ARTISTS
John Akomfrah
John Akomfrah is a hugely respected artist and filmmaker, whose works are characterized by their investigations into memory, post-colonialism, temporality and aesthetics and often explore the experiences of migrant diasporas globally. Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, which started in London in 1982 alongside the artists David Lawson and Lina Gopaul, who he still collaborates with today. Their first film, Handsworth Songs (1986) explored the events surrounding the 1985 riots in Birmingham and London through a charged combination of archive footage, still photos and newsreel. The film won several international prizes and established a multi-layered visual style that has become a recognizable motif of Akomfrah’s practice. Other works include the three-screen installation The Unfinished Conversation (2012), a moving portrait of the cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s life and work; Peripeteia (2012), an imagined drama visualizing the lives of individuals included in two 16th century portraits by Albrecht Dürer, and Mnemosyne (2010) which exposes the experience of migrants in the UK, questioning the notion of Britain as a promised land by revealing the realities of economic hardship and casual racism.
In 2015, Akomfrah premiered his three-screen film installation Vertigo Sea (2015), which explores what Ralph Waldo Emerson calls ‘the sublime seas’. Fusing archival material, readings from classical sources and newly shot footage, Akomfrah’s piece focuses on the disorder and cruelty of the whaling industry and juxtaposes it with scenes of many generations of migrants making epic crossings of the ocean for a better life. In 2017, Akomfrah presented his largest film installation to date, Purple (2017), at the Barbican in London, co-commissioned by Bildmuseet Umeå, Sweden, TBA21—Academy, The Institute of Contemporary Art/ Boston, Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon and Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow. The six-channel video installation addresses climate change, human communities and the wilderness. In the same year, Akomfrah debuted Precarity (2017) at Prospect 4 New Orleans, following the life of forgotten New Orleans jazz singer Charles ‘Buddy’ Bolden. On the occasion of his participation at the first Ghana Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, John Akomfrah presented Four Nocturnes (2019), a new three-channel piece that reflects on the complex intertwined relationship between humanity’s destruction of the natural world and our destruction of ourselves.
Akomfrah (born 1957) lives and works in London. He has had numerous solo exhibitions including Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain (2021); Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla, Spain (2020); Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA, USA (2020); Secession, Vienna, Austria (2020); BALTIC, Gateshead, UK (2019); ICA Boston, MA, USA (2019); Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal (2018); New Museum, New York, NY, USA (2018); Bildmuseet, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden (2015, 2018); SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA, USA (2018); Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain (2018); Barbican, London, UK (2017); Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK (2017); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2016); Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen, Denmark (2016); STUK Kunstcentrum, Leuven, Belgium (2016); Eli and Edythe BroadArt Museum, Michigan, USA (2014); Tate Britain, London, UK (2013-14) and a week long series of screenings at MoMA, New York, USA (2011). His participation in international group shows includes: Ghana Pavilion, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2019); ‘Strange Days: Memories of the Future’, New Museum x The Store, London, UK (2018); Prospect 4, New Orleans, LA, USA (2017); ‘Restless Earth’, La Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy (2017); ‘Unfinished Conversations’, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY, USA (2017); ‘British Art Show 8’ (2015-17); ‘All the World’s Futures’, 56th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2015); ‘History is Now: 7 Artists Take On Britain’, Hayward Gallery, London, UK (2015); ‘Africa Now: Politcal Patterns’, SeMA, Seoul, South Korea (2014); Sharjah Biennial 11, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2013); Liverpool Biennial, UK (2012) and Taipei Biennial, Taiwan (2012). He has also been featured in many international film festivals, including Sundance Film Festival, Utah, USA (2013 and 2011) and Toronto International Film Festival, Canada (2012). He was awarded the Artes Mundi Prize in 2017.
Image Credit: John Akomfrah at his London studio, 2016 © Smoking Dogs Films, Courtesy Smoking Dogs Films, and Lisson Gallery.
