Cross Contemporary Art

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Conversation: Katherine Bowling & Suzannah Lessard

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Conversation Between Katherine Bowling & Suzannah Lessard

On Saturday Sept. 26th at 7pm, writer Suzannah Lessard speaks with Katherine Bowling on the union of memory and the landscape in Ms. Bowling’s current show “The Presence of Leaves” at Cross Contemporary Art. Katherine Bowling’s passion for contemplative landscape spaces has long been an essential trait of her paintings and prints. Inspired by the woodlands of the Hudson Valley and Catskills region, Ms. Bowling’s recent artwork captures the luminosity of golden dappled forests and the quiet shadows of moonlit nights. Writer Suzannah Lessard will steer a lively conversation with the artist about her intentions and techniques and the symbolism of the landscape in Ms. Bowling’s artwork.
About Katherine Bowling’s Solo Show “The Presence of Leaves”
Katherine Bowling’s imagery uses the landscape to create intimate spaces. Inspired by the environment of upstate New York, her woodlands are illuminated by dappled light sparkling through a leafy ceiling. Often Ms. Bowling’s paintings compel the viewer to enter this shimmering forest realm down a pathway away from civilization. Other images introduce the contrast between the decay of manmade structures and the grand, renewable cycle of the surrounding trees. And like Albert Pinkham Ryder before her, Katherine Bowling sometimes boldly paints a portrait of the moon with a silvery light that is in elegant contrast to the habitual golds of her sunlit forests. Although Ms. Bowling’s paintings and prints are in the tradition of the Hudson River School, her expressive technique, quiet symbolism and masterful spatial illusions take the idea of landscape painting into the 21st century. Katherine Bowling’s “The Presence of Leaves” closes Sunday, September 26th.
About Katherine Bowling:
Since her emergence in 1980s, Katherine Bowling has been well respected as an American painter and printmaker. Ms. Bowling has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship. Her work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum and the Fisher Landau Center in New York City, the Orlando Museum of Contemporary Art and the Norton Museum of Art in Florida as well as the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art in Evanston, Illinois and St. John’s University in Santa Fe, New Mexico

More information about the artist can be found:
Artist’s website:  http://katherinebowling.com/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Bowling
NYTimes Art Review: http://bit.ly/ccakbnyt
About Suzannah Lessard:
Suzannah Lessard is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family (1996). Ms. Lessard has taught at Columbia School of the Arts, Wesleyan University, The New School, George Mason University, George Washington University, and Goucher College MFA in Creative Non-fiction.  She was one of the first editors of the Washington Monthly and a staff writer at The New Yorker Magazine. She has also published in New York Times Magazine, Architectural Record, Architectural Digest, Wilson Quarterly and Harvard Design. Suzannah Lessard is the recipient of the Whiting Award and the Mark Lynton History Prize as well as a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Jenny McKean Moore Fellowship at George Washington University. Her latest book, T”he View From a Small Mountain: Reading the American Landscape in the Twenty-First Century” is scheduled to be published in 2016.

Katherine Bowling: The Presence of Leaves

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Katherine Bowling: The Presence of Leaves

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 Katherine Bowling’s imagery uses the landscape to create intimate spaces. Inspired by the environment of upstate New York, her woodlands are illuminated by dappled light sparkling through a leafy ceiling. Often Ms. Bowling’s paintings compel the viewer to enter this shimmering forest realm down a pathway away from civilization. Other images introduce the contrast between the decay of manmade structures and the grand, renewable cycle of the surrounding trees. And like Albert Pinkham Ryder before her, Katherine Bowling sometimes boldly paints a portrait of the moon with a silvery light that is in elegant contrast to the habitual golds of her sunlit forests. Although Ms. Bowling’s paintings and prints are in the tradition of the Hudson River School, her expressive technique, quiet symbolism and masterful spatial illusions take the idea of landscape painting into the 21st century.
About Katherine Bowling:
Since her emergence in 1980s, Katherine Bowling has been well respected as an American painter and printmaker. Ms. Bowling has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship. Her work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum and the Fisher Landau Center in New York City, the Orlando Museum of Contemporary Art and the Norton Museum of Art in Florida as well as the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art in Evanston, Illinois and St. John’s University in Santa Fe, New MexicoMore information about the artist can be found:
Artist’s website:  http://katherinebowling.com/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Bowling
NYTimes Art Review: http://bit.ly/ccakbnyt
Almanac Weekly: http://bit.ly/ccakbaw

Susan Copich “Domestic Bliss”

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Susan Copich “Domestic Bliss”

