Cross Contemporary Art

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Katherine Bowling Presence of Leaves review by Ann Hutton

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Katherine Bowling at Cross Contemporary Art

by Ann Hutton for Almanac Weekly/HV1

Painter Katherine Bowling in her studio in the Catskill Mountains.



Some of us appreciate nothing more than the visual imagery provided by trees, this writer included. I can, and often do, stare into the forest for hours, accomplishing nothing more than the nurturance of my spirit or soul, or whatever you want to call it. American painter and printmaker Katherine Bowling accomplishes more. She translates her perceptions of the natural environment onto canvas or paper or spackled wood in colors both vibrant and muted, as if squinting to capture an overall impression of nature, rather than the crisp details.



Inspired by the woodlands of upstate New York, she creates paintings that command the viewer to look into the landscape, not at it. The moody skies, the earth covered in a tangle of trees or snow or a distant body of water, the silhouetted V of geese flying south, an old garage, an empty road, a fence, and always the branches and trunks and leaves of trees — all come together to form the commonality of country views and brought into a soft focus that suggest simply, “Look at this.”

Showing works since the early 1980s, Bowling has been compared to the 19th century painter, Albert Pinkham Ryder. And it’s been written that 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. The recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, Bowling has works exhibited in the collections 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.


Now exhibiting at Cross Contemporary Art Gallery in Saugerties, Bowling offers “The Presence of Leaves,” a group of paintings that quietly invites the viewer to become intimate with trees. An opening Artist’s Reception will be held on Saturday, August 29, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Directed by Jen Dragon, Cross Contemporary Art Gallery is dedicated to showing mid-career and established artists who have a connection to New York City, the Hudson Valley and the Catskills region. Open Thursdays through Mondays from noon to 6 p.m., Tuesdays and Wednesdays by appointment or chance. “The Presence of Leaves” will be exhibited until September 27. More information about the artist can be found at https://katherinebowling.com/


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Forces of Nature: Peggy Cyphers and Catherine Howe

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FORCES OF NATURE: Monotypes by Peggy Cyphers and Catherine Howe

by Fiona Steacy for Saugerties Times

Catherine How and Peggy Cyphers printing monotypes together for their two-woman show at Cross Contemporary Art



The newest exhibit at Cross Contemporary Art on Partition St. is fresh off the press.


Just two weeks ago, artists Catherine Howe and Peggy Cyphers holed up in a studio together to create some of the monoprints currently on display at the gallery.
“The ink is barely dry,” said gallery director Jen Dragon at the Nov. 8 reception.
“The ink isn’t even dry,” said Howe, leaning in to examine one of her new pieces. It’s a large, monochromatic, expressionist depiction of flowers in a vase, part of a triptych that acts as the focal point of this wall. The back wall belongs to Cyphers’ floor-to-ceiling painting titled “Woodpecker,” a tempest of swirled and feathery brushstrokes.


The artists’ pieces are similar in their large scale and vibrant color palettes, and it’s these commonalities that make for such a well-curated show. Even though the pieces are so energetic, they do not detract from one another, nor does one artist’s work demand all of the attention. The show was curated by fellow artist and mutual friend, Ford Crull, who, having known both of the painter-printmakers for a number of years, realized what a striking exhibit could be made from their works. Dragon cited the pieces’ gestural quality as the aspect that makes them work so harmoniously in the small space, as well as a shared “exuberance.”


Despite the similarities that make the artists’ works so complementary to one another, their styles are easily distinguished once you’ve had a moment to take it all in. Cyphers tends toward a representation of organic forms as they exist in the natural world and often from nature’s perspective. “Woodpecker,” Cyphers says, is the world from a woodpecker’s point of view. The textures and patterns bear resemblance to the bird, but they are blurred as if in motion, perhaps in flight.


Cyphers considers herself to be a naturalist artist. Her latest example is “Prairie Conversation,” a series Cyphers created while in a residency at the Grin City Collective in Iowa. There, she researched plant specimens in Grinnell College’s herbarium, some dating back to the 1800s. Her series appropriates the specimens, replicating and juxtaposing them in new ways, as a kind of collaboration with a bygone era of American conservation. Now that only 0.1 percent of the original American prairie still exists, Cyphers aims to create new awareness of the disappearing beauty with her unusual compositions. A group of cyanotypes on display at the gallery shows the beauty of nature through the lens of the past. The geometric collages of flora give the impression of a study of nature that, unlike Cyphers’ “Woodpecker,” is at once reverent and distant.



