O+ Festival Kingston

October 9-11, 2020

Kingston

Days

Hours

Minutes

Seconds

10th Annual O+ Kingston Lineup

MUSIC

!!! (Chk Chk Chk)

Elvis Perkins

David Longstreth (Dirty Projectors)

The World/Inferno Friendship Society

Tall Juan

Lady Moon & The Eclipse

Sam Cohen

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

Hen In The Foxhouse

DJ Ali

(KINDERDISCO!)

The Meditation Tapes

Nova One

Cheval Sombre

The Wilful Boys

Camp Saint Helene

Eat The Cake Band

Glockabelle

Mary Hood

Jalani Lion

Zamy Maa

Mooskii G. Myyers

100ANDZERO

Sledge Wolf

Tyler G. Wood

The Arkhams

Carrtoons

Greg Farley

Zeb Gould

JB!! AKA Dirty Moses w/ Victory Soul Orchestra and DJ Nate da Great

Maiko Hata Trio

Peter Naddeo

Ramona Lane

Tonus Maximus

Sandy Bell

Datura Road

The Four Fives

Grover

Julia Kent

Olivier Manchon's Orchestre de Chambre Miniature

The Nightblinders

The Restless Age

Tiny Blue Ghost

ART

Hyuro

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

Joe Mangrum

Woodstock School of Art

B.A. Miale

Erika DeVries + Matt Dilling

Robert Markey

Aki Goto

ArtPod

2019 O+ Kingston Art Committee

Sebastian Pilletteri, Emily Vail + Matthew Friday

Stefan Saffer

Kris Campbell

Havarah Zawoluk + Ernest Goodmaw

Michael Fusco

Maxine Leu + Arielle Ponder

Lynn Herring

Madeleine Kelleyan + Dr. Kate Stone

WELLNESS

DXF

The Arts in the Valley: Representation and Inclusión

CO+NFERENCE

Da Wu Qigong

with Chris Brandon Whitaker

Introduction to Belly Dance

with Amanda Maria

Hula Hoop

with Sarah Preston

Full Moon Ritual

at Anahata

5 Simple Tools For Emotional Self-Regulation

with Amy McTear

"Resilience" film screening and discussion

Dance with Plants

with Connie Dasilva

Vital Being: Creativity and Self Knowledge using the Enneagram of Personality

with Ellen Boyce

Healing at the Intersection of Health, Mental Health & Community

Artists’ Clinic, the Beating Heart of O+

Ever since our founding 10 years ago, the Artists’ Clinic and Greenroom has been the heart of the O+ festival weekend. O+ Kingston artists, musicians and volunteers (most of whom are un- or underinsured) receive care from volunteer nurses, doctors, bodyworkers and mental health professionals in a clinic we install in Bethany Hall of Old Dutch Church and from local dentists in their offices. Bethany Hall also houses our Greenroom, a place for participating artists, musicians and volunteers to relax over a home-cooked meal.

Latest News

Kingston Artists Collaborate on Black Lives Matter Mural

June 13, 2020 / Kingston

Jalani Lion and Dina Kravtsov, assisted by Matthew Schulze, painted a mural featuring the late Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery.

O+ Offers Free Emergency Grant Consultations

March 26, 2020 / COVID-19, Kingston, news

O+’s grant writing expert is available to alumni artists, musicians, wellness providers/teachers and festival volunteers for one-on-one (remote) consultations (March 30 and April 1) in filling out grant applications for

Kingston COVID-19 Relief Applications Open

March 25, 2020 / COVID-19, Kingston, news

Applications for one-time financial support from the Kingston COVID-19 Relief Fund are now open! Residents within the City of Kingston’s School District can request assistance (up to $500) for bills and expenses through the Radio Kingston Community Fund, facilitated by Family of Woodstock.

Inspiring Wellness Gifts for Yourself, Your Neighbor

December 10, 2019 / Kingston, Wellness

Do you hope to manage stress and be more present during the winter holidays? Want to help someone you love welcome a new decade with an integrative approach to health

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

Murals

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

THANK YOU

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.