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Since Susan Copich’s first exhibit of “Domestic Bliss” in 2014 (Umbrella Gallery, NYC), her photographs rapidly travelled over the internet generating tremendous response. Images from the exhibit flashed across countless computer screens worldwide. The elegant scenes depicting suburban privilege are at first glance banalities often found in lifestyle magazines. Like advertisements for an ideal life, the photographic quality and composition mimics a marketing illusion. However, the carefully composed veneer is part of Copich’s message: a fur coat, a swimming pool, an elegant dining room with picture windows, a dream kitchen are all a staged set prepared for actors posed in a “tableau vivant”. But the challenging gaze of the photograph’s female protagonist demands closer examination revealing darker ironies: the pain of parenting, the cruelty of intimacy, the ache of ambivalence, the recklessness of desire, and ultimately the loss of illusion. To engage with these photographs in a gallery, and not through the Internet, is the best way to understand the irony of Ms. Copich’s storytelling. “Domestic Bliss” is a mirage as the moment is imagined while the story-line continues to roll past the stills. The pretty blonde woman staring out at the viewer, is the only moral compass that is constant throughout the photo series. She challenges us to experience the discomfort of the tableau and dares us to recoil from the scene. She presents the taboos of our society and acts as the silent narrator of a morality play frozen by the camera’s eye. The over arching lie of Susan Copich’s “Domestic Bliss” tells a harsh truth by peeling back the veneer of civilization to reveal the danger of denial.
Susan Copich writes about her work: “I dwell in the dark thoughts and recesses of my mind to create character and subject…(and) navigate both my own personal imperatives as woman, artist, mother and wife, as well as those – personal, social, and cultural -that are imposed by
others. My work is my commentary on how a family can live a public life that is far from their private life, even within the family; how secrets are kept, coddled and nurtured”

About Susan Copich:

Since graduating Ohio State University (BFA, 1991), Susan Copich has had professional careers as a modern dancer, teacher and actress. Looking to explore new forms of art and self-expression, Copich returned to academia at New York City’s International Center of Photography. While at ICP, Ms.Copich began laying the mental framework for what would become her photographic series “Domestic Bliss”.The series gives voice to Copich’s inner “darkness” while examining family life in a humorous context. Like many celebrated contemporary artists, Copich’s art rarely inspires a moderate response. Copich’s journey to explore universal truths are celebrated by some and shunned by others. Susan Copich lives in Upstate, NY where she resides with her husband and two daughters.
More information about the artist can be found:
Artist’s website: http://susancopich.com
Media reviews/Interviews (selected):
Daily Mail: http://bit.ly/ccascop1
Slate: http://bit.ly/ccascop2
BoredPanda.com: http//bit.ly/ccascop3
Huffington Post: http://bit.ly/ccascop4
Bust.com: http://bit.ly/ccascop6
Beautiful Decay: http://bit.ly/ccascop7

CATHERINE HOWE SOLO SHOW

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Catherine  Howe

Supreme  Fiction:  Monotypes  &  Mylar  Paintings 

Solo  Exhibition  July  3  –  26,  2015

Supreme Fiction: Monotypes and Mylar Paintings by Catherine Howe opens with an Artist’s Reception July 35-8pm at Cross Contemporary Art, Saugerties and runs through July 27th, 2015. Inspired by the luscious paintings of the Baroque era, Catherine Howe’s riotous compositions bring still lifes and botanicals into the 21st century. Her exuberantly expressive brushwork  and attention to surface create vibrant works out of uniquely contemporary materials such as carborundum grit and polyester. The luminous results resist being categorized as solely, drawings, paintings, or prints. David Ebony writes “Howe’s still lifes…are anything but still. The images seem to be imploding or exploding, in a constant state of flux.” Michele C. Cone says about Ms. Howe: “Howe’s evocative paintings are not about still life per se, but about the naming of things transposed into paint, and the magical interaction between medium, memory and perception.”Supreme Fiction: Monotypes & Mylar Paintings by Catherine Howe” opens July 3-26.
About Catherine Howe: Catherine Howe received an MFA from SUNY Buffalo in 1983. She has been reviewed in many publications including Art in America, Artforum, Art Critical, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times. For over twenty years, Ms.Howe has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe  including shows at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, MoMA PS 1 in New York, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. Catherine Howe is on the faculty of the New York Academy of Art in New York City.More information about the artist can be found: 
Artist’s website:  http://catherinehoweartist.com
Video interview: http://bit.ly/ccachow1

Peggy Cyphers: Solo Show

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Peggy  Cyphers:  Prints  and  Paintings

 

Peggy Cyphers solo exhibition of paintings and prints opens Sat, June 6th at Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties, NY.   The art of Peggy Cyphers responds to the multi-dimensional experience of the landscape from the various viewpoints of living beings. Gazing skyward from the bottom of a cavern like a fox or towards the horizon in a ruffle of woodpecker feathers, Ms. Cyphers re-imagines the world through different animal consciousnesses, defying both perspective and gravity. For her show at Cross Contemporary Art, Peggy Cyphers introduces a series of cyanotypes (prints created by sunlight) using rare botanical prairie grass samples and mysterious equine imagery whose reverse shadows are suspended in a sky-blue ground.