Alexandre Arrechea
Alexandre Arrechea’s practice comprises large-scale installations, sculptures, watercolor drawings, and videos that address issues of history, memory, politics, and the power relations of the urban landscape. He often works with site-specific materials and/or imagery, exploring the ideological and philosophical legacy of the context in which the work is produced. Born in Trinidad, Cuba, in 1970, Arrechea graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana in 1994. He was a founding member of the influential Cuban artist collective Los Carpinteros (1991-2003). As a solo artist, Arrechea represented his homeland in the first ever Cuban Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011) as well as the 11th Havana Biennial (2012). Arrechea is widely recognized for Nolimits (2013), a monumental project composed of ten sculptures inspired by iconic buildings in New York City and erected along Park Avenue, and Katrina Chairs (2016), erected at the Coachella Music Festival, Palm Springs, California, USA. Arrechea’s major sculptural commission ‘Orange Functional’ (2022) is currently on view at Art Omi, Ghent, NY. He has forthcoming exhibitions at ArtYard, Frenchtown, NJ and the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Arts at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and Edge Effect: The Biennial of the Americas with Artistic Direction by Black Cube, Denver, CO September 2022. Recent exhibitions and projects include: Corners, at Galeria Nara Roesler, in New York (2019), USA; Obsesiones y acumulaciones: el gabinete del artista, at Estudio Figueroa-Vives and the Norwegian Embassy in Cuba (2019), in Havana, Cuba; The World’s Game: Fútbol and Contemporary Art, at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), in Miami (2018), USA; Construções sensíveis, at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (CCBB-RJ) (2018), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Adiós Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art since 1950, at the Walker Art Center (2017), in Minneapolis, and at the Museum of Fine Arts (2017), in Houston, USA; Without masks: Contemporary Afro – Cuban Art, at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana (2017), in Havana, Cuba. His works can be found in numerous important collections, such as: Daros Collection, Zurich, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, USA; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, USA; Museo del Barrio, New York, USA; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS), Madrid, Spain.
David Becker
David Becker was born in Stockton, CA in 1950 and attended California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) in Oakland, the Central School of Art and Design Holborn in London and received his BFA from San Francisco State University. Following graduation he attended The Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in New York. He lives and works in Hudson, NY.
Photo credit: Shannon Greer.
CHIMBA
Chiarra Hughes - MBA combined her first and last names to arrive at her artist name, Chimba. Born and raised in Hudson, NY, she says that if you were also born and raised there that you probably know a relative or two of hers, since her Hughes family was well rooted deeply within the city. Chimba left Hudson in 2004 to pursue her dreams and obtain her degrees in Fashion Design, Computer Graphics and Fine Arts, which has allowed her to work in several professions. Fashion design was a dominant one in her career, but also shares a seat at the table with her other passions, painting and writing. She's published a fictional novel in 2011 called “Micheal Rogue – Life Unscripted.” And now that she is back in her hometown, she’s had her first solo exhibit “Reproducing Life Conception” At WOH (Window On Hudson), and the opportunity to work with some amazing artists in two collaborative shows, “Jewel the Wound” and “WinterOver?” She is currently using all her experiences to continue to create meaningful art to share with the world.
Ifetayo Cobbins
Ifetayo Cobbins, an accomplished painter and poet, is presenting several large paintings in one window, over two dozen small works inside WOH (Window On Hudson), and selected poems through video. Cobbin’s paintings are a place for her to relax her mind and unfocus. She examines both the power of black women and seeing beyond the obvious. Her practice involves, “Playing a game with what I see. I like to see how far I can go into the things I see. I unfocus. I let my hand go where it goes. I then look at what was drawn and see if I can go deeper. You can go deep into the paper if you can focus your mind and go deep down the rabbit hole. I want to see things using another lens.” When speaking of the “Ladies” who sometimes dominate her paintings, Cobbins says, “the Ladies represent power and strength. They are also mysterious. There is a mystery about black people - about black women. We go through so much nonsense but we still stand in the end. Where do we get the strength from to not give up?” Cobbins concentrates more intently on the experiences of black women and men with her poetry. Writing starts when “a situation comes up and tells me it needs to be written about. I focus. I must put things in a way people can understand. I don’t want to sting with what I say but the writing is me screaming out, ‘Why is no one seeing this!?’ I’ve got to speak. ‘Wake up. How many times do I have to tell you this for it to get through your head? Inequality! What’s so hard to understand about it?’ I write until I’m exhausted. Then I have to move on.”
Photo credit: @tayoife420.
kirby crone
Kirby Crone is an artist and painter originally from Texas. She received her BA from Southwestern University and her MFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Crone currently lives and works in the Hudson Valley where they are the painting production manager at a prominent contemporary artist's studio. In the past couple of years Kirby has included her art as a part of a wall of small vignettes featuring local artists as well as designing a large-scale street mural with the organization Street Plans in Hudson, NY. Last year she completed her largest mural to date on a residential building in Sharon, CT as well as participating in group shows at Hudson Hall & Tanja Grunert Gallery.
