ArtBeat: What To See

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Art Meets Art: Perspectives On and Beyond Olana @ Olana and The Hudson Opera House, Hudson. These dual exhibitions showcase 36 contemporary artists who live and work in the area around Hudson and include photographs, paintings, posters and multi-media works inspired by Olana: the family home, studio, estate and working farm created by the eminent Hudson River School painter, Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900). Works will be available for sale to benefit both The Olana Partnership and the Hudson Opera House. Each artist was invited to create a new artwork directly inspired by Frederic Edwin Church’s most personal artistic masterpiece, Olana. The artists spent time within the iconic house and throughout Church’s 250 acre artist-designed landscape, utilizing the nineteenth-century painter’s home on the Hudson as muse. Artists featured include Peter Aaron, Marina Abramovic, Carolyn Marks Blackwood, R.O. Blechman, DJ Spooky, Makoto Fujimura and Annie Leibowitz. Opening receptions: Saturday, June 8: 4:30pm at The Coachman’s House Gallery, Olana and 6-8pm at the Hudson Opera House. (Through August 11)

Subliminal Transcriptions @ The Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy. An immersive light installation by Yael Erel, who uses lights to magnify small surface topography into large-scale light drawings. Visitors of the exhibit can walk themselves through the center’s Black Box Theatre, where various light installations will be set up throughout the room. Opening reception: Thursday, June 6, 5-9pm with an artist’s talk at 7pm. On display: Friday, June 7, 9am-7pm and Saturday June 8, 9am-1pm. (Two days only)

Anne Roecklein and Fiber 2 Form @ Salem Art Works, Salem. Collage and assemblage pieces by North Adams artist Anne Roecklein in the Cary House. The Barn 2 Gallery will house the group show Fiber 2 Form with artists Claudia Sbrissa, Derek Parker and Ben Cuevas, three artists who focus on the manipulation of fiber outside its traditional aesthetic to achieve desired forms. Opening reception: Saturday, June 8, 4-6pm. (Through June 29)

Pittsfield First Friday @ Downtown Pittsfield (PDF). Pittsfield’s hopping with a slew of exhibitions for the month of June and a celebratory arts walk of openings on Friday, June 7 from 5-8pm.

Winslow Homer: Making Art, Making History @ Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown. A showcase of some sixty oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and etchings, as well as approximately 120 rarely seen wood engravings by Winslow Homer. Drawing upon the resources of the Clark’s own holdings of nearly 250 of his works (dating from 1857 to 1904), the exhibition provides a variety of distinctive perspectives on this important American artist. Opens Sunday, June 9. Lecture by exhibition curator Marc Simpson: Sunday, June 9, 3 pm. (Through September 8)

George Inness: Gifts from Frank and Katherine Martucci @ Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown. Eight landscapes by George Inness that represent a survey of the artist’s late work. The paintings range in date from 1880 to 1894, the year of the artist’s death. During this period, Inness moved from the open-air painting and naturalism of his early career toward a more conceptual approach to capturing mood and the play of light and shadow. Opens Sunday, June 9. (Through September 8)

Floriography @ Galerie BMG, Woodstock. An exhibition of new floral photographic work created with various photographic processes and mixed media by Brigitte Carnochan, Kim Kauffman and Leah Macdonald. (Through August 5)

Design@Work: The Karene Faul Alumni Exhibition @ The Esther Massry Gallery, Albany. Printed media, packaging, web and video works by 25 alumni of the College’s graphic design program. Gallery receptions: Friday, June 7, 5-7pm and Friday, September 6, 5-7pm. (Through September 22)

Impressive: Perspectives in Printmaking @ The Albany Barn. An exhibition by local artists Chris Skaggs, Audrey Hammond, and Kristine Monahan, who use one or more printmaking techniques within their work, ranging from hand carved wood blocks, transfers, embossment, chine-collé, drypoint, collograph, and etching. Opening reception: Friday, June 7, 5-9pm with a performance from St. Rose’s award-winning a cappella group The Girls Next Door at 6:30pm. (Through July 3)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Creation of a Classic @ The Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge. Guided by the vision of a master storyteller, 32 animators, 1032 assistants, 107 inbetweeners, 10 layout artists, 25 background artists, 65 special effects animators and 158 inkers and painters and countless production staff came together to create an enduring masterpiece of the moving image. This exhibition explores the making of the film through more than 200 original works of art – from conceptual drawings and early character studies to detailed story sketches and animation drawings. Opens Saturday, June 8. Family Day: Sunday, June 9, 1-4pm. (Through October 27)

