Series will run Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons
By Alison Rooney
In a nice bookend to the films on artists screening at the art center, actual, real-live artists will present talks on their work, which encompasses many different art forms, in a new series presented in tandem by the Garrison Art Center and Desmond-Fish Library, at the library. All of the talks are free and open to the public.
Cartoonist, illustrator and writer Summer Pierre, profiled recently by Philipstown.info/The Paper, starts things off on Thursday, Jan. 29, at 7 p.m. Pierre, who teaches drawing and cartooning classes at the art center, is the author of The Artist in the Office: How to Creatively Survive and Thrive Seven Days a Week and Great Gals: Inspired Ideas for Living a Kick-Ass Life. Her writing and art have appeared in The Rumpus, Hobart, The Nashville Review and Booth Literary Journal, among other places.
Old-timey fiddler and author Harry Bolick takes over the artist talk reins on Saturday, Jan. 31, at 2 p.m. Bolick teaches beginning fiddle at the Garrison Art Center and leads three monthly fiddle jam sessions in the area (one at the Howland Center in Beacon every second Tuesday). He will speak about this unique American subculture and how it survives in our modern settings. Putting current practice into context, he will also be speaking about and performing tunes from his upcoming book, Mississippi Fiddle Tunes of the WPA Era, to be published by the University Press of Mississippi in fall 2015.
Multimedia artist Jaynie Gillman Crimmins will speak on Thursday, Feb. 5, at 7 p.m. Crimmins describes her work as “exploring how household mail reflects our cultural engagement — societal conventions including beliefs, behaviors, values, goals.” In particular she scrutinizes her own behavior. Catalogs, solicitations, letters and financial statements are mailed to her because she has consumed, supported or expressed interest in an object, service, cause or belief. She shreds her mail and sews it together, allowing the materials to lead her process.
On Saturday, Feb. 7, at 2 p.m., P. Emmett McLaughlin, an artist and teacher (holding an MFA in painting from American University) who teaches art and art history at many schools as well as the Barrett Art Center and Mill Street Loft, will facilitate a meeting between the attendees and “the best artists in history!” He will share “how and why painters made these priceless cultural treasures.” McLauglin’s approach is “based on the evolution of pictorial space focusing on color, perspective, and the use of value structure. Discover the ‘building up’ and ‘breaking down’ of painting space with stylistic innovation; see how it all fits together and trace the history that created the avant garde tradition!”
Hiro Ichikawa’s Feb. 12, 7 p.m. talk, “A Painter’s Printmaking to Expand Ideas and Enhance the Senses,” explores the history of printmaking and its many benefits, from stimulating different parts of the brain to the social aspects of working with other artists in the studio environment. Ichikawa grew up in the family business of a wedding kimono maker, in a small city in Japan known for its silk industry. After studying painting and drawing in Tokyo, Ichikawa was drawn more to Western art and came to New York to study. After graduating from Pratt Institute, he decided to stay in Brooklyn. He has shown his works in many galleries in New York City since the late 1980s. In search of better studio space, he came to Beacon in the spring of 2001. As he has lived close to the river and mountains, his abstract works have become noticeably influenced by nature.
Multimedia and performance artist Jaanika Peerna explores “Light and Line as Materials for Making Art” in the concluding talk of the series on Feb. 26 at 7 p.m. Peerna is an Estonian-born artist living and working primarily in the Hudson Valley. Her work encompasses drawing, video, installation and performance, often dealing with the theme of transitions in light, air, water and other natural phenomena. She will be sharing her recently published book Storms and Silences. Peerna will also be teaching a workshop at Garrison Art Center in April on how visual art and sound can connect in inspiring creative work in everybody’s life. (Click here for a full profile of Peerna.)
Images courtesy of Desmond-Fish Library