Popular showcase on tap for next weekend
Last year, Darya Golubina, the savior of Beacon Open Studios, expressed interest in showcasing a theater component to complement the citywide event, which runs June 27 to 29. She got her wish.
After their initial home at La Reserva Wine Bar shuttered, Jennifer Malenke and Will Reynolds brought their Broadway in Beacon open mic shows to The Yard and will host a performance there on June 29.
The Hanna Lane venue serves as the hub for open studios and will host a weekend-long group show of visual artists, the Beacon-based Skyla Schreter Dance Company on Friday and three musical acts on Saturday.
Beyond the shift in dates from July to June, new this year are showings in the KuBe Art Center, including an interactive installation by video artist Rooster at Clutter Gallery. The lot at 14 North Cedar St. will become a sculpture garden, and a group show at Hudson Beach Glass opens for a month-long run on July 12 (it ran during and after last year’s weekend).
A former dancer for the San Francisco Ballet and co-owner of LotusWorks Wellness on Main Street, Schreter (and members of her company) will present an improvisational work at open studios for the second time. The piece, Love is An Action 3.0, is a “raw, real-time collaboration” with Jeremy Wilms, who will be playing synthesizers and string instruments backed by drummer Mike Pride.
Though Golubina is assisted by Chris Ams, John Menzie, Evan Samuelson and Julia Zivic, she ticks off a dizzying array of recurrent tasks that whittle down to creating labels for every work on display at dozens of spots around town, including The Yard, shops along Main Street, the Howland Public Library, an old church and a woodworking studio.
“I keep doing this because there’s nothing else like it here,” says Golubina, who hired a designer for the pink posters plastered around town. “Everyone shows their work together, united. It’s super rewarding, but it does take a personal toll.”
The event builds community. “I love seeing partnerships grow,” she says. “Shop owners often welcome an artist back to show their work outside of open studios. That’s one of my favorite parts of the process.”
Ams helped recruit an offbeat venue this year at Hudson Valley Guitar Fix, owned by Eric Alfredo, who turned a rotting garage on Rombout Street into a spiffy 198-square-foot shop. A visual artist since he began to draw at age 3, Alfredo will show some of his cyanotypes, along with works by Ams, Bam Bowen and Eliot Debryun.
The place smells like wood, naturally. Guitars in various states of repair lie on benches like patients at a hospital. For one weekend, the Clash, Joy Division and Echo & the Bunnymen posters are coming down.
“I always hear from people that this place reminds them of their basement, bedroom in high school or dorm room in college,” says Alfredo. “It’ll be nice to bring some beauty into the world and meet some people who don’t play guitar.”
To purchase tickets and download a map, see beaconopenstudios.com.