Fresh: From Farm To Gallery @ Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, Pittsfield. A group art featuring Berkshire County artists Phil Bastow, Marge Bride, Denise Chandler, Joan Ciolfi, Tom Fiorini, Diane Firtell, Ann Getsinger, Carol Gingles, Kate Knapp, Nina Lipkowitz, Nancy Magnusson, Laurie McLeod, Susan Merrill, Jen Morse, Isha Nelson, Sam Ponder, Gabrielle Senza, Mary Sipp Green, Savannah Spirit and Scott Taylor Thirty percent of all art sales will benefit the new Downtown Pittsfield Farmers Market. Opening reception: Friday, June 7, 5-8pm during the Pittsfield First Friday ArtsWalk (Through June 27)

The First 15: Photography from the Meredith S. Moody Residency at Yaddo @ The Tang Teaching Museum and Gallery, Saratoga Springs. The Meredith S. Moody Residency, which supports one female photographer each year, was established in 1997 by the Moody family in honor of the late photographer Meredith S. Moody. This exhibition presents several of her photographs as well as one work by each of the Residency’s artists: Dru Arstark, Linda Cummings, Barbara Ess, Sharon Harper, Sarah Jones, Jennifer Karady, Jin Lee, Annu P. Matthew, Sara Cedar Miller, Yola Monakhov, Arezoo Moseni, Carol Shadford, Rosalind Solomon, Jean Vong and Letha Wilson. (Through September 29)

Salon Style @ Ybar, Pittsfield. More than 40 oil paintings from the past four years that reflect Michael Rousseau’s self-guided exploration into the many facets of oil painting, including an in-depth study of materials and techniques employed by painters from the High Renaissance to modern masters. Receptions: Friday, June 7, 6pm-midnight and Thursday, June 20, 5-10pm. (Through June 30)

The Study @ Albany Center Gallery. Works by local artists MammalSoap, Emily Dorr, ♥Neener and Patrick Picou Harrington that explore the natural world from the comfort of the home environment. Artists’ reception: June 7, 5-9pm. (Through June 29)

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Painting Between The Lines @ Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown. Fourteen contemporary painters created newly commissioned paintings based on descriptions of paintings in historical and contemporary novels by authors such as Marcel Proust, Samuel Beckett, Sylvia Plath and Milan Kundera. By examining the ways contemporary artists look at storytelling, literature and writing as expressions of individual thought, the show aims to looks at the state of contemporary painting today, presenting some of its most innovative practitioners such as Laylah Ali, Marcel Dzama, and Fred Tomaselli. (Through June 9)

Visionaries: Outsider Portraits by Fred Scruton @ BCB Art, Hudson. Fred Scruton travels extensively throughout the country to document self-taught artists and their work, examining the vitality of visions formed outside of the artistic mainstream. This exhibition focuses on environmental portraiture within the personal worlds each artist has created. Also on view will be a group show of gallery artists, including work by Ching Ho Cheng, Frank Cresotti, Rodney Alan Greenblat, Emily Gui, Julie McCarthy, Dan Welden and others. (Through June 9)

LGBTQ @ Wikoff Student Gallery, Union College, Schenectady. The fifth annual exhibition of LGBTQ-themed artwork includes pieces by both students and alumni, working in painting, photography, film, and rap performance. (Through June 13)

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Art Biologic @ Limner Gallery, Hudson. Twenty seven contemporary artists interpret the biological world in this exhibition featuring traditional and eclectic works in all media by regional, national and international artists. (Through June 15)

The Legacy of Currier & Ives: Shaping the American Spirit @ Albany Institute of History & Art. An exhibition featuring sixty-four hand-colored lithographs that pays tribute to the popular nineteenth-century printmakers and their role in establishing a form of mass media that was inexpensive and eagerly sought by ordinary people. (Through June 15)

