Valentine’s Day is an annual reminder that affection for others and private ardour are important elements of dwelling creatively amid difficult occasions. The vamp of artwork leads the way in which into February’s crop of exhibitions in Upstate New York. Kick off this romantic time of the 12 months with a go to to Mary Ellen Mark’s present on the lately reopened Middle for Images at Woodstock to see this award-winning photographer’s poignant pictures of ladies in a high-security psychiatric facility. Head to the Hyde Assortment in Glens Falls to see Nigerian-American painter Odili Donald Odita’s vibrant work. On the Entrance Room Gallery in Hudson, Linda Griggs exhibits luxurious and moody oil work laced with solitude, whereas Joan Harmon’s exhibition at Garner Arts Middle in Garnerville contains glass sculptures and charcoal works on paper that really feel otherwordly. In the meantime, a six-decade survey of painter Ralph Fasanella on the Ruffed Grouse Gallery in Narrowsburg options spirited works by this self-taught artist from the Bronx, and Z Behl’s exhibition at Pamela Salisbury Gallery in Hudson options wild sculptural creations. Allow us to indulge our ardor for artwork throughout these amorous days of February!
Joan Harmon: Chaos/Gentle
Garner Arts Middle, 55 West Railroad Avenue, Garnerville, New York Via February 23
Joan Harmon, Streambed, 2024, ceramic, forged glass, mild, wooden (photograph by Susan Stava, courtesy the artist)
One principle holds that the universe is held in place by opposing binaries — the place there may be type, then, there may be at all times formlessness. Joan Harmon’s exhibition at Garner Arts Middle in Garnerville appears to toggle between these two states with a collection of glass items and charcoal works on paper that morph between free-form and totally shaped. “Streambed” (2024), a ceramic, forged glass, wooden, and emitted mild work that remembers a mattress of undulating purple clay with a fiery gold stream operating proper via the center, is each tomb-like and fairytale-esque. “Lighted Footpath” (2024) appears like one other chapter from the identical narrative of wandering some far-flung world, that includes a quarter-circle of strung-together glass toes lit from under atop a pile of crushed basalt. And whereas the sci-fi blue-hued “Bouton Cluster” (2024), a hand-blown glass object, appears to wrangle with its personal unusual form, Harmon’s glowing “Glass Brain” (2020) is simply the reminder that consciousness is the last word formless energy.
Rand Hardy, Lisa Hoke, Buzz Spector
Catskill Artwork House, 48 Important Road, Livingston Manor, New YorkThrough March 1
Rand Hardy, “Scribbler” (2024), Aqua-Resin (picture courtesy Catskill Artwork House)
Among the many nice trios of Hindu iconography are Brahma (creator), Vishnu (preserver), and Shiva (destroyer), and their colourful incarnations supply timeless insights into the true nature of actuality. At Catskill Artwork House in Livingston Manor, Rand Hardy, Lisa Hoke, and Buzz Spector discover playful modes of creation, preservation, and destruction via a collection of mixed-media installations and sculptures. Hardy’s Aqua-Resin “Scribbler” (2024) and “Ta Ta Tati” (2024) counsel the creation stage with their quasi-phallic protruding shapes and pleasant nonsensical type. Spector’s “About the Author” (2014), which consists of pictures and textual content on museum board, and “Frieze” (2025), a row of mud jackets put in gracefully in a horizontal line throughout the wall, are in regards to the preservation of the previous. And Hoke’s superbly chaotic “Lady Liberty” (2025) and “Pop” (2024) installations experience destroyed supplies, remodeling recycled packaging and disposable ephemera into spinning and twisting shapes that dance as they cascade down the wall, bringing the dialog full circle to creation
Linda Griggs – Consolation and Loss
The Entrance Room Gallery, 205 Warren Road, Hudson, New YorkFebruary 8–March 9
Linda Griggs, “Pool Fence – Letter of the Law” (2024), oil and selective varnish on canvas, galkyd
A collection of luxurious and moody oil work by Linda Griggs on the Entrance Room Gallery in Hudson displays a sense of solitude laced with a hint of strangeness. The story of the exhibition begins with works corresponding to “Night Swimming” (2024) and “Sirens” (2023), during which aqua-tinted swimming pools counsel midnight skinny dipping on sultry summer season evenings. The ambiance lightens with works corresponding to “Hamilton Fish Kiddie Pool” (2023), during which empty lifeguard chairs and recliners anticipate an inflow of seasonal swimmers and solar worshippers. Griggs’s story then takes a flip in direction of a hazy dream state: The existentially prosaic “Salad Bar, Myrtle Beach” (2022) depicts an expansion of bowls filled with coloured Jello nestled amid a mattress of wilting kale on ice. “Piggly” (2022) is probably the apex of this exhibition-as-memoir. We’re witnesses to this unusual black and white scene of two figures holding palms as they stroll down a highway smattered with previous automobiles and incredulous of us staring on the outsized pink pig head of one of many pair. On the foreground, a baby gazes outward at us in a scene that feels bizarrely nostalgic.
