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HUDSON CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT 22ND ANNUAL STUDENT ART SHOW
The Hudson City School District 22nd Annual Student Art Show will be on view at Columbia-Greene Community College during the month of March. The opening reception will be held Tuesday March 11, 2008 from 5 PM. to 7 PM at the Blue Hill Gallery in C-GCC. The Art Show will present art projects created by Kindergarten through 12th grade Hudson City School District Art Students. The Hudson Art Department Educators supervising the exhibition are Angela Nassimos of John L. Edwards Elementary, Dana Fisher of Greenport Elementary, Sandy Drahushuk and Chuck Peters of Montgomery C. Smith Middle School, and Cindy DiDonna-Drake, Gary Finelli and Elizabeth Anne Albino, Art Department Chairperson, all of Hudson High School.
The student group exhibit is a collection of two-dimensional and three- dimensional artwork that represents the art curriculum during the current school year. This non-juried Art Show provides the public with an opportunity to examine the creative themes and expressive vision of our young artists. The talented students create art projects in various mediums including acrylic paint, charcoal, oil pastel, ink, pencil, clay, plaster and digital photography. The audience will view student paintings, drawings, prints, collages, sculptures, pottery and photographs. The display is a wonderful model of the design process and artistic decision-making learned in our art program.
The Hudson City School District Art Department expresses its gratitude for the incredible dedication of the following community members: Guy Apicella of C-GCC, Jan Hanvik, Executive Director, and Carline Murphy, Arts in Education Director, of Columbia Council on the Arts; Hudson City School, Gary Shiro and Joseph Herwick of Hudson Opera House, District Board members, Hudson City School District Administration members and the members of the Hudson Teachers Association. We are grateful for our annual student exhibition contributors including John L. Edwards Elementary PTA, Greenport Elementary PTO, Montgomery C. Smith Middle School PTO, and Columbia-Greene Community College. We would also like to show our appreciation to the parents of the students who continue to support the visual art education program at the Hudson City School District. For more information contact Elizabeth Anne Albino at Hudson High School: 518-828-4360.
MIRACLE TOMATOES ARRIVING IN HUDSON!
On the heels of Earth Day, embrace Spring in Columbia County by celebrating TOMATO DAY on Saturday, April 26th from 4 to 9 PM with the play Miracle Tomato as the culminating event of a salsa made up of theater, a lecture and discussion, and food-related festival of information and ideas. Miracle Tomato will be performed at 7:30 pm Friday, April 25, as well as on Saturday, April 26th at the end of TOMATO DAY, at the Basilica Industria in Hudson, NY. Ticket price TBA. For more information go to www.wtdtheater.org or phone 518 392 0131.
This Saturday event, presented by Walking the Dog Theater and the Basilica Industria, invites the audience to meet with farmers, businesses and educational organizations that will discuss and disseminate information about local food consumption, production and activism. The Nature Institute will host a lecture and discussion.
The event will close with a performance of Jessica Cerullo’s play Miracle Tomato, a traveling story of love, bioengineering and the search for home.
If you would like to volunteer for this event or have something to contribute please contact HudsonTomato@gmail.com or call Jessica at 202- 841-5141.
The play Miracle Tomato is for one actress and 303 tomatoes and has been touring in the United States for the last year. This original and serious comedy is presented by the character Angelina, a waitress-explorer whose journey across America places her in Hudson, where she will impart the history of the tomato to all who will listen. Angelina, the youngest of triplets birthed in the family tomato plot, reveals not only the history of the controversial fruit/vegetable, but also her own, as she employs the help of her identical sisters Valentina, a bio engineer, and Josephina, a food activist. Projected slides, music and tomato handlers assist in telling the story.
Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Why did the tomato appear in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1893? How many slices of pizza does America eat in a second? Where are the tomatoes that taste good? How do we say goodbye to what is lost? And how do we hold on to what is left? In viewing history through the tomato, Angelina takes the audience on a journey that examines vulnerability, appropriation, identity, mass consumption, cultivation, and the changing dynamic of food and family in Angelina’s hometown and in all the towns across the country.
Although the text is scripted, what is said each night changes depending on the audience. What ‘makes it in’ is determined in an unspoken agreement with the audience as nods or laughs or frowns of interest, disinterest, confusion, or celebration are responded to by Angelina. As Miracle Tomato tours the country, a unique version of the show is created in each town. Come and be a part of the Columbia County's Miracle Tomato!
