March to March at the National Bottle Museum

An exhibition featuring the work of 42 regional artists has been mounted in the JRM Artists' Space at the National Bottle Museum in Ballston Spa and will hang there through May 1 has been extended through May 29.

The view above shows a fraction of the entire show, which is entitled March to March and its effect on Art and Artists, and was created through an open call by organizer Fred Neudoerffer.

The detail below includes my own contribution to the show (it's the larger one in the middle).

Hope you'll want to go check it out - hours are Weds-Sat 10-4. Enjoy!

photos by Fred Neudoerffer

Earthly at Esther Massry Gallery

An installation of numerous works by Julie Evans is the focal point of Earthly

all photos provided

The current five-person show at The College of Saint Rose's Esther Massry Gallery in Albany is a lively, cohesive example of curatorial ingenuity.

While each artist in the show is highly skilled and clearly worthy of attention on her own, in this setting the five women's works take on greater complexities of meaning through their interrelationships, losing nothing of individual strength in the bargain. The theme of the show, which is entitled Earthly doesn't shout - in fact, it's so subtle you could miss it altogether - but it succeeds in holding the collection together organically.

Odessa Straub - Supplemental Soul Suppository 2019

I don't have a favorite in this show, though I'd say the layered, lyrical installation of nine ink-on-Mylar assemblages by Julie Evans is its focal point. Dated 2011-2014, these mixed-media organic abstractions retain their freshness, enhanced by the playful nature of their presentation here, in which an unframed series of swooping and morphing forms adhered directly to the wall serves as a lattice to connect the more stolid framed and mounted works.

Also installed directly on the walls are three of four sculptures by Odessa Straub (the fourth being a freestanding floor piece). Straub has a Surrealist bent, with a Dadaist sense of humor and surprise. How else could one so elegantly combine such inapt objects as a live underwater plant and a leather speed bag (the type used by boxers to train), among other witticisms? There's also an undercurrent of mad-scientist menace to Straub's combines, while they are still sleek, playful, and colorfully pleasing.

Meg Lipke - Garden Gates II 2020

Meg Lipke also works in three dimensions, but her two pieces in the show play off the wall as pumped-up frames that become their own pictures. Lipke's more modest piece (which is untitled) has multiple openings in a pillow-like structure of stuffed fabric, with highly vivid coloration activating its upbeat claim on a small square of wall space. Her much larger Garden Gates II, also made of painted stuffed fabric, is less bright and slightly droopy - but, at nearly 9 feet tall, its presence is clearly stated.

Yet another sculptor, Tamara Zahaykevich, is represented by a group of five pedestal-mounted forms that hold together quite nicely as a group, though they span well over a decade of production from 2007 to 2021. Like Evans' work, these lean toward abstract biomorphism, with a limited color palette and carefully worked surfaces.

Two Tamara Zahaykevich sculptures

Variety comes as Zahaykevich works these pieces' surfaces in many different ways, from meticulously detailed to roughly scrubbed. One piece, entitled Robert Wisdom is more architectural, as were some of Zahaykevich's pieces that were included in the excellent Cut and Color show that recently ended at the Albany Airport Gallery.

The overall installation of earthly is somewhat sparse, which allows for one side of the gallery to remain unlit for viewing the wall-projected video contributed by Laleh Khorramian. Entitled I Without End, the nearly 7-minute-long time-lapse animation is a curious vision of sad romance, played out by carefully cut orange peels in a miniature chateau-like setting.

Khorramian's soundtrack ranges from lightly industrial to orchestral, including atmospheric voices at times, and it sits comfortably in the gallery space, not loud, almost soothing. Her imagery is at turns abstract and representational, but its real magic comes in the unpredictable movements of drying organic material over time, and it is surprisingly affecting. I don't have a lot of patience for longer-running video clips in a gallery setting, but this film held my attention for two complete viewings.

Credit is due the two curators of Earthly, Saint Rose Associate Professor of Art Susan Meyer and Massry Gallery Manager Erin Sickler, who've assembled this grouping with sharp eyes and clear minds, allowing the whole to honor each of its parts. The show will remain on view through March 17.

A still image from Laleh Khorramian's 2008 animation I Without End 

Terry James Conrad: Object Permanence at Opalka Gallery

Terry James Conrad adjusts his musical installation at the Opalka Gallery.

all photos provided

We’ve all heard of the three Rs - Reduce, Reuse and Recycle – and most of us know that the first two are the more effective approaches to problems associated with waste. But they’re also harder to do, so we’ve tended to focus on recycling, which, also known as remanufacturing, has more and more clearly been revealed as not much of a solution at all.