While Howe is equally fascinated with organic matter, she chooses to depict it through a peculiar kind of still life. She claims to have “an affinity for difficult nature…for post-nature nature.” Howe applies a vigorous, expressionist technique to old master structures, giving her still lifes a distinct immediacy. The term “still life” seems y inadequate to describe them; they are anything but still. One can see the energetic hand of the artist in the violent and gestural brushstrokes, and the red and orange hues are as evocative of human emotion as they are of an autumnal harvest.


The natural world is as much a vehicle as a subject for Howe. She says her art reflects her “physical relationship to the natural world.” She aims to capture “the emotional, the operatic…without resorting to the human figure.” She works in a manner as organic as her subjects. “I hate the math part,” she admits, referring to the careful calculations and calibrations artists typically use in the printmaking process. Howe does not make numbered editions of her work. She also prefers bleed prints, printing on large sheets of paper and trimming them down to size.

Both women take a hands-on approach to their works. While many artists employ people to handle the mechanical aspects of the printmaking process, Howe and Cyphers are painstakingly involved in the creation of their pieces. Their recent monoprints are the result of what Howe refers to as a “three-day marathon” in which they “worked like fiends” with the help of only one assistant.


In addition to being prolific artists, both women teach art; Cyphers at Pratt Institute and Howe at the New York Academy of Art. While there is an undeniable urban sensibility in their works, it is equally clear that each draws inspiration from the natural world. The artwork of Peggy Cyphers and Catherine Howe will be on display at Cross Contemporary Art until Dec. 1.


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Anthony Haden-Guest preview by Paul Smart

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Anthony Haden-Guest Artist Talk

by Paul Smart/January 12, 2017

Anthony Haden-Guest hand-coloring his prints available at Cross Contemporary Art




For anyone familiar with party scenes in New York City from the heady 1970s on, the name Anthony Haden-Guest — who has a new exhibit opening at Cross Contemporary on Partition Street next weekend, as well as a talk at a new performance venue and B&B on the Saugerties/Woodstock border January 14 — is instantly recognizable.


He’s that witty Brit who used to write about all manner of scenes he’d be in attendance at for decades. The one whose family peerage went to half-brother Christopher Guest (of Spinal Tap fame), whose work (and image) regularly appeared in the New York Observer, the Sunday Telegraph, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Sunday Times, Esquire, GQ (UK), Radar, Spy and Financial Times. And who the late Christopher Hitchens pegged as the real model for Tom Wolfe’s character study of a drunken expat yellow journalist, Peter Fallows, in the epochal Bonfire of the Vanities.


“I was publishing political cartoons before I started writing,” Haden-Guest said of his inclusion in Word Count, an exhibit of his hand-colored prints alongside materials by Shira Toren and Peter Tunney that opened in December and runs through Sunday, January 15. “That’s another field that’s depreciated over time.”


The scribe known for his reportage on scenes at Studio 54, New York’s art scene of the 1970s and 1980s, and glimpses into the high market value of auction art in more recent years talked about how the world he arose and flourished in is fast disappearing. At least in terms of readership…and recompense.


“Magazines are a melting iceberg. I do some online work for Daily Beast and other sites, some continuing book projects, curation of a few exhibitions, but it’s all much more difficult than it once was,” he said. “Of course, something called the Internet happened. It transferred things from what used to be the best life a writer could have.”


Haden-Guest went on to talk about the proliferation of fake news, and attacks on journalism and intellect in general, noting how it made he and his peers tend to feel that “what we do hasn’t ever been more necessary than it is right now.” He added that wit and humor, his own stocks in trade, have also always grown in sharpness during “harder regimes.”


“We’re all oppositional now,” he added. “It’s just economically more difficult.”


The writer/artist’s works in Word Count at Cross Contemporary tend to present profound quotes with a slightly ominous twist, playing off and with Tunney’s painted and screened over collages of old book pages that “create contemporary clarity over layers of cultural memory,” and Toren’s graphite numbers evoking “the count down at the start of old black and white films as well as the anticipation of what a count down can bring.”


Haden-Guest’s talk, at 7 p.m. in the new boutique venue The Pineapple, 1659 Route 212 Saugerties, just across from Red Onion, is planned as a multi-media conversation featuring new animations and a live reading of poems and essays entitled An Evening with Anthony Haden-Guest.


The Pineapple, added Cross Contemporary’s Jen Dragon, is the art deco living room of a new bed and breakfast establishment featuring modern art and “spacious, elegant interiors in a traditional woodland setting ideal for small gatherings and special events.”



“We will be presenting a renaissance man who is full of stories and insights about current events, the art world and contemporary culture,” Dragon said. “We hope that this will be the first of many monthly cultural salons at The Pineapple that will present writers, artists, performers, singers and musicians to the public in a relaxed and congenial atmosphere.”


