Kingston

October 11-13, 2019

Kingston

Days

Hours

Minutes

Seconds

10th Annual O+ Kingston Lineup

MUSIC

!!! (Chk Chk Chk)

Elvis Perkins

The World Inferno Friendship Society

Tall Juan

Lady Moon & The Eclipse

The Mystical Arts of Tibet

(presented by Bardavon at UPAC)

Carrie Nation & The Speakeasy

Sound of Ceres

Bodega

Chris Wells and The Silver Spaceship

The Giraffes

Ami Madeleine

Brandy

Dronechoir

Foster Care

Jalani Lion

Zamy Maa

Mooskii G. Myyers

Ramona Lane

Tiny Blue Ghost

Chris Andersen

Camp Saint Helene

Eat The Cake Band

Glockabelle

JB!! AKA Dirty Moses w/ DJ Nate da Great

Maiko Hata Trio

Peter Naddeo

The Restless Age

Tonus Maximus

The Arkhams

Carrtoons

Greg Farley

Grover

Julia Kent

Olivier Manchon's Orchestre de Chambre Miniature

The Nightblinders

Sledge Wolf

The Wilful Boys

Sandy Bell

Datura Road

The Four Fives

Hen In The Foxhouse

DJ Ali

(KINDERDISCO!)

The Meditation Tapes

Nova One

Cheval Sombre

Tyler G. Wood

ART

Donna Mikkelsen

Sophi Kravitz

Matt Pond, Eva Marie Magill-Oliver + Chris Hansen

Meg Bashwiner

Jicky Schnee

Alexandra Dewez

Kerry Pharmer

Chewy Altamirano

Callie Jayne / Rise-Up Kingston + Shadia Fayne-Wood / Survival Media Agency

Carolita Johnson

HV Movement Collective

Daniel Totten

Roy Verspoor

Annabelle Popa

Jana Liptak

Signature Unknown

Tronvs

Joe Mangrum

Woodstock School of Art

B.A. Miale

Kingston Pop Museum Presents

Robert Markey

Aki Goto

ArtPod

Sebastian Pilletteri, Emily Vail + Matthew Friday

Stefan Saffer

Kris Campbell

Havarah Zawoluk + Ernest Goodmaw

Michael Fusco

Maxine Leu + Arielle Ponder

Lynn Herring

Volunteer

Submissions to volunteer in the Artists’ Clinic or to participate as a general festival volunteer will be gratefully accepted throughout the summer.

Choose an application from the options below:

Latest News

10th Annual O+ Kingston

July 16, 2019 / Art, Events, Kingston, Music, Wellness

Dance-punk band !!! (Chk Chk Chk) will play the 10th annual O+ Kingston festival of art, music and wellness (Oct. 11-13) along with folk-rocker Elvis Perkins, cabaret-punk band The World/Inferno

2019 O+ Kingston Theme: X

April 14, 2019 / Art, Kingston

O+ will celebrate its 10th annual festival of art, music and wellness in Kingston during the 10th month of this year (Oct. 11-13, 2019). The theme for year 10 is

O+ Kingston Seeks Box Office-Tech Manager

February 27, 2019 / Events, Kingston

O+ Kingston is recruiting for a Box Office + Tech Manager to systemize and manage our visitor experience and box office processes, train our fleet of volunteers and work closely

O+ Kingston Recruits Volunteer Manager

February 27, 2019 / Events, Kingston

O+ Kingston seeks a Volunteer Manager to recruit, schedule, train and manage our fleet of volunteers, as well as working with core staff to implement the 10th festival of art,

YES! Magazine Highlights O+’s ‘Quietly Radical’ Mission

November 29, 2018 / Art, Educate and Activate, Kingston, National, North Adams, Poughkeepsie, Press, Wellness

The “quietly radical” mission and work of O+ is featured in a story for YES!, which aims to provide rigorous reporting on the positive ways communities are responding to social problems. “The Unique

Ninth Annual O+ Kingston Broadens Reach

October 11, 2018 / Art, Events, Kingston, Music, Wellness

Nearly 4,200 residents and visitors experienced the ninth annual O+ Kingston festival of art, music and wellness, which was the largest and most diverse to date. The beloved kickoff parade