Klock Kingston
Foundation

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

MADELEINE KELLEYAN + DR. KATE STONE

THIS IS US

SOUNDS OF THE CITY REMIX WALL

INSTALLATION

This Is Us is an portrait of a community- a series of photographs placed around the city that people can interact with to hear the stories of local people. Touching the portraits triggers a series of audio interviews with the subject- what makes the city feel like home, what their dreams and aspirations are, their experience of the past and present within their community and their thoughts on change and the future. This Is Us presents a canvas from which out of towners can gain a deeper understanding of a community, and the community itself a snapshot of its existence. We’re addressing this year’s theme, X, by choosing 10 community members to create an indicator of a community, to provide coordinates of a society through marking personal experiences that reflect a wider place.

Music Remix Wall: Sounds of the City The Sounds of the City Remix Wall takes its inspiration from Kingston- landmarks, countryside, notable figures and industries to present an interactive graphic that attendees can touch to play music. Interacting with hotspots on the wall triggers an unfolding remix inspired by the locality, where natural sounds and musical beats combine to create an interactive mural. For us, X can be seen as both a collection of things and a crossroads, a place to stand and witness multiple paths, objects and experiences. Sounds of the City presents an opportunity to explore these pathways through an interactive graphic, to understand the collections and layers that make up a place and a community.

Madeleine Kelleyan and Dr Kate Stone

Madeleine and Kate create installations at festivals around the world, including Bestival, Nocturnal Wonderland and SXSW. Kate has a Phd in physics and is a TED speaker, and Madeleine studied design at Central Saint Martins in London. They combine their backgrounds in design and science to create interactive, collaborative experiences that immerse audiences in a theme with touch sensitive graphics and music. During the daytime, they head up Novalia, an interactive technology company creating brand experiences and interactive consumer products, where Kate, the CEO, invents interactive tech and Madeleine and the rest of Novalia’s team develops ways to commercially apply it.

www.novalia.co.uk

www.madeleinekelleyan.com

David Longstreth
(Dirty Projectors)

Scarcely a year after the release of the self-titled Dirty Projectors LP, Dave Longstreth’s band returns with a new album that is, in pretty much every way, the YANG to the yin of that record. Coming in at 10 songs, 37 minutes, LAMP LIT PROSE is The Straight Story to the s/t’s Blue Velvet; Punch-Drunk Love to the s/t’s Magnolia.

Lamp Lit Prose, the eighth Dirty Projectors LP, is an album of light and lightness, tenderness and care, melody and fascination and beauty.

The album cover speaks volumes: unbleached linen, an explosion of flowers, the absence of gravity — happy chaos shot in lysergic detail. This version of the classic red-and-blue Dirty Projectors logo features two custom-made sculptural glass objects bending toward each other in taoist harmony — a new configuration that suggests affirming, restorative balance.

Lamp Lit Prose is a REBIRTH: an album of new hopes, new ideas and new collaborators. Song titles read like breathless dispatch from a place of beginnings and elemental forces: ‘I Feel Energy’, ‘Break-Thru’, ‘Lifestyle’, ‘Right Now’, ‘Feel It All.’ Should it be paradoxical that it’s also a return to form? Lamp Lit Prose feels like a RECOMMITMENT to the sonics and ideals of Dirty Projectors albums past, anthologizing the band’s trademarks and wrapping them within Dave’s ever-growing production chops and arrangement sense.

On ‘Right Now’, the album’s scene-setting opener, Dave sings, “there was silence in my heart, but now I’m striking up the band.” It’s true: together with the announcement of a new live band and the first proper tour dates in five years, this album feels like the return of a dear friend — albeit one who always surprised and pushed the sonic envelope. GUITAR has returned to the Projectors’ world, and so has VOCAL HARMONY. These are some of the most intricate and gorgeous vocal arrangements in the band’s catalog — from amazing GUEST ARTISTS including Syd, Amber Mark, Empress Of, Haim (background vox), Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, Rostam, and Dear Nora.

In its unity of taut songwriting, electric emotion and great performance, Lamp Lit Prose stands as Dirty Projectors’ most extroverted and immediately accessible record in quite some time.