How did Haden-Guest get invited for the exhibit and evening?

The man himself says he’s been coming to the Woodstock area from his West Village home in New York City for years.


“It’s a sort of UK thing. You spend part of your time in the town, and some of it in the country,” he explained. “It’s become more interesting of late given some of the problems now in the city, as well as the numbers of city people now up in the country. It’s not exactly rural these days, you know.”


Dragon noted how having Anthony Haden-Guest in her gallery, and as her first guest at The Pineapple, is a bit of a dream come true.

“I was always a fan girl of Anthony’s writing back when I had subscriptions to New York Magazine and Vanity Fair. I loved his NYC culture and Art World coverage as well as the cartoons that would pop up every so often in random publications like the NY Observer,” she said. “I started Cross Contemporary Art with the encouragement of some friends: Ford Crull, Larry Litt, Eleanor Heartney, Mark Kanter and Heather Hutchison. They in turn introduced me to mid-career artists they thought would be a good fit for my small space and Anthony Haden-Guest was one of them.”++

-Paul Smart

Christy Rupp Review by Paul Smart for Woodstock Times

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Artist Christy Rupp opens new show in Saugerties

by Paul Smart

/September 29, 2017/

“The​ ​First​ ​Harvest​ ​after​ ​Asher​ ​B​ ​Durand”​ ​Christy​ ​Rupp​ ​2017​ ​collage​ ​on​ ​paper​ ​11”​ ​x​ ​17”



There’s a moving image of a tadpole swimming upstream in murky waters on the website of Christy Rupp, whose exhibition, “Catastrophozoic,” opens at Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties with an artist’s reception this Saturday, September 30. There are skeletal sculptures, embossed glassware, collages and posters. An entire world of the fragile and natural is under attack from manmade objects and methodologies.


Rupp’s latest show, named after the Greek root word for “long emergency,” is dominated by an installation of 16 birds taken from centuries of art history, but now ensnared by discarded plastic net bags: a real-life scourge brought into more cultured settings. There are also collaged works that bring fuel trains into classic Hudson River School settings, as well as Russian-doll-inspired “nesting pesticide dolls.”



Ever since this Buffalo-born artist emerged in to the late 1970s New York arts scene with “The Rat Patrol,” sculptures and posters tied to the garbage strike of the times, Rupp has mixed an ironic sense of humor with a penchant for well-researched takes on our civilization’s increasingly tragic dealings with the natural world. She has created new skeletons for coming adaptations to a polluted world, a massive ear of corn tethered to a snail out front of Manhattan’s Flatiron building (entitled “Social Progress”), cardboard sculptures of fish attacked by PCBs and other pollution elements, toxic molecules and genetically-modified insects, labels for new GMO foods, water glasses embossed with images and words of water toxins, a globe made from chicken wishbones, fake ivory, felted oil containers, and a regular flow of similarly witty but provocative works.

Years ago, the artist would come up and rent a Catskills farm or woodsy cabin with outdoor spaces for her welding. Eventually, she bought land and built a home and studio in the rolling fields of Delaware County. Almost a decade ago, Rupp spent several years looking to replicate her deep Catskills experience closer to the Hudson River, the easier to make her back-and forth travels to New York City, where she’s long been on the arts scene. She was in Colab, (The Times Square Show) and she participated in the Real Estate show’s unlawful occupation of a city-owned storefront that later gave birth to the still alive-and-kicking ABC NoRio.



Does her art change depending on where she is?
Her property is blessed with long, relatively untamed vistas reaching down towards a sliver view of the Hudson River. It’s obvious that the artist needs time alone observing the world as it’s always been, as well as participating in the culture so abundant in New York City. Spending time increasingly in the Hudson Valley and Catskills, she knows where her birds nest, where the coyote and bears hide. She’s also learned to listen for sounds that tell her when impending trains will roar down the CSX lines near her house. She builds videos of those fuel cars for her collage work.



“It’s our attitudes towards wildlife that I care about,” Rupp said.



Looking through pieces for the new Cross Contemporary show, I’m struck by her take on a 17th-century painting, The Goldfinch, seen on the cover of Donna Tartt’s best-selling novel. The Dutch original shows the small bird held captive by a delicate chain. Rupp’s goldfinch is made exclusively of plastic netting, with discarded pieces of packaging layered to simulate the luminous plumage of the bird itself. The whole thing has a lighter feel to it than Carel Fabritius’ dark original.
Rupp was inspired in her bird pieces by a variety of other artists: Brancusi, Frida Kahlo, Lee Bonticou, Louis Bourgeois, Escher and lots of Miro. John James Audubon would have shot the birds he drew and painted.