Organizers Reveal Lineup, Programming for Ninth Annual O+ Kingston

August 13, 2018 / Art, Bike, Events, Kingston, Music, Wellness

The lineup for the ninth annual O+ Kingston (Oct. 5-7, 2018) is the art, music and wellness festival’s most diverse, experimental and inclusive to date. Confirmed acts for the 3-day weekend include: The Comedy

SWAK Bike Rack Combines Public Art, Wellness

May 10, 2018 / Art, Bike, Kingston, Wellness

Cyclists riding along Kingston’s Cornell Street can now park and lock their bikes on a piece of public art at The Lace Mill. Writer, artist and aerobics teacher Buddy Valentine in

Spring Gala Auction Raises $50K

April 24, 2018 / Art, Events, Kingston, National

The sold out O+ Spring Gala Auction on April 14 at The Beverly in Kingston raised more than $50K for O+. The event was hosted by the O+ Board of

O+ Radio Hour Launches on Radio Kingston

April 4, 2018 / Art, Kingston, Music, National, Wellness

The O+ Radio Hour on Radio Kingston is a weekly conversation about art, music, wellness and activism at the intersection of community brought to you by O+. Every Tuesday at

Murals

O+ Kingston mural maps are available at Ulster County Tourism, 20 Broadway, and at many mural locations.

THANK YOU

Klock Kingston Foundation

Havarah Zawoluk
+ Ernest Goodmaw

THE MATTER DIGEST

PARTICIPATORY

The Matter Digest is a living archive. It will be present at O+ to collect thoughts and ideas from the community, to be stored in The Matter Digest archive. Input into the archive will be chewed upon, digested, and then re-presented to the community by TMD founders, Havarah & Ernest. TMD will set up a tented space that people can enter and spend some time; outfitted with tables, chairs, fabric and pillows, the space will be inviting and comfortable.

They want to start a conversation with people in the community about what matters to them. They want to hear from everyone and anyone. They want to hear about anything – from the dust bunnies in their living room to their financial concerns. This space will act as a point of intersection for the community. More specifically, we will be asking visitors to our booth to share recipes. Recipes of life – how do you wake up in the morning? Is there a recipe for perfectly clean socks? For a good conversation? A recipe for being a better neighbor? Recipes will be collected in our booth on the spot, either via written submission by the visitor or by transcription of their orated recipe. We will also offer visitors an addressed and stamped envelope so that they can send us their recipes at a later date. In the months following O+, these recipes will be compiled into a book, Recipes from Personhood, Vol. 2. The first volume of Recipes from Personhood was self-published in November of 2018 by The Matter Digest and is a collective volume of thoughts and practices. It includes recipes for consciousness (mind), sustenance (food), the mortal vessel (body), and more. The Matter Digest seeks to point out that OUR STORIES MAKE US STRONGER and that everyone has something to offer. Our booth at the O+ Festival will address the theme of ‘X’ in that ‘X’ is the marking of a point where we can all meet. It is the intersection of each and every one of us. The point at which our experiences unite us. X can also be a placeholder in the archive. Each person has a story to tell, a thought or recipe to share. The ‘X’ is that blank line in a sentence or paragraph to be filled in by anyone!

The Matter Digest is a living archive of thought, happenings, and experiences. Founded in the summer of 2018 by Ernest Goodmaw and Havarah Zawoluk, The Matter Digest exists in both no form and any form at all. It hopes to collect the “matter” of any person and preserve and present that matter to be chewed upon by any other person. The matter can then be digested, and thus brought into a collective consciousness. The Matter Digest is evolving daily. As it grows, it takes new forms, spills out into new realms of expression like water pushes through sand. To date, The Matter Digest has self-published three books: ‘Recipes from Personhood’, ‘Whatsa Home?’ and ‘STUFF’.

As an artist and facilitator, Ernest Goodmaw works to explore the connections and outcomes between the audience and the intention. They are fueled by questions, and ask them through documented and ephemeral performance, illustration, conversation, and experiments. How does it feel to be in the presence of something that asks a favor of you? How can we use what we have to interact with one another?

