Art Matters: The Worlds of Toc Fetch and Tricia Cline

"The Exile and The Path Of The Mouse Arive" Tricia Cline

Toc Fetch: Book in Progress

Hold on. I do have a concept of ample. It means enough, even more than enough in certain instances. But when I walked into Tricia Cline’s studio, half mile off a main road in Woodstock, I looked for the barrels of clay, paints or glazes, boxes of tools, models, books and the likes. Instead, dog skulls are lined up along a beam, seated in a corner is a funky but proud and obedient manikin waiting for a raison d’etre, a computer, the model , a couch for sitting and sleeping, small table for tea sipping or whatever, a woodstove and work all around. I looked for drawers, secret places , the hidden accoutrements of a working artist , but no luck – elegantly spare. My heart raced to catch up to the unexpected, only to suspect that Tricia Cline’s inner life, is her artwork and that would never fit into a drawer. The animals, people, saints, imaginary “visitations, lucid dreaming, the “perfected archetypes” inside of her, come to life in beautifully crafted unglazed porcelain clay figures. I don’t know how. They just do. (Although she does teach it at the Woodstock School of Art.) Believe it or not, the fiction rests not as much on symbolisms but on a religious fidelity to form and (could it be?) ingenuousness.
Animals, people, odd and out-of-date clothing, faintly recognizable gestures, no color to confuse us. Is it a movie? Or a song? A prayer? Is it God? Is it a self- portrait or maybe, me? Oh, I know. It’s a storybook without the book and I don’t get to write it. Why does her work feel so personal to me? I never really thought about being a (female) pope or strapping an elephant to my back – which is more compelling than it is amusing. I would certainly not wear those clothes. I remember my grandma’s home, full of porcelain dolls collected from her worldly travels – staring at them for hours as a child, enchanted by the delicacy of form and detail, clothing from faraway dreams. They were real to me - dolls to look at, admire and pretend with. Tricia Cline’s art is not like that. It speaks another language, not my own, but somehow connected. It’s more like a missile, destined for deep insides, where metaphors challenge assumptions and hard core beliefs. Tricia’s work is alive. I think that her subconscious is asking my subconscious to romp – like we do with dolphins, maybe. (Hmm. What are those twitching sort of dreams that dogs seem to have. Who were their ancestors and which are their archetypes? Something about humans strapped to their backs…. )
Speaking of romping, Toc Fetch (a.k.a. Joseph Stubblefield) makes his entrance into Cline’s studio with a ‘can’t –wait- to- get- into- this’ look on his face. Having seen only one reproduction of his work on a gallery announcement, I assumed he was a picture maker. The reference to his work - Diamond Comic Distributors - as if I knew what he was talking about, set me into a bit of a head spin. A comic book artist? Well, that would be a maker of pictures - plus narrative, plus color, plus framing and pacing. Then he goes on to tell me how he is or was a “juicer” in film production and how his art evolved from shooting stories to making collages. He now works from video stills to create elaborately (remarkable actually) crafted pencil drawings. But this is the thing. That which he does is entrancing enough, but there is so much more to it than comic books or large graphite drawings: It is entry into his personal space that transports us, straight-a-way, into a playful and cleverly designed parade of characters and dialogue. And how does he accomplish this? Only an artist who takes the journey inside himself, over and over and over again, can observe that“…nothing holds the silent life of observation-in-light better than pencil……very conducive to trance work, my work.”
Why does River Scout Finnegan look like Tricia Cline? Metaphorically, depending on your birth year, it’s up for grabs. But, rule is, you have to stay with Toc and try to listen to his voice. I’m thinking that there are things happening in Toc’s lucid dream world that can help us to get away from our provincial small selves by way of familiarity with his art. Tricia as subject belongs to both of them. They share her,, (forgive me, Tricia) like the chair in Van Gogh’s famous painting of his room, (you brought it up) which is merely the subject, not the meaning of the painting. The chair is everybody’s chair, Tricia Cline (in their works) belongs to everyone and the voices of Toc Fetch’s characters are all of us speaking. We, the audience, are the ones that give it meaning…..or not.
What is the difference between Tricia and Toc? They seem to be spirit mates of a high order. Tricia is like a sentience seeker. She sees “things”. Toc Fetch, too, has imaginary visitors. He hears them. Their work is earth and sky, and we, the audience, can stand wherever we want.
Tricia Cline and Joseph Stubblefield (a.k.a.) Toc Fetch) are represented by the Roger Ricco/Maresca Gallery on West 20th Street in Manhattan, as well as the Obsolete gallery in Venice California. You can view work at the gallery website: www.riccomaresca.com, or check out www.tocfetch.com to see both, as well.