Off in the distance, a train rushed past. It has been hard to find a Hudson Valley spot after 25 years in Delaware County. Saugerties to her “is still the Catskills.”



“I couldn’t see parting with the great expanses of forest and field, that big green thing, that I had before,” she said. “But then I realized the expanse, the peace, is all in the river. Once I figured that out, this property materialized.”



From her studio we walked into Rupp’s simple, window-oriented home and then out onto porches that look down over fields to that sliver of shining water in the distance. All looked natural, unblemished, comforting, peaceful.



Christy Rupp’s creativity and caring, evident in all her work, made sense. “I think the river is such a great metaphor,” she said.


Off in the distance, the Hudson was still, suspended between its northern and southern pulls.


-Paul Smart

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The Sweep of the Hand: Catherine Howe at Cross Contemporary

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The Sweep of the Hand: Catherine Howe at Cross Contemporary

for Art Critical August 15, 2015

Catherine Howe: Supreme Fiction. Monotypes & Mylar Paintings at Cross Contemporary Art,

July 3 to 26, 2015

Catherine Howe, Carborundum and Silver (splashy), 2015. Acrylic, intaglio ink, polyester sheeting, 40 x 40 inches.. Courtesy of the Artist and Cross Contemporary ArtCatherine Howe, Carborundum and Silver (splashy), 2015. Acrylic, intaglio ink, polyester sheeting, 40 x 40 inches.. Courtesy of the Artist and Cross Contemporary Art

“Supreme Fiction,” the title of Catherine Howe’s strong show in upstate New York, likely refers to the amalgam of painterly surprise inherent in work that references both baroque effects and nature. The title also makes use of Michael Fried’s idea that painterly imagery does not have to come from a realist bent, being in some cases entirely imaginative in nature. Her paintings, which at times have attained the quality of low relief, use nature as a springboard for a highly active imagination. Her collection here, of monotypes and works done on canvas or Mylar, resist easy categorization but define a place that begins with the New York School and extends toward the past in its rococo impact and to the future in its fusion of imageries and contemporary materials (carborundum grit and polyester). The sweep of Howe’s hand is expansive and exuberant but also controlled; never fussy about the consequences of her brushwork, she also demonstrates a discipline that links her to art history in ways that intensify her audience’s viewing involvement.

Actually, pleasure is what one thinks of when facing these dynamic images. One black-and-white work, made of carborundum-infused acrylic on canvas, consists of flowers and bulbs that float in a sea of gesso white. Drips and thin skeins of paint actuate the rounded blooms and plant life; the effects of these nods to earlier abstract expressionists are actually muted to some extent by the sheer energy of the present tense, always active in Howe’s style. As a painter, she wants to give us the immediate beauty of what she depicts; this desire is evident in the roiling, tempestuous quality of her brushwork. Here, mostly blackened forms, which admit a gritty sparkle in certain light conditions, surround a white flowerlike crown in the upper center of the painting. The viewer has the sense that the painting exists as a passionate embrace of an esthetics based in nature. It consequently becomes clear that Howe’s high regard for nature brings her beyond mere quotation of expressionism, a movement that reached its zenith generations ago.

Even so, someone like Fairfield Porter serves to contextualize Howe’s efforts—despite the fact that their imageries are not related closely! His combination of brushy strokes and interest in the outside world finds a later reflection in her art. In the tall, reverse-painted Mylar work entitled Geisha (2015), she imparts a fiercely emotional treatment of a sunflower in a short vase, with other white blossoming shapes looming in the upper register against a blue background. The brushwork is strongly about feeling, made evident by the powerful intuitive forms that sprawl across the Mylar. Clearly, this work and the others in the show concern the performative aspect of painting just as much as they address issues of figuration and abstraction; Howe’s audience has the sense that these paintings exist as fields of play—being action paintings in the best sense of the word.

In the discussion I attended in late July with Howe and fellow painter Suzanne Joelson at Cross Contemporary Art, the primary word used was “gesture.” As a descriptive term, it certainly characterizes the main impulse behind Howe’s art, which is gestural in the extreme. The question facing the artist and those who support her work has to do with authenticity: at what point does history intervene and make the gestural image antiquated, even obsolete? To her credit, Howe has found ways of keeping the gesture alive, primarily by emphasizing the baroque impetuousness behind a lot of expressionist art. Even so, the problem of historic precedent needs to be addressed. Howe’s considerable technical skill allows her nearly to caricature the role of the sinuous brushstroke even as she makes it clear she is in love with the luxuriousness of such a style. But perhaps it can be said that her paintings encapsulate the conflict between a historically derived embellishment and the need to make things new—a requirement in today’s art, no matter what the origins of the impulse may be.