Havarah Zawoluk is a Kingston resident who has a passion for illustration and cartography. They have illustrated professionally for table top board games and various event promo materials. They have also organized many community events in the Hudson Valley, the most recent of which is a current on-going series of free workshops at Three Phase Center in Stone Ridge titled “ART/LIFE Automotive”.

www.thematterdigest.com

Jicky Schnee

INSTALLATION // PERFORMANCE

Death has been a major theme explored in Jicky’s work. She recently completed a new series that explores this theme from a different perspective, Treachery of Images I,II, III and IV ( titled after Magritte’s work of the same). As Magritte’s Treachery of Images (This is not a Pipe) questions the difference between representation and reality, Treachery of Images I, II, III and IV questions the same, yet regarding death. Are the described and painted medical conditions truly death or are they merely an exit point or strategy for a being’s departure from what we identify as life? As the Conservation of Energy theorem of physics states, energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather it can only be transformed from one form to another. When this theorem is applied to human life, there is no death. These lungs filled up (with grief), this brain decamped (from loneliness), this heart grew too big for its casing and this stomach does not want to digest (life’s sadness) could merely be exit points into what we identify as death. Yet the law of the Conservation of Energy suggests that no such death exists and that it is only that we have no comprehension for what lies beyond death that limits our perception to designate death as an endpoint. Jicky will show these paintings in the graveyard of the Old Dutch Church in Kingston.

Along with the installation of paintings, Jicky will perform her play, The Four Sisters; The Eye, the Ear, the Brain and the Mouth. The play is an homage to both Chekhov ( The Three Sisters) and Beckett–and covers the pondering of the meaning of life of and of death of one being separated into four characters, an eye, a brain, an ear and a mouth who are stuck on a boat, adrift.

Jicky Schnee received her B.A. in Art and Art History from Rice University and studied drama at BADA in Oxford, England. She works as both a painter and actress. As a visual artist, Jicky shows with AMP gallery in Provincetown, MA and Collective Gallery which she also curates in Woodstock, NY. Her most notable roles as an actor have been a supporting role to Marion Cotillard and Joaquin Phoenix in The Immigrant directed by James Gray, the female lead role in The Afterlight also starring Rip Torn and Michael Kelly (House of Cards), the female lead across from F. Murray Abraham in Perestroika and the title role in Arabian Nights at Classic Stage Company in NYC. She lives and works between NYC and Woodstock, NY.

https://www.jickyschneestudio.com

https://www.thecollectivegallery.art

Callie Jayne / Rise-Up Kingston + Shadia Fayne-Wood / Survival Media Agency

FILM

This 12 min film will be a conversation framer/starter around what equitable development looks like in Kingston. The goal is to shift culture, moving hearts and minds in the region around the issues of housing affordability and access, and establish housing as a human right. X is a point of intersection, a crossroads. We are at a crossroads in Kingston where we can decide whether or not we believe that everyone deserves a safe place to live, and that our priorities need to reflect that decision that we make. Set in Kingston, NY, this film will uncomplicate the issues of gentrification, giving our viewers an understanding of the types of decisions our city, county, and state governments make every day that prioritize developers over people. It will explain how these forces that often promise revitalization and market growth also promise displacement and trauma for low-income communities and communities of color. This film will humanize the issues of displacement on both ends of the spectrum, putting a face and a story to those who are displaced and create a moral responsibility for those in power to choose differently. We will also show the types of decisions we want the places we love to be making instead.

Callie Jayne’s desire to fight for justice began in 8th Grade protesting against unequitable dress code policies. Callie’s career started off in sales, bouncing from job-to-job, and struggling to make ends meet. When she decided to go back to college, she found herself transitioning to the post-secondary education field – wanting to focus on helping women prioritize their education, and moving forward in their careers. It was then, that she found herself in a situation like so many before her – a single mother, trying to survive within structures that were created to make sure she failed. Callie finished her undergraduate degree in business, and then went on to complete her Masters’ in Nonprofit Management. For her internship, she began working at a human services organization, which later hired her full time. She built and expanded the volunteer base and pantry hours which increased the number of families who were able to access food. She increased the individual giving, community and business engagement which lowered operational costs. Though providing emergency services was helping hundreds of families every week, it was doing nothing to change the systems of oppression that are set in place. Her life, work and educational experiences led her to discover the institutionalized issues that were preventing her and many others — from all walks of life — from achieving a quality standard of living. Her desire for change comes from the belief that all people deserve a basic standard of living, and if we could all come together and hear many differing perspectives, we can use our struggles to achieve collective greatness. —

