Lauren, Author at O+ - Page 2 of 17

Notes from Here

Notes from Here
an exhibition of small works from Hudson Valley Artists
Bill Brovold, Joe Concra, Ramiro Davaro-Comas, Erika DeVries, Sophie Eisner, Lara Giordano, Casey Inch, Don Johnson, Grace Lang, Reyna Martinez, Adam Mastropaolo, Thomas Sarrantonio, Saidee Sonnenberg, Thorneater, and Lindsey A. Wolkowicz
December 19th, 2025 – January 24, 2026

Opening Reception: Friday, December 19th, 2025 6-8pmLocation: O+ Exchange, 334 Wall St, Kingston, NYGallery Hours: Thurs-Sat 12-6pm or by appointment

Notes from Here brings together small work from O+ artists making work in, and of, the Hudson Valley region. With work that ranges from landscape in oil on linen to sculpture that acts as a literal container to the elements, this exhibition explores the meaning, substance, absurdity and experience of the time and location they find themselves in.

These works offer brief glimpses of each artist’s process and attempt to make meaning from the moment. They are offerings—like a postcard to a friend, a found rock slipped into a pocket, ephemera pressed in a book– holding an impression of a place or a fleeting moment you try to carry with you.

The exhibition opens at The O+ Exchange Gallery Friday, December 19th, 2025 with a reception from 6-8pm and is on view through January 24th, 2026.

Notes from Here features work from Bill Brovold, Joe Concra, Ramiro Davaro-Comas, Erika DeVries, Sophie Eisner, Lara Giordano, Casey Inch, Don Johnson, Grace Lang, Reyna Martinez, Adam Mastropaolo, Thomas Sarrantonio, Saidee Sonnenberg, Thorneater, and Lindsey A. Wolkowicz.

About the artists

Bill Brovold: www.billbrovold.bandcamp.com – @billbrovoldJoe Concra: www.joe-concra.com – @joeconcraRamiro Davaro-Comas: www.ramirostudios.com – @ramirostudiosErika DeVries: www.erikaswonderlands.net – @fancyswanpantsSophie Eisner: www.sophieeisner.com – @s.eisnerLara Giordano: www.laragiordano.com – @laraagiordanoCasey Inch: www.caseyinchstudio.com – @casey_inch_studioDon Johnson: Facebook – InstagramGrace Lang: www.grooseling.com – @grooselingReyna Martinez: @mtnzraynaAdam Mastropaolo: www.newpaltzmetal.com/adam-mastropaolo Thomas Sarrantonio: www.thomassarrantonio.com – @thomassarrantonioSaidee Sonnenberg: @saidee – @sonnenberg_galleryThorneater: www.thorneater.tumblr.com – @thorneatercomicsLindsey A. Wolkowicz: www.lindseyawolkowicz.com – @lindseyawolkowicz

The O+ Exchange Gallery is an exhibition and performance space located within the organization’s home base. The gallery prioritizes performances and exhibitions by O+ alumni and other artists working throughout the Hudson Valley as a way to provide them with opportunities to share their work with the public as a pathway to healthcare access through O+’s distinct exchange-based model of care.

In Someone’s Shoes

In Someone’s Shoes
an exhibition of work by Mark Hogancamp
November 14th – December 13th, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, November 14th 6-8pm
Gallery Hours: Thurs-Sat 12-6pm or by appointment
Location: The O+ Exchange Gallery/Art O+n Wall, 334 Wall St, Kingston, NY

In Someone’s Shoes invites viewers to step into the imaginative and intimate world of Mark Hogancamp, the Kingston-based artist known globally for his deeply personal and cinematic project Marwencol. This new exhibition, curated in partnership with One Mile Gallery (that represents Mark Hogancamp), presents a stunning series centered on one of Hogancamp’s lifelong fascinations — shoes, especially high heels — as symbols of identity, transformation, and empathy.

For Hogancamp, shoes have always been signifiers for far more than fashion. They carry our stories — the weight of who we are, where we’ve been, and who we long to become. In his photographs, stilettos, combat boots and scuffed heels alike become portraits of courage and vulnerability, fantasy and survival. Each image blurs the line between reality and imagination, inviting viewers to consider what it truly means to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.”