Columbia County Bounty is the beneficiary of Columbia County Tomato Day, an accompanying opportunity for local organizations and individuals to display, discuss and disseminate information about local food consumption, production and activism.
Columbia County Tomato Day, including the performance of Miracle Tomato, will take place at The Basilica Industria, 110 Front Street, Hudson, New York, across from the Hudson Amtrak Station. Ticket Price: TBA. CONTACT: Jessica Cerullo 202 841 5141, HudsonTomato@gmail.com or www.wtdtheater.org.
MANFISH: THE STORY OF JACQUES COUSTEAU by Ancram author Jennifer Berne
CCCA writer-member Jennifer Berne has collaborated with award-winning painter/illustrator Eric Puybaret to create this beautiful, lyrically-written children’s picture book biography of Jacques Cousteau, for children 5 and up. MANFISH:THE STORY OF JACQUES COUSTEAU, published by Chronicle Books, will be available April 2008.
The gorgeous, evocative, lush illustrations were painted on linen by Eric Puybaret, who lives in Paris and has illustrated many award-winning books in Europe, and the best-selling PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON in the U.S. Puybaret’s paintings create underwater panoramas though which the reader can enter and experience the amazing, fascinating world of Jacques Cousteau.
The story is written lyrically and poetically, starting with Cousteau as a curious little boy wondering about the sea, and traveling with Cousteau through his life and adventures, ending with his passion to love, protect and save the underwater world, its creatures and our planet Earth.
This book will remind us all of how Jacques Cousteau first introduced us, so long ago as children, to the magical, mysterious wonders of the ocean and its remarkable creatures. And now the next generations will learn to love and care for the sea, through this exceptional, beautifully presented story.
Author Berne has lived in Ancram since 1978, in a house she designed herself. She grew up in New York City, where she attended the Parsons School of Design and The New School for Social Research. She worked for Andy Warhol, assisting with silk-screening and making movies. She then became an advertising copywriter, winning scores of awards for her print campaigns and TV commercials. Now she is a contributing writer to Nick Jr. Magazine and spends her time writing children's books about our amazing universe and the people who explore it and discover its secrets.
She lives here with her husband Nick Nickerson, an artist-member of CCCA.
PLUGGED IN 2008
The public exhibition Plugged In will highlight new media works being created by artists throughout the Hudson Valley and beyond including sound, performance, digital and video art and interactive works. This exhibition will showcase the highly provocative and pioneering artists who reside within the county and beyond with a focus on the interaction of their works with the residents of and visitors to Hudson’s main thoroughfare: Warren Street.
There is a fundamental revolution happening in the way that separate media are being combined. People are getting information, education, entertainment and communications thrown together into one big soup. It provides us with all sorts of possibilities as artists and as individuals. By creating interactive exhibits on Warren Street we will have events and experiences that to which the visitor responds in a truly participatory process.
“I believe the marriage of technology and new media with the historically rich spaces along Warren Street will provide a challenging environment in which people can have adventures. Visitors can make their own journeys and their own decisions. Artists will not just be providing a particular piece of work to be heard, seen and enjoyed in one way, but supply a collage of materials for people to play with, explore and create something for themselves,” states exhibition curator Melissa Stafford.
Plugged In will be exhibited along the mile-long Warren Street, the main business district, in Hudson, New York. From May 17 through May 31, artists will utilize everything from store windows to the sides of buildings, to the street itself to exhibit their site specific work.
Plugged In is sponsored by Columbia County Council on the Arts and is made possible with public funds from New York State Council on the Arts’ Electronic Media and Film Program. This program recognizes CCCA’s commitment to encouraging the development of a new generation of curators in the County, and its vision as one of only two County agencies to pro-actively seek out and promote new electronic media and film projects.
Participating Artists include
Isabel Barton (Hudson) Mark Gregory (Albany), Giorgio Handman (Hudson), Kathe Izzo (Hudson), Ingrid Ludt (Albany), Jesse Matulis (Cohoes), Jillian McDonald (New York), Michael Oatman (Troy), Fernando Orellana (Troy), Jonathan Osofsky + Jasdeep Gosal (Hudson), Christine Sciulli (New York), Bart Woodstrup (Troy) Chip Fasciana (Albany), and Bryan Zanisnik (New York).
