Livingston Manor, NY — On October 22nd, this strip of Main Street in New York’s Sullivan County joins the list of often-unexpected rural places to see art installations. James Turrell.
Catskill Art Space, a local arts nonprofit, celebrates its 50th anniversary and is rebranding itself as a new arts destination. Includes Turrell’s work “Avaar” as well as two Sol LeWitt walls with his drawings. The three works will be on semi-permanent loan, and the works of artists with ties to the region will be exhibited on a rotating basis, allowing them to be viewed over the long term.
“Work by an artist of this size is certainly the limit for an organization of our size,” said Sally Wright, executive director of the organization known for 50 years until last month as the Catskill Art Society. Even for a town with a full-time population, it’s a stretch. less than 1,000,
Wright, 35, has led the nonprofit since 2017.
Avaar, on loan from the Seattle Art Museum, is one of what Turrell called a “space division” or “aperture” work. (There is some debate as to when Turrell came up with “Avar,” but the Whitney Museum His solo exhibition in 1980.) The huge space is divided into zones where visitors position themselves and look to the second zone where the light radiates. While some of the artist’s most famous works amaze with saturation and color shifts, ‘Avaar’ is achromatic and uses only white light.
As the visitor enters the seemingly dark space, the eye adapts, at first looming like a flat field, before revealing an opening that seems to open into an endless abyss of pure light. takes a few minutes. The artist compared such a work to the way the view passes through the night just after turning off the porch light. The experience Wright quickly points out is common in rural areas. She said that those who see the work find it “meditative and a true reflection of the Catskill environment”, and Turrell often cites the Hudson River School painters as an influence.
First shown at Artspace in New Haven, Connecticut in 2001, LeWitt’s two works, Wall Drawing #991 and Wall Drawing #992, were created at Catskill Art Space following the artist’s guidelines, who died in 2007. rice field. His five local his artists using specific pencils and pens carried out his LeWitt instructions. (“I had to start buying markers off eBay to make sure the nibs were properly sharp,” she said.) Two draftsmen were on hand to oversee .
Wright took inspiration from the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts and the Deer Art Foundation, which was previously involved in the development of the museum space in Beacon, New York. -Class art and programming are “unique to the community we serve,” she said.
She aims to hay these loans that could have been run even by wealthy and large institutions in big cities. She plans to use these “important conceptual works” to attract not only art lovers, but “children and amateur artists who come to our program to learn about art production and art history for the first time.” Practicing pottery and watercolors. “Different things resonate with different groups.”
For example, Wright invited a science lecturer from his local community college, the State University of New York-Sullivan, to use Turrell to teach about light and give public talks on photons and electromagnetic waves. And inspired by Turrell’s contemplative nature, her team invited a monk. Zen monastery near me Host weekly meditations for the community on site. She plans to use her LeWitt artwork to teach “not just color theory, but conceptual ideas about originality and ownership.”
Built as a movie theater in 1929, the nonprofit home has also been a general store and auction house throughout its long history. The facility he moved to the lower floors in 2007, but Wright waited for sufficient support from donors and a significant New York state economic development grant before renovating and expanding the upper floors.
The redesign is the work of Brooklyn-based husband-and-wife design duo Jane Stageberg and Tim Baid. Bade Stageberg Cox Architecture, who own a home in the area.
They created a 9,500-square-foot exhibit and performance space (Turrell and LeWitts will live on the redesigned top floor) for passers-by, including families from the local public elementary school and young children’s patrons. Added a glass shelf to act as a street gallery. A local shop along the main artery of town.
The building now houses an expanded art studio for ceramics and mixed media classes, as well as a new multi-purpose performance space, which is being used this week as a pre-opening residency for up-and-coming choreographic and dance talent. dance gallery festival (The inaugural festivities are free and open to the public).
In the five years her organization has been hosting the festival, Wright says, previous programs have been held at nearby basketball courts due to the lack of performing space in the area.
Such improvisations are common in small arts groups. During the renovation, the nonprofit operated in the former laundromat across the street.
But that’s changing as the sprawling Hudson Valley art scene evolves. Foreland, his 85,000-square-foot arts complex, opened this year in Catskill, New York. And last May, artist Bosco his Sodi’s new museum, Assembly, debuted in nearby Monticello, with an exhibition of artists from Japan and those who share Mr. His Foreland. Sodi’s Mexican heritage. (Foreland is closed for season this month, but the Catskill Art Space and Assembly is open year-round.)
The inaugural exhibition will feature two artists with deep ties to the region. Francis Cape, who lives near Narrowsburg, New York, presents his work through 2027 from the “Utopian Bench” series, which carefully recreates the seating of religious communities in North America dating back to the 1700s. “This work is about the communal exchange and the disintegration of social hierarchies that permeate our world and permeate the art world,” Wright said. On the show, which runs until December 23, Livingston, who travels back and forth between the manor and Brooklyn, Ellen Brooks describes the state of decay in digital images of found trees and leaves, describing “the degree of decay and loss. Over the past few years, We’ve experienced it as a community,” Wright added.
Wright said he hopes the new Catskill art space will “make a difference” for Livingston Manor. “Art is a great way to stimulate the economy,” she said.
Wright said other notable artists have made homes in the area, including Carrie Mae Weems, Philip Lorca DiCorcia, Mark Dion, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Dyke Blair and Julie Meheretu. She added that she hopes to encourage some of them to participate in programming at her Catskill Her Art Her space in the coming months.
Catskill Art Space
Opening October 22nd 48 Main Street, Livingston Manor, NY, catkillartspace.org.