    In the Brooklyn Rail, Jonathan Goodman writes about Ms. Cyphers: ” Cyphers makes it clear that she has opted for a double awareness, in which non-objective insight vies with close scrutiny of the natural world.” New York Times’ Roberta Smith notes that Cyphers paints “in an effortless style that corrupts and complicates the staining technique originated by Color Field painters like Helen Frankenthaler with various ideas in the air: notational, pattern-prone motifs, landscape references and allusions to textiles and fabric.” Cross Contemporary Art gallery director, Jen Dragon notes that “throughout Ms. Cyphers long and distinguished career, her overarching aesthetic concern has always been the interconnectedness of all beings to the earth and to each other”

About Peggy Cyphers:       Peggy Cyphers’ work can be found in many important museum,university and public collections throughout the world including National Gallery, Washington, D.C.Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. National Museum of Women in the Arts,Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Wash. and the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, Iowa to name but a few. She is a recipient of many Grants include National Endowment for the Arts, Peter S. Reed Foundation, The Elizabeth Foundation, National Studio Award PS.1. Residency awards include Yaddo, Art Omi, Tong Xian Art Beijing, Santa Fe Art Institute, ISCP, Triangle & Clocktower/P.S.1. Currently, Peggy Cyphers is a tenured adjunct professor of visual arts at Pratt Institute. More information about the artist can be found: 
Artist’s website:  http://peggycyphers.com
Video interview: https://vimeo.com/86328765
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Cyphers

Portia Munson Solo Show

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Portia  Munson  “Little  Suns,  Hollow  Bones”

 

Portia Munson‘s solo show, “Little Suns, Hollow Bones”, transforms Cross Contemporary Art into a world of flowers, plants, bones and creatures. From brilliant dandelion wallpaper on the walls to magical mandala prints of blossoms and small animal corpses, this exhibition addresses the artist’s interest in environmental issues while infusing the gallery with the spirit of spring.
     Although a conceptual extension of her 2013 “Reflecting Pool” exhibit at PPOW Gallery in New York City, Portia Munson’s upcoming “Little Suns, Hollow Bones” presents some new imagery derived from the flora and fauna of the Catskills and Hudson Valley region. Munson’s digital scanning of her subjects is a meditative exercise in organizing the chaos of nature as its elements are caught at a moment in time. Choosing flowers that bloom that day in her garden, Munson creates intricate patterns of color and form that, according to Claire Lambe in Roll magazine, “although preserved through the magic of digital technology, are as ephemeral as sand paintings,” and as a reviewer for The New Yorker stated,“(have) a seductive luminosity; each floral element appears to emit light.”
More information about Portia Munson can be found:
Artist’s website: http://portiamunson.com
New York Times Article about Portia Munson: http://bit.ly/pmccanyt
Portia Munson’s recent Public Arts Project for MTA Arts and Design: http://bit.ly/pmcca01
Portia Munson Review in Roll Online: http://bit.ly/pmcca02

About Portia Munson: Portia Munson is a visual artist who works in a variety of media including installation, painting, photography & sculpture. Solo shows include exhibitions at PPOW Gallery, Yoshii Gallery and White Columns in NYC, among others. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US, Canada & Europe in such venues as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland; the Kunstahallen Brandts Klaedefabrik, Odense, Denmark; and in NYC at the New Museum, Ace Gallery, Exit Art, DC Moore Gallery and Affirmation Arts. Ms. Munson has taught at NYU, Yale School of Art, Vassar Collage and SUNY Purchase. She holds a BFA from Cooper Union and a MFA from Rutgers. Portia Munson has received fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, Skowhegan, Fine Arts Work Center Provincetown, Art Omi, and others. Her work has been reviewed and written about in many publications including The New York Times, Art in America, Newsweek, Harper’s, USA Today, The New Yorker, Flash Art and Artforum.