Jeff Jacobson: The Last Roll @ Center for Photography at Woodstock. Works by Jeff Jacobson in the wake of his diagnosis with Lymphoma a few days before Christmas of 2004 and the subsequent announcement of the elimination of his beloved film Kodachrome – the tool which shaped his artistic vision over the course of his career in photography – by its manufacturer, Kodak. Artist presentation and book signing: Saturday, May 4, 3-5pm. (Through June 16)

Renee Iacone: Stacks & Artifacts @ John Davis Gallery, Hudson. John Davis Gallery’s new exhibition season opens with six solo shows featuring Renee Iacone in the main galleries showing Stacks & Artifacts, a series of stone cairns, and Jon Isherwood in the Sculpture Garden with three hand-carved, eight-feet-tall sculptures in granite and marble. In the Carriage House are sculptures by Victoria Palermo and paintings by David Hornung, Cecelia Rembert and Herbert Reichert. (Through June 16)

Photography Now 2013 @ Center for Photography at Woodstock. This years’ installment of the annual Photography Now exhibition presents eight artists who employ photography to put forth varied discourses within the documentary genre. Noah Addis, Alinka Echeverria, Ilona Szwarc and Samantha VanDoren look outwards into society, exploring timely or pertinent subjects ranging from forays into surreal subcultures to records of international movements and events. Beth Chucker, Ayala Gazit, Gary Grenell and Robin Schwartz each turn inwards with their work, training their eyes on conflicts and pleasures close to home. (Through June 16)

Cascadia @ Collar Works, Troy. An exhibition of eighteen artists that explores the current artistic climate of the Pacific Northwest regions of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia featuring Anna Fidler, Michelle Forsyth, Aja Rose Bond, Cable Griffith, Britta Johnson, Ryan Molenkamp, Molly Magai, Rita Alves, Chip Baker, Scott Grigg, Libby Gerber, Suzy Kitman, Sarah Morejohn, Gordon Nealy, Uli Ostermann, Garric Simonsen, Martha Schlitt and Christy Turner. (Through June 22)

Benjamin Dimmitt, Debi Milligan, Keiko Sono @ Davis Orton Gallery, Hudson. Primitive Florida is a series by Benjamin Dimitt investigating the wetlands, palm hammocks and low-lying forests of Florida, while Deb Milligan’s First Light, Last Light observes the conversation between light and form – the way everything is transformed through the light; now here, then suddenly gone forever. Keiko Sono’s video installation, 110 Days of Winter, follows the formation and evolution of an ice layer on a Catskill boulder from December to April, condensing the five-month-long process into a 40-minute loop. Also on display are portfolio showcases by Kent Krugh and Anna Beeke. (Through June 23)

Re-Place Kahonios @ The Foundry for Art Design + Culture, Cohoes. An exhibition of work by native artist Merritt Johnson that honors the peaceful return of 100 acres of sacred land at Cohoes Falls back to the Haudenosaunee, League of Iroquois, by Brookfield Renewable Energy Company. Artist lecture: Sunday June 9, 1pm. (Through June 23)

Adventures in Space @ Laffer Gallery, Schuylerville. Ceramics by Regis Brodie, Emeritus Professor of Art at Skidmore College. (Through June 23)

Banjie Getsinger Nicholas – Echoes @ Clement Gallery, Troy. Interpretations of the strength and fragility of the natural world rendered in egg tempera paintings and silverpoint drawings on clamshells. (Through June 26)

R.O. Blechman: The Inquiring Line @ @ The Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge. A celebrated illustrator, animator, children’s book author, graphic novelist, and editorial cartoonist, R.O. Blechman is well known for his memorable advertisements for Alka-Seltzer and Capezio, among others, and for his witty illustrations for The New Yorker and The Huffington Post. His imagery for magazines, illustrated books, advertisements, and animations will be on view. (Through June 30)

Beauty and the Feast @ Spencertown Academy, Works by botanical photographer Ellen Hoverkamp. (Through June 30)

Happy Birthday Ellsworth! @ Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham. A collection of prints by noted American minimalist Ellsworth Kelly. Also on display are additional work by the EK Boys: Jack Shear, Nick Walters and Joseph Yetto. (Through June 30)

Labeltalk 2013: India @ Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown. The ninth exhibition in the Labeltalk series, exhibitions that aim to explore works of art from a broad range of perspective, this show focuses on Indian art, inviting Williams professors from a broad range of disciplines to write short responses to the works. Also on view: Teaching with Art: The Persian Image, an array of Persian paintings dating from the 15th to the 20th century. (Through June 30)