Art Matters: Am I Dreaming or Are We Already A Community?

“I have read or been told that in a book of etiquette of the 17th century the very first rule forbids you to tell your dreams to other people, since they cannot possibly be of interest to them.” Isak Dinesen. On the other hand, me and my cat have spiked the misbehavior charts, or maybe not, according to recent dreaming:
Dream # 1: My cat, Sheba, is romping in the dining room, when I notice that she is not using her kitty litter box. In fact, an odd arrangement of placemats on the floor seems an invitation to relieve herself right there! Buckets of kitty pee start to flow, and, magically, I notice there is no spillover in spite of copious amounts draining from her tiny body. A large absorbent sponge in hand, I beckon the mythical Sisyphus, (the poor chap doomed to roll a heavy downward destined stone uphill as punishment in Hades) to reveal his secrets of handling frustration. No way, I thought, it’s hopeless. Besides, where is the misdeed that drove me to this huge payback?
No sooner had these disturbances penetrated my desperate goal to regain cleanliness, when Sheba, with one corner of the “placemat blanket” in her mouth, drags the whole mess diagonally across the room and out the back door, without spilling a drop. Cleaning up after herself seemed totally logical in my dream, but during the day, my dream memories of Sheba, having a responsibly cautious and sensitive approach towards human communal living, sent me into fits of laughter. This ridiculous situation, however, became the mother lode for ideas about the supportive sort of context needed to shape a community and the power of each of us as partners in a collective civic imagination. “The start of an article about having good manners, not spilling and leaving your mess for the next generation, etc” I thought. Then, the following night happened.
Dream # 2: I had modeled an assortment of animals in clay, and in trying to place them next to one another, in a visually appealing way, in my dream they would shift or self-correct into a more fruitful communal arrangement than I, or any one person could possibly imagine. It didn’t matter when I coaxed them back into my idea of “beauty”. They insisted on creating their separate realities by re aligning themselves. In the dream I reluctantly accepted this turn of fate for my little animal sculptures, but, in waking reality, it seemed prophetic. Good manners, or how things ought to look, is relative. Truth can be a matter of the heart. It’s probably exclusively selfish interests and mathematics that steer us worlds apart. In any case, it is a gift when we finally listen to each other.

My dream tapestry looks something like this: A colorful assortment of interests, dreams, rivalries and ancestral influences. This composition of differences and distinctions, spawning a new reality and new value factors for Ellenville, is a visually compelling promise of future revitalization inside our community. Art is pivotal to this promise because artists embrace the differences, invite community dialogue and help shape the imagination of it’s people or audience. Tractability is not often inscribed in the artist’s character bank, but, then again, creative thinking and acute observations is a way of life. Much like Sheba.


This is what I think:
Ellenville is a spectrum community. It’s history can be a great mobilizer. It has young, old and in between, rich, poor and in between, ethnically , religiously and spiritually diverse. We are so lucky. But, for the quick fix, how do we avoid signing on to the facades of progress fueled by the secrets and greed of a few? How do we get our lives and our livelihoods to mean something, equally, to us all by planting the seeds of a fertile future for our kids to nurture? Dreams are beacons, not realities. The work of an artist is a powerful reality and typically presses for interesting questions that provoke and awaken potential rather than marginalize. Artist communities are nurturing sources of growth for transformation. I am an image maker, and, to my way of dreamy thinking, Sheba’s instincts were flawless –(except for the forgetting about her kitty litter part)

Judy Sigunick is a Cragsmoor based artist.
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ART MATTERS to Ellenville: The Grace of Ed Smith

