Please make sure and go to "Older Posts" (on lower right hand corner of this page) to read about Artists Harvey Konigsberg, Hatti Iles, Jenne M Currie and Lowell Miller, as well as a Description of the 2-day event itself.  As well, I wrote up on Why we chose the Woodstock Library Annex Project as our project to support.  Please feel free to leave a comment on any post...

Meet the Artist: Heather Hutchison, abstract painter

Heather Hutchison comes from a long line of visual artists; her father, an itinerant caricaturist, traveled with the family throughout the expansive land, sea and sky-scapes of California, Oregon and Arizona.  She spent her formative years in Bisbee, AZ, which in the late 1960s and early 70's was a refuge for other visionaries: visual artists, musicians and people in film.  She had inspiring relationships with many of these artists and as a young person she was allowed independence and her own studio space.  These formative years profoundly shaped her ideas about color, space, light and artistic practice.  Hutchison continued her artistic practice in the real worlds of San Francisco and New York, particularly near the water, where she was always captivated by light, the creation of atmospheric space and a constantly changing vista.  Her studios near or, in one case, on the water allowed her to observe the flowing water and blocks of sky as they changed throughout the day.  Thus began the inquiry she has been involved in for the past 23 years, using natural light as her primary material.  Over the years her works have gone gradually from being somewhat translucent and heavily constructed to being nearly completely transparent and appearing to float on the wall. Utilizing the transparent properties of plexiglass and beeswax as well as natural light captured and inflected, Hutchison's reductive constructions are as much light sculpture as painting.  See her work at www.heatherhutchison.com.

Between Balance & Unbalanced
42 x 42 x 3.5 inches
Plexiglass, enamel, beeswax, pigment, birch ply

Sea of Change
30 x 61 x 2.5 inches
Plexiglass, enamel, beeswax, pigment, birch ply

Meet the Artist: Mark Thomas Kanter, abstract painter

Mark Thomas Kanter’s work derives from a process of mark making which reflects the natural movement of the human body.  The resultant organic movements and use of dark and light configure themselves into palpable if imaginary forms and space that are intrinsic to his work.  Kanter’s concern with light, though more metaphorical by nature, is important as a conveyor of the poetics of his work.  Kanter's work reflects the psychological force of light and dark, motion and stillness.  His pieces exists at the intersection of painting, printmaking and drawing, beginning with printing ink applied on Lexan until an underlying structure and imagery suggest themselves.  He then mono-prints this by hand onto paper or canvas, allowing serendipitous accidents to occur.  He uses India ink, charcoal or oil paint to realize the final pieces.  The resulting works of art, produced with this unique process, are neither purely figuration nor abstraction; rather they are a “configuration” in which figurative and abstract elements are the Yin and Yang which evoke a pictorial space that is analogous to the larger phenomenological world.   His work can be seen at www.markthomaskanter.com.

Meet the Artist: Pat Horner, abstract painter

Pat Horner’s work is in numerous private and public collections including the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Center of Photography at Woodstock.  She has exhibited in galleries in New York, Paris, Seattle, Houston and Minneapolis and recently has shown her work at the Guggenheim Museum, and the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in New York.  Her work has been published in magazines, newspapers and books worldwide.  With a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design and a year of Graduate School for fine art at the University of Minnesota, Horner has worked in photography, film and video before becoming a collage artist and painter who is now combining several media together.  She has lived in Woodstock since 1994 and serves on the board of directors at the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum as President.  Her work can be seen at www.pathorner.com.  Horner often references calligraphy and mark making in an attempt to organize the dabs of paint, lines, drips and flow to make visual memories, retaining traces of familiar aspects, explaining nature and exploring the truth that is beyond the visible.

