Upstate Art Weekend brings galleries, groups together
The Cronin Gallery, The Dorsky Museum, Wallkill Valley Land Trust, and the Women’s Studio Workshop will participate in Upstate Art Weekend, taking place Aug. 27-29 as “Rooted: Art + Land.”
The Cronin Gallery, The Dorsky Museum, and Women’s Studio Workshop are working collaboratively to present woman-identified artists with sitespecific installations along the historic Wallkill Valley Rail Trail, linking Rosendale, New Paltz and Gardiner.
The Wallkill Valley Land Trust will act as a bridge between the artists, organizations, and the land bringing contemporary art into trails and open spaces. Each organization is hosting programming throughout the weekend at the different sites, in an effort to spark conversation around land stewardship and to demonstrate the power of art to connect communities.
“This is a very special project for us,” said Melanie Cronin, chief executive officer of CronArtUSA, who oversees The Cronin Gallery, in a prepared statement. “We are excited to be part of Upstate Art Weekend and partner with The Dorsky Museum, Women’s Studio Workshop, and Wallkill Valley Land Trust on this project; such wellrespected anchors of our community.
“spans across six counties, with the intention of sharing the rich culture of the Hudson Valley. To be included among the likes of Storm King, Dia Beacon, and Art Omi, to name just a few, and to be working with artists of such high caliber is quite an honor for us,” she said.
The Cronin Gallery has partnered with Brooklynbased curator Beth Tully to bring artist Bel Falleiros’s living monument, “America (un)known,” to the Gardiner Library. The piece dismantles traditional monument structures based on colonial, hierarchical standards, and reimagines them using ancestral forms of construction, bringing humans, the earth, and the cosmos together.
Falleiros will also install a second piece, “To Ripple With Water,” at the Denizen Theatre at Water Street Market in New Paltz from Aug. 27-29.
The Dorsky Museum will present the work of Emilie Houssart, a Dutch American artist based in Upstate New York. Houssart is the 2021 Artist In Residence at the museum and will be creating a site-specific installation for Upstate Art Weekend at the Nyquist Wildlife Sanctuary, titled “Supergardening,” which is an interactive performance piece challenging desires for control over the landscape.
Women’s Studio Workshop is presenting work by Althea James, the recipient of their 2021 Public Art Mural Grant. Over the course of her four-week residency, James will create an original work of art for Women’s Studio Workshop’s mural wall, an ever-evolving canvas for public art that overlooks both their new ADAaccessible outdoor event space and the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail.
James is an illustrator and artist from Brooklyn. Her mural will envision the different ways that family can manifest for an individual and will include adults, children, and animals are coming together around games, food, and conversation.
Outdoor installations will be available for viewing from dawn until dusk.
Indoor installations will be available for viewing from noon to 6 p.m. on Aug. 27 at The Cronin Gallery at Denizen Theatre, 10 Main St., Water St Market, New Paltz.
Special events will be held on Aug. 28 and 29.