August arrives like the regal season that she is, giving her greatest gifts of natural abundance and warmth. Among the poets who have extolled her riches is William Carlos Williams, who writes in his poem “Daisy” (1921): “The dayseye hugging the earth in August, ha!” This month, some galleries are enjoying time off while others are presenting artistic visions that complement the robustness of August. Pioneering video artist Mary Lucier presents early multi-channel video pieces that consider ecology and death at Catskill Art Space in Livingston Manor, while Dani Klebes shows fantastically fun neon-hued installations of paintings and three-dimensional cut-outs in a bona fide country cabin. At Headstone Gallery in Kingston, Michael Royce presents a series of charmingly complex paintings that explore realms of psychology and fantasy, while LABspace in Hillsdale offers a peek into the triumphant creative practice of Pauline Decarmo, a cancer survivor and artist who had to switch hands to continue painting after losing the use of her dominant hand. Let the majestic energy of these diverse shows in August invigorate our art-hugging spirit!
PAULINE DECARMO: ins and outs and ups and downs
Hudson-based artist Pauline Decarmo had to harness an immense amount of willpower to overcome the challenge of chronic illness related to cancer treatments, including the loss of her dominant hand. That triumphant attitude infuses her latest work with an emotional edge. I had the pleasure of sitting for a public conversation with the artist on the occasion of her second solo show at LABspace in Hillsdale, which includes a series of acrylic-on-wood-panel works that serve as self-portraits but that also can be a “portrait of anyone,” as indicated by the artist in press materials. All the paintings in this show were created by her non-dominant hand, reflecting her determined and life-affirming use of painting as healing. The work “CHAMPION” (2024) is a straightforward vision of this: a faceless black figure wearing a crown and bright red boxing gloves lifts up their arms in a gesture of celebration. “blue sky” (2024) shows the flipside: a figure from behind, head bent and leaning on a wall in a moment of exhausted repose. While most of Decarmo’s paintings include figures and figurative visions, works such as “all the pretty flowers” (2024) reflect Decarmo’s urban roots and her abstract expressionist tendencies.
LABspace (labspaceart.blogspot.com)
2642 State Route 23, Hillsdale
Through August 11
Rachel Burgess: Simple Gifts
As Georgia O’Keeffe put it: “Everyone has many associations with a flower.” Rachel Burgess takes this sentiment to heart with a contemporary pop-art edge, extolling flowers for their illustrious charms in a series of bold graphic works that border on abstract. Simple Gifts at Susan Eley Fine Art in Hudson brings together a series of recent large-scale monotypes of bouquets her husband, a New York Police Department detective, brought her from the late-night corner deli upon his midnight arrivals home. Over time, she began sketching these flowers, effectively capturing the loving kindness of this ritual in bright, bold prints. Works such as “Peonies” (all works 2024) and “Tulips IV” are more stoic presentations, while “Bud Vase VI (Wedding Present)” appears to morph into a more esoteric image of flowers as portals to universal intelligence.
Susan Eley Fine Art (susaneleyfineart.com)
433 Warren Street, Hudson, New York
Through August 18
Mary Lucier
Pioneering video artist Mary Lucier has been creating multi-monitor and multi-channel video installations that examine the complexities of ecological trauma, death, transformation, and resilience in both artificial and natural worlds since the early 1970s. Her solo exhibition at Catskill Art Space in Livingston Manor presents photographs and video works in their recently expanded multi-arts center, also home to long-term installations by James Turrell and Sol LeWitt. Highlights include “Equinox” (1979/2016), a seven-channel work for which the artist trained her video camera on the sun for 12 consecutive days, effectively burning the camera tube with marks that track the movement of this life-giving orb. The multi-channel video and sound installation “Leaving Earth” (2024) is a sensitive presentation of select journal excerpts of her late husband, the painter Robert Berlind, who wrote fearlessly and appreciatively about the inevitability of passing on during his final days. The isolated comment “how to imagine death” appears on one of the monitors of this installation, aptly encapsulating the intimate ruminations of this show.
Catskill Art Space (catskillartspace.org)
48 Main Street, Livingston Manor
Through August 24
Back and Forth, Between Names: An exhibition about bodies of water
This multi-media show of 12 artists curated by gallery director Alison McNulty considers the protean identities and poetics of water as both a material and a metaphor. Carmen Lizardo’s “To Swallow a River: Migrant Yola-Boat” (2023), a digital print with crystals on panel, is a poignant vision of an overloaded boat filled with evacuees traversing water to find new lands, while Jaanika Peerna’s work on paper “Ablation Zone 14-15-16” (2023) abstracts water into a pulsing, rhythmic dance. Matt Frieburghaus’s “Tongue of Ice” (2016) is a vision of white water frozen in time, while Adie Russell’s charcoal-on-paper “Origins 2” (2024) embodies a melancholic vision of water beyond trees. This considerate show reflects the power of water as giver of life, documenter of history, and reminder of the constancy of flux.