“People see high heels and think of style or gender or desire,” says Hogancamp. “For me, they’re more than that — they hold power and memory and they help me understand others, and myself.”

In Someone’s Shoes is both deeply personal and universally human — high heels as a reflection of resilience, and representative of the process of building, or rebuilding, oneself from the ground up. In addition to the photographs included in the exhibition, O+ is honored to feature an installation of shoes and figures from Mark’s personal collection in the storefront project space, giving viewers an intimate look at some of the objects that not only inspired the photography, but have been gathered and cherished by the artist throughout his life.

Listen to the Aimee Gardner in conversation with Mark Hogancamp on the April 29, 2025 O+ Radio Hour on Radio Kingston

As a closing event to the exhibition, O+ will present a screening of Marwencol — the 2010 documentary, directed by Jeff Malmberg — on December 13th at 5pm, followed by a Q&A with Janet Hicks of One Mile Gallery and Mark Hogancamp himself. Marwencol is an honest, emotional account of the vicious attack that changed Mark Hogancamp’s life and the ways that art and storytelling became pathways to healing, authenticity and empowerment for Mark, as well as anyone who encounters the worlds he creates.

In addition to Hogancamp’s exhibited photographs, open edition signed prints will also be available with proceeds from benefiting Mark Hogancamp and healthcare access for artists through the O+ Exchange.

About the artist

Mark Hogancamp is an artist, photographer, and storyteller whose work explores trauma, healing, and imagination. His world-renowned project Marwencol — a miniature WWII-era town he built as a means of recovery after a brutal attack — was the subject of the award-winning documentary Marwencol (2010) and the feature film Welcome to Marwen (2018). In Someone’s Shoes extends that story — a testament to the power of creativity to restore dignity, understanding, and hope – expressed through objects long collected and cherished by the artist.

The O+ Exchange Gallery is an exhibition and performance space located within the organization’s home base. The gallery prioritizes performances and exhibitions by O+ alumni and other artists working throughout the Hudson Valley as a way to provide them with opportunities to share their work with the public as a pathway to healthcare access through O+’s distinct exchange-based model of care.

Art O+n Wall is a distinct project space located at the corner of Wall and N. Front Streets in storefront of The O+ Exchange in the historic Uptown Kingston neighborhood. Encased by glass windows on three sides, this space offers a site-specific, highly visible, distinct container for the exhibition and/or development of new work with an emphasis on sculpture, installation, time-based media and performance by Hudson Valley artists.

Index: New work by Beth Humphrey

Index
an exhibition of work by Beth Humphrey
September 4 – October 5, 2025

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 4th 6-8pm
Gallery Hours: Thurs through Sat, 12-6pm or by appointment
O+ Exchange @ 334 Wall Street, Kingston, NY 12401

O+ proudly presents Index, an exhibition of recent work on paper by Hudson Valley artist Beth Humphrey. Humphrey’s compositions are both whimsical and informed, leveraging the visual languages of landscape, abstraction and object to present sculptural combinations of paper, drawn line and pattern. Her process, pairing formal concision with exploration, feels like the construction of intimate poems solving for the intangibles in the human experience. They balance bright color and familiar forms that call forward associations with home, with weather, with land and body to give shape to emotionality and to shine light on the absurd, the unknown and the existential in being alive.

ARTIST STATEMENT

This body of work is inspired by the infographics from 1950’s & 60’s encyclopedias that attempted to distill information and inspire curiosity about natural systems, depicting individual parts removed from the whole. These were sanitized, clinical, colorful imagery, removed from the exploitation and rampant destruction of these systems. I am reimagining components of natural forces inspired by my own sense of awe and wonder around these systems that support us all.They are constructed with paper as a ground, building up surfaces with paint, drawing, accident, light and shadow.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Beth Humphrey studied printmaking at Minneapolis College of Art and Design and surface design at Oregon College of Art and Craft. She’s had residencies at the Ucross Foundation and the Penland School. Humphrey was a NYFA Mark Fellow in 2009 and exhibits her work nationally. In 2005, she co-founded Art Lab, an arts based non-profit promoting affordable arts programming for children based in the Hudson Valley, is the Education Curator for the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum and is currently the Workforce Director of the Midtown Kingston Arts District Youth Workforce Development Program (formerly known as PUGG/Pop-Up Gallery Group).