Shadia is the Executive Producer and Founder of the Survival Media Agency and is a film director and photographer. She became an advocate for justice and the environment at an early age. At seven she got involved in a campaign to address the cancer cluster in her community that was caused by toxic waste. Though young, she spearheaded a successful eight-year campaign to pass state legislation to refinance the Superfund Program in New York State. She is a recipient of the Yoshiyama Award and the Brower Youth Award and has been featured in the 2007 Green Issue of Vanity Fair and is a recipient of Elle Magazine’s 2008 Green Awards. Shadia worked for the Environmental Justice & Climate Change Initiative as the youngest Campaign Coordinator in the Energy Action Coalition. Her photos have been featured in the New Yorker, the Boston Globe, MSNBC, and the front page of the Huffington Post among many others. She has mobilized photo and video teams all over the world to produce visual media tools that equip social movements. Since 2016, Shadia has helped produce 53 short films.

RiseUpKingston.org

Joe Mangrum

INSTALLATION

Joe create designs embedded with metaphors of science, DNA, technology botanicals, floral and indigenous designs rooted in cultural symbols like Celtic Knots, rose windows, islamic mosaics, african adinkra and many others. His work is about bringing all these symbols together.

His proposal for O+ year ten is a 10 pointed design.

Joe Mangrum’s sand paintings and multi-material installations explore issues of the urban grid, environmentalism and its effects on the collective psyche. Mangrum has developed a unique visual language tying together cultural patterns with those found in nature, science and technology to create living breathing forms that entangle their surroundings. He has created a series of over a thousand intricate sand paintings in public and private spaces as well as a body of permanent sand paintings on canvas and carved wood. His work is inspired by ancient traditions and synced with a rhythm of urban free-style animation, combined with bright “Pop Art” colors. His paintings are influenced by an abundant world of undersea creatures, botanicals and geometric forms of cross-cultural metaphors, representing a living mathematical amalgam. His technique with sand employs a graffiti like parallel of close to the ground sharp lines to a wide “spray” from higher up of diffused effects in alternating layers. Mangrum is based in New York City and has traveled with his work internationally. He kicked off 2018 with a commission by Prabal Gurung for the Spring Fashion Week runway in New York. His work was featured at the Museum of Arts and Design as part of the “Swept Away” exhibit, completing an indoor project “Asynchronous Syntropy” as well as circumambulating the entire museum for a marathon 24 hrs in two days. He participated in The Flag Art Foundation’s “Watch Your Step” exhibit and has installed at The Corcoran Gallery Rotunda in Washington D.C. Mangrum has held residencies at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, at the Ashé Cultural Center, New Orleans and The Red Gate Gallery, Beijing, where he was featured in the inaugural exhibit of the Sunshine Museum. He received the prestigious Lorenzo de Medici Award at the Florence Biennale in 2003, for his piece titled “Fragile”. Mangrum’s works have been commissioned by private collectors, The Asia Society, Prabal Gurung, Jen Kao and many others. In addition, he has received commissions from the City of San Francisco, including a permanent public artwork on the sidewalk of the Mission District. Other commissions include Coachella Music and Arts and other festivals. He has created a series of sand paintings in Miami during Art Fairs at Project Miami, Multitudes Gallery and Miami Art Space. Mangrum grew up Florissant, Missouri and later earned his degree in Fine Arts at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Working primarily as a painter, Mangrum embarked on years of travel inspired by natural wonders and indigenous sites of North America. He continued to travel internationally, making his own connections to cultural patterns. During this time, he began using plants and flowers that he collected to make ephemeral artworks. In 1995, he made San Francisco his home until 2008 and expanded his ephemeral works to include auto parts, technology and varieties of found and fabricated artifacts, presenting his first solo installation at San Francisco State University. His large scale installations continue in such manifestations inspired by mushroom clouds, pyramid shapes and the Ouroboros. Mangrum has also worked with educational programs, given artist’s presentations and panel discussions at School of Visual Arts, Adelphi University and SUNY Geneseo. He has demonstrated his work with students at The United Nations International School, The de Young Museum of San Francisco, Eleanor Roosevelt High School in New York and Moton Elementary in New Orleans. He is an active supporter of environmental causes and has contributed efforts to Love For Japan, Riverkeeper Alliance, Natural World Museum, World Environment Day and Copenhagen 15. He has been featured on “Sesame Street,” and interviewed for the PBS program “Spark” on KQED. His work has been displayed in various publications including Antennae Journal in the UK. He has been featured on CNN, The New York Times, New York Daily News, LA Times, Artbusiness.com, Yahoo News and numerous blogs. In 2017 Joe was featured by the Emmy nominated online series Humans of New York (HONY). His sand covered hands share the cover of HONY’s NY times best seller by the same name.