Z Behl: Stand in My Hazard
Pamela Salisbury Gallery, 362 ½ Warren Road, Hudson, New YorkThrough March 30
BALONEY, “Fertility Tub” (2024), concrete and metallic (photograph by David Behl, picture courtesy Pamela Salisbury Gallery)
Z Behl is just not afraid to go massive. The primary time I encountered the larger-than-life sculptures of this New York Metropolis-born-and-raised badass, I used to be smitten together with her work. Pamela Salisbury Gallery in Hudson presents a four-story set up of current multi-media works by the artist and her collaborator Kim Moloney (collectively generally known as BALONEY), together with set up, work, drawings, and movies. In “Artist as Coyote” (2025), Behl crafts a legendary half-human, half-animal out of forged concrete, metallic, and stone; the shadows it casts are as compelling as its eccentric hunched anatomy. BALONEY’s “Harpy (3 Fates)” (2024), in the meantime, is a dynamic imaginative and prescient of one other unusual creature made out of a wicker birdcage that seems on the verge of withdrawing from a metal perch. And the duo’s “Fertility Tub” (2024) hints at an ulterior narrative with its surreal assemblage consisting of three snakes slithering across the empty metallic body of a bath. BALONEY’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Filmmaker” (2025) is the showstopper: Fabricated from metal, concrete, and materials together with lace, cheesecloth, and velvet, this elaborate harlequin character hangs down from the fourth ground and fills the open shaft of this historic carriage home with its monumental physique, whereas Behl’s drawing “Plan for Carriage House” (2024) presents a sketch of this feminine trickster archetype balancing completely in a daring yogic place.
Historical past Classes
College Artwork Museum, College at Albany, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, New YorkThrough April 4
Demian DinéYazhi’, “my ancestors will not let me forget this” (2020), letterpress print (picture courtesy College Artwork Museum)
Historical past Classes on the College Artwork Museum in Albany presents works by 15 artists working from the Sixties to the current, together with deceased greats corresponding to Louise Nevelson and powerhouse up to date figures corresponding to Glenn Ligon. This mixed-media exhibition considers counternarratives that reposition the previous and promote activism and schooling as elementary to the well being of society as we speak. “AIDS (Marcus Garvey)” (1991) by Normal Concept — the collective undertaking of Canadian artists Jorge Zontal, AA Bronson, and Felix Partz — is a daring reconfiguration of Robert Indiana’s “LOVE” (first created in 1964) and a poignant reminder of the once-crippling epidemic that ravaged queer communities (and claimed the lives of Zontal and Partz). “my ancestors will not let me forget this” (2020) by Demian DinéYazhi’ is a strong text-based imaginative and prescient of an American flag that reads “EVERY american [sic] flag is a WARNING SIGN,” which is all of the extra chilling throughout our present political local weather. Jeffrey Gibson’s “SHE KNOWS OTHER WORLDS” (2019) is a beautiful instance of his signature mixing of geometric compositions and patterned beadwork to create punchy graphic visuals. And Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds’s “Sweetheart Songs” (2017–18), consisting of 24 monoprints with white textual content towards shades of crimson, brings a smile with saccharine statements corresponding to “hold me tight in your arms dear” and “no matter where you are I love you.”
Seen: Six A long time of Ralph Fasanella Work
The Ruffed Grouse Gallery, 144 Important Road, Narrowsburg, New YorkThrough April 6
Ralph Fasanella, “Nathan’s with Bakery” (1996), oil on canvas (courtesy the Ruffed Grouse Gallery and the Property of Ralph Fasanella)
Ruffed Grouse Gallery is exhibiting six many years of the work of Ralph Fasanella, an artist who dropped out of faculty to work on his father’s ice truck (amongst different odd jobs) earlier than devoting his life to portray. His “Night Nude” (1947) a home psychological composition barely harking back to Matisse’s “The Red Studio” from 1911, includes a bare purple girl mendacity stiff on a purple tabletop (or is it a mattress?) in a home scene overpowered by the hulking purple lamp to the precise. “Nathans with Bakery” (1996) depicts love for group within the type of motley people snacking collectively in a cafeteria setting. Fasanella’s work will likely be featured on the Ruffed Grouse Gallery’s sales space on the Outsider Artwork Honest in New York Metropolis later this month, giving artwork lovers on each ends of the Hudson River an opportunity to come across this self-taught ace.