Tin cans reduced to essential shapes

It’s admirable to try to reduce our production and consumption of stuff, but there’s a conundrum in it: Doing things – which often means making things – is what gives our lives meaning. And that goes double for studio artists. Just try to imagine all your favorite creators having built their careers without leaving behind a trail of stuff. Not at all likely.

All of which makes the unusual approach to making art that Terry James Conrad has pursued so fascinating. Currently the protagonist of a solo exhibition and series of events at Sage College’s Opalka Gallery in Albany, Conrad has taken that second R to heart, and made Reuse his raison d’etre. The result is both intriguing and – perhaps a surprise - esthetically appealing.

One of Conrad's presses in use - the paper
is at the bottom, under the cans

Conrad is essentially a printmaker, though this installation also includes numerous small sculptures, four handcrafted wooden guitars, and a large musical apparatus, in addition to three homemade printing presses that are being actively employed during the exhibition. The level of skill involved in all these works is extremely varied, from pounded, foil-wrapped tin cans that evoke outsider art to fancy woodworking and metalcraft on the guitars. Somewhere in between is the Rube Goldberg-esque music machine, which Conrad set into sonorous motion during my visit. (He’s in the gallery every Thursday adding a residency component to the show.) Unlike many sound installations, the contraption’s rhythmic emanations were not unpleasant or intrusive; rather, they suited the room and the other art in it quite nicely.

It’s worth trying to explain about those presses. Conrad has invented a unique method of printing, which uses gravity to create downward pressure on a matrix of folded, joined, and grouped tin cans that are placed on top of the printing paper. Each press is a multilayered stack of found stuff, not all of it functional, but all of it adding to the overall visual and symbolic effect of the conglomeration. After homemade inks are piped into the interior spaces of the cans, where they pool and soak for several days, an embossed and colored image will be permanently impressed upon the page, formed of deep lines from the cans’ edges and flowing colors within and around them.

Conrad has embellished these found cans with colored foils 

Conrad makes his inks from everyday sources like walnuts and rust, and uncommon ones, too, such as silt taken from 565 meters below the ocean. Many of the more than 30 finished prints in the exhibition are displayed without frames or glass, making it easy to examine their soft textures and subtle variations in tone. Others are shown in frames, most notably a suite of black-on-white lithographs embellished with pastel-colored frames - but the unframed works are the stars of the show.

Four Conrad prints

The prints are abstract and have equally abstract names, and they are fun, funky, even stylish, with geometric forms and an array of mostly muted colors. Their method of display appears to be yet another Conrad innovation: Angled out from the wall on painted wooden supports, and placed well below the usual eye-level of gallery art, they invite relaxed intimacy and close examination. The experience is enhanced by the opportunity to also examine the tin-can constructions that made these prints, as they are also on view in the gallery, along with a number of simpler transformations of tin cans that evoke early Modernist minimalism.

The show is billed as a survey, with prints ranging throughout the last 10 years. Most of them have white backgrounds, but a triptych entitled Benthic is brown and soft like suede, fully stained with walnut ink around its other colors and floating shapes. Benthic is also larger than the other prints, and super-fresh (dated 2021), suggesting a strong current direction.

Terry James Conrad: Object Permanence will remain on view through March 13. The Opalka Gallery is open to the public, with generous visiting hours that include Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons. I highly recommend that you make time to see this outstanding show by a uniquely dedicated and talented artist.

Benthic 2021 - monoprints by Terry James Conrad

Painted Stories: Susan Hoffer at LGAP

The day we were sent home to stay home. March 13, 2020. Essex County, NY

In a time when many museums and galleries are closed to the public, those few that continue to fulfill their mission of mounting new shows that can be viewed in person are especially valuable.

One of those crucial venues is the Lake George Arts Project's Courthouse Gallery in Lake George Village, which hardly skipped a beat in its exhibition roster through the pandemic, and currently hosts an outstanding solo show of paintings by the Adirondack artist Susan Hoffer.

Entitled Painted Stories, the collection of 21 recent works holds together nearly perfectly as a solid body of work built around the theme of technology's place in our daily lives, with an awareness of current events and deeply personal connections as a complex underlay. In other words, these paintings are ripe with content, living up to the show's title, while simultaneously being subtle and intimate.

From the Warsaw Ghetto to Lake Clear: Never Again

Hoffer has a lot going for her here: First, her technique is off the charts. Working in oil on cradled hardwood, she layers glazes of transparent color under heavily built-up impasto to achieve both a luminosity and an extremely active surface, a rare combination of effects. She also organizes her space, and the people and objects within it, with the confidence of an orchestra conductor, making for compositions that are particularly engaging.