Lifestyle
Collage
11 x 8 inches

Aqua Drips
oil
14 x 13 inches

Allegories
oil
13 x 18 inches

Chinese Lake
Mixed media
5 x 9 inches

Meet the Artist: Calvin Grimm, abstract painter

As an abstract Expressionist painter, Calvin Grimm engages in an individual dialogue with each canvas.  Such a dialogue is never predetermined but rather is spontaneous and informed by years of in-depth personal experience with the forces of nature.  He draws from first-hand knowledge of how physical dynamics are continuously repeated in vast and varied macro and microscopic worlds.  His goal is not to define a particular setting but to draw from all environments to create harmonious and tensioned juxtapositions that remind and permit the viewer to have their own dialogue with these forces of nature.  “Grimm’s work comes from a biomorphic expressive abstraction which he carries into his own energetic and richly inventive mode,” wrote Sara Lynn Henry, Distinguished Professor of Art History at Drew University. Grimm’s paintings, while largely based in nature, freely involve emotive and intuitive awareness.  A painting’s evolutionary process can be read in each gesture, each edit and each character.  In his early 20s he designed and built his mountain home and studio in Woodstock, NY, where he paints today.  As wilderness educator, mountaineer and horseman he has explored extraordinary environments, which continue to influence his work.  Images and biographical material can be found at www.calvingrimm.com.

"Georgia's Black Iris and Michele's Amaryllis"
60" x 72"
Oil on canvas
2012

"If Olives Could Dance"
16" x 20"
Oil on canvas
1990

"Clearing Out the Stories"
48" x 48"
Oil on canvas
2013

"The Secret Life of Fungi"
46" x 60" approx.
Oil on canvas
2005

Meet the Artist: Lowell Miller, sculptor

In the early 1970's Lowell Miller experienced a near-total transformation as a result of Reichian and Bioenergetic practices, and almost immediately began showing sculpture in New York and publishing poetry in Rolling Stone magazine.  Disenchanted with the art world scene then, he moved to the Hudson Valley, where he continued his exploration of sculpture and text.  At the same time he has been pursuing a successful career in business, taking heart from Andy Warhol's idea that "…working is art and good business is the best art.”  Mentored for many years by Wade Saunders (a sculptor, the Director of Sculpture at R.I.S.D. and a long-time sculpture critic for Art in America), Miller has pushed to capture the somatic side of emotion and aesthetic feeling, seeking a vocabulary of object and gesture that provides a "body" for the inarticulable.  He seeks to infuse an object with primal experience of the sort that's common to all of us but often obscured by our civilized concerns and attentions.  We have come far from our aboriginal ancestors, and yet we retain much of their consciousness and un-consciousness.  Reaching for contact with that elemental part of us is the subject of Miller's work.  After nearly 40 years of working mostly in isolation, Miller has only recently opened his studio for private sales of his work and begun to arrange for shows.  To see more of his work please visit www.lgmsculpture.com.

Meet the Artist: Hatti Iles, fantasy imagery art painter & sculptor

A self-taught artist, Hatti Iles has been painting since she was a little girl in England, where she sold her first painting at age 12.  Today she is a fantasy imagery painter and sculptor whose art must surely be influenced by surrealism and her peripatetic life.  She has lived all over Europe and America as well as in Afghanistan, India, Kashmir and Nepal.  As a painter Iles is obsessed with certain images and shapes such as horses’ noses and large human feet, both of which often show up in her work.  Her highly imaginative subjects are almost always animal forms although she likes combining human and animal features in her works.  Symbolisms from mythology, archaeology and ancient history, all of which she is passionate about, are evident in her work.  The images Iles creates are about love, kindness, fun, surprises and relationships.  Some of the characters in her art may look serious but they are never mean.  They always have a kind light in their eyes.  Her work is all about love and line.

Meet the Artist: Jenne M. Currie, abstract painter & sculptor

Jenne M. Currie was born in Woodstock, NY into a family of illustrious artists and received considerable art training from her parents while still a child.  After leaving home, she attended Boston University’s School of Fine Arts, the Art Students' League of NY and later obtained her bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, from Hunter College.  She spent two summers in the Tomassi Bronze Foundry in Pietrasanta, Italy, where she learned the lost wax technique of casting.  While Currie began her career as a painter, she quickly found she loved cutting and arranging shapes, first with welded steel and later by making wooden constructions.  The latter medium has proven to be one of her favorites, melding her love for assembling with her passion for applying color to a surface.  Currie began exhibiting her work in New York City in a variety of venues while still in her twenties.  Her work has since been exhibited widely throughout the Northeast and is represented in numerous private collections throughout the US.  Currie taught art to children in the New York City public school system for years.  She currently conducts adult workshops at the Woodstock School of Art and the Art Students' League of New York.  Her work can be seen at www.jennemcurrie.com.