www.bethhumphreyart.com @studiobeth

The O+ Exchange Gallery is an exhibition and performance space located within the organization’s home base. The gallery prioritizes performances and exhibitions by O+ alumni and other artists working throughout the Hudson Valley as a way to provide them with opportunities to share their work with the public as a pathway to healthcare access through O+’s distinct exchange-based model of care.

In The Pale Light of Shadow We Put Together a House

Sophie Eisner picture of "Put Together" 2

In The Pale Light of Shadow We Put Together a House
an exhibition of work by Sophie Eisner
July 17th – August 24th, 2025

Opening Reception: Thursday, July 17th 6-8pm
Gallery Hours: Thurs through Sat, 12-6pm or by appointment
O+ Exchange @ 334 Wall Street, Kingston, NY 12401

O+ is honored to present In The Pale Light of Shadow We Put Together a House, an exhibition of recent work by Kingston-based artist, and 2024 O+ Festival alum, Sophie Eisner. Eisner will be showing new sculptural work in the gallery, as well as an installation in the storefront project spaces.

With formal elements reminiscent of both Joseph Cornell and Beuys, and distinctly contemporary explorations of connection, purpose and longing, the work exemplifies the informed, curious, and associative nature of Eisner’s practice. Her objects are both nostalgic and inventive– produced from familiar materials that mimic the body and refer to the home just enough to seem both intimate and utilitarian. The giving shape to the space between materiality and emotion, the presentness of play and the weight of memory.

ARTIST STATEMENT

“In making for ourselves a place to live, we first spread a parasol to throw a shadow on the earth, and in the pale light of the shadow we put together a house.”

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows

In the early pages of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s text he writes, “in the pale light of the shadow we put together a house.” It is unclear if the “we” still exists or if he is now alone recalling a past time of togetherness. Even in the most joyful memories, there is a felt space of absence.

Putting together a house, building a life, is a hopeful act as well as a commitment of labor. It is a corporal investment in one’s future and, in the “we” that Tanizaki writes, a joint effort and a shared experience. To put a house together is not to build from the ground up, but to gather and combine disparate parts and bring them into relationship.

It is somber and hopeful, vulnerable and brave. There is uncertainty and opportunity in the making. Gravity and play exist concurrently. In the pale light of the shadow we do not know the future, but in it we build on our memories and make a place to live.

My practice is a tender putting together. With a combination of industrial materials and more traditional art media, I build, cast and assemble forms that appear simultaneously utilitarian and intimate. The forms and arrangements in this body of work speak to the unfixedness of home, the inherent longing of nostalgia, and gestures of a body in juxtaposition with a materiality most akin to architecture and manufacturing. The objects are imbued with the discovery of childlike exploration, the non-linear narratives of memory, and opportunities for holding and care in spaces of absence.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Sophie Eisner grew up in New York City, and after spending many years in the Midwest, has made her home in Kingston, NY. Eisner’s studio practice includes sculpture, installation, drawing, performance and musical collaboration working in steel, silicone, concrete, wood, fabric and bronze. With a background in ceramics and figure drawing, Eisner’s work is grounded in the act of making and close observation of the physical world.

Eisner’s work has been exhibited in galleries, museums, and sculpture parks in the United States and internationally including at Simone DeSousa Gallery, Wasserman Projects, Franconia Sculpture Park, the Wright Museum of African American History, and Galerie Marzee. She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, Mass MoCA, the Vermont Studio Center, and Salem Art Works among others and was honored with the Louise Bourgeois Award in Sculpture from Yaddo. Eisner teaches sculpture at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.

Watch: In CO+nversation with Sophie Eisner

www.sophieeisner.com
@s.eisner

The O+ Exchange Gallery is an exhibition and performance space located within the organization’s home base. The gallery prioritizes performances and exhibitions by O+ alumni and other artists working throughout the Hudson Valley as a way to provide them with opportunities to share their work with the public as a pathway to healthcare access through O+’s distinct exchange-based model of care.