A monotype, mostly in yellow and red, seems to be about brushwork description. A blossoming crown on the top feels like an opportunity for Howe to paint demonstratively, while the bottom half of the composition consists of a pile of transparent brushwork, whose edges exist in red. Musical in its emotive impact, Rise (2015) delivers a punch that suggests both intensity of motive and cathartic skill. Howe, who has a home in upstate New York herself, shows that she is comfortable with the landscape and flora this part of the world consists of. She knows the public gardens of the area well, deriving inspiration from a nature that is actual rather than second-hand. In her work there is a liberating voice based on the artist’s willingness to work deliberately with beauty. While such an approach cannot be seen as utterly original, at the same time, in Howe’s hands, it must not be understood as mere quotation. She balances memory of previous art with a real need to display her own reading of contemporary life. Indeed, she thoroughly succeeds in doing so.

Christy Rupp: Catastrophozoic

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Christy​ ​Rupp:​ ​​Catastrophozoic

Review by​ ​Lemon​ ​Reimer

​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​The​ ​Greek​ ​philosopher​ ​Plato​ ​was​ ​once​ ​applauded​ ​for​ ​his​ ​definition​ ​of​ ​mankind​ ​as​ ​‘a​ ​featherless​ ​biped.’​ ​Diogenes the​ ​Cynic​ ​responded​ ​in​ ​kind​ ​by​ ​displaying​ ​a​ ​plucked​ ​chicken​ ​at​ ​Plato’s​ ​school​ ​and​ ​proclaiming​ ​“Here​ ​is​ ​Plato’s​ ​man.” Plato​ ​attempted​ ​to​ ​separate​ ​humanity​ ​from​ ​the​ ​animal​ ​kingdom​ ​through​ ​aesthetic​ ​difference.​ ​Diogenes​ ​showed​ ​that there​ ​is​ ​nothing​ ​that​ ​truly​ ​differentiates​ ​man​ ​from​ ​beast​ ​beyond​ ​this​ ​need​ ​for​ ​individuality.

​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​In​ ​Christy​ ​Rupp’s​ ​​Catastrophozoic​​ ​at​ ​Cross​ ​Contemporary​ ​Art,​ ​​ ​we​ ​come​ ​face-to-face​ ​with​ ​‘Plato’s​ ​man’​ ​and​ ​all​ ​we have​ ​done​ ​against​ ​our​ ​feathered​ ​siblings.​ ​The​ ​sculptures​ ​of​ ​birds​ ​are​ ​dualistically​ ​constructed​ ​through​ ​human representation​ ​in​ ​art​ ​history​ ​and​ ​through​ ​human​ ​refuse​ ​like​ ​plastic​ ​netting​ ​and​ ​fishing​ ​line.​ ​​ ​Searching​ ​for​ ​images​ ​of birds​ ​from​ ​art​ ​history,​ ​the​ ​context​ ​of​ ​struggle​ ​and​ ​vulnerability​ ​become​ ​the​ ​focus​ ​for​ ​a​ ​body​ ​of​ ​work​ ​using​ ​the materials​ ​that​ ​ultimately​ ​doom​ ​birds​ ​and​ ​their​ ​habitat.​ ​In​ ​constructing​ ​these​ ​birds​ ​from​ ​the​ ​same​ ​plastic​ ​netting​ ​used​ ​in supermarkets​ ​for​ ​wrapping​ ​produce-​ ​materials​ ​briefly​ ​used​ ​and​ ​then​ ​discarded,​ ​Rupp​ ​draws​ ​the​ ​comparison​ ​of permanence​ ​and​ ​disposability.​ ​The​ ​Birds​ ​of​ ​Art​ ​History​ ​endure​ ​through​ ​time​ ​yet​ ​so​ ​does​ ​the​ ​plastic​ ​refuse​ ​as​ ​it persists​ ​in​ ​the​ ​environment,​ ​threatening​ ​avian​ ​digestive​ ​systems​ ​and​ ​their​ ​habitat.