Exhibition Statement
Today more and more people are connected to their computers, their phones, their electronics, and their screens. More people today are plugged in to devices and networks that are both connecting and consuming us, creating a new world. This terrain is mostly uncharted, and it falls to the brave and creative pioneers to both explore and define this new paradigm.
In selecting and curating the artists for Plugged In, my choices reflect my own interest in art that displays the intersection of humanity and technology – that is, the joining of art and science. Each of the works of the fifteen chosen artists displays a drive to bring about shifts in our perception of that union and a general desire to take us by surprise.
My selections were guided by my own passion and admiration for all things experimental. I believe that the way in which people interact with new technology will change the way they live and think. This exhibit – not simply propelled by technology, but instead designed and artistically conceived specifically with this progress in mind – attempts to redefine art and the countless ways in which it can be made, encountered, absorbed and processed.
Technology is a wonderfully democratized and ultimately powerful tool of creativity, and perhaps even more fundamentally crucial, a powerful tool of speech. To the artist’s point, this is representative of that vital shift in the community as a whole: these tools allow people to interact on a much more intimate level with the high-concept technology around them and, perhaps, see the lives they lead each day in a new and different light.
Furthermore, these new technologies are capable of much more than just opening eyes. There is the unspoken feeling that technology can be cold, empty, and that it can in fact ruin artistic development. Here, however, these artists seek to actively demonstrate the powerful tool that technology can be – and the more tools in one's arsenal, the more empowered one is to cast off the role as consumer and become the creator. From this exhibition and its concurrent a
tist talks and seminars, even more new ideas will spring; the ultimate self-sustaining system.
There is a beautiful quote from John Philip Sousa, "I firmly believe that we have more latent musical talent in America than there is in any other country. But to dig it out there must be good music throughout the land, a lot of it. Everyone must hear it, and such a process takes time." Project Sousa's quote on any art form - visual, performance, or aural - and one begins to understand how important it is to constantly keep exposed to new thoughts, ideas and concepts.
My hope for those viewing the exhibition would be, as Baudelaire puts it, "[to] seize on some fragment, and like an able dancer, use it as trampoline, to spring to distant dreams."
I hope that the Plugged In exhibit will showcase these visions, entertaining and educating those who travel down Warren Street in Hudson, New York. My goal is that this will be the start of a tradition in bravely exploring the frontiers of electronic and interactive art in outdoor public spaces throughout Hudson.
Melissa Stafford 2008
518-526-2999
melissastafford@gmail.com
www.hudsonpluggedin.com
QUEEN OF THE MIST AT HUDSON VALLEY ACADEMY OF PERFORMING ARTS
Fans of the work of Stuyvesant playwright Kate McLeod can hear and enjoy a reading of one of her latest works, Queen of the Mist, on Sunday March 30th. Queen of the Mist follows the travails of Annie Taylor, the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. A reception and talkback session with Kate will immediately follow the reading.
The reading will be at 2:00 pm at the Hudson Valley Academy of Performing Arts, located on Route 23 just East of the Taconic Parkway. Queen of the Mist is being produced by The Two Of Us Productions in collaboration with the Hudson Valley Academy of Performing Arts. For additional information please call 518-329-6293. The Two Of Us Productions is an affiliate of The Roving Actors’ Repertory Ensemble, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit corporation. Donations will be gratefully accepted at the door.
SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE IN MARCH AND APRIL AT OLD CHATHAM COUNTRY STORE CAFÉ GALLERY
Ashley and Aleisha Jackson’s art exhibition One by One will be at The Old Chatham Country Store Café Gallery from March 1 – April 2. One by One will feature Ashley’s detailed nature photography and Aleisha’s water colors of flowers and more. There will be an opening reception on Sunday afternoon, March 2nd from 3 – 5 PM. One by One will be on view daily from Tuesdays through Sundays until Wednesday, April 2, 2008.
Carl Berg, a psychologist and a part-time resident of Malden Bridge, will exhibit his extraordinary photographs Facing Vietnam at the Old Chatham Country Store Cafe Gallery from April 4 through April 30 with an Opening Reception on Sunday afternoon April 6 from 3 - 5 PM.
Ashley and Aleisha come from a large Columbia County family. On their mother’s side they are Lamphears, and on their father’s side Jacksons, the eponymous name of the Old Chatham House Restaurant which has been owned by the Jackson family for three generations. Both women grew up in the restaurant business and still work at Jackson’s, when not attending classes.