http://www.joemangrum.com

https://vimeo.com/joemangrum

Eva Marie Magill-Oliver, Matt Pond + Chris Hansen

AN ORCHESTRATED IMPULSE

VISUAL // SOUND INSTALLATION

X is the intersection of mediums, attempting to create an intersection of people and encourage further conversation, connection. The collection, a collaborative effort between visual artist Eva Magill-Oliver and recording artists Matt Pond and Chris Hansen, comprises twelve paintings and twelve instrumental compositions across twelve keys. The artists have responded to each other’s work over time and across wireless miles in the languages they speak most fluently, adding to the collection as a reaction to what they’ve seen and heard from each other. In its completed state, An Orchestrated Impulse is intended to be interactively experienced in a way that allows the observer to choose what he sees and hears most intensely.

Eva Magill-Oliver is an artist currently living and working in Atlanta, Georgia. She creates delicate, meditative collages, drawings and paintings that reflect and explore different elements of the natural world. Her main subject matter is drawn from abstractions and patterns found in nature and organic environments. She feels a strong sense of connection to the constantly evolving and transitioning state of the natural world that surrounds her. Her mediums of choice are pencil, ink and cut paper on paper. The variance in materials adds a textural interest that she uses to mimic those found in the environment. The collage aspect also adds an element of controlled design as a fresh transformation emerges with every new layer. After two decades of successfully pursuing simple truths in popular music,

Matt Pond has recently begun to take on projects that stretch beyond the conventional trajectory of independent rock and roll. He currently resides in Kingston, New York, and pays strict attention to the arc of every season.

Chris Hansen began his career as a manager and engineer at the legendary Bearsville Studios, near Woodstock, New York. He continues a long collaboration with Matt as guitarist and co-producer of numerous Matt Pond PA albums and EPs. They co-wrote the score to the film Lebanon, PA and have composed commercials for IBM and Penguin Books.

http://orchestratedimpulse.com

Kris Campbell

THE SHEPARD

INSTALLATION

Kris creates large scale cross stitch portraits (lots of tiny Xs). The X ican be a symbol of a barrier, a fence. It separates. It is a symbol for the human condition – that my experience is contained within my body – and my pain is contained within this body. Kris’ work is made of Xs on a grid. The grid (screen) separates the space, defines it. The X creates an image. One that can be seen through. Separate and connected. When the work is hung off the wall, one side is the Xs – ordered and structured. The other side is organic, much like the human skin. Each side has a different experience but acknowledges the other.

The work is able to be touched. It is best hung in a place that forces the audience to move in an unexpected way with the space.

Kris Campbell is currently creating large scale portrait art using cross stitch technique on open weave synthetic screens for canvas. Kris double majored in both Art and Biology at Lafayette College. Her early path after undergraduate school lead her to a position of color manipulation in the world of clothing catalog publishing, back when Photoshop was just 1.0! Her desire for community connection lead her to working for Social Impact Studios, a Philadelphia based business that brought art and activism together to engage the public in important social issues. She continued to paint and sculpt in Philadelphia while not only working full-time but also studying at the original renowned Barnes Museum. Never willing to sit still in life, Kris persistently pursued acceptance to the SVA graduate school program. Upon acceptance into the MFA program, Kris left Philadelphia and returned to New York. Here her work continued, painting portraits on plexiglass while experimenting with layering techniques of both color and plexi. Kris’ art has been deeply influenced by the generations of familial history in the flower bulb industry. It shines brightest in how she sees color, explaining that each cross-X in her stitching is like an individual bloom in the Dutch flower fields. Kris inherited a vast supply of fiber art supplies upon the death of her grandmother. Bequeathed heirloom supplies and equipment (looms, spinning wheels, wool, and boxes of embroidery floss) guided her to her first cross stitch project which was a portrait of her son. Upon completion, she chose to frame the piece with the back as the front. Flashing forward 10 years now, she is using window screen as a ground, enabling her to work bigger and play more with color. In the past year the work has come off the wall and hangs so that both sides of the work can be experienced, making her newest art a sculptural experience also.