Ann Street Gallery (annstreetgallery.org)
104 Ann St, Newburgh, NY
Through August 25
Edward Merritt: The Long Season
Last week I drove over to Turley Gallery in Hudson to see Edward Merritt: The Long Season and had the pleasure of hearing about Merritt’s atypical artistic process directly from gallery founder Ryan Turley himself. The artist scouts out locations home to layers of graffiti. He collects the debris from the walls and ground of those spots — thick from years of tagging and bombing by artists — and repurposes the fallen paint to create lighthearted, joyful works that reflect the vibrant energy of their former incarnations. Excavated from old warehouse buildings, train tunnels, and bridges, among other locations, the result is a garden of recycled paint-waste paintings that defy their origins. Works such as “Arrangement on Grass” (2023) and “Wildflowers with Poppies and Ferns” (2024) are free-flowing and symphonic, and “Garden with Stone Wall” (2024) will make your heart sing. Another compelling aspect of this body of work is how Merritt’s botanical compositions highlight awareness about the need to consistently reconsider our care for the environment.
Turley Gallery (turley.gallery)
609 Warren Street, Hudson
Through September 1
Michael Royce: Rabbit Bouquet
Michael Royce’s allegorical narrative-style art, which gracefully explores complex realms of psychology and fantasy, is immediately captivating in their delightful oddness. Rabbit Bouquet at Headstone in Kingston brings together 14 new paintings by the artist. These range from smaller works such as the intriguing “Squirrel Crucifixion (Desire, Despair, Desire)” (2024), which features two squirrels in a pious moment onstage: one crucified on a tiny wood cross while the other bears mournful witness shrouded in a blue cloak as billowing, start-covered turquoise curtains framing the drama. The titular painting “Rabbit Bouquet” (2024) is a pop-art vision of a radiant sunflower and blue rabbit emerging from a pot, a moment of sweet strangeness. Other larger works, such as the diptych “Reverse Centaur” (2024), dig deeper into Royce’s life experience growing up queer in the south of Virginia as the impetus for his artistic attunement to secrets buried within the ordinary. This lush image of a stoic half-painted horse set against a barn, a green silhouette body of a human twisting upward against a wood panel, reflects a seductively strange scene that is familiar yet surreal at once.
Headstone Gallery (headstonegalleryny.com)
28 Hurley Avenue, Kingston, New York
Through September 1
Elizabeth Keithline: Breaking Broken
Elizabeth Keithline repurposes discarded wood to explore cast shadows and destruction, revealing moments of energetic growth as the flipside of darkness and ruin. Breaking Broken at Jane Street Art Center in Saugerties presents a series of her latest paintings in this vein: “Ocular 1” (2024), for instance, harbors jagged layers of wood nestled within a gnarly rip in a perfectly baby blue expanse. “Ruins 9” (2024) appears to be a landscape containing a sheath of ice and a ragged mountainous range of sorts, and her oversized seven-panel painting “Through Line” (2023) is a vigorous flow of lines and colors that appear to harmonize as they, too, rip across the wood on which they are painted, defying gravity as they go.
Jane Street Art Center (janestreetartcenter.com)
11 Jane Street, Suite A, Saugerties, New York
Through September 14
Dani Klebes: A Dyke Cabin of One’s Own
Curated by Elijah Wheat Showroom, Dani Klebes: A Dyke Cabin of One’s Own at Mother-in-Law’s in Germantown is among the most authentic art installations you will see anywhere in the world this summer season. A bright neon tinge infuses the artworks in this little brown cabin found down a dirt road, including cut-out objects and paintings that speak to a country-infused vernacular of lesbian skylarking. Playful works such as “Easy Riders” (all works 2024) and “Let me run with you tonight” feature women on bikes and ruling the world, so to speak. Complete with faux beer cans, guitars, leather jackets, and a piece called “Deer Taxidermy” that truly looks the part, A Dyke Cabin of One’s Own is a riotous and utterly fun installation that expresses Klebe’s rich imagination and masterful control of oil paint to conjure her arcadian dream.
Mother-in-Law’s (frontroomles.com)
140 Church Avenue, Germantown, New York
Through September 21