Pick a Point in a Picture: New Mind Model Works @ Uncommon Grounds, Albany. Thirty digital collages by George Guarino that are meant to serve as focal points for meditation, self-growth and insight. Guarino will be on hand to discuss his process for enhanced viewing of the artwork on Friday, June 28, 7-9pm. (Through July 2)

John Jackson: Whimsical Metal Sculptures @ West Kortright Centre, East Meredith. John Jackson has been creating sculptures for over 35 years using a sculpture palette consisting mainly of bike and motorcycle parts, distressed musical instruments, old tools and gleanings from flea markets. Favorite themes are musicians, masks, critters, and banksters behind bars. (Through July 8)

Earth & Atmosphere @ Good Purpose Gallery, Lee. Luminous paintings by William McCarthy and whimsical sculptures by David Bryce. (Through July 15)

A Dream in the Dash @ The Living Room, Albany. This exhibit, the grand opening a new exhibition space at the historic St. Agnes Cemetery in Menands, will feature photography and “Dream Windows” by Albany artist Chuck Miller who has framed some of his works in actual windows removed from very old buildings. (Through July 17)

Pure Photography: Pictorial and Modern Photographs from the Syracuse University Art Collection @ Arkell Gallery, Canajohaire. The 30 photographers included in this exhibition have extensive histories that span thematic periods and artistic styles. Taking their cues from master photographers like Edward Steichen, artists such as Berenice Abbott and Manuel Alvarez Bravo built on that foundation in order to explore the very art of photography. (Through July 20)

Plowshares: Living Close to the Land @ GCCA Catskill Gallery, Catskill. This group photography exhibit highlights the agrarian, pastoral and utilitarian aspects of our landscape as well as sustainable economics and lifestyles. Participating artists include regional journalist Kyle Adams, old-process revivalist and rural life chronicler Craig Barber, digital and alternative process specialist Dan Burkholder, conceptualist and photogram experimenter Jared Handelsman, East Texas photo teacher and pin-hole master Vaughn Wascovich and others. (Through July 27)

Mind and Matter: Jane Dell and Liz Parsons @ SCAC Arts Center Gallery, Saratoga Springs. An exhibit that brings together two painters who explore both inner psychology and the physical world around them. (Through July 27)

Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent @ The Tang Teaching Museum and Gallery, Saratoga Springs. A major retrospective of graphic artist, activist and educator Corita Kent including iconic images from the turbulent 1960s and 70s. (Through July 28)

Points of Connection: Generations of Mingei @ The Harrison Gallery, Williamstown. In 1918, the British potter Bernard Leach visited Japan where he met a young, then unknown now legendary, potter Shoji Hamada in the small village of Mashiko. This friendship sparked the resurgence of the mingei aesthetic, from which sprung the life force of modern Japanese ceramics. Mingei, the “art of the people,” aspires to celebrate beauty in the functional.

Shoji Hamada, one of Japan’s National Living Treasures, mentored Tatsuzo Shimaoka, also a National Living Treasure, who in turn mentored Ken Matsuzaki. Shinsaku Hamada, son of Shoji, continued the tradition, passing it along to his son, Tomoo Hamada, who, along with Yoshinori Hagiwara, represent the contemporary work in this lineage. Inspired by Bernard Leach, Phil Rogers carries on the legacy in Great Britian. (Through July)

Objectify: A Look Into the Permanent Collection @ Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield. A major new exhibition of some of the most significant and fascinating objects from the Museum’s holdings of more than 50,000 artworks, specimens, and artifacts. (Through September 1)

Some Assembly Required @ Albany International Airport Gallery. An exhibition focusing on collage, expressed through traditional cut paper techniques as well as hybrids of photography, film, painting and sculpture. Artists: Todd Bartel, Allen Bryan, Laura Christensen, Susan Spencer Crowe, Paul Forte, Kirsten Hassenfeld, Niki Haynes, Andrea Hersh, Elana Herzog, Thomas Huber, Mary Lum, China Marks, Michael Oatman, Rob O’Neil, Rich Remsberg, Anne Roecklein. (Through September 8)