Portia Munson “Little Suns, Hollow Bones” Solo Exhibition 
May 9-31, 2015
Artist Reception Saturday, May 9, 6-8pm
at Cross Contemporary Art, Saugerties, NY

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Gregory Amenoff: Selected Prints

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Gregory  Amenoff:  Selected  Prints  1983-2013

     “Gregory Amenoff: Selected Prints 1983-2013” is the first solo exhibition of woodcuts, lithographs, intaglio and monoprints in this artist’s distinguished career. The show opens with an Artist’s Reception Sat, April 11, 6-8pm at Cross Contemporary Art, Saugerties, NY.  Known primarily as a painter, Mr. Amenoff has also had a long career as a printmaker. This survey traces Mr. Amenoff’s first forays into large format color block woodcut through to his later painterly monoprints, aquatints and lithographs. Whether its painting, prints or drawings, Gregory Amenoff works in the tradition of the great American nature painters using the landscape as the inspiration for his abstract imagery. According to Rachel Rosenfield Lafo,  “Gregory Amenoff responds intuitively to stimuli in the natural world of landscape and atmosphere and the inner worlds of emotion and spirit, blending his perceptions into organically abstract images. In his work the outer world is internalized; the inner world is manifested in visible form.” For those who have followed Gregory Amenoff’s career as a painter, this exhibit will present his changes and discoveries as an artist and the influences these discoveries have had on his painting. For those new to Mr. Amenoff’s work, this show will be an exciting introduction to a great 21st century American artist.

 

About Gregory Amenoff: Gregory Amenoff’s work can be found in many important museum and public collections throughout the world including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Modern Museum of Art (MoMA), The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Art Institute Of Chicago and The Brooklyn Museum, to name but a few. Mr. Amenoff is a multiple recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Award in Painting, American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award and in 2011, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow. Gregory Amenoff holds the Eve and Herman Gelman chair of Visual Arts at Columbia University and received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art.  Mr. Amenoff works and lives in New York City and Ulster County, New York.

Garry Nichols “Water Witch”

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Garry  Nichols:  Water  Witch

 

Garry Nichols solo exhibition of paintings, drawings and sculpture opens Sat, March 7 at Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties, NY. Mr. Nichols is a prolific artist who plays with the paradox of space: what should be big is very small and what should be small, is enormous creating a fantastic distortion that torques pictorial space. The feeling of far-off lands, of maybe even the most far-off land of Nichol’s native Tasmania lends his art a sense of adventure and discovery of a new state of nature.
Garry Nichols takes over the gallery and transforms the space into an enviroment of nautical and botanical fantasy reflecting his far-ranging fascination with water divining, sailing ships, tropical plantlife and aboriginal art. Adrian Frost writes: “Nichols is now in his stride. Ultimately an epic painter, a man of the long vision, the big picture, he is intimate with painterly detail yet always pushing for the grand yet haunting vision”. Cross Contemporary Art director Jen Dragon says of Garry Nichols “Mr. Nichols is a wordless storyteller whose art follows the flow of form much as the divining rod discovers the unseen stream of subterranean water. Its exciting to surrender the gallery for an installation of such breadth and ambition!” In an interview with Guy Trebay for the NYTimes, Garry Nichols say of his own work “I have no plan when I go into the studio, I just let the drawings flow.” Just like the divining rod also known as the water-witch.

About Garry Nichols:
Garry Nichols, work can be found in many museum and public collections throughout the world including Samuel P. Harn Museum University of Florida, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria, Burnie Museum, University of Newcastle Australia,Osaka Hilton Hotels, Westpac Bank, ARTBank. A recipient of New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and Gottlieb Foundation Awards, the artist has shown at numerous institutions including The Brooklyn Museum, Marymount Manhattan and Kean University. Most recently, Mr. Nichols’ paintings were published in “I Don’t Poem” an anthology of poetry and art edited by Claudia La Rocco. Garry Nichols currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Garry Nichols currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
More information about the artist can be found:
Video interview: http://vimeo.com/79713584
Artist’s website: http://garrynichols.com

About Cross Contemporary Art: Cross Contemporary Art is a gallery dedicated to showing mid-career and established artists who have a connection to New York City, Hudson Valley and Catskills region. Open Thurs through Mon 12-6, Tues and Wed by appointment or chance. 81 Partition st Saugerties, NY 12477 Phone Gallery Director Jen Dragon 845.399.9751 for more information

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sm_ship_spiral_by_garry_nichols_oil_on_canvas

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“Take 5” Group Show of 5 NY Artists

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Take  5:  Group  Show  of  Five  New  York  Artists

“Take 5”, at Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties, NY, opens Sat, Feb 7, 6-8pm and runs through Sunday, March 1.