Standing in the midst of “grace”, inside a renovated barn in Chatham, NY, situated in a minimally manicured field, I rely on my camera to regard it all in one fell swoop. Like the snow falls in a paper weight – dense and pervasive - some of the work sits along the shelves, while others seem to move at you. My camera and I are partners in this interview, and I trust that it will help locate the questions for this exchange.
Ed Smith is beside me, recovering from a bit of unscheduled fathering this Sunday morning. We briefly exchange parental philosophies, and then charge headlong into talk about discipline and art.
“It’s not a free for all” I can hear him repeatedly warning his students at Marist. And here is the perfect segue from his task as parental disciplinarian into focused talk about the extraordinary rigors of printmaking, and wax sculptures, demanding years of learning the craft, studying the masters and self study within both traditional and popular culture. Is the artist’s world any different from yours or mine? I think so. Do we share his contextual framework? Maybe. Somewhat. Do personalized sensory filters shift our vision and therefore our thinking. I think so.
But back to "grace". Ed feeds his wood stove and we talk about a lot of stuff, including the gentrification of Chatham and how this is bad for the farmers, artists, and blue collar workers, who now live in trailers since that’s all they can afford. He mentions the conflicts between “yuppie” dinner parties and the occasional un-timeliness of manure spreading. All the while, I listen, but I am not quite connecting to his angers towards the shift of his uppity community into a place that seems to resent poor people. You see, there is this work surrounding me which is full of grace. Yes, it’s about war, and heroism and human battling each other for god knows what, but this is just the beginning of what surrounds me. There are guns, body parts, contradictions, snake like forms, and in-your-face nasty goings on! But no red for blood, sharp for pain or brittle for fragile.
I see fields of white, like the skin of Moby Dick, as if these battles before me represent hope, pure conflict and exquisitely designed struggles. This is a soulful search for grace – saying it like it is – not trying to be clever or smartly cool. Within a focused framework of “heroism” and human issues of dissent and dispute, Ed Smith clears his personal voice with vivid pictorial vignettes of the fight to save our humanity . But it doesn’t stop there. Shelves of table sized waxes and bronze sculptures, a wall of prints revealing a human world of progressive complexities, my attention is secured, by unrelenting quantities of repetitious shapes . What strikes me is an insatiable quest for “honor” through suites of personalized metaphors.. At the center of the studio is a formidably proud work of figuration, waiting to be finished, or finished but waiting, I’m not sure which. Smith tells me that he was thinking about the fall of the world trade centers in this piece. It is my favorite - a modeled wax - two legs, not belonging to the same individual, one tall, the other not, with serpentine creatures, and one clunky overused foot. I suppose the pilgrimage tattered the skin, swelled the tendons, and now, it waits. Because it can’t hop from foot to foot. There is only one. So, art matters, after all. So does Ed Smith. And war matters. But winning doesn’t. Winning is what happens when the other side loses, but I can’t really tell by the fragmentation and battle remnants in Smith’s friezes which side brings it all home. The quiet serving up of the honor of fighting for anything that matters is just under (or right beside) the roughly textured surfaces of his work. I’m just not sure whether the honor and heroism of battle ought to be listed in our human Hall of Fame, above and beyond the local farmers, givers of our food and sustainers of our lives, mentioned in the beginning of this article. Ed Smith is a Guggenheim Fellow in Sculpture and Drawing. He was a First Alternate Prix de Rome, has received numerous awards including Fulbright, Teaching Excellence, Ford Foundation grants and more. He exhibits internationally. Professor at Bard College, New York Studio School and others, and now on the faculty of Marist College, and the Marist College Art Gallery director. The Marist College Art Gallery is located on the Poughkeepsie campus in a former steel plant across the road from the main campus. The exhibition program focuses on contemporary regional artists. You can see works of Ed Smith in a group exhibition at the Lesley Hellery Gallery at 90 East 92nd Street in Manhattan. (between Fifth and Madison) lesleyheller.com for information. Judy Sigunick is a Cragsmoor based artist, who works, lives and teaches in the Hudson Valley. .