Mary Ellen Mark: Ward 81
The Middle for Images at Woodstock, 25 Dederick Road, Kingston, New YorkThrough Could 4
Mary Ellen Mark, “Laurie in the Ward 81 bathtub, Oregon State Hospital, Salem, Oregon” (1976) (© Mary Ellen Mark; courtesy the Mary Ellen Mark Basis)
The 12 months 1976 is the backdrop for Mary Ellen Mark’s solo present on the newly renovated and reopened Middle for Images at Woodstock in Kingston. Curated by Gaëlle Morel and Kaitlin Booher, the present is organized by the feminine names — pseudonyms for these within the images — featured in every cluster of photographs, together with “Laurie,” “Carol T.,” “Mona,” and “Beth” as major characters. Mark met these ladies whereas capturing on the set of the film One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1973) at Oregon State Hospital in Salem, the place she returned a 12 months later for 36 days to doc each day life at this high-security psychiatric facility. In “Mona with Michael Douglas’s Picture,” Mark images Mona from above as she leans gently right into a poster of Douglas throughout his early heartthrob years, whereas “Carol T. in the Mirror” positions Mark’s digital camera barely behind this frail feminine who friends at herself earnestly. “Laurie in the Bathtub” depicts the titular topic’s head and her moist hair matted towards the porcelain tub in a comical and childlike second. These moments of levity uplift a present that’s typically somber: “Mona and Beth in the Shower,” for example, depicts two ladies collectively in bathing fits who stare upon Mark with faces each incredulous and defiant, inviting extra questions than solutions with regard to psychological well being and private intimacy.
Odili Donald Odita: A Survey of Context
The Hyde Assortment, 161 Warren Road, Glens Falls, New YorkThrough Could 11
Odili Donald Odita, “Eternal” (2020), acrylic on canvas (courtesy the Hyde Assortment)
The Hyde Assortment in Glens Falls presents a survey of Nigerian-American artist Odili Donald Odita, who employs a brilliant, daring graphic type that mixes West African aesthetic traditions with a type of abstraction related to Minimalism. Robust conceptual undercurrents corresponding to violence and displacement (he fled from conflict in Nigeria as a baby) spotlight his private journey to the States and infuse his work with fearlessness. As an illustration, in “Burning Cross” (2023), among the many most frightening collage works within the present, an overlay of colourful shapes conquers photographs of KKK members within the background with their geometric magnificence. The equally sized and composed “Smoke” (2023) is a variation on this theme of overlapping realities. A collection of early images reveal Odita’s curiosity in promoting and Black American style: works corresponding to “The Authentic African (Businessman)” (1997) function trendy lone figures free-floating towards a white backdrop. A number of large-scale summary work anchor the present, together with “Eternal” (2020) and “Return” (2024), each of which vibrate vigorously with Odita’s signature coloration palette. The place the extremely angular “Light Storm” (2023) seems like a flash of depth, “Descent” (2001), with its horizontal layers of cool colours, is a metaphorical exhale.
Making Connections: Highlights from a Decade of Acquisitions
Memorial Artwork Gallery at College of Rochester, 500 College Avenue, Rochester, New YorkThrough July 13
2021.70Landmines: Dawoud Bey, Christina Fernandez, Richard Mosse, Rick Silva
The Dorsky at SUNY New Paltz, 1 Hawk Drive, New Paltz, New YorkThrough July 13
Christina Fernandez, “Untitled Farmworker (Photographic Collage)” (1989/1994/2020/2025), archival digital pigment print on vinyl
The historical past of humanity is riddled with tales of colonization and acts of violence towards Indigenous peoples. Landmines, curated by Sophie Landres on the Dorsky at SUNY New Paltz in New Paltz, presents the work of 4 artists whose camera-based work explores the function of landscapes as revealers or concealers of narratives. “Cabins and Shadows” (2019) by Dawoud Bey is a black and white {photograph} of a lonesome stretch of shadowed plantation yard, hinting on the horrors of slavery. Richard Mosse’s “Slaughterhouse, Rondônia” (2021) is an aerial drone’s view of this unforgiving location within the Amazon basin — and but he turns this bleak place into an in any other case stunning imaginative and prescient of psychedelic colours and shapes. Christina Fernandez’s “Untitled Farmworker (Photographic Collage)” (1989/1994/2020/2025) agitates for reform in its depiction of an nameless hand repeatedly inserting a white card with the identify of somebody who has died and their reason for dying — often, poisonous farming chemical compounds — into the earth.