www.kriscampbellart.com

Sebastian Pillitteri, Emily Vail + Matthew Friday

STORIES OF WATER AND WASTE: A Walking History of the Hasbrouck Sewershed

PERFORMANCE | INSTALLATION

In the spirit of O+, this collaborative project envisions wellness as more than just an individual concern. Embodying wellness means thinking about how communities work together with their ecosystems to create sustainable and just systems. The diverse and thriving communities of Mid-town and Rondout in Kingston are also home to antiquated urban infrastructure. This area contains a combined sewage overflow system that, under heavy rain or snow melt, releases untreated sewage directly into the Rondout Creek, impacting environmental and human health. Besides sewage, plastic trash, road salt and many pollutants find their way into the river, affecting the well-being of the Hudson, a drinking water source for 100,000 people. This project brings together several groups including Riverkeeper, the Art Department of SUNY New Paltz, Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency, Hudson River Watershed Alliance and the residents of Mid-town and Rondout. Before the start of the festival, the students of SUNY New Paltz will create a massive plastic ball from Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency (UCRRA). Festival participants will meet at Broadway and Foxhall Ave with Riverkeeper watershed educator Sebastian Pillitteri and SUNY New Paltz professor Matthew Friday. After a short discussion about Kingston’s ecology, history and infrastructure, participants will begin rolling the giant trash ball as they trace the route of the city’s largest remaining sewer overflow system. While tracing the path of the sewer, this work will also recognize the buried stream that traveled the same path and the City of Kingston’s current steps to separate stormwater and sewer water. We will stop at several spots to point out various aspects of Kingston’s infrastructure and entangled ecology. This project takes up the theme of health and art to creatively renvision the connections between urban infrastructure, ecology and everyday practice. Focusing on the “X” theme as both intersection and destination we are proposing a project that will help people visualize their relations to their watershed and plan for a better, healthier and more resilient future. For us, X marks the spot of Kingston’s invisibilized infrastructure, a cross between stormwater, sewage, natural ecology, and history.

Sebastian Pillitteri is the Community Science Coordinator at Riverkeeper.He will be partnering with Emily Vail, artist and director of the Hudson River Watershed Alliance. As well as Matthew Friday, Graduate Coordinator and Associate Professor of Critical Studies at SUNY New Paltz to realize this project.

This project is made possible with funds from the Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Mid-Hudson.

Woodstock School of Art

NTERACTIVE ART MAKING EVENT

PARTICIPATORY

Woodstock School of Art proposes an interactive art making event at the Matthewis Persen House, a cornerstone of the City of Kingston’s historic Stockade District. They will provide two WSA instructors to lead visitors in unique and engaging hands-on experiences in printmaking and mixed media art creation. In collaboration with WSA printmaking instructor Savannah Baker, Melanie Delgado will present visitors with a “Mystery ART Bag” filled with mixed media materials to create their own ‘unknown’ piece of ART. This is an art opportunity for all ages to experience creating on the X SPOT Art & exemplifies the work Melanie creates year-round with her students in the Emerging Artists class at WSA. Savannah Baker, our printmaking instructor, will guide visitors to hand print using black etching ink different X designs with pre-cut linoleum blocks. Before printing, visitors can glue colorful cut out X’s onto the paper to create depth. Finished prints will be hung to dry on an outdoor line, strung in a “X” shape, making the the event part workshop/part installation. Participants will be able to take home their creations after they have dried. These two projects connect with the theme of “X” by embracing the unknown with mystery bags, and by connecting people invisibly to each other by the shared use of the the “X” linoblocks. In addition, participants will leave with their very own unique “X” themed artwork.