“The​ ​Threatened​ ​Swan​ ​after​ ​Jan​ ​Asselijn”​ ​above:​ ​original​ ​painting​ ​below:​ ​Christy​ ​Rupp​ ​2017​ ​welded​ ​metal,​ ​plastic netting​ ​and​ ​filament

​​ ​Ironically,​ ​nature​ ​has​ ​little​ ​say​ ​in​ ​the​ ​environmental​ ​degradation​ ​by​ ​these​ ​featherless​ ​human​ ​bipeds​ ​and​ ​real​ ​birds around​ ​the​ ​world​ ​struggle​ ​to​ ​survive​ ​in​ ​the​ ​man-made​ ​biome​ ​of​ ​oil​ ​spills,​ ​cityscapes,​ ​and​ ​smog​ ​clouds.​ ​These recreations​ ​are​ ​ultimately​ ​incapable​ ​of​ ​replacing​ ​nature’s​ ​original,​ ​highlighting​ ​the​ ​futility​ ​of​ ​replacing​ ​the​ ​ecosystem we​ ​lost.

​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​Another​ ​way​ ​that​ ​Rupp​ ​highlights​ ​this​ ​futility​ ​is​ ​through​ ​the​ ​symbolism​ ​of​ ​Russian​ ​Nesting​ ​or​ ​matryoshka​ ​dolls​ ​of chemical​ ​compounds.​ ​The​ ​smallest​ ​in​ ​the​ ​chain​ ​is​ ​replaced​ ​by​ ​the​ ​next,​ ​each​ ​becoming​ ​more​ ​and​ ​more​ ​complex​ ​and detrimental​ ​to​ ​the​ ​environment.​ ​As​ ​humanity​ ​discovers​ ​or​ ​invents​ ​new​ ​chemicals​ ​to​ ​replace​ ​the​ ​last,​ ​the​ ​chain becomes​ ​longer​ ​and​ ​more​ ​deadly.​ ​From​ ​mercury​ ​and​ ​lead​ ​to​ ​glyphosate​ ​and​ ​nicotinoids,​ ​nature​ ​suffers​ ​at​ ​the​ ​hands of​ ​human​ ​ingenuity.​ ​We​ ​can​ ​turn​ ​our​ ​backs​ ​to​ ​the​ ​impact​ ​of​ ​our​ ​actions​ ​due​ ​to​ ​the​ ​production​ ​of​ ​a​ ​lifestyle​ ​unhinged from​ ​our​ ​ecosystems​ ​but​ ​we​ ​can’t​ ​ignore​ ​the​ ​permanent​ ​effects​ ​of​ ​the​ ​toxicity​ ​in​ ​the​ ​environment.

“Pesticide​ ​Nesting​ ​Dolls”​ ​Christy​ ​Rupp​ ​2017​ ​paint,​ ​wood​ ​sizes​ ​variable

​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​In​ ​Ms.​ ​Rupp’s​ ​collages,​ ​art​ ​history​ ​is​ ​featured​ ​again.​ ​​ ​Hudson​ ​River​ ​School​ ​paintings​ ​by​ ​Thomas​ ​Cole​ ​and​ ​Asher B.​ ​Durand​ ​are​ ​the​ ​backdrops​ ​for​ ​slithering​ ​metal​ ​pipes​ ​and​ ​train​ ​cars​ ​filled​ ​with​ ​leaking​ ​oil.​ ​​ ​The​ ​patterning​ ​of​ ​bucolic waterfalls​ ​with​ ​the​ ​ominous​ ​and​ ​endless​ ​trains​ ​bearing​ ​crude​ ​oil​ ​not​ ​only​ ​depict​ ​the​ ​potential​ ​for​ ​disaster​ ​but​ ​the tragedy​ ​of​ ​a​ ​pristine​ ​landscape​ ​irreparably​ ​touched​ ​by​ ​the​ ​human​ ​hand.

“The​ ​First​ ​Harvest​ ​after​ ​Asher​ ​B​ ​Durand”​ ​Christy​ ​Rupp​ ​2017​ ​collage​ ​on​ ​paper​ ​11”​ ​x​ ​17”

​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​The​ ​world​ ​that​ ​Christy​ ​Rupp​ ​forms​ ​with​ ​these​ ​works​ ​is​ ​both​ ​beautiful​ ​and​ ​melancholic.​ ​Though​ ​the​ ​bright​ ​nylon plumage​ ​of​ ​birds​ ​and​ ​the​ ​rich​ ​black​ ​of​ ​oil​ ​rivers​ ​may​ ​be​ ​superficially​ ​appealing​ ​and​ ​whimsical,​ ​the​ ​underlying message​ ​ultimately​ ​shows​ ​that​ ​this​ ​world​ ​is​ ​unsustainable,​ ​and​ ​the​ ​price​ ​of​ ​creating​ ​these​ ​striking​ ​landscapes​ ​is​ ​the permanent​ ​loss​ ​of​ ​something​ ​far​ ​older​ ​and​ ​far​ ​more​ ​precious.