This group show presents paintings, drawings and sculpture by five New York artists: John Berens, Jeffrey Bishop, Mike Cockrill, Jared Deery and Shria Toren. Despite their distinctly different styles, the artworks are uniified in that they all identify the infinite encased in the intimate. From John Berens hazy, lonely landscapes, through Shira Toren’s meandering beings, and Jeffrey Bishop’s alternate universes, to Jared Deery’s mysteriously subjective still-lives and culminating in Mike Cockrill’s reduced and deconstructed figures, the paintings and sculpture in this show capture a deep contemplation of winter.

About The Artists: John Berens: An associate professor at Parson’s, John Berens has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellwoship in Painting. Mr. Berens paintings are in numerous public collections and are described by ArtNet’s Stephen Maine as “glazey, moody”. More about the artist: http://johnberens.com

Jeffrey Bishop: Jeffrey Bishop has had numerous solo shows notably at the Danforth Museum of Art, the Miami University Art Museum and the San Diego State University Gallery. In Art in America, Matthew Kangas writes about Mr. Bishop’s abstract paintings as having a “indeterminate light source (which) sites the work on an intellectual rather than an emotional or humorous plane.” Jeffrey Bishop most recently completed the Takt Artists Residency in Berlin. More about Jeffrey Bishop: http://jeffreybishop.com

Mike Cockrill: Although some of Mike Cockrill’s artwork has generated controversy, (notably the “White Papers” with Judge Hughes and “Baby Doll Clown Killers”), the artist is also quite sentimental. His latest paintings and sculpture reference a nostalgic sense of time and the memory of suburban comfort. Anthony Haden-Guest writes about Mr. Cockrill: “The pictures (sources) that turn Mike Cockrill on are neither plunder nor cultural markers. They are his ways and means of at once re-experiencing a seemingly enchanted childhood world and decoding it. They are time machines …” More about Mike Cockrill: http://mikecockrill.com

Jared Deery: The art of Jared Deery can be characterized as both intimate and wistful with titles that evoke visual poetry. A graduate of Pratt (BFA) and Hunter College (MFA), Mr. Deery lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. More about Mr. Deery can be found: http://jareddeery.com

Shira Toren: The paintings of Shira Toren present meandering swirls of migrating forms which evoke both the flight of birds and the unconscious procession of human forms in an indistinct landscape. A graduate of Pratt Institute, Ms. Toren is an Israeli-American artist who lives and works in New York City More about Shira Toren: http://shiratoren.com

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Heather Hutchison EXTENDED thru Jan 25

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Heather Hutchison: Here Now

Heather Hutchison’s latest exhibit will continue through Sunday, January 25th at Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties, NY. Ms. Hutchison’s work explores the visual ratio of changing light over time, utilizing various transparent materials, color and form. Making the gallery walls part of her canvas, natural light forms ever-changing “paintings” as it travels though bent plexiglas forms, creating fluctuating colors and shadows. The ephemeral subject matter of all the pieces, the passage of time, is bound by one constant: light. To underline this, the artist has also created two video installations: one presented as a traditionally framed Hudson River School painting capturing sunset and moonrise at Saugerties Beach, compressing several hours into minutes, and the other utilizing the reflection of glowing embers to illuminate the gallery’s storefront window. Cindy Moore writes: “Hutchison’s paintings are impossible to experience thorough reproductions. No matter how skilled the photographer, they cannot be captured in a fixed moment. The work is responsive in a way that is alien to traditional painting: as the light shifts, so does the hue”. Maia Damianovic, describing the experience of Hutchison’s work, says: “Our gaze has no privileged or natural access, only fleeting opportunities that may be seized, in Blake’s words, “to catch joy as it flies”. And Eleanor Heartney writes in Art News: “Hutchison demonstrates that Minimalism and metaphor do not make such an odd couple after all.”

Cross Contemporary Art is open Thurs thru Mon, 12-6pm and Tues and Wed by chance or appointment.

About Heather Hutchison: Ms. Hutchison’s work can be found in many museum and public collections including The Smithsonian Institution, The Hammer Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, Harvard Business School as well as Reader’s Digest, Brooklyn Union Gas and Cantor-Fitzgerald art collections. A recipient of both Pollock-Krasner and Gottlieb Foundation Awards, the artist has shown at numerous institutions including The Corcoran Gallery of Art Biennial, Montclair Art Museum and The Brooklyn Museum. She currently lives and works in Saugerties, NY.

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