Aleisha attends Hudson Valley Community College and will be graduating with an Associate’s degree in the spring. This fall she will transfer to the University at Albany where she plans to major in Psychology and study Art Therapy. In addition to working at the family restaurant across the street, Aleisha can be found working at the Old Chatham Country Store on weekends.
She says, “I have always had a passion for art and especially for painting. In my free time, what little I have now, I enjoy painting with water colors. I love traveling to different places, looking at art and perhaps buying a new piece to add to my collection.”
Ashley is working towards her nursing license. She has an AAS in science degree as well as her EMT license. She is training at Albany Medical Center in the Emergency Department and works with the Greenport Rescue Squad as an EMT. It was on a trip to France and Italy that her interest in photography grew. She says, “I love seeing the up-close and personal part of nature, which is why most of my work is as close as I can get without actually disturbing the object I am shooting. I like to make the viewer imagine that they are feeling it, touching it, smelling it…”
The following is Carl Berg's statement about this exhibit: “Although I did not serve in the military there, the Vietnam War, or the American War as it is referred to in Vietnam, was a constant and central presence during many of my important and impressionable teenage and young adult years growing up and living in New York City. Reading about the war daily, regularly seeing clips on the nightly news and experiencing the consequential divisiveness within families, communities and the country as a whole, made a deep impression on me and left an indelible mark on my world perspective. I do not regard my impressionability on this subject
unique, as the war and its development affected any conscious world citizen of that time strongly and irreversibly. The historical and contemporary parallels are startling, including the deception and misrepresentation by leadership, the fear mongering by insisting that somehow our personal and national security was and is at risk, the premeditated and deliberate negative manipulation of the population's perspectives and sentiments and the unilateral vilification and dehumanization of an entire group of people, becomes and continues to be standard operating procedure in preparation for and sustaining any war effort.
The names of Vietnam's towns, villages, cities and regions became completely familiar to me. I felt an overwhelming need to witness this country personally and to step foot upon a land only known in a historically negative way. We planned a journey beginning in the north and
slowly working our way south. The unification of people once enemies, now working together, rivals and surpasses the limited healing that has taken place in this country regarding the war. The openness, acceptance and willingness of the people to engage without animosity or bitterness is an unfailing reality and was reflected in their eagerness to be photographed. The exhilaration and pride of the people to be finally free of foreign occupation after over a thousand years is reflected in the faces of the portrait images. Vietnam is ‘open for business,’ bursting at the seams and bustling. My Vietnam portrait series attempts to convey and communicate to
the viewer our experience of the people we were privileged to have encountered. I can only hope this helps in a re-humanization and re-personalization of the Vietnamese people.”
The Old Chatham Country Store is located in the center of Old Chatham. During the winter, the store is open from 7 AM to 4:00 PM. Tuesdays through Sundays for breakfast, lunch and take-out menus. The proprietors are Brian Albert and Peter Trump, graduates of the Culinary Institute of America. Information about the store and about the Gallery and its upcoming exhibitions can be found on the web at theoldchathamcountrystore.com.
HRC Showcase Theatre at Stageworks/Hudson
On Saturday, April 5th, HRC Showcase Theatre is presenting The La Vidas’ Landlord, by Lawrence Weinstein, their fourth staged reading of the 2007-08 Season. Mr. Weinstein has written several full-length plays. One of his plays was a finalist for the O’Neill Conference and another of his plays was a finalist at the International Playwriting Festival in the UK. In 2003, his play, New Curtains for Macbeth, was produced by the Lyric Stage of Boston.
The La Vidas’ Landlord is about an idealistic high school teacher who rents out an apartment to a political refugee from Central America. Unfortunately, there are more than minor philosophical differences between the two, and they can't be resolved by the teacher's anxious attempts to be understanding. In Act II, one surprise comes hard on the heels of another...right up to the final curtain.
Showcase Theatre productions are performed in residence at Stageworks/Hudson. For directions and a map visit www.stageworkshudson.org. The performance is at 8 PM and reservations are suggested: 518 799 3230. This event is made possible (in part) with public funds from the Decentralization Program of the New York State Council on the Arts, administered through the Twin Counties Cultural Fund in Columbia County by the Columbia County Council on the Arts.