Gallery director stresses ‘being with art’
Half a block from Beacon’s main drag, Analog Diary’s space at 1154 North Ave. can be hard to find, despite the two modest signs.
On-site parking is limited and getting towed is a possibility, according to the gallery’s website. Hint: Check out West Church Street.
It almost feels like trespassing to bypass the now-closed Mother Gallery, follow an incline to the rear of the 1884 brick building and enter a satellite of the Manhattan art world.
Close to the train station and featuring visual and sculptural works showcased in a 2,000-square-foot space, Analog Diary is certainly worth a visit.
Established in 2022, the gallery conveys the vision of rising star Katharine Overgaard, 35. She took over in January after three other high-powered founding partners departed amicably.
The deep-purple paintings and solar-burned visual pieces created with a giant magnifying glass by Charles Ross have come down. A new exhibit, Into a Kind of Quietness, featuring genre-defying artist Beatrice Modisett, opens Saturday (May 18).
While the “diary” part of the gallery’s name is about keeping a record of the exhibits, which typically run from four to six weeks and are cataloged on the gallery’s website, “analog” reflects Overgaard’s disdain for experiencing art in the digital realm, even though the pandemic made it unavoidable.
“So much information is lost on a screen and it’s too detached,” she says. “We need to get back to being with art and looking at art.”
An administrator, not a creator, Overgaard found a nice niche. In her realm, developing a keen eye for quality, marketability and conceptual cohesiveness is crucial. She started young and the viewpoint is modern.
Raised in western Massachusetts, her mother and grandmother took her on tours to galleries and museums. She then filled her plate at college, double-majoring in art history and studio arts with a minor in arts administration and museum studies.
After graduating 14 years ago, she beelined to an internship at New York City’s posh Franklin Parrasch Gallery, located in a townhouse on East 66th Street between Fifth and Madison avenues.
Franklin Parrasch, along with the gallery’s two other founding partners, own homes in the Hudson Valley and are familiar with the Beacon scene. Overgaard visited Dia:Beacon over the years as she rose to become the gallery’s director.
Her rejection of snobbery and pretense is refreshing, especially since she honed her chops on the Upper East Side.
“I don’t expect people to come with a wealth of information in their back pocket,” says Overgaard, who commutes from upper Manhattan but hopes to move closer to the area with her human partner and the gallery’s mascot, Sadie, who is half Golden Retriever and half something else.
“I’m just as excited when someone walks in the door and is new to a medium or visual art practice and lets the work take them to a new place,” she says.
Overgaard revels in visceral art. Ross’ paintings seem to glow and emit energy, for example. Modisett also checks the box by creating images with her hands from ash and charcoal culled from the campfires that burned at her off-the-grid property in Summit, near Albany.
For some larger works not included in the Analog Diary show, Modisett used her body as an ersatz brush to press the campfire residue onto the surface of several series.
She also encases some of her images with upstate twigs, making the frames part of the work rather than an accessory. Several sticks surrounding “I Saw a Shadow Touch a Shadow’s Hand II,” an image exhibited at the new show, are burned.
“I love the charred, woody quality of the surfaces,” says Overgaard. “The smudgy, physical process reflects how engaged she is and her fingers conjure images that represent unconventional modes of drawing.”
Sometimes, Modisett scratches the surface. “It takes a lot of work to manipulate charcoal on paper, but sometimes she’s erasing, not adding, which builds the final image by taking things away,” says Overgaard. Less is more.
For Analog Diary’s new director, contemporary art is just another link in the chain that stretches back to the ancient caves.
“Magic happens when the viewer finds a point of entry and engagement, then works out the mystery, which could be anything from intent, the emotional meaning behind an abstract or its symbolic significance,” she says. “You know it when it hits you.”
Into a Kind of Quietness opens with an artist’s reception from 4 to 6 p.m. on Saturday (May 18) at Analog Diary, 1154 North Ave. in Beacon. The exhibit runs through June 16. Visit analogdiary.art for information.