Photo Credit: Angelina Dreem.
jane ehrlich
Jane Ehrlich lives and works in Hudson, NY. Ehrlich’s paintings create the presence of light by the layering of transparent linear, gestural paths and simple forms. They start with a single background color and are composed mostly of white, straight, zig zag, and curvilinear layers of transparencies that refer back to the ground color. The layering is a slow process with nuances, accidents of application, and imperfections of surface, as the networks of light accumulate with paint. The layers create myriads of monochromatic tonal variations and movement. As each stroke connects to the one beneath the paintings begin to resonate with light. Ehrlich is a graduate of The School of Visual Arts and attended Pratt Institute. She has exhibited in New York, Florida, New Hampshire, and Maine. Most recently at LUMBERYARD, LABSPACE, Mohawk Hudson Regional 2021, Susan Eley Fine Arts, Windows On Hudson and the Barrett Art Center. Upcoming exhibitions include; The Hudson Eye, Salon Zurcher, 11 WOMEN OF SPIRIT Part 6; and Lockwood Gallery. Jane Ehrlich is the founder of Open Studio Hudson. She is the recent recipient of the 2022 Community Arts Grant, a regrant program of the New York State Council of the Arts.
Bibiana Huang Matheis
Bibiana Huang Matheis is the co-founder and Curator of the Inspiration Arts Group International. She is an artist, fine arts photographer and curator who has been active in the arts since the late 1970s. Over the years she has been involved in a variety of projects, ranging from mixed media installations to performance art. Her work has appeared in major exhibits and publications of all types in the US and Europe, in New York City, Chicago, and Berlin. Her photography is hanging on permanent display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture – Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. Bibiana frequently combines installation art, collage, and photography. She is the recipient of the 2015 Arts Westchester ‘50 for 50’ Arts Award honoring 50 Outstanding artists on the 50-year Anniversary of the organization. She was also honored with the 2014 Arts Mid-Hudson Executive Arts Award – Individual Artist. She is a frequent panelist in art forums, including the Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art: Curating for the Public 2017. In 2019 she was an artist in residence at the Fresh Winds Art Biennale in Iceland. Bibiana has curated a series of exhibitions in the Hudson Valley for 15 years. This includes a highly successful shows at the Akin Library and Museums in Pawling, the Mid-Hudson Heritage Center, the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon and the Hammond Museum in North Salem. She is widely recognized as a strong advocate for the arts in the region.
Jon Isherwood
Jon Isherwood’s work has been widely exhibited in public museums and private galleries in US, Canada, Europe and China. He is the recipient of a Jerome Foundation Fellowship, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation award and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of New York at Plattsburgh. His sculpture has recently been exhibited at Villa Strozzi, Florence, Italy, The National Archaeological museum, Florence Italy, Ping Yao II, China; The DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum Boston Mass and in Belgrave Square, London, UK. He has had over 25 solo exhibitions, including Reeves Contemporary in NYC, John Davis Gallery in NYC; The C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore; Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park and Museum in Hamilton, OH. He has been featured in many group exhibitions, including the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, Italy; The McNay Museum, San Antonio, TX; The Derby City Museum, Derby, UK; and Kunsthalle, Manheim, Germany. His work can be found in more than 25 public collections. Isherwood has completed over 30 commissions in the private and public sector including a recent commission for New Jersey Public art, Capital One investments, USA, the US State department Art in Embassies program for the new Embassy in Oslo Norway, The Peninsula hotel, Beijing China, Public Art San Antonio, Fidelity investment UK, BCA, St Paul MN and The Woodner Memorial sculpture at the Evening Star building Washington DC. Isherwood’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, ArtNews, The Washington Post, The New York Sun, Sculpture Magazine, Partisan Reviews, The Philadelphia Enquirer, London Times and in The Guardian, UK. He has made personal appearances on shows featuring his work, including WAMC Public Radio and The Culture Show, BBC Television, UK. He has lectured at numerous colleges and universities in the U.S, Europe and China. He teaches at Bennington College VT and is the President of the Digital Stone Project.
Photo Credit: jonisherwood.com.
NADIA KHAYRALLAH
Nadia Khayrallah is a performer, choreographer, writer, occasional drag artist, and general menace. Her work highlights the body as a place of intersection between intimacy and power; pleasure and resistance; personal and political--often with a dose of humor. A graduate of Columbia University with a B.A. in Dance and Psychology, she currently performs with Jonah Bokaer Choreography, Gotham Dance Theater, eSKay Arts Collective, and Artists by Any Other Name. Nadia has presented work through Dixon Place’s Crossing Boundaries and HOT! Festival, Dancers Unlimited, Queens College Arts Festival, Chez Bushwick RECESS, YallaPunk, and ModArts Move to Change Festival, and has worked with musical artists Roxiny and Alethea and visual artists Qinza Najm and Reza Farkondeh. She has written for The Dance Enthusiast, The Huffington Post, Sukoon Magazine, and Reductress. As a member of the Dance/NYC