The Woodstock School of Art, Inc. is a not-for-profit, 501(c)3, educational institution chartered under the laws of the State of New York. The school is located in New York’s famed artists’ colony of Woodstock, surrounded by the pristine woodlands of the Catskill Mountains, about 100 miles north of New York City. Woodstock School of Art’s mission is to offer high quality, affordable instruction in fine art; maintain stewardship of its unique and historic buildings for continued use as an art school; and provide opportunities which engage the community in allied arts activities and exhibitions. Savannah Baker, a High Falls native graduated from the SUNY at Purchase College where she studied with Ron Swainston and Stella Ebner while earning a BFA degree in Printmaking in 2017. Before Purchase she attended SUNY Ulster County Community College, majoring in Fine Art, for two years before transferring to Purchase College. While attending SUNY Ulster, she participated in the Thompson Family Foundation Scholarship program at the Woodstock School of Art and took classes in monotype, drawing, and sculpture. Later, during her time at Purchase, printmaking stood out and became a creative calling. Returning to the Woodstock School of Art, she became a monitor and press assistant, and then an instructor. Melanie Delgado was born and raised in Morris County, NJ. She currently resides in the Hudson Valley with her husband Marc Delgado & their daughter Mary where she has been focusing on her abstract oil paintings. From spray paint to oil sticks, Melanie uses playfulness, a child-like vision and a heavy dose of street art to bring her voice to the canvas, door, window or piece of wood. Her background has been in the field of education ranging from high school to preschool. She instructs young artists at the Woodstock School of Art. Delgado is curious about the stories behind the dilapidated fence, the overgrown pines and what comes next.

https://woodstockschoolofart.org/

https://vimeo.com/woodstockschoolofart

Annabelle Popa

MURAL COLLABORATION WITH JANA LIPTAK – ENDANGERED SPECIES OF NEW YORK

When we make a mistake, we ‘x’ it out. Writing, drawing, we have a need to physically destroy what has got awry. When you work with pen, there’s no going back, you need to start form scratch. What I’ve learned over the years in the process of making art is that crossing something out is not the answer- its best to use the mistake as much as possible and incorporate it into the work. The mistake can even bring about new inventions or creative ways to problem solve. ‘X’ is the mark that ultimately destroys. ‘X’ cancels forever. ‘X’ is what we are currently doing to our environment and sacred lands that surround us. We have an idea- a new project- a new development- a new dream- and we don’t let anything get in our way. This is causing eco-systems to be destroyed and with it- beautiful little souls. Cars race by on a stormy night and leave splattered bodies in its wake. Humankind has entered into an eco-system, perplexing it and leaving endangered predators who are no longer able to regulate the deer in the area. The deer graze and feast upon the wetlands, destroying the swamps and homes of salamanders, frogs and turtles. They’re left with lines of asphalt splitting their land. Water systems grow toxic due to fracking and the oil industry- as well as chemicals and factory waste. Amphibians are at the center of all this damage only to be seen as ‘slimy and gross’. Instead human kind chasing the ‘next big thing’ and speaking about their ‘American Dream’, the solution is right below us – taking care of the land we walk upon. This mural is about ‘X’tinction. About waking up, stopping our acts of cancelling nature, and growing together with the natural world. Tiger Salamanders are currently an endangered species within the Hudson Valley and are amazing, gorgeous creatures that need a little bit of love.

Annabelle Popa was born and raised in NYC and has a BFA in Illustration from the Parsons School of Design. She now lives in Kingston, NY. Her fantasy worlds and strange creatures are inspired by nature; they use allegory to communicate deeper meanings to viewers. She sees art as an exploration and adventure, and often it takes a life of its own by the end of the piece. She is merely a messenger who is able to peek into the vast unknown. Her art is based on folklore, fantasy, personal mythologies, and weird miss-moshed animal creatures. She tries to capture wild wonder, adventure, and the chaotic side of beauty. She makes an effort to paint atypical subjects in order to show another side of a story to get viewers thinking. http://annabellepopa.com

https://www.youtube.com/user/Fexazaur