ART MATTERS to Ellenville: Process Makes Perfect with Jeff Shapiro

Slowly, I inch my car down into the hollow of Jeff Shapiro’s secluded property in the lower Hudson Valley in New York State. Just minutes of scanning the site and I’m already on information overload. Following him from kiln to kiln to studio/ gallery, all stitched together by the trees, ceramics laden tables , pottery perched on nothing and well placed sculpture, finding myself a bit speechless, I considered, for a moment, a photo essay. His work didn’t seem to particularly embellish the landscape as much as embolden it – even the tiniest bowls. A few even seem to predate the forest. Jeff Shapiro is a maker of functional and sculptural objects, of shifting scale, which explore earthy matter and its potential. A walk through his gallery should confuse the mind looking for perfection, delight the one which is nourished by chaos, and enchant the viewer inclined towards Japanese traditional styles and forces of nature. For me, it was the dualities throughout his work, and the happenstance appearance of his surfaces, bubbling with craters, alien like textures, cracking and peeling, and miraculous colors. which suggests both Eastern and Western ideas, not entirely merging or contradictory, either. They are the singular works of Shapiro. Overarching the impact of this self-contained community belonging to Jeff and his family, is a meticulously maintained orderliness and a world shaped by his work’s demanding processes. As an owner of one of his pieces, the glazes, texture, color, shape, and, indeed, the intense process of firing his 20 foot anagama kiln, are integrally a part of the physical and tactical experience of my newly acquired tea bowl. And to bring me this experience, he has traveled extensively, worked relentlessly for a couple of decades, built kilns and created of all of his work which preceded my tea bowl, not to mention the numerous interventions in the clay during the stages of it’s making, which, now, contains my tea! Distractions to his demanding and productive lifestyle are discouraged, yet here we were, sitting leisurely at a long, well designed table, inside Shapiro’s Japanese influenced gallery and studio, with an overhanging light fixture, all of which were designed by local artists and woodworkers. We shared green tea, in the style of the Japanese Tea Ceremony. Relaxed and no longer short- circuited by irrelevancies to the task at hand, I asked a few questions to shed light on my obsession over why art matters. He told me of upcoming events, exhibitions, workshops, and commissions through 2008, starting with Firenza,, Italy, where he has built two kilns and the possibility of a student assisted mural, to Heidelberg, Germany, where he will participate in a group exhibition, to SOFA Chicago, as a featured artist for the gallery, La Coste, in Concord, MA. And more. Rather than produce a lengthy essay on Shapiro’s accomplishments, a cogent argument supporting the value of art to the fabric of our communities is somewhat about relaxing the boundaries of language or culturally determined definitions. “Beauty exists” says Shapiro. Then he repeated it again, and again. Between comments, such as, ”imperfections are, in essence, a beauty of their own” and “open eyes can make us (Westerners) better people”, Jeff Shapiro seems to value consciousness and it’s partner, expansiveness. He crosses boundaries in his works and flirts with uncertainties in the process. Like many artists from the Hudson Valley, Shapiro takes some of his cues from the local “scenery”, although he states, “most people don’t get what I am doing”, in reference to the “imperfections” in his work. But I think that most people do “get” Jeff Shapiro. Maybe it’s not what he intends or supposes, but his work is searching, and we all get that. His work details the alterations of time and timelessness and challenges our expectations. I think we get that, too. He supports a local community, through employment, commissions and wood firing workshops. We certainly get that. Jeff Shapiro’s works affirm years of experience with his craft, the wisdom accrued through persistence, and futuristically, his dreams. Maybe it’s the dreams that we don’t get, but, then again, the vessels and sculptures are graciously designed so as to include our own. To view works and access information about Jeff Shapiro visit his website at: www.jeffshapiroceramics.com. Judy Sigunick is a Cragsmoor based artist, whos works include public art and studio ceramics.