​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​When​ ​Plato​ ​separated​ ​man​ ​from​ ​beast​ ​was​ ​the​ ​beginning​ ​of​ ​a​ ​slippery​ ​slope,​ ​producing​ ​the​ ​world​ ​we​ ​live​ ​in​ ​today. Catastrophozoic​​ ​is​ ​a​ ​masterful​ ​balance​ ​between​ ​pleasure​ ​and​ ​pain.​ ​It​ ​is​ ​hard​ ​to​ ​look​ ​away​ ​from​ ​the​ ​eye​ ​catching scenery,​ ​yet​ ​what​ ​we​ ​see​ ​is​ ​ultimately​ ​a​ ​crass​ ​Band-Aid​ ​that​ ​none​ ​of​ ​us​ ​wish​ ​to​ ​rip​ ​off​ ​for​ ​fear​ ​of​ ​the​ ​damage underneath.

Christy Rupp: Catastrophozoic at Cross Contemporary Art Oct. 6-29, 2017

Conversation with Christy Rupp & Anthony Haden-Guest

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Conversation with Christy Rupp & Anthony Haden-Guest

Anthony Haden-Guest & Christy Rupp Artist Talk Sat. Oct 28, 6-7pm at Cross Contemporary Art

Cross Contemporary Art presents A Conversation with Christy Rupp & Anthony Haden-Guest on Sat. Oct. 28, 6-7pm in the gallery’s new location at 99 Partition Street, Saugerties NY.

Both Haden-Guest and Rupp were part of New York City culture during a time of explosive street art activity that launched in the Seventies and continues up through today. The conversation will be preceded by a closing reception for Christy Rupp’s solo show Catastrophozoic.

About CATASTROPHOZOIC:
Christy Rupp faithfully brings birds of Art History to life as colorful, vibrant wall sculptures. Her inspirations range from Hieronymus Bosch’s “Bird of Death” to Frida Kahlo’s frightened “Parrots” to Fabricius’ ensnared “Goldfinch”. Searching for images of birds from art history, the context of struggle and vulnerability become the focus for a body of work using the materials that ultimately doom them and their habitat: plastic mesh produce bags. Rupp constructs these birds from the same plastic netting used in supermarkets for wrapping produce- materials briefly used and then discarded. This plastic refuse persists in the environment, threatening the digestive systems and habitat of birds. Other artworks in the show present the dangers of oil transportation and the enduring toxicity of pesticides.

About Christy Rupp:
Christy Rupp has been on the forefront of urban ecology living and working in New York City and the Catskills for the past 4 decades. Her wry humor paired with a naturalist’s curiosity had led her to explore the biosphere and its multi-layered systems.She has received grants from NYSCA, NEA, Art Matters INC., Anonymous Was a Woman, and a CALL grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Christy Rupp has exhibited her artwork internationally and as an early participant of CoLab, is also part of Art History.

About Anthony Haden-Guest: Anthony Haden-Guest has had a long career as a journalist, culture critic, writer, poet, cartoonist, animator and artist whose work has been published in the Financial Times, Vanity Fair, The New York Observer, Paris Review, Esquire, GQ (UK) and New York Magazine.

Artist Talk with Anthony Haden-Guest and Christy Rupp: Saturday, Oct 28, 6-7pm at Cross Contemporary Art, 99 Partition St. Saugerties, NY

CHRISTY RUPP: CATASTROPHOZOIC closes with a reception for the artist on Saturday, Oct. 28, 4-6pm and runs through October 29, 2017.

Peggy Cyphers: Modern Fossils

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Peggy Cyphers: MODERN FOSSILS

Peggy Cyphers’ painting continues her long-held interest in the world of naturally occurring opposites: creation and destruction, growth and decay, rebirth and transformation. Cyphers’ use of paint and sand textures transforms the artist’s ephemeral gestures into more permanent Modern Fossils. The mark-making and pigment layers seize the beauty within water, sky and the abiding commonality of all beings. Modern Fossils reflects the constants of chaos and order in the natural world, freezing a fragile moment in time of a complex Darwinian evolutionary dance.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…with various ideas in the air: notational, pattern-prone motifs, landscape references and allusions to textiles and fabric.”

About Peggy Cyphers:  Peggy Cyphers’ work can be found in many important museum,university and public collections 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, S.C. 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. Peggy Cyphers is a tenured adjunct professor of Visual Arts at Pratt Institute. More information about the artist can be found:
Video interview: https://vimeo.com/86328765
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Cyphers

     Peggy Cyphers: MODERN FOSSILS opens on November 4th with an artist’s reception from 5-8pm and will run through November 26th. 