2025 O+ Kingston Theme: PO+wer

The O+ Festival will return to Kingston, NY for the 15th annual exchange of art, music and wellness October 10-12th, 2025.

Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change – it can not only move us, it makes us move.

~ Ossie Davis

What is power? Who holds it? How is it sustained? When do we wield it, when do we resist it? How do we, consciously or unconsciously, uphold structures that reinforce inequitable access to it? How do we share it? What happens when it is redefined or redistributed? How do we reclaim it when attempts are made at taking it from us?

In a time marked by political turbulence and division, art emerges as a potent instrument of the people—a medium through which voices are amplified, dissent is visualized, and collective resilience is forged. Power is, however, neither inherently good nor bad—it is an omnipresent force that governs societies, shapes relationships, and defines identities in complex and often contradictory ways. Power is at once tangible and elusive, oppressive and liberating, inherent and constructed.

Friedrich Nietzsche said “Happiness is the feeling that power increases – that resistance is being overcome” perhaps defining power, in all of its forms, as a force. And perhaps possessing or harnessing power is the sense that if you push against something (whether physical, metaphysical or metaphoric), it will move.

The fascism in us all causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.

~ Michel Foucault

The 15th Annual O+ Festival offers a space to reconsider power not just as something to be held, but as something to be shared, dismantled, or reframed. We welcome the work of artists exploring power in ways both practical and political. Structural power or the literal power grid. Renewable “green” power or economic power. Interrogations of authority, questioning of systems, celebration of movements, or even explorations of physics all present power as a force, a medium and a subject that we encounter and contend with in our everyday lives.

and the armies ceased advancing
because the people had their ear
and the shepherds and the soldiers
lay beneath the stars
exchanging visions
and laying arms
to waste in the dust
in the form of shining valleys
where the pure air recognized
and my senses newly opened
I awakened to the cry
The people have the power
~ Patti Smith

The measure of a man is
what he does with power.
~ Plato

From the heart
It’s a start, a work of art
To revolutionize make a change nothing’s strange
People, people we are the same
No we’re not the same
‘Cause we don’t know the game
What we need is awareness, we can’t get careless
You say what is this?
My beloved lets get down to business
Mental self defensive fitness
Don’t rush the show
You gotta go for what you know
Make everybody see, in order to fight the powers that be
Lemme hear you say
Fight the power
~ Public Enemy

Submissions are welcome from artists, musicians, and writers of all mediums, genres and modalities that explore the nature of power in all of its forms, structures, expressions and complexity. We welcome work that examines how it is wielded, challenged, distributed and reimagined. The structures that sustain power, the forces that resist it, and the possibilities for its transformation. Some pieces confront systems of dominance, exposing the weight of authority, surveillance, and inequality. Others celebrate empowerment, resilience, resistance and the transformative potential of collective action. The interplay between these perspectives underscores the fluidity of power—how it shifts, adapts, and manifests in both visible and invisible ways.

Sometimes people try to destroy you,
precisely because they recognize your power
— not because they don’t see it,
but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.

~ Bell Hooks

In an era where institutions and services are battlegrounds for ideological control, as seen with recent political interventions in both art and healthcare, this year’s O+ Festival stands as a testament to the essential power of creative expression as a form of resistance, a catalyst for dialogue, a celebration of connection and a way to imagine new ways forward using power as a force.

A LO+ve Letter to The Old Dutch Church

panned out church door with sign displaying festival performances

For O+, the Old Dutch Church has been a second base of operations, a site for collaboration, and a sacred space where the mission of O+ comes to life.

Innerworld Ecologies

New work by Singha Hon
July 19th through August 15th
Opening Reception Friday, July 19th 6-8pm

Statement:

The wellspring for my work comes from nature, dreams, and mythology. Through painting and drawing, I create pieces inspired by plants, animals, and emotions. Many of my pieces feature chimeric figures– people transforming into plants or animals or simply becoming subsumed into nature.