Kaaterskill Clove: Where Nature Met Art @ Zadock Pratt Museum, Prattsville. Works by contemporary painters Athena Billias, Patti Ferrara and Carol Slutzky-Tenerowicz alongside one of the late Thomas Locker’s renderings of Kaaterskill Falls. The exhibit is intended to raise awareness about the importance of the Clove and the need for its preservation in the face of the environmental strain it has been under for the past several years. (Through October 14)

Caffe Lena: Inside America’s Legendary Folk Music Coffeehouse @ The Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs. Featured in this exhibition is a selection of photographs made at Caffè Lena during its first decade of existence by Joe Alper (1925-1968). A self-taught freelance photographer, Alper’s work includes historic jazz, folk, and blues performance photography. His candid black-and-white photographs of the musicians, audience, and staff at Caffè Lena capture the Caffè’s intimate, creative environment. (Through October 20)

Xu Bing: Phoenix @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. Drawing inspiration from the contemporary realities of his fast-changing country, Chinese artist Xu Bing spent two years creating his newest work, featuring two monumental birds fabricated entirely from materials harvested from construction sites in urban China, including demolition debris, steel beams, tools, and remnants of the daily lives of migrant laborers. At once fierce and strangely beautiful, the mythic Phoenixes bear witness to the complex interconnection between labor, history, commercial development, and the rapid accumulation of wealth in today’s China. (Through October 27)

Russel Wright: The Nature of Design @ New York State Museum, Albany. An exhibition featuring the work and philosophy of renowned industrial designer Russel Wright, exploring his career from the 1920s through the 1970s and including approximately 40 objects along with photographs and design sketches. (Through December 31)

Clark Remix @ The Clark, Williamstown. A salon-style installation of works from The Clark’s permanent collection, including some 80 paintings, 20 sculptures and 300 examples of decorative arts. Visitors will be able to create their own “curatorial remix” of the collection through an interactive project called uCurate, available in the gallery and on the Clark’s website and can then submit them to a gallery that will be featured at clarkart.edu. The Clark’s curatorial team will regularly review the submissions, and will select the best of these for exhibitions that will be presented at the Clark. (Through Jan. 1, 2014)

Love to Love You @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. An exhibition that brings together artists who explore fandom as a unique opportunity for shared social experience and extreme personal obsession, presenting fans not as passive spectators but active participants in culture. Whether making memorabilia, writing fan fiction, or singing karaoke, fans become creators as much as consumers of culture; by looking at the social culture of fandom, this exhibition poses questions about authorship, collectivity, and our place in the hierarchy of cultural production. Participating artists include Mark Bennett, Eric Doeringer, Elissa Goldstone, Jason Lazarus, Eva LeWitt, Patrick McDonough and Jeremy Shaw. (Through January 5, 2014)

Jason Middlebrook @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. For the past decade, Jason Middlebrook has been exploring the complex relationship between man and nature in his sculptures, installations, paintings and large-scale drawings. Responding to the unusual scale of MASS MoCA’s gallery, the artist will be working with planks that in some instances reach tree-like heights, while others will retain a human scale. Middlebrook will also debut a new monumental mobile that will function like a fountain within the gallery. Titled Falling Water after Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Kaufman residence, the work continues the artist’s exploration of manufactured nature while adding a twist to Wright’s notions of living in harmony with the environment. (Through April 7, 2014)

Joseph Montgomery: Five Sets Five Reps @ Mass Moca, North Adams. New York-based painter Joseph Montgomery creates compact abstract assemblages (many measuring only 12 x 10 inches) by layering a range of materials — a base vocabulary of sorts — including wood, clay, cardboard, fiberglass, paper, and wire. These elements take on the appearance of painterly gesture, each functioning like a brushstroke. The earliest of these works developed from the artist’s attempts to veil or destroy paintings which he found too earnest or too personal. These rejected works become a support for his subsequent collages and are at times cannibalized as material fragments in newer works. (Through April 7, 2014)

Guillaume Leblon @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. This first solo exhibition of Paris-based sculptor Guillaume Leblon’s work in a U.S. museum will feature a selection of works made over the last decade, in addition to two major new projects created for MASS MoCA. While his works refuse a single reading, they often conjure images of the ruin and the passage of time, bringing the present and the past into contact. Leblon can transform everyday components into sculptures that attain a relic-like quality or the aura of a classical statue.. (Through April 7, 2014)