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Poetry Reading by Robert Kelly & Charles Stein

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Poetry Reading by Robert Kelly & Charles Stein at
BRIAN WOOD:PAINTINGS

Sunday, Sept. 17th, 4:00pm

Renowned poets Robert Kelly and Charles Stein read their poetry as part of the current exhibition of BRIAN WOOD:PAINTINGS on view at Cross Contemporary Art, 99 Partition St. Saugerties, NY.

Charles Stein and Robert Kelly

About the Poets: 

Robert Kelly is an American poet whose early work was associated with the deep image group. He is the 2016-2017 Poet Laureate of Dutchess County, NY with more than sixty poetry titles, including Kill the Messenger Who Brings Bad News (1980), which received the Los Angeles Times First Annual Book Award. He received The American Book Award (Before Columbus Foundation) for In Time (1991), the Award for Distinction from the National Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Kelly recently wrote a group of poems to Brian Wood’s Paintings (The Doris.) Included in his many titles are The Hexagon (2016), Heart Thread (2016), Opening the Seals (2016), Red Actions: Selected Poems 1960-1993 (1995), Lapis (2005), May Day (2007), and A Voice Full of Cities: the Collected Essays of Robert Kelly (2014), edited by Peter Cockelbergh. He serves on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions as well as Poetry International. As Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris state in volume two of the anthology Poems for the Millennium, “Kelly is heir to both Pound & Zukofsky in his vision of the poet as a ‘scientist of the whole . . . to whom all data whatsoever are of use / world-scholar.’’
Charles Stein‘s work comprises a complexly integrated field of poems, prose reflections, translations, drawings, photographs, lectures, conversations, and performances. Stein is the author of many books of poetry including Views From Tornado Island (2016), There Where You Do Not Think To Be Thinking (2015), From Mimir’s Head (2011), The Hat Rack Tree (1999), Parts and Other Parts (1982), and a verse translation of The Odyssey (North Atlantic Books). Deeply investigating Being in all his work, his Persephone Unveiled (2006) has an illuminating chapter on Parmenides of Elea. His critical writing includes a meditation on Terry Winters’ paintings in Placing Space, Picturing Time (2015), a study of poet Charles Olson’s use of the writing of C.G. Jung in The Secret of the Black Chrysanthemum (1987), a collaboration with George Quasha on the work of Gary Hill, An Art of Limina: Gary Hill’s Works & Writings (2009), and is editor of Being = Space x Action: Searches for Freedom of Mind in Mathematics, Art and Mysticism (1998). In Robert Kelly’s words:  “Charles Stein…is a poet with all the means of his craft at hand…one of the smartest men of his generation, and one of its most exemplary poets.”

About BRIAN WOOD:PAINTINGS
The process of consciousness has always been the source of inquiry for Wood’s work. The boundaries and limits of awareness hold a particular fascination for Wood and it seems likely that the obsessions in his work originate in the earliest phase of life before language and before self – the “chora” in Julia Kristeva’s description. At the beginning of life, instinctual drives, locality, suffering and pleasure, aggression, holding, repulsion, devouring and expelling merge in a timeless non-reflective realm.
Wood is very interested in the way images flash into awareness, fluoresce, and die. He makes a distinction between the images of fantasy (wishing, planning, regretting, wanting) and the very different experience of mental images that seem to arrive from outside of the ego and have the intensity of the real – they light up the nervous system and consciousness with an aliveness that approaches hallucination. It is this level of image and its transformations that he’s interested in discovering and experiencing in his painting – that first flash of image that arrives before the inevitable tip toward language, discursive thought, and narrative fantasy. Importantly, he discovers these pre-linguistic images in the direct process of painting – they could not exist in this form outside of painting. Rather than representations or illustrations of already experienced thought, the manipulation of paint reveals the image in its making.
As Eleanor Heartney describes Wood’s paintings: “They balance on the cusp between abstraction and representation, teasing us with details that seem sharp and tangible but refuse to cohere into any definitive image or narrative. … Wood’s paintings offer us glimpses of possibly recognizable things or places, but “human meaning” as [Wallace] Stevens would style it, remains just out of reach.” And as Holland Cotter recently wrote in the New York Times about Brian Wood: “…[Wood] creates a kind of Symbolist world in which emerging into life and being devoured by it are part of the same inexorable process. …the erotic and the spiritual are of a piece.”
BRIAN WOOD: PAINTINGS continues through Sun. September 24th This exhibition is accompanied by a 36 page full color catalogue with an essay by Eleanor Heartney is available online: http://bit.ly/ccabwcat