Innerworld Ecologies is an exploration of the connections/disconnections that exist between our bodies and our emotions, an examination of the relationships we have to our surroundings, each other, and our own inner worlds. They are inspired by folk tales and my own curiosity about the natural world through the lens of queer ecology and the practice of childhood joyfulness.

I look to folk tales and the natural world as a pathway to explore complex emotions–tenderness, safety, despair, desire, love, anger and hope. Through my paintings, I hope to visualize a way to return to some deeper, wilder self, one that is more easily at home in the winding river of our mythologies and planet.

Bio:

Singha is a visual and teaching artist from New York City. Through painting, drawing, and sculpture, her work is about creating visual stories inspired by plants, animals, and emotions, set in dreamlike places somewhere between reality and an imagined one bursting with chimeras and megafauna.

As an artist and illustrator, she is dedicated to using visual mediums to tell stories that highlight the beautiful and nuanced mythologies of our lives, foster hope, and nurture dreaming. She has created artwork for organizations such as the ACLU, The Museum of Modern Art, The People Paper’s Co-Op, and Womanly Magazine. She joined The W.O.W. Project–an arts and activism nonprofit in NYC’s Chinatown as their 4th Artist in Residence in 2019 and has most recently finished up a two year teaching artist residency at W.O.W. through the Creatives Rebuild New York Artist Employment Program. As a teaching artist, she has taught workshops across mediums, including ceramics, sculpture, cyanotype, drawing, and painting.

She has recently worked with O+ Positive in Kingston to create two murals, one which lives on the side of Lite Brite Neon, and one indoors at The Unicorn.

https://www.singhahon.com
https://www.instagram.com/singha.hon/#

Making NOISE: O+ Announces 2024 Festival Lineup

Headliners include Neko Case, Kate Pierson of the B-52’s and The Blair Witch Project 25th Anniversary Screening

Kingston, NY – The O+ Festival returns to the streets of Kingston October 11-13th, 2024 for its 14th Annual celebration of art, music, and wellness. The three day schedule features over 55 live music performances, dozens of visual and performance art activations, spoken word, a BlO+ck Party filled with vendors and a variety of health and wellness workshops open to the public.

Headlining the 2024 O+ Festival is Neko Case, whose layered lyrical choices, genre bending sound and clarion vocals have brought us over twenty years of powerful music with collaborators The New Pornographers and Case/Lang/Veirs and her critically acclaimed solo work including Fox Confessor Brings The Flood and 2022’s Wild Creatures. Case takes the stage at The Old Dutch Church Friday night of the festival with Hannah Cohen opening the evening.

Other music headliners for this year include local legend Kate Pierson of The B-52’s, Beech Creeps (with members of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Guided By Voices), Rhett Miller of Old 97’s, Milagro Verde Cumbia, Eric Redd and Tall Juan with more than 45 other music acts filling the weekend with a genre-spanning lineup.

This year’s theme NOISE is explored in an art and WO+rd lineup that features explorations of sound, chaos, and silence with work about the loudness of chronic pain or the din of electoral politics in balance with the connection that comes through shared communication.

Dance sits in the spotlight of this year’s art lineup bringing inventiveness, lyricism, storytelling, and informed, divergent movement vocabularies to explorations of the human experience. International physical theater and dance company inkBoat, founded by Shinichi Iova-Koga and winner of 6 Isadora Duncan awards, researches the interplay of dance, Japanese performance and martial arts, improvisation, site specific installation and Daoist internal arts. Stephen Pelton Dance Theater (London/San Francisco) pulls movement and imagery out of the real world and combines it with virtuosic dance to create work that feels abstract and narrative, personal and universal all at once.

While welcoming national and international acts to Kingston, more than 60% of this year’s eclectic, multifaceted lineup hails from the Hudson Valley, in keeping with O+ Festival’s commitment to celebrating and serving the local creative community. The full O+ 2024 music and art lineups will be announced @opositivefest and at opositivefestival.org the week of July 8th.

The wellness ExpO+ street fair returns bigger and bolder than ever, rebranded as BlO+ck Party. ExplO+re, the public facing wellness workshops at O+, will populate the schedule with opportunities for attendees to deep dive into a range of topics and modalities throughout the weekend. This year’s ExplO+re Wellness lineup will follow later this month and is set to include sound healing, yoga, dance, presentations from health experts, hands-on activities for families and more.