ART MATTERS to Ellenville: Emil Alzamora"s Bronze Figures

“Autonomy” is what Emil Alzamora calls his very first life sized bronze cast figure created in the late 1990’s. Was he trying to liberate himself from some personal or ancestral bondage when he defined this piece as a figure “pulling himself off the cross”? Seven years later, sitting in his raw, chilly but cozy studio in a field of nowhere, artist to artist, I’m surrounded by recent works – one of them with two heads, each trying to pull itself away from the other, and another smallish figure bound up in coils which emanate from the top of it’s head, another contortionist style bending back into itself, as if meeting itself for the first time. Did I want to run? If not, why not? Looking at entrapment, lack of freedom, and bondage, in the face, and personally challenged by this human predicament, I start to wonder about his “autonomy” and the conundrum of trading one freedom for another. Oh well. From the mountains of Peru, Emil Alzamora, the artist, unwittingly it appears, adorns his figures with questions, fears and dire prospects, while expressing a positive outlook for humanity. Well, I wasn’t prepared for real thinking so early in the day, so I lapsed into a barrage of questions about his family history, his (suspected) connection to Beacon, which ended up being geographical more than social. Polich Art Works Foundry in Newburgh, where he was previously employed, is a working destination for him, preferring to have hands on experience with his own bronze casting and finishing processes.
Sorry! I’m back. So here I am, climbing the irregular concrete steps to his hilltop home, greeted by Emil and an over excited dog. Perched along the railing of his front porch are several naively charming terracotta sculptures of houses – an ode to his childhood talent. Has anyone else ever been here, besides the dog, Emil and Annie, his partner? What pure Beauty! Flanked by the silent river and a proud Mount Beacon, my eyes scan rocks awaiting placement in a developing garden, magnificent sweeps of nature, carefully placed bronze sculptures and a pickup truck, unarguably poised to transport one of his works to it’s buyer. At the heart of this enclave sits Emil’s studio, a hideaway sort of space, where we chatted about memories of mountainous Peru, the Boca Grande Island of his formative years, travels throughout Europe and Morocco, and his current life in Cold Spring and, now, Beacon. Should he ever want to come home, which will it be? Does it matter? Is it the inner space of his mind to which he refers in a statement about his art: “The space between limitation and potential is as human as the flesh, yet hardly as tangible” There was, indeed, a palpable struggle going on in that studio, a tug of war between free choice and self censorship, between the emotions that rest with personal insight and condemnations of, let’s say, the church – ideas that matter to us all and are challenged by many, and to a broad community of listeners and arguers – of people puzzling their lives together.
Alzamora’s persistence to the exploration of both humanly friendly and less humanly friendly ideas, an impressive loyalty to craft, and a sensitivity to marketing his work have attracted patronage and with that success, a green light to focused dedication in his studio. He is represented by five galleries from Boston to Sarasota, to Maine, Sag Harbor and at Yellow Bird Gallery in Newburgh, NY . Upcoming is an installment of 3 bronze pieces at Pepsico, a sculpture park well worth the trip in Westchester County as well as a group show in Sarasota, Fla. Works can be viewed on his website: emilalzamora.com.

Judy Sigunick
October 9,2006
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ART MATTERS to Ellenville: Why Do This Together?

When I wandered into the Red Barn in Ellenville, that first weekend in October, to see what 30 some artists were up to, my weakness for old barns and rustic walls paled to the “I-mean-it” sort of work I saw. Immediately, I thought to focus an article on the first artist I encountered and her powerful photograph of a South American woman, identified as her birth mom. A touching story of a recent encounter with her real family after years of absence was touching enough for me. But, then, Greg MacAvoy’s work sidled up and declared itself worthy of an article because of the inference of a sort of cultural entanglement in his use of concrete. Then I looked up., “It’s Your Lucky Day” a collaborative work by Noah Post and Thomas Malin, staring down at me, pleading with my personal curiosities to look further. So, whirling through the 2 story exhibition of all of these artists, I set about just to look. The next day, the opening reception, was replete with Great food and a full expression of a contemporary art group exhibition called “thatwedothistogether”.

On the way out, I was introduced to Sara Auster, artist, educator, book binder and one of the original members of this group that met in Westchester County in the late 1990’s.

The following morning I asked Sara to explain, figuring someone could tell me what’s going on here, like, who are all of you people, why did you come to Ellenville, and since you’re mostly from Brooklyn, what does it matter if your work appears in Ellenville, which is not exactly a thriving art scene? Let’s start with who they are. All of the core group artists are Bachelor of Fine Arts candidates at SUNY Purchase in Westchester and received BFA’s in 2001. They represent a cross section of the art studies program:, performance, visual and film. Jimi Pantalon, one of the key outreach players in the group is a film maker, editor and installation artist, articulate, querying and a racing mind that can’t quite get the words out fast enough. Then there is Greg MacAvoy, raised in Pine Bush, the artist who organized and funded this Ellenville event in the red barn, owned by his supporters and friends, Irena Elbaum and Richard Tarzoch, This group has never turned down an opportunity to exhibit their works. For example, In 2002, Sara had put together a series of shows, utilizing some of the Manhattan real estate dealer’s, Douglas Durst, properties that were earmarked for demolition on 42nd Street in Manhattan. Pantalon has been documenting all of the exhibition events of this group since August 2001, and periodically, travels cross country, filming landscapes, conducting street interviews with prodding questions to people he meets up with about their thoughts and feelings about America. Weaving together the artist events with his cross country film footage, Jimi’s goal is to produce a film that puts “cultural context to war time America.”