In Dirty Projectors’ universe, there are the ‘concept’ records — The Getty Address, Rise Above, Mt Wittenberg Orca, Dirty Projectors [s/t] — and the ‘songs’ records: Bitte Orca, Swing Lo Magellan, The Glad Fact. Lamp Lit Prose is the latter — a stylistically diverse collection of absolute CHUNES — unified around a core of optimism, bonhomie and new love. This is what wild, new, risk-taking music sounds like, from an artist who puts his lyric and his lifeline on the line.

https://home.dirtyprojectors.net/

2019 O+ Kingston
Art Committee

Denise Orzo and Jesika Farkas, co-directors of art

Laurie De Chiara
Laurie De Chiara, a New York City native, is an independent curator/ former gallerist with an MA in Contemporary Arts/ Arts Management. De Chiara has been a creative force wearing many different hats in the art world for more than two decades. In 1997, she opened De Chiara|Stewart Gallery in NY’s Chelsea district and then her curiosity led her to Europe where she opened Galerie müllerdechiara in Berlin, Mitte in 2001. Her ongoing independent curatorial art practice ranges in scope from exhibitions in galleries, public parks, art centers, domestic settings to venues beyond the traditional. Her projects have been presented around the USA, Denmark, Mexico City, Bangkok, Berlin, and Italy. In 2010, De Chiara established ArtPod (artpod.org), a socially engaged not-for-profit in Berlin with a focus on creating large scale accessible art experiences and commissioned exhibitions. In 2015, she returned to the USA (after 13 years in Germany) settling in the Hudson Valley/Kingston, NY area embarking on De Chiara Projects first a small Salon Gallery in Stone Ridge then Kingston to evolve into the pop up projects on request.

Marissa Foti
Marissa is a local public school teacher, music collector, hoop-dancer, cloud appreciator, linguaphile, arts enthusiast, Catskills hiker, and avid traveler.

Christina Osburn
Christina Osburn is 25 years a Hudson Valley resident. She teaches art in a local middle school for 20 years and had served on the board of the Hudson Valley Material Exchange and Arts Mid-Hudson. She is wild about music, art, experience, health, travel, community and believes we all have the power to heal.

Susie Ximenez
Raised in the Hudson Valley, Susie grew up watching her parents navigate a new language in order to provide a better life for their family. She earned her MFA in Fine Art at Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, and eventually moved back to New York to raise her daughter . Susie worked in retail for 10 years before feeling the urgent call to found Latinx in 2017, her organization to strengthen the latinx community through art and community . Susie hopes to combat the stigma behind being undocumented, while bridging the gap between the latinx community and the places they live. In the last year Latinx Project has worked with Latino Cultural Study, Arts Mid-Hudson, La Guelaguetza, and New Wave Latin. Susie is now working on organizing the Creative Market for Women of Color and A multi venue series of exhibitions that will take place in the City of Kingston.

Sam Cohen

Sam Cohen’s second solo LP, The Future’s Still Ringing In My Ears, just might be a magical thing. An album blessed equally with melody, melancholy and depth. A richly psychedelic listening experience, immaculately produced, often the work of one man toiling away alone in his studio but sounding like a cast of many, chasing his dreams late into the night. A collection of songs that take stock of a maddening present and a potentially dark future, but delivered with heart, warmth and wit.

It’s also an album that might never have happened.

Backtrack to 2015. Cohen had just completed work on his first solo album, Cool It, after spending his 20s with psychedelic rockers Apollo Sunshine, then taking flight as Yellowbirds, a bedroom project that somehow ended up as a real, live band.

In tandem with Yellowbirds, Cohen began nurturing a career as a producer (Kevin Morby, Benjamin Booker, Curtis Harding and others), thanks in large part to the production on his two Yellowbirds albums. With the growing demands of producing, coupled with the impending birth of his first child (he has two kids now), Cohen reluctantly disbanded Yellowbirds to streamline the completion of Cool It. While the album won a cult of loyal fans following its 2015 release, Cohen says, “Commercially, the album didn’t connect as I had hoped, and I might have been content, at that point, to have just decided, ‘Well, that was my final album as an ‘artist,’ I’ll just concentrate on collaborating as a producer now.’ The vanity of laboring to promote myself started to take a back seat to other ways of doing what I love, and it became a welcome path of less resistance.”