O+ will close the festival weekend this year with a 25th anniversary screening of The Blair Witch Project, one of the most profitable independent films ever made and, certainly, one of the most influential films of all time in the horror genre. Co-presented by Upstate Films and the Woodstock Film Festival, the 7pm screening on Sunday, October 13th in The Old Dutch Church will be followed by a panel discussion with original cast members including filmmaker, writer, actor and Hudson Valley resident Joshua Leonard.

With its expansive programming and exchange for healthcare, the O+ Festival is unlike any other festival. At the heart and behind the scenes of O+ Festival is the Artists’ Clinic. All artists, musicians, and volunteers access a variety of healthcare services through this pop-up clinic in exchange for their contributions to the festival – everything from dental care to acupuncture, chiropractic, reiki, dermatology, nutrition counseling, physical exams, connection with mental health professionals and so much more.

“To be able to come to the clinic and have acupuncture, speak to a nutritionist, to a naturopath, to have massage therapy… these things are very expensive on their own” said 2010/2023 alum Gail Ann Dorsey while in the Artists’ Clinic during the 2023 O+ Festival. “It’s just such a humane way to share with each other, to help each other. Having come back after playing the very first time,.. thirteen years later to play this festival (2023) has been very meaningful for me… I feel very blessed to be a part of this community so I am always here to do whatever I can to keep this kind of spirit alive .”

This exchange – the art of medicine for the medicine of art – is the core of O+’s mission. Our year round work is made possible through the support of attendees who have access to an overflowing schedule of arts and wellness programming by donating what they can for a festival wristband. At O+, we believe that everyone deserves access to healthcare and that everyone should have access to the healing power of the arts.

O+ Festival wristbands are on sale now! Every by-donation wristband sold goes directly back into the festival and helps fund our work of providing care to artists and musicians and building healthier, more resilient communities.

We will see you in October!

Safety Zones & Watermelons

O+ is honored to present the work of 2021 Alum David Najib Kasir in the O+ Exchange Clinic Gallery. Safety Zones & Watermelons, an exhibition of his recent work, includes several pieces he made while at The Golden Foundation Residency Program this Spring.

Intergalactic Planetary

Open Wed, Thurs 1-5pm, Sat 12-4pm and by appointment

In Intergalactic Planetary, artist Jennifer Zackin weaves colorful rope and scraps of fabric through late 20th century lawn furniture and tractor seats to create portals to new perspectives. Shown alongside neon works on paper, the exhibition embodies a joyfully defiant attitude and multidimensional curiosity akin to the 1998 Beastie Boys hit, “Intergalactic,” which is the namesake of the show.

The chairs Zackin uses in these works serve as a marker of a particular era, but she transforms the familiar objects with color and pattern, creating gravity-defying, day-glow sculptures reminiscent of underwater-like worlds, mountain ranges, escape hatches, and refuges. These chairs are part of Zackin’s ongoing Vortex Weaving series, and use a process of hand-knotting and weaving inspired by the handwork of traditional weavers with whom the artist studied while living in rural India and Peru. Like a Vortex, Zackin strives to create an axis of energy in her work with the power to pull us from our current perspective, opening to other possibilities.

Alongside these woven sculptures, works on paper help drive home the theme of transformation. The drawings are intuitive, abstract color studies. Some were created to support the development of the sculptures. Others use color and pattern to ruminate on the interconnected nature of the natural world. Still others are themselves Vortex Weavings – paper punctured with thread into intuitive shapes and patterns. By showing these drawings alongside the Vortex Weaving pieces, the work invites conversations about the intersection between fiber, sculpture, and painting.

Finally, in conjunction with the exhibition, the gallery will present a participatory communal weaving project on May 24th at the Old Dutch Church Yard during the O+ 365: A Benefit to Support O+’s Year-Round Clinic. Visitors are invited to weave together, contributing to a large-scale Vortex Weaving designed to bring the community together.

https://www.jenniferzackin.com