blackwood’s photographs, taken in fields immediately following the harvest, when the flocks descend en masse to feast on seeds, the birds create patterns against the sky that are at once exquisite and menacing.  Similar patterning marks her luridly colorful images of fish in overcrowded tanks at the Dutchess County Fair, and her overhead close-ups of the ice on the Hudson as it breaks up around the Rhinecliff dock.  Through Blackwood’s lens, the ice looks, as one critic infamously said of Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, like an explosion in a shingle factory.  Only here, the shingles are made of glass.

Rural Intelligence Arts

All of these—fish, ice, birds—are in the new show, but the centerpiece is that biblical sky.  There is no context to those images, no down here is the ground, up there is the sky.  She presents the sky one little painterly chunk at a time.  The way Blackwood sees it, those heavens are no placid paradise.   

The Wind Blows Through My Heart, Carolyn Marks Blackwood Photographs
Alan Klotz Gallery
511 W. 25th Street, Suite 701, New York
May 12 - June 25; opening reception, Thursday, May 12, 6 - 8 p.m.

Related posts:

A New View of the Hudson
Carolyn Marks Blackwood Talks About Her Film

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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 05/07/11 at 08:05 AM • Permalink

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New Galleries Open in the Berkshires

Debut receptions at The White Gallery in Great Barrington and Sohn Fine Art in Stockbridge on Saturday, April 30
Rural Intelligence Arts
Over the past eight years, Tino & Susan Galuzzo  have made The White Gallery in Lakeville, CT, a cultural hub in northwestern Connecticut.  Now, they are expanding into Great Barrington with a second location in a restored 19th century farmhouse on South Main Street (above).  “Our Lakeville space is very intimate, very homey, and this new space is much more open,” says Tino, who is especially excited about being able to show large paintings and sculptures. “We’ve always show outdoor sculpture, and we have a lawn to show it here, too, but now we have space for it inside as well.”

Rural Intelligence ArtsThe White Gallery’s opening exhibit features contemporary glass art by Adam Waimon and paintings (right)  by David Dunlop, who is one of the stars of the the Lakeville gallery. “David has such a huge following from his PBS series, Landscapes Through Time with David Dunlop ,” says Tino. “His work has evolved from the landscapes he’s famous for. Now, he’s making what I call cityscapes. They’re more abstract, but they are incredibly beautiful really appeal to a broad range of collectors.

The Galuzzos are very civic-minded dealers (they annually host “Blue & Gold at the White,” an exhibit of work by students at the public Housatonic Valley Regional High School), and they are joining forces with Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation for their Great Barrington debut. “We will donate a portion of all sales in the month of May to Berkshire Taconic’s Neighbor-to-Neighbor Fund,” he says. “Susan believes strongly in this program because it provides direct assistance to people in crisis when they need it most. She likes the simplicity and effectiveness of it. We want everyone in the Berkshires to know that we are committed to being part of the community.”

Rural Intelligence ArtsCassandra Sohn (left) is reaching out to the community at Sohn Fine Art at 6 Elm Street in Stockbridge. While the inaugural exhibit features her large, abstract seascapes—un-manipulated and poetic images (below) taken in Ko Chang, Thailand—she is asking regional artists to submit work for a summer show called ‘A Summer Ramble”, which will honor the 19th century Berkshires poet William Cullen Bryant. In fact, Sohn will be holding a workshop and organizing an exhibit this summer at the William Cullen Bryant Homestead.

Rural Intelligence ArtsSohn Fine Art will do double duty as Sohn’s studio and as a printing center for other artists. “We can do iris and giclée prints 44 inches wide and as long as you want,” says Sohn, who teaches photography at IS 183 Art School of the Berkshires and Berkshire Community College. “We can do prints on anything—watercolor paper, metallic paper, fabric. Our goal is to help artists bring their vision to life.”

Rural Intelligence Arts


 
The White Gallery
924 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA; 413.528.3631
Opening reception Saturday, April 30, 5 - 7 p.m.
 
 
Sohn Fine Art
6 Elm Street, Stockbridge, MA;  413.298.1025
Opening reception Saturday, April 30, 5 - 9 p.m.

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Posted by Dan Shaw on 04/26/11 at 10:29 AM • Permalink