Okay, so here we have a not-so-unusual group of artists, bonded through academia and the arts, resisting boundaries to what they can and cannot do as artists and activists, in order that they can do it their own way, Most of them have jobs, so even though they would like to sell work, that doesn’t seem to the driving goal of their “art events”. They close themselves off to grant monies by resisting titles and mission statements in hopes that the quality of their uncompromised art is the critical voice. But the most powerful voice of all, and what I think makes them uniquely attractive, is the bonds created, not just by their impressive and reliable friendships, but by the dynamics of these collaborative exhibitions i.e., the ‘together’ part of thatwedothistogether. It strikes me as a fluid and non-competitive association, where patience and an unguarded respect are intact and the “in your face” urgent quality of much contemporary art is relaxed for this bunch. The exhibition in Ellenville represented a sort of collage style group voice seeking a vast range of audience. If they manage to resist the temptation to pressing their collective noses against the NY galleries as a singular goal, we may even see some of them return to our swiftly developing community of Ellenville for an encore.

One of their more recent NYC events on Nov. 2nd, 2004 addressed the fate of our country. Advertised as a party, it was an installation/ performance entitled “Election Day of the Dead.” Sara explained the group’s motives. “We needed to be together,” “…to celebrate…..not Bush bashing.” “What is the common thread?” I ask her. She responds: “We have a lot to say…it’s subtle”
Find out more about them at their website: thatwedothistogether.info

Judy Sigunick is an artist who lives and works in Cragsmoor.

ART MATTERS to Ellenville: Roman Hrab in Kingston, NY

ART MATTERS: Call him Roman. School of Visual Arts, Bard College Art Department, Union Square, Red Hook, Budapest International Art Expo: Wait! Art matters to where? To Whom? Who is impacting which? My second article for the Ellenville Journal, and here I am searching for a relevance. Who is Roman Hrab, and which is his community? (I did not expect to hear Ellenville, but his Ukranian background has led him to discover the wonders of his favored Polish cuisine on Main Street 209 Ellenville.) So, I walk into his Kingston studio, separated from his family home by a football field sized lawn, and this is what I see, without pause, as my eyes float around the studio’s perimeter: Painted canvases with their Rorschachian field of squiggles, cracks and color, organized as if they were all marching in place. Then I look upwards. Centered on his ceiling, hangs a plaster cast, mandala-like work in progress, which, at first, declares itself, distinctively, in a crowd of color and calligraphic shapes. But tugging at this writer’s personal aesthetic, which favors a Japanese feature of natural beauty called ‘wabi-sabi.’ is a sort of creative buttress: “To experience wabi-sabi you have to slow way down, be patient and look very closely” (Leonard Koren’s Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers.) It is not exactly like meeting your maker in Hrab’s studio, but more like meeting your self, where the true pleasure is in sorting out. sifting through and repackaging all those squiggles, cracks and colors “alive with possibilities.” “Who are you Roman Hrab?” Well, I didn’t exactly ask it that way, but I wanted to pull out some template material, such as, what’s special about the Ashokan Reservoir where you live and work, or the community of Bard and it’s distinctive connection to the arts. the Accord indoor skate park, a new concept in our Hudson Valley. We began with a discussion about his employment at Bard, as both co-worker with faculty member, Judy Pfaff, and Director of Operations of the Art Department meaning he manages just about all of the equipment, the summer MFA program, as well as student exhibition spaces. But guess what? Roman Hrab gets super animated when he tells me about the 18,000’ foot USB (a scaffolding design company for large corporations) space, leased by Bard for studio, workshop and exhibition space for students. Located in Red Hook, apart from the incubatory, Bard campus, he describes the student/ business relationship as not only mutually supportive, but the workers he claims are “blown away” by the whole arrangement between business and students and their work. Excess wood, metal and fabrics, normally discarded, are donated for their use. Across the road is another “jewel” - radio station, WKZE. Rewinding his employment history, Hrab briefed me on his experience working at SVA, his alma mater, where he was asked to construct a huge “mountain” of clay with a styrofoam armature in Manhattan’s, Union Square, as a marketing strategy for their Continuing Education Program. The project was called “Make It” and he assisted people, the entire day, pulling and shaping lumps of clay from the 3 ton 18’ high form in the midst of Manhattan street life! I can barely imagine how Mr. Hrab managed his time for an exhibition this past month. Recent work can be seen at The Pearl Gallery, in the heart of Stone Ridge on Route 209. (parking available at the Stone Ridge Center for the Arts) through October 18th. The exhibit includes both Grace Knowlton (hand painted digital photography) and Jamie Hamilton (Sculpture) For gallery information call: 845-687-0888.