Fortunately for Cohen, however, one of Cool It’s most loyal cultists was Brian Burton, better known as Grammy-winning producer, songwriter and musician Danger Mouse – and he didn’t want to see Cohen stop releasing music of his own.

“Brian got in touch, and was, like, ‘No man, you need to continue doing this’,” says Cohen. Burton signed Cohen to his 30th Century Records label, reissued Cool It, and gave Cohen the boost of confidence he needed to return to writing and recording his own material, setting the album that would become The Future’s Still Ringing In My Ears in motion.

“Brian really helped me get motivated to make this record,” says Cohen. “His support pushed me to get started, and to value myself as an artist. It came at a time when I needed to hear that from someone.”

Danger Mouse’s divine intervention was just the latest twist in a career that began on a school playground in Houston, TX, when, aged 12, he and his friends decided to start their own group, fashioned after the biggest band on the planet at that time: Guns N’Roses. “When I picked up the guitar,” he remembers, “I was like, Oh, I get this. I could definitely do this for the rest of my life.”

Six years later, after moving to Boston to study music, he formed Apollo Sunshine with fellow students Jeremy Black and Jesse Gallagher. “I’m glad I spent my 20s as a rock’n’roll monk,” he laughs. “We happily gave up everything for that band: we didn’t have apartments for a long time, we kept the van running on vegetable oil…sort of running! Jesse and Jeremy are still like my brothers, and that band formed my ethos, which is still very DIY. Do more with less.”

It’s an ethos still in play on The Future’s Still Ringing In My Ears. The album’s roots were far from grandiose, beginning during a session where Cohen was expecting to help Burton work on another artist’s material. When the session fell through, Burton suggested they spend the studio time on some of Cohen’s own material. “I hadn’t written a song since Cool It,” remembers Cohen, “so Brian said, ‘Okay, let’s write something now.’” The first track they cut was “Lose Your Illusion,” released as his first single on 30th Century Records. Then they cut a bass and drums loop with the Strokes’ Fab Moretti, which Cohen took home to work on, later building it up into the album’s stately opener “I Can’t Lose.”

This session kick started Cohen’s work on the new album. “I obsess over certain details of my music, but then I let other stuff totally go,” he says. “I record really fast and crazy, I leave little errors and flubs, but I’m always tweaking the sounds, and especially the lyrics.” The fruits of this approach blossom across the album, in its mixture of handmade and homespun with artful exactitude.

Recording at his own studio gave Cohen the luxury to record in haste and sculpt at leisure. “This record was very much built in the cracks between helping other people make their albums,” he reflects, but the slow gestation has yielded something remarkable, Cohen reveling in his dual roles as artist and producer.

“When I’m producing, it’s mostly about the sound and arrangements, and I get really excited about those elements” he says. “But I also really love helping out when an artist is stumped on lyrics because they start talking about what the songs mean to them. All these ideas and images pour out, and it’s always better than what was on the page. I’ll tell them ‘say that!’. It’s made me more direct in my own writing.”

The words within The Future’s Still Ringing In My Ears are certainly direct, though hardly upbeat. “I’ve been writing about climate change and the decline of the west for a long time, and those issues have amplified to sort of a fever pitch. It’s on a lot people’s minds.” The title itself is a statement on Cohen’s own state of mind. “It’s just always reverberating in my head,” he says. “What is our future? Is there a future?”

Becoming a parent put a fine point on his worldview. “For years I was like, ‘Alright, humans are killing the Earth — we had a good run, but…party’s over, guys!’” he laughs. “It pains me more now. You can’t protect your kids from what’s to come. “The only way to go on is to laugh at it a little, because the weight of it and the profundity of the problems can destroy you. What I want for this music is to connect with people struggling with these same thoughts and feelings. I want people to hear this and say, yes, this is all really heavy, and I also feel helpless, and we don’t have any good answers…but we have each other. And this music sounds really good! It’s all I can offer.”