Hoffer's paintings are portraits, but they are equally domestic interiors - think of Vermeer as a comparable example. And, like Vermeer, Hoffer uses lens-based technology extensively as a base for her creations. Don't misunderstand - this is NOT photorealism. Rather, it is a carefully honed process that utilizes a multitude of photographs for reference, often incorporating visual effects that can come from the subject having been seen through a lens. 

The resulting pictures are bathed in a dazzling light, highly detailed, and realistically representational - but they never appear to be anything other than a painting, and they feature many beautiful passages of paint and color, more than enough to satisfy lovers of that sort of thing. Further, these luscious paintings show as much attention to mundane objects - say, a glass of beer - as to people's faces, maybe even more in some instances, which I find intriguingly rigorous.

6 Things You Need to Know This Morning

So we have a painter of stories who is also a painter of floors, and fabrics, and furniture. The evocative titles, the carefully arranged scenes, and the people depicted combine to provide context and develop deeper meaning to each work, but one can also simply get lost in the lush strokes of paint.

This is why it's so important to see these paintings in person - trust me, they just don't translate online (worthwhile art rarely does). Instead, allowing your eyes to roam over their surfaces will amply reward the time and effort spent in going to the gallery.

Watching the healthcare debate:
No pre-existing conditions allowed

That said, there's a lot more to these elaborate compositions than sensual pleasure. What started out in 2017 as a thoughtful painter's response to our nation's particular and peculiar political situation, evolved in 2020 into a meditation on the effects of the pandemic, and the direct or indirect way the situation was enmeshed with our dependence on electronic devices.

Thus, in all but five of the works presented here, the subjects are absorbed with looking at a screen, or, if not directly looking, they also aren't looking out at the viewer, and a screen or other device is present. (In the show's only self-portrait, Hoffer is shown in her studio listening to a podcast while she stares off into space.) One is made to ask: What does this say about our time and its preoccupations? In the effort to stay informed and connected, are we losing more than we're gaining? Alternately, in the handful of paintings where we are directly confronted by the subject, we are forced to have quite other kinds of thoughts, about that person, their circumstances, and what all of that may mean to us personally. Either way, it's quite a powerful experience.

Painted Stories: new work by Susan Hoffer will remain on view at the Courthouse Gallery through February 19. The gallery is currently open by appointment only, preferably with 24 hours' notice. Call 518-323-5499, ​or ​email laura@lakegeorgearts.org to schedule your visit.

The moment you understand white privilege and decide to act for the greater good

Kingsley Parker: An artist who cares

A Single Vine Invades
the 70-foot Canopy, Kinderhook, NY
acrylic on re-used drop cloth

The artist Kingsley Parker is unusual in a number of ways.

For one, he adeptly works in a wide variety of media – drawing, painting, sculpture, and printmaking among them. Few artists can pull this off (two examples that come to mind: Michelangelo and Picasso), but Parker does it with aplomb.

Parker also works at wildly different scales, from quasi-miniature to monumental. Additionally, his style can range from detailed realism to total abstraction (including forays into the teasingly humorous), all of which he does, again, with apparent ease.

Finally, Parker has a habit of engaging with a subject, wringing the life out of it (in a good way!), and then moving on to something entirely different - yet another approach that few artists can successfully navigate and most would be well advised to avoid.

Against these odds, Parker throws caution to the wind. And, though there is a thread (I promise you) that binds it all together, I’m not sure that is uppermost in his mind. He just seems to plow ahead with a relentless singularity of focus.

Winter Birch, Mt. Merino, Hudson, NY
acrylic on re-used drop cloth

Most recently, these impressive abilities were on view in a tight solo show at Thompson Giroux Gallery in Chatham, which closed on Jan. 3. Other Parker works were included in the 2020 Mohawk-Hudson Regional at the Albany Institute of History & Art, which also just closed. The Regional featured online video talks by many of the selected artists, Parker’s being one of the more engaging choices (you can watch it here), and that’s what really got me interested in seeing more of his work. Catching the Thompson Giroux show on its last day proved to be a very satisfying fulfillment of that curiosity.

Indecisive, Chillmark, Mass.
acrylic on re-used drop cloth

Entitled A World of Hurt, the show featured eight very large acrylic paintings on re-used canvas drop cloths, along with six sculptural pieces of various size and materials, and numerous works on paper, some of them mounted and hung and many more in flat files. All but one of the large works and several of the smaller ones are tree portraits, lovingly rendered in natural settings with a variety of atmospheric light conditions. I was told that an additional piece in the same vein was stored in the back – at 130 inches, too tall to hang on the wall.

