UP & COMING & RECENT:
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Arts-Mid Hudson EMPOWERING ARTIST AWARDEE
Arts Mid-Hudson is thrilled to announce the recipients of the 2023 Empowered Artist Award, a prestigious recognition bestowed upon exceptional artists in Dutchess, Orange, and Ulster Counties. This annual award, created in honor of Linda Marston-Reid, the former executive director of Arts Mid-Hudson, provides unrestricted funds to support artists in pursuing their creative journeys. The Empowered Artist Award addresses the critical need for artists to access unrestricted funds that enable them to continue their artistic practice, elevate their careers, and enhance their visibility within their communities. These grants empower artists to create new works, acquire essential equipment, access educational opportunities, and meet their financial obligations. |
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From the Ground UP
From the Ground UP is an investigative and experimental public art project featuring a site-specific participatory art exhibition by Ann Street Gallery Artist/Researcher-in-Residence Jean-Marc Superville Sovak who will be curating a series of roundtable discussions with invited historians, community activists and guest artists dedicated to the memorialization of African-American lives and deaths in Newburgh shortly after the Gradual Abolition of slavery in New York State. Next event: Sat. Dec 2nd, 2PM Ann Street Gallery Newburgh, NY |
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QUIET AS IT'S KEPT
curated by Jaime Ransome Trolley Barn Gallery 489 Main St. Poughkeepsie, NY Oct 6 - Nov. 10 Opening Reception: Friday Oct. 6, 6pm Three new videos on display - "Love Letters to Toussaint Louverture" QUIET AS IT’S KEPT is an exhibition of contemporary Black art that explores the depths of Black expression, translating its complex aesthetic dialect and demonstrating that Black art is as unique as Black people. We are healing by recognizing ourselves as art, as worthy of art, and as part of an indelible system of artistic excellence. This is an opportunity to illuminate voices that established art systems have previously ignored. Black people have always had a place in the art world, but the magic of our practice has been as quiet as they’ve kept it. For this exhibition, we are QUIET NO MORE. |
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A Life in Bondage or Among Believers?
by Jean-Marc Superville Sovak in the Watervliet Shaker Journal The story of Black Shakers may come as a surprise (it was for me) but the story of Betty and Phebe Lane is exemplary of the life of many Black citizens of early 19th-century New York for whom "Gradual Emancipation" meant a transition to a different form of servitude. |
design - Josh McKible @MCKBILLO.COM
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One City, Two Schools:
Racial Politics of School Districting in Poughkeepsie - A PODCAST - An Arts-Mid Hudson Individual Artist Commission awarded to a new investigative podcast series dedicated to two overlapping historical narratives: 1) A late 19th century Black community’s many decade-attempt to desegregate public schools in Poughkeepsie, NY and 2) a mid-20th century suburban community’s successful attempt at openly defying the New York State Education Department to create a separate, functionally segregated school district in a mostly white sub-urban section within the township of Poughkeepsie known as Spackenkill. generously hosted by: BEACONITES! with production support from: Beacon AV Lab This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts-Mid Hudson. FIRST EPISODES COMING SOON! |
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a-Historical Landscapes @ Loeb
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College has recently acquired two "a-Historical Landscapes"; "Am I Not a Man?" and "Between Hell and Hell on Earth", currently on view in the museum's Hudson River School Collection, the collection of works acquired by Matthew Vassar in dating back to the museum's founding in 1864. |
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"Blauvelt Blues: Afro-Dutch Voices of Rockland County"
Rockland County Art in Public Places contract awarded for permanent outdoor public sculpture installation at Cropsey Community Farm in New City, NY Opening Spring 2023 |
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Thomas Pomplin Memorial
Public Sculpture commissioned by Piermont Fire Co. #13, Piermont, NY Thomas Pomplin (1826-1854), a Black man born one year before the conditional abolition of slavery in New York State was also the Piermont Fire Company's first Line of Duty Death (LODD) and was posthumously recognized for his sacrifice 168 years after the fire that ultimately consumed his life. I was commissioned by Chief Dan Goswick to create the sculpture of Thomas Pomplin, which is based on the only known photograph of Pomplin, pictured without a uniform. His recognition as a firefighter, a citizen and a hero is now recorded in Rockland County's Legislature and the monument to him stands proudly at Flywheel Park in Piermont for all to see. |
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Olana and the Color of Freedom
A discussion with Dr. Myra B. Young Armstead, Professor of Historical Studies at Bard College and author of Freedom's Gardener, considering how the timeline of Church’s site-specific masterpiece, Olana, runs concurrent to the experiences of men and women born into slavery in the Hudson Valley. |
Press
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"Always Present, Never Seen"
by Editor Chip Rowe "a-Historical Landscapes" featured in Highlands Current article on Black history in the Hudson Highlands "Always Present, Never Seen" by Editor Chip Rowe. "The exclusion is reflected in recent artwork by Jean-Marc Superville Sovak, who has a studio in Beacon. In a series of prints, a-Historical Landscape, he took idyllic 19th-century landscape engravings typical of the Hudson River School and inserted images from anti-slavery almanacs and abolitionist tracts of the same period. “What makes these works so American, I think, is not what is depicted but also what’s missing,” he says." |
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"7 Emerging Hudson Valley Artists to Watch"
by Carl Van Brunt "Black Artists in the Hudson Valley" A selection by Chronogram staff |
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Scenic Hudson's Hudson Valley Viewfinder
Scenic Hudson recently acquired the site of the former Empire brickyard, located in Stockport, NY and the source for many of my "Empire Brickwork." It is now the Charles Flood Wildlife Management Area at the Empire Brickyard. |
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Interviews
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sculpture
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prints
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video
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drawing
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