"Jazz"

"Serenade"

"Twilight"

"Juggler"

Meet the Artist: Harvey Konigsberg, abstract painter

Harvey Konigsberg was born in New York City in 1940.  He studied painting at New York University and the University of Miami.  In 1965 he began studying Aikido with Yamada Sensei at New York Aikikai.  He has devoted himself equally to the disciplines of painting and Aikido since then.  In 1987 he founded Woodstock Aikido and continues to serve as its chief instructor.  He is currently a 7^th degree black belt and a Shihan (Master Instructor).  Over the years Konigsberg’s work has been exhibited in 22 one-man shows in New York City in addition to numerous national and international exhibitions.  His work is represented in private and museum collections in North America, Japan and France, to name a few.  For Konigsberg, art should be a luminous experience for both the artist and the viewer.  To create the quality of luminosity in his work he continuously strives to use movement and form to reveal the unseen world.  In order to achieve this goal he suspends the classical notion of foreground, background and subject to focus entirely on the total interrelationship of all facets of the work so as to reveal the elemental force of the universe.  Please see www.harveykonigsberg.com for more of his art.

"Misogi"
Oil on paper

"Light Blue"
Oil on paper

"Orleans"
Oil on canvas

Why have you chosen the Woodstock Library Annex Project as Autumn Art Tour 2013's beneficiary?

Having called the Catskill Mountains my home since 1993, I can't think of a place in Woodstock itself that I enjoy visiting more than the Woodstock Library. Tinker Cinema comes a close second.  I love the quaint looking building it is housed in. Like Tinker Cinema, it is a source of endless pleasure and entertainment for me - due to not only their books and films, but also the charming though quirky old structures they're in. The library will go to great lengths (and distances, apparently) to lend me a requested book that it does not have in its collection. It has loaned me a book from as far north as Syracuse University, as close as West Hurley Library and Vassar College south of us. One can keep books (except for new fiction) for a long period of time. And it never charges a fine for late returns, which is a real boon. I have not had to buy many new books in the last decade for I don't have the space for them.  If I bought some books recently they're mainly used gardening books from the Library's sociable book sales. The librarians are helpful and approachable, always willing to locate a particular book for someone or lend a hand to anyone struggling with one of its PCs. It makes its space available after hours for meetings of various groups without regard to their belief, persuasion or orientation. It does not even try to shush people who run into their friends and chat there, and regular visitors seem to have given up on trying to make it like a library of old where you could hear a pin drop. It is a congenial meeting place for the townspeople, much like a local market or a church is. It is of modest size though for a town of 5,600 people.

I was very pleased for the Library when I read that the awful-looking building next to it went up for sale and the library had a chance to buy it for a reasonable price. The icing on the cake is that the management and board of directors have recently appointed an ultra-modern architect, Joel Sanders, to design the Annex. I am a proponent of modern architecture and design - in particular, I believe that a structure ought to reflect the times during which it is built, for both functionality and aesthetics. And also for leaving a legacy to posterity. While Woodstock has shown itself to be resistant to certain changes, sometimes with good reason, I am optimistic that the design of the Library Annex will sit well in the rural environment and therefore with the town residents. This is because of the top reason why I love the Library so: it has a  simple management structure that is not vulnerable to bureaucratic snags. I have heard only positive things about the current administration led by chief librarian Amy Raff and her staff. An elected board of directors helps her make decisions that have community-wide ramifications such as the annex design. I trust their judgment implicitly and anyway their meetings are open to the public. Finally, because it is a library district its operations and finances are necessarily more transparent than other not-for-profit organizations. The Library deserves our support for a multitude of reasons including the above.  Part of the proceeds from Autumn Art Tour Project's ticket sales will be donated to the Woodstock Library Annex Project.