Tony Moore mounts show of works by friends and neighbors
After more than a year of curation, Tony Moore is poised to open his remote Philipstown gallery space and its lush grounds to display his work and that of 14 other artists whom he admires and calls friends.
The show, Destination Earth, contains over 70 pieces spread across the wooded property and inside the light and roomy interior spaces. The main upstairs gallery seems like an airy treehouse, with vistas complementing the art.
Moore and his wife, Cynthia Ligenza, met in New York City nearly 30 years ago at a gathering for people wanting to imbue their lives with health, art and sharing. Two years later, they moved to a 5-acre property on a ridge abutting Fahnestock State Park.
The two married that summer under tall oaks, and the expansive surroundings continue to nurture creativity. “We are living in paradise,” says Ligenza. Crediting her husband’s vision and efforts, she says “every inch of our property is curated, and it brings me to tears to look at it because it’s so beautiful.”
Moore has been producing beauty since childhood, even before his grandfather recognized his interests and gave him woodworking tools. Born in the midlands of England, Moore went to art school in the U.K. and Yale University. After graduating with an MFA, he installed exhibits at the Guggenheim, which would later acquire four of his works. The Brooklyn Museum owns two.
Ligenza became a physician, with a practice in Cold Spring, while maintaining a lifelong devotion to music. The Ligenza Moore Gallery has hosted recitals featuring Ligenza on violin and with other musicians.
Art beckons as one approaches the show, which explores “where we are, how we got here, what may endure, and what is to come.” When coming from the plateau below the buildings, a ceramic platter by Jeff Shapiro sits before ascending stairs. Kurt Steger‘s wood-and-steel abstraction is adjacent to the gallery sign. More Steger pieces pepper the grounds.
Once inside the vestibule, there are graphic etchings and collages by Judy Pfaff, who attended Yale with Moore. Entering the upstairs space, Moore’s dark painting on paper features a bright blue hand, echoing the hand imagery in Pfaff’s work.
On the landing leading to the main gallery, the shapes in each work mimic others in proximity. “The works start talking to each other,” Moore says. “As a curator, you try to foster that conversation. I’ve spent a great deal of time moving things around in the gallery to try to achieve that balance and harmony.”
Moore’s work in the show includes a mysterious painting that suggests a chrysalis or womb; a wall of pictorial ceramics he calls “fire paintings;” wood-fired ceramics with surface and interior interest; an early wood-fired ceramic wall tile; and one bronze and one ceramic-and-steel sculpture placed outside that shift in appearance depending on weather and light.
“I’m not a figurative artist,” Moore says. But he is also not an abstract artist such as his friend David Provan, who died last year. Instead, evocative imagery and forms with a spiritual component mark his work, which he suggests might be characterized as “symbolic abstraction.”
The gallery also has three small acrylics by Katherine Bradford, whose swimmers, while figurative, respect formal principles and abstract composition, with faces that are nothing more than slabs of color. Perhaps the most traditional art in the show is by Moore’s neighbor, Simeon Lagodich, who is completing a series of Hudson Valley plein air paintings. An iguana poses with an adorned woman painted by Garry Nichols, and around her is a ceramic piece by Moore that might look like a pair of animals — dogs, bunnies?
On a lawn behind the gallery and near the sheltered Anagama-Noborigama wood-firing kilns, a lacy world map by Cal Lane made from an oil tank is graced by goddess-like forms. Moore’s studio, which stands between the gallery and the kiln building, is adorned with three Marieken Cochius driftwood assemblages. They appear lyrical and explosive.
The show has been brewing ever since Ligenza and Moore moved into the home, they say, and is not meant to be the last. Four times a year a cadre of artists and helpers come together to fire pieces in the kilns. Although their place is a bit out of the way, “the people who came here first had a vision, and I think we’ve caught their spirit. We have a similar vision of involvement in our community and allowing others to share in that.”
The Ligenza Moore Gallery, at 78 Trout Brook Road, off East Mountain Road South, is open from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays and by appointment. Destination Earth opens on Saturday (May 24) and runs through July 27. See ligenzamooregallery.com or call 845-220-7890.