People who know me well understand that I’m not a huge fan of electronic media and their ubiquitous glowing screens – I’ve often said I’d rather just stare at a tree. Or I could just stare at a Kingsley Parker painting of a tree. The best of them have sufficient detail to hold hours of attention (as they clearly did for him). These homages are carefully observed and obviously quite deeply felt. As I do, he loves these fellow beings and is heartened by their presence in our world; equally, he laments the threats they face as a result of our presence in theirs.

Thing 2 - Found wood, vines, used coffee filters,
acrylic paint, wire, styrofoam, tar, hay, old bucket

I think Parker’s dedication to the environment and his desire to express that through his art is a strength, despite the potential for such an approach to devolve into insubstantial messaging. Lesser artists over the centuries have tried and failed to maintain the highest standard of artistic quality (however measured) while issuing a pointed message, but Parker succeeds, moving the viewer not with the message but with the transcendent power of the art itself.

That he cares so much only adds to this success, because it drives the work forward. Clearly a sensitive soul, Parker effectively applies that sensitivity to the media he employs. Whether in delicately brushed renderings of undersea fauna, carefully placed hills of tiny twigs representing a clear cut, or hauntingly depicted midnight-dark forests, Parker’s technique wins hearts and - there’s always hope – minds.

I’d only been vaguely aware of Parker before these two exhibitions, and I’m sorry it took so long, but it has most certainly been worth the wait. Check out more of his work at kingsleyparker.com.

Unclaimed Luggage - found luggage, used coffee filters, fabric

In Brief: Fence Select at ACCR

Michael Oatman - American Spring (after Wallace Bergman), collage

Part all-inclusive members' show, part juried regional, the longstanding Fence Show at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy is a unique annual event. Like many other exhibitions this year, Fence was delayed a few months due to the pandemic, and so it is still on view in December, though it would normally be a summer show (historically, the show got its name because it was hung outdoors on a wrought-iron fence that surrounds a private park associated with the former location of the ACCR).

Victoria van der Laan - To Dash Against Darkness
sewn and quilted cotton

This year's Fence Select was chosen by Tang Museum Director Ian Berry, with additions selected by ACCR staff (possibly a first) and, if memory serves, this was the first time the show restricted entrants to just one submission each. Naturally, this would lead to a far less comprehensive presentation than a juried show with the typical three or more entries per participant, but it still resulted in a representative cross-section of many of the region's most interesting artists.

In this way, despite its limitations, Fence Select serves as a handy augmentation of the Annual Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region (aka the Regional), currently on view at the Albany Institute of History & Art through Jan. 3. Coincidentally, this year's Regional also features just one work by many of the participating artists, and several of those artists are in Fence Select - so a careful observer can actually combine those in their minds' eye to develop a fuller understanding of each of those artists.

Fern Apfel - The Yellow Envelope

For example, Fern Apfel, whose acrylic and pen on wood panel received the Best in Show award at Fence, has two related pieces in the Regional; and Victoria van der Laan, who was named runner-up at Fence for her lyrically graphic quilt, has another outstanding quilted work in the Regional.

Other important artists represented in both shows include Niki Haynes, Michael Oatman, John Hampshire, Mandi Coburn, Jeff Wigman, and Dorothea Osborn. I also noticed a few favorite photographers in Fence Select, such as Chris DeMarco, Ray Felix, and Jennifer Duke Anstey, bringing to mind the recent annual Photography Regional at Albany Center Gallery, where some of them were also represented.

Apart from these various associations, Fence Select stands alone reasonably well, but it is a bit thin, due to the relatively large space it inhabits at the ACCR. I suspect this underfilling may be the reason that five staff picks were added (making for a total of 28), and I'm glad they were, as they include some of the better works in the selection.

Fence Select remains on view only through this week, with open hours Tuesday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. - so , if you want to catch it, be sure to act now.

John Hampshire - Labyrinth 623, ink on polypropylene

Unraveling at Opalka Gallery

Joan Grubin's E Pluribus is part of Unraveling at the Opalka Gallery in Albany

The artist Yura Adams has curated an important show at Russell Sage College's Opalka Gallery in Albany that features three other artists and herself. While it’s generally a faux pas for curators to include themselves in the show they’re selecting, Adams proves to be an exception to this rule, having plenty of experience organizing worthy exhibitions and events while being one of the region’s best and most productive artists.

Unraveling includes Adams, Joan Grubin, Ruby Palmer, and Christina Tenaglia, all of whom have ample room in the big space to spread their wings, and they all do so by bringing aspects of installation into their presentations.

Yura Adams - Geologic Time, acrylic and ink on Tyvek

Both Tenaglia and Adams have drawn or painted directly on the walls, while Grubin created her single, sprawling piece on-site; Palmer’s pieces aren’t site-specific, but they claim the space physically, in one instance by straddling a corner of the gallery. Altogether, the exhibition finds the right balance of scale and fullness without overcrowding the venue or overshadowing any of the art, which all works well individually and as a group.

A large panel near the entrance to the gallery introduces the show with a concise, cogent statement from the curator that explains the intention of the title, including equally valued interpretations that relate to the current unraveling (or falling apart) of society and the unraveling (or solving) of a mystery, in this case through the artists’ steady explorations. Her summary statement celebrating the act of “creation in the face of uncertainty” aptly describes the show’s purpose and relevance.

Though the curator’s introduction states that these are “four women artists,” it really doesn’t matter to me whether they are women or not. The qualities of perseverance and resourcefulness they exemplify are generally embodied by all significant artists (it’s pretty much part of the job description), regardless of gender.

Ruby Palmer used a minimalist dollhouse to display
ten small sculptures, five on each side

What matters more here, as in any contemporary art exhibition, is that the work is very good. Beyond that, one can seek to derive elements of a show’s meaning from the personal identities of its artists (and there are certainly many cases where that is the main point, or a significant part of it), but I don’t feel that urge in this case.

Rather, I respond to a strong collection of mostly abstract work that emphasizes form and color more than content. There is an arguably feminine perspective in Grubin’s wall-size construction, where the traditionally female craft of weaving is employed, and a few household objects that reference domesticity (including a loop potholder) are deployed, but it is so much more than that. After all, every one of us is caught in life’s vast networks, as helpless as the fly in a spider’s web. The title, E Pluribus, and the placement of tiny photographs of Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela among the many parts, reveal a broader political interpretation and an inclusiveness that I think supports this point.

Ruby Palmer - Surprise Ending
acrylic paint on basswood

Palmer’s work also could be viewed through a feminist lens, but her dollhouse construction (as one example) could just as well have been made by a man, and its meaning would be little different if that were so. What stands out for me in Palmer’s work is her sense of humor, her playfulness, and a feeling of freedom, all of it enhanced by the power of her meticulous application of rich colors and materials. Some of her works are clearly inspired by stage sets, while others cross the line into domestic architecture. Either way, they are endlessly clever, whether simple or complex.

These strengths are also in evidence in Tenaglia’s collection of more than 30 discrete items, eight of which are wall drawings, all of them nominally presented as one piece under the title halftones and densities.  An additional installation is slyly tucked behind a freestanding wall, all of its many elements painted the same shade of gallery white as the wall itself. I particularly enjoy Tenaglia’s skilled-yet-roughshod handling of her materials, which range from raw wood to fired porcelain, and her innovative investigation of shapes.

An untitled object in painted wood
by Christina Tenaglia

Adams is essentially a painter, but she achieves a similar monumentality as Grubin and Tenaglia by stacking six large paintings into two rows, nearly filling the 16-foot height of the gallery’s end wall. Entitled Geologic Time, the six free-floating Tyvek sheets ripple and billow slightly, their utilitarian surface reflecting light in such a way as to seem almost transparent. These pieces are ever so vaguely figurative, and their scale is similar to human size, building a connection between our bodies and the environmental elements they draw from. These and several other works by Adams in the show emphasize form but also feature intriguing illusions of texture in a nod to printmaking and papermaking techniques.

Unraveling will remain on view through Saturday, Dec. 19. The gallery has generous hours (including through 8 p.m. on Thursdays) and is operating with smart COVID protocols: Masks are required, temperature is taken and travel/exposure questions answered upon entry, and a phone number is recorded for contact tracing.

Installation view of Christina Tenaglia's halftones and densities

A note on curating: There seems to be a trend – or a series of coincidences – in the region among certain artists, galleries, and curators. I couldn’t help but notice that all three artists that Adams chose for Unraveling were also included in a recent show entitled SpaceLAB at Troy’s Collar Works, which was organized by Julie Torres and Ellen Letcher. That pair, in turn, made up half of a panel of four jurors who selected the work for Infinite Uncertainty, the previous show at the Opalka. And Palmer was among eight artists included in Cut and Color, which recently closed at the Albany Airport Gallery.