Consider The Future’s Still Ringing In My Ears as a respite, then, a chance to laugh at the absurdity of it all, to revel in all the unlikely beauty that still surfaces amid the chaos and meaninglessness, a soundtrack to the apocalypse you’ll struggle not to whistle along to.

It’s an album Sam Cohen almost never made. You’ll be glad he did.

https://samcohen.bandcamp.com/

Jicky Schnee

INSTALLATION // PERFORMANCE

X as a destination. X as an endpoint. When walking the old Dutch churchyard in Kingston earlier this year I noticed some of the first immigrant grave markers from the Puritan era. On the back sides of some of these grave stones was a simple mark, an X, which, though likely made to mark graves that were not to be exhumed for fear of disease, seemed an interesting simplification of a life passed and gone; an x-ing out of a life lived and now at it’s end-point.

In my university studies we were required to take physics and I was particularly struck by the Conservation of Energy theorem which states that 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.

In this series—The Veil—grave-rubbings cover the solid form of each painting, floating and revealing the content underneath: various words that describe core essence. On each black rectangular canvas, chosen to reflect the human torso, a different word is sewn in red thread, to connote life-blood.

Along with this Installation I will also be presenting a play that I wrote, The Four Sisters; The Eye, the Ear, the Brain, and the Mouth, an absurdist piece in homage Chekov and Beckett that examines journey, distraction and destination. In this one act, four parts of one psyche are divided into eye, ear, brain and mouth, and these argue, distract and confuse each other as to how to proceed on their voyage in which they find themselves marooned in a boat
out at sea.

I will also engage the community in making their own grave rubbings—providing materials and teaching the process which is really very simple.

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

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

Cat Martino

Awareness Through Voice – An Experiential, Creative & Meditative Vocal Workshop for Singers & Non-Singers

Join Vocalist/Composer/Producer/Sound Healer, Cat Martino (aka Stranger Cat) in finding your voice. We all have a voice, and so we are all singers!

This workshop is a growing and healing group vocal experience that combines playful vocal warm ups, improvisational vocal experiences, and light yogic movement with sound (optional), that allow us to be fully of aware and present in the moment through observing and creating sounds. Will will unlock the chakras through sound, mantra, vocal vibrations, exercises in laughter, and play. We will also explore group singing using Pauline Oliveros improvisational templates, and dipping into song for social change. Cat has honed these exercises over time with groups at all levels to create a buzzing and vibrational group energy. You will have the chance to explore your voice in a safe space with unique exercises that unlock your creativity, as well as opportunities to bathe and be bathed in vocal sound and mantra by the other workshop experiencers in a way that provides a transformational healing experience.

My philosophy is that as a people, we have forgotten how to sing together, an essential part of creating community! Throughout history, cultures that “sing” together have more of a togetherness. When we join our voices, we become stronger, heal, and lift each other up individually and become a greater whole!

Cat Martino (aka Stranger Cat) is a Vocalist, Composer, Dancer and Sound Healer who has toured the world internationally from Carnegie Hall to the Olympia and Sydney Opera House. She has practiced and taught Yoga & meditation for over 15 years, and infuses her facilitating of sound studies with an opportunity for the experiencer to become fully of AWARE and present in the moment through observing and creating sounds and healing vibrations.

Stranger Cat, the frequent collaborator with Sufjan Stevens, Son Lux, The Shins, Sharon Van Etten (circa Epic) and others, creates a soulful collection of art pop songs. Marked my Martino’s velvet croon, signature vocal looping, and driven by a production style that is both electronic and organic, Stranger Cat delivers intricate, soulful, and dark R&B pop. NPR cites it “Pairs high-energy production with soaring vocals that sound like a dare to be free”, while Noisey says it “Hangs in a starry galaxy alongside Bat For Lashes, Kate Bush, Chew Lips, and Purity Ring”.

Cat Martino (Stranger Cat) Vocalist, Composer, Producer, Sound Healer

https://iamstrangercat.tumblr.com