Location: Kingston NY

“Family Business,” Sunday, Oct. 8 with performances at 4:30 p.m., 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., ARTBAR Gallery, 674 Broadway

Come to ARTBAR for this intergenerational performance of “FAMILY BUSINESS”. Enter and you will be a customer in this family run restaurant, a 20-minute play in motion. Why is the chef refusing to cook? Why does the bartender want to quit? And who is the hostess in the gold turban, trying to get you to eat homemade chopped liver? Come find out. Each performance will be different.

Amy Poux is an arts advocate who believes that the arts belong in every walk of life for us to sustain diversity as part of human existence. She has spent her adult life dedicated to this issue as a theater director of multigenerational devised theater and as an arts educator.

As a theater director she has been developing original theater with young people and adults for twenty-five years. She most recently formed the Youth Ensemble Theater (YET) which provides multi generational people ages 10 to 82 with opportunities to play close the edge in their art form, and gain pre-professional acting/performance skills. Venues have included: Off-Broadway in NYC Labyrinth Theater Company, Hudson Valley: Richard B. Fisher Center at Bard College, partnership with The Ford’s Theatre, Washington D.C., High Meadow Performing Arts Center, NY Stage & Film/Powerhouse Theater.

As an arts educator she has worked to build artistic forums into the daily life of schools, that otherwise would not provide an arts education to their students. Currently the Director of Education at Film Society of Lincoln Center, her work has reached thousands of students in dilapidated school communities.

http://www.youthensembletheater.com

Enz is a graffiti muralist and graphic artist. Born and raised in rural NY under the cultural shadow of Gotham City, he has always felt the influence of dark gritty urban street art but merges this with wilderness themes as well as comic book, pop, musical, and fantastical imagery. His art is based on his nom de plume letters: ENZ. He arrived at this moniker when he first began vandalizing with spray paint at the age of 14. It is an abbreviation of the word “enzyme” defined as a catalyst. Nothing happens metabolically without enzymes and this is a metaphor for the art of Enz as stimulating artistic expression. Today, Enz remains addicted to the art form of graffiti but, has branched out to produce commercially viable murals and graphic art.

Actor and educator Caley Vickerman is passionate about the intersection of arts, education and community building. She is an actor specializing in interactive and improvisational performance, a storyteller and, most recently, a poet-enabler. She is a believer in the power of words to connect us to ourselves, to each other and to our neighborhoods and public spaces.

In an effort to connect her many areas of interest, she founded the Guerilla Haiku Movement, a public art experience that has traveled the country since 2011 joining communities in creative play using the short form poetry, haiku, as the tool for connection and engagement. Through Guerilla Haiku she offers programs tailored towards educational and arts institutions for creative literacy programming, arts integration, internal team-building, and professional development. But the underlying mission is to connect strangers and to deepen conversations inside all of our neighborhoods.

www.ghm575.org

https://vimeo.com/40755720

Matt Goldpaugh is a Kingston native, who spent a 9 year stint in NYC, only to happily return to Kingston in 2012, in order to spend more time focusing on his musical endeavors as well as visual arts full-time. A graduate of SUNY Purchase College ‘s Visual Arts program in 2005, Matt has continued working in visual arts over the years and even worked as a Forensic Photographer for the City Of New York from 2007-2008. Pursuing music primarily, while still relying on that fine art background, Matt plays a custom upright bass which he designed himself and helped to build, (playable art if you will). He is responsible for most of the art and branding for the bands he plays in: Lara Hope and the Ark-Tones, The Gold Hope Duo, and The Arkhams.

 

Matthew spends the majority of his time on the sketching and composition phase of a piece. Once the composition has been completed and the final product can begin – in his mind, all the hard work is done. At this point he sees it as a sort of paint by numbers project, this value here, this value there, as he already knows what it is going to look like so he can sit back and allow it to happen. He finds a certain level of relaxation in the repetition of the dense layering of the cross-hatching.

http://www.matthewpleva.com/Home.html

Through art, I connect to the beauty of mother Earth’s strength. While studying ethnobotany in the ways of creation.

I began as a painter and hiker adventuring through little bits of the Appalachian Trail, and the woods of the hudson valley. I sought to combine two of my most spirited paths and found the art of papermaking.

I am interested in the whole lifespan of art; from the material’s creation past its’ presentation to the public. The relationship and exchanges it has within the ecosystem.