ART MATTERS to Ellenville: Richard Bruce in Beacon, NY

ART MATTERS and Who Is Richard Bruce, Anyway?

What else matters? Just about everything, drawing up my list, so where do I go from there? A flood of all these mattering things might weaken the persuasiveness of Art Matters to our Ellenville community, but as I pull into the parking lot of the Bulldog Artist Studios in Beacon, I am determined to collect any data that will help me to focus an article on a single artist’s impact on his community and how the community has influenced his art.

Richard Bruce meets me at the back door of Bulldog Artist Studios, where his private studio is situated in the massive reinvented high school, and we walk through the old corridors, up the stairs, with that familiar need to disregard the paltry grey aesthetics of it’s mid 20th century architecture, while engrossed in the forces of mutual expectancy of a shared conversation about his art work and life in the Beacon/Cold Spring community.

Connecting to Bruce’s studios, are other studios (previously classrooms), a dense forest of magical places, with defining thick walls between artist’s spaces. Intending to address ideas about collectives of artists and their relationships to “community”. including the significance of this downtown artists’ studios complex, which was the brainchild of the not-for- profit, Beacon Studio Project, my brain was re-routed.

With specific questions in my notebook about how art matters in Bruce’s community of Cold Springs/ Beacon, I entered his 400’ square space, and, straight away became lost inside - an inhabitant in the imaginary world of Richard Bruce. My rehearsed questions, obediently waiting for the right moment, didn’t happen. The concept of Bulldog Studios dissolved within his painted surfaces, behind the blues, umbers and siennas vying for attention. “Art” and “community development” excused themselves. Silence reigned and pre-determination lost to the best qualified: an entirely unique vision of rivers and skies. Like the endorphin high of a 50 mile bike ride, I couldn’t ignore where these paintings took me. I was transported.

Back at my studio in Cragsmoor, I excitedly resurrected a treasured book from my past, The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, and turned pages until I got to the chapter “intimate immensity” where the writer seemed to be speaking directly to Bruce by supporting the way we process things when we are alone. He says, “immensity is within ourselves”. In his paintings, Bruce creates both separation and fusion of water and sky, with an exquisitely balanced and delicate line, and, in his most recent work, breaks it up into a field of chaotic textural disturbance.

Who is Richard Bruce, anyway? He spends time kayaking up the Hudson, and hiking local trails, when he is not painting. He hopes to take the time for river sweeps with the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries,
appreciates Gaelic philosophy, and about his work he notes, “I am not trying to create literal depictions of specific places, but am more interested in capturing the experience of the landscape, of being in nature and the inherent spirituality found there.” Bruce received the Hudson River Arts Award in May, 2006. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in NYC galleries and continues to show to great critical acclaim.

Currently his work is being shown at Karin Sanders Fine Art on Main Street in Sag Harbor, NY. through October 26, 2006. Upcoming is a solo exhibit at the Beacon Institute for Rivers & Estuaries: “Wetlands and Bodies of Water”. Sept. 16, 2006 – January 6, 2007. Opening . reception in Beacon: Sat. Sept. 16th, 5pm – 7pm. For information: www.theBeaconinstitute.org.