Newburgh Sculpture Project is pleased to present its inaugural group exhibition of outdoor public works for the summer of 2019, with installations at the SUNY Orange Campus (Grand Street), as well as Safe Harbors Green (Broadway and Liberty Street), and the Newburgh Armory Unity Center (South William Street). All of the artists hail from or reside in Newburgh, and have installed works that respond to the unique views and architecture of their surroundings.
Participating artists include Vivien Abrams Collens, Amy Feldman, Daniel Giordano, James Holland, Mollie McKinley, and Stuart Sachs. The works will be on view from July 12th - October 25th. Please join us for an artist reception at the SUNY campus “oval” on Thursday July 25th from 7-9 PM.
Vivien Collens’ work pairs the language of formal, abstract sculpture, with a lightness and whimsical approach. Referencing notions of play and themes around memory and nostalgia, the works on view at both SUNY and the Safe Harbors Green (Broadway and Liberty Street) conjure game pieces or toys through their playful use of form and color.
Primarily a painter, Amy Feldman continues her ongoing interest in contrasting light and dark, and the manipulation of boundaries, in her sculpture at the SUNY campus. Amy’s pavers include her well-known grey palate and abstract motifs that may remind viewers of cartoon-like or graphically rendered body parts, while the steel frame encasement further emphasizes formal concerns including the edge of the “painting,” and rigid versus fluid forms. Titled “Patio Cameo,” this work also conveys Amy’s sense of humor and absurd leanings in her work.
Daniel Giordano applies language to his work around a sensual relationship between maker and object, host and parasite. Both playful and intimate, his deep-fried jetski at the SUNY campus skirts a line between the grotesque and the beautiful, referencing a mistress through its title, “Goumada.” Simultaneously repelling and seducing its viewers, the work is a playful musing on vulgarity.
James Holland’s work deals with themes around the passage of time and notions of destiny. Working in photography, installation, and video, he expresses our connections to history and place through poetic interpretations of his immediate surroundings. “Renewal Asterism” is a sculptural extension of his ongoing series of photographs, Sky Lines, that interprets city lights as stars, forming constellations using an analog drawing technique. Transformed here into 3D using LED light ropes, the asterisms series speaks to notions of destiny and chance, and provides a re-imagining of the urban landscape. In this case, the title of the work refers to the urban renewal site around the SUNY campus.
Using grasses and dune plants, Mollie McKinley has created a triangular cutaway of a coastal Atlantic sand dune overlooking the Hudson River. The winds provoke a shimmering movement of the dune grasses, and a soft, rustling sound. A milky egg of blown glass sits amidst the moving grasses, like a body in the dune. Using earth as a material contrast to the glass, the artist questions the cultural value of ecology. The transference of the dune from its native environment to the Hudson Highlands evokes a mystic convergence of two sites. The work is informed by the artist’s interest in ancient ritual sites; her childhood landscape of coastal Cape Cod; and the classic art house film, “Woman in the Dunes,” by Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara. The sloping triangular shape of the dune alludes to the influence of ancient geometry in mysticism.
Stuart Sachs’ trio of sculptures, collectively titled “Hudson River Mid Landscape” point to SUNY’s geographic location on the Hudson River, referencing surrounding views through their titles; Storm King and Breakneck Ridge to the South, Beacon to the East, and the Hamilton Fish Bridge to the North. At the Armory Center is a new interactive work that can be played like an instrument. In both installations, Stuart’s abstract steel works question and enhance our mutual interactions with both art and landscape.