Erika deVries, is a mother, artist, teacher, fairy tale reader, teller and believer.  She works interdisciplinarily including, photography, performance, neon (litebriteneon.com), video and handcraft in which she creates and relates embodied experiences. Her works rendered in neon, are handwritten transcriptions dictated to her children and family members which crystallize the moments when language and meaning coalesce. Erika is on the faculty of New York University NY, NY.

Jonah Meyer of sawkille.com is a father, an artist, a furniture craftsman, business owner and occasional 007. He has been based in The Hudson Valley for over 20 years. Jonah’s work draws on traditional materials, concepts and stories that are pulled through his looking glass and re-presented with Humor, deep heart, courage and integrity.

deVries and Meyer have collaborated on a large-scale installation for Bloomingdales 2016 holiday windows and are very eager and grateful to create these new works for their home community in Kingston. Follow the collaborators on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonah_w_meyer https://www.instagram.com/fancyswanpants and https://www.instagram.com/litebriteneon

erikaswonderlands.net

Kingston abounds with historical homes – each with its own treasure trove of stories waiting to be told. My mission as an artist is to create immersive and site-specific work that challenges the definition of theatre as we have come to know it. With the kind cooperation of the Friends of Historic Kingston, we will inhabit the historic Frederick J. Johnston House on the corner of Main and Wall in the Stockade Historic District of Kingston. Five shorts will be presented on a continuous loop. Because the performance in its entirety is not dependent on any particular order, guests are encouraged to explore at their own level of interest and commitment. They are free to watch a few minutes here and there or stay and take it all in – one room at a time. Created and directed by Rik Lopes. Written by San Francisco playwirght Alan Olejniczak. Featuring the talents of Chris Bick, Fennel Skellyman, Jennifer Krawitz, Flair SmithJones, Imogene Simmons, Kortnee Simmons, Jim Fish, and Tricia Mazzocca.

The Wayfinder Experience builds immersive, theater and play based experiences. Employing characters, costumes, sets, props, and improv to open up new and exciting worlds to kids, teens and adults. Our home is in mid-town Kingston, but we run programs in the Hudson Valley, NYC, and the larger tri-state area. We use play to build lasting community ties, and encourage active involvement in local and global communities.

This year, at the O+ Festival, The Wayfinder Experience will combine forces with The Wilde Hunt, a Brooklyn-based underground events network which hosts scavenger hunt bar crawls, themed parties, and secret art festivals.

Festival-goers will have the chance to connect with the festival on a whole new level; following intricate clues and solving puzzles to get from venue-to-venue, gig-to-gig, dentist-to-artist, and what have you. Scavenger Hunt Participants will gain access to hidden areas of the festival, have immersive (perhaps absurd) interactions with O+ performers and Kingston characters, get deals on drinks and snacks, and win all sorts of prizes and surprises.

ADULT SCAVENGER HUNT FESTIVAL CRAWL “TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT”

AGES 21 +

CHILDREN’S SCAVENGER HUNT:  “THE GNOME HOME CLEAN-UP PARADE”

AGES 5-12 (Parent Participation Required)

WARNING: The Scavenger Experiences produced for the O+ Festival will not be catered to the mundane, the “nay” sayer, or the easily bored. To the fun-loving adventurers, enthusiasts, and the curious of heart: Come and play! Join the hunt just for a day! “

For more info about either organization, visit:

www.wayfinderexperience.com

www.thewildehunt.com

VALERIE SHARP is a visual and performance artist in Rosendale, New York originally from Oklahoma City with a BFA in Acting (2014) and BA in Studio Art (2015), minor in Costume Design and Directing, from Oklahoma City University. She creates performance art using a combination of long durational actions, costume, and installation in order to transform personal experiences into universal symbols. Through her work, she investigates the perception of time, loss of innocence, our relationship to nature as a mirror to ourselves, and the wonderful, mysterious forest that is our minds. She has exhibited performance art in New York at Grace Exhibition Space for International Performance Art, Broadway Arts, Greenkill Gallery, HiLo Art, O+ Festival Kingston, and Rosekill Farm, and in Oklahoma at Kasum Contemporary, IAO Gallery, Momentum, and in Oklahoma Shakespeare on Paseo. Valerie also paints, plays violin, directs theatre, and studies trees.

www.valerieksharp.com

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNZ6_Vptwl8fVMSnw786fWg