Digital Portraits by Bo Gehring.
Opened April 8 and up through May 1, “All For One” includes 77 pieces with a number of previous regulars missing and quite a few more Sunday painters than usual. And yet it is filled with startling pieces by artists currently making major leaps with their work, alongside of other paintings by those better known in other media.
Lenny Kislin won best of show for a joyful play on words and old (and heavy) materials, in what also seemed to be the exhibit’s largest work. But for this viewer’s money, the highlight was a pair of digital portraits by Bo Gehring, spectral yet fun, that served as a great introduction to the video portraits the artist has been creating using a one-of-a-kind scanning camera, visible on his website and Vimeo.
There’s a J.H. Aronson panoramic photo of the Catskills’ Wall of Manitou that brings our mountains’ majesty into dramatic perspective. One of the sweet yet ironic still lives that shows where Portia Munson refuels her abundant creative energies, as well as a new treescape photogram by Jared Handelsman that seems to concentrate all he’s been working on, in photography and video, over the past decade.
Eleanor Steffen returns to dog portraits with an assured, somewhat more expressionist hand. Katherine Burger’s collage work feels perfect in all its elements, from composition and materials to size and framing. Kaete Brittin Shaw’s porcelain, which looks like it’s made from rough-hewn paper, is surprisingly funny and innovatively utilitarian at the same time. Murray Reich’s minimalist paintings, playing off directional arrows, is the work of an artist who has spent years honing a vision, then bringing it to expert life. Carol March’s atmospheric painting has child-like eyes and a knowing sensibility.
Such treasures repeat, in new works, each time one makes a pass at the room.
What talented Guild members. And what a nice start to a new season at the Kleinert!++
Gallery hours for the current show are Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 6 p.m.
The Kleinert/James Arts Center is located at 34 Tinker Street in the center of Woodstock. For further information call 679-2079 or visit www.woodstockguild.org.
Cabane living large
Andrea Cabane’s new show at her eponymous gallery in Phoenicia, which opened last Saturday, is all large works. Really large works. There are large, dry photo landscapes by Richard Edelman, who some are calling the Ralph Gibson of our neck of the woods, and more atmospheric platinum palladium pinhole works by photographer Craig Barber. There’s large watercolors and drawings by Lucinda Knaus, elegant naturalist paintings by Douglas Alderfer, and colorful abstracts by Harper Blanchett. The exhibit will be on view through May 20th and gallery hours are Saturdays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. or by appointment at 38 Main Street in Phoenicia.++
For further information call 688.5490, check out Facebook, or visit www.cabanestudios.com.
Cosmic American Art
The art exhibits that Lenny Kislin puts together at Oriole 9 in Woodstock always have an odd but enlightening balance to them. Think apples and cats, oranges and drive shafts.
Or better, head over and see what’s up at the eatery/gallery into the middle of May: being the road sign paintings of Mary Anne Erickson, almost photorealist in their execution, were it not for the painter’s beautifully mnemonic effects, as well as the sanblasted wood works of Michael Hunt, including his great new piece Falluja (the Ninth Ward), a symphony of dark imagery on natural redwood.
Hunt calls his work “Cosmic American Art” in reference to a term that Gram Parsons coined for his own music back in the early 1970s. “A hybrid of Pop & Folk that examines, indicts, celebrates and surrenders to the search for that mythic and ragged American Dream,” is how he described his singular work. “It is a place somewhere out there in the postmodern mind, a rest stop halfway between the dream world and the waking life.”
“This show is devoted to some of the signs I’ve seen and loved in my travels over the years. I continue to be enamored with this theme for many personal reasons, and I just love the ‘kitschy’ nature of many of these images,” Erickson writes of her new “Signs of the Times” series. “Many artists and photographers have found visions of our past and the interface with today’s world compelling. What we call ‘America’ is always in flux, changing and evolving.
Guess the shared terrain of these two artists Mr. Kislin has pulled together is more cogently together than first suspected. ++
Oriole 9 is open 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. seven days a week at 17 Tinker Street, across from the Village Green. For further information call 679-5763 or visit www.oriole9.com.
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