Digest

There are particular joys to be found in a movie theater in the summer - nostalgia, escape, a cool respite amongst red velvet and low lights - all with hours of sunlight remaining after a mid-day film. Upstate New York has some especially great theaters. The Upstate Films Group has locations in Kingston, Rhinebeck, and Saugerties - all three historic theaters show first-run films (we’re anxiously awaiting Maddie’s Secret), film series, independent and foreign films, and classics. This summer, don’t miss three films from the 90s that might have made our personal best-of list: The Piano, I Shot Andy Warhol, and Trainspotting. 

Other theaters we love include the recently-renovated Community Theater in Catskill, Spectrum One in Albany, and the fantastically retro Greenville Drive-In.

For a true community movie night vibe, our favorite Renssalaerville Library has film night on the last Thursday of each month. Follow their calendar to see the film of the month.

Other Things of Note:

In Solidarity, David Zwirner Gallery, through July 31st

Our great friend Suzan Frecon and many others in a group benefit exhibition to raise funds for for The American Immigration Council and Journey’s End Refugee Center

Pick Your Own Blueberries, Whistle Down Farm, Saturday, July 11th

Certified organic fruit grown on 60 beautiful acres of fields, forest, and wetlands running alongside Taghkanic Creek near Hudson.

Nancy Shaver's Henry 348 Warren Street, Hudson, NY closing mid-July

Nancy’s Henry is suspended between an artist’s studio and an antique shop. Humility pulses through its objects, carrying a steady, unnameable weight: essential, uncertain in our gaze. Nancy’s form of “junking” is an uncompromising practice of attention — objects as extensions of her eye. Henry was formative to me, tempering my interest in provenance with a deeper attention to the thing itself: shape, color, texture, feeling. Henry is a kaleidoscopic theater for the useless (the highest praise) and the tasteless (her word), which shift through placement and care. And then you and the thing you’ve chosen are released back into the world, not for ownership, but for love. Stop by before it closes for the last few days of magic.

Betty Parsons: An Expanded World at Bard's Hessel Museum of Art June 27 - October 18

The first major retrospective to examine the intertwined legacies of Betty Parsons as both pioneering abstract artist and trailblazing gallerist who shaped the trajectory of 20th century American art. An abstract painter and sculptor best known as a dealer of mid-century art, she maintained a rigorous artistic practice by creating works in a variety of media including paintings, sculpture, and works on paper. Her eye for innovative talent was deeply informed by her own artistic training, and her curatorial choices helped to shape the course of 20th-century art in the United States. Through the works on view—presented in tandem with the new film, featuring firsthand recollections by Parsons herself and the artists she exhibited—a deeply curious and restless woman is revealed. Betty Parsons: An Expanded World considers how she was continually propelled towards what she called “the expanding world,” a theme informed by her understanding of American modernism and reflected in her practices as both an artist and art dealer.

Fairfield Porter: What Everyone Knows The Art Students' League June 5 - August 18

The first large-scale exhibition of the artist’s work in New York City in twenty-five years and the first ever at the Art Students League, where he studied from 1928–1930. Described by John Ashbery in 1983 as “perhaps the major American artist of this century,” Porter (1907–1975) remains an essential if still under-recognized figure whose paintings of shaded lawns, uncleared tables, and briny coasts are both lush and challenging, each motivated by Porter’s fundamental claim: “the real is specific.”

Pick Your Own Black Sour Cherries at Fix Brothers July 9 

A late frost in April got the sweet cherries, but there are still plenty of English Morello black sours for your bucket. Pick your own opens July 9th and continues until the fruit is gone. Freshly harvested apricots available for sale in the orchard during cherry picking hours.

American Folk Art: Revisiting the Collection of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller at MoMA

Rockefeller's collection of 19th-century artworks features objects both functional and visually expressive, from painted portraits and stenciled still lifes to weathervanes and wooden toys. Produced by professional artists and craftspeople, students, and self-taught makers from across the nation’s Northeast, these works share roots in preindustrial workmanship, regional tradition, and community and will be presented in dialogue with selected paintings and sculptures in MoMA’s collection by modern artists who were inspired by or championed American folk art

Get Your Tickets for Supernature 7 Farm-Dinner-Disco-Camping Party at World's End Farm July 24th-26th

Bring your camping gear, bring your appetite for some of the best farm food you’ve ever eaten, bring your friends, bring your kids, bring your optimism for a better future and of course bring your dancing shoes. Two nights of camping/music/food - stay the whole weekend! Proceeds from ticket sales go directly to supporting our mission: practicing world-building and teaching small scale agriculture and craft practices.

Perhaps more than any other art form, pottery is of a place - living alongside us in our most intimate and personal spaces, intended for everyday use, made from the earth itself. Frances Palmer, polymath ceramicist (a printmaker and art historian by training, she’s a photographer, expert gardener, and floral designer as well), takes this a step further and creates a fresh collection for each collaboration. For her show at London’s Garden Museum, she was very much inspired by Delft spouted vases and Wedgwood pedestal pieces, mostly in white creamware, a clay body invented by the great 18th century potters in Staffordshire. For a late summer show at the Berkshire Botanical Garden, she created pieces with terracotta clay, which she found sympathetic to the garden aesthetic and echoed in the goldenrod meadow just outside the gallery windows.

In a week, she’ll come to the shop with a collection made just for us: “The work I am currently throwing for Pidgin references the history of English marbleized pieces. When I am in London, I spend a lot of time at the Victoria and Albert Museum studying the ceramic collections. The 18th and 19th century everyday marbleized pieces are a great jumping off point for the work I will be bringing.” 

Frances’s work is always deeply informed by the history of art. “It’s at the root of the three processes of ceramics, gardening and photography that I explore,” she explains, and we can see this in her two sumptuous books, Life in the Studio and Life with Flowers. “I choose the flowers that I grow through looking at paintings and gardens and continually study new approaches. Likewise with photography, I am looking at photographers that I admire to consider the composition I am trying to document.  Last year I spent time working on platinum palladium prints, which is an early printing technique from 1874. That was a lot of fun, and I would love to get back to producing more images. I think a lot about light and dark in the frame.” 

On Saturday, June 27th at Pidgin, all three creative pursuits will come together: besides offering the new pottery collection, Frances will be signing both of her books, and the shop will be filled with the scent of high summer flowers from Saipua’s Sarah Ryhanen, gathered into arrangements by Frances, and also available for purchase.

JOIN US for a celebration of new work by Frances Palmer for PIDGIN on June 27th from 3-6. Have a drink, a bite, meet old friends, and new. And shop. RSVP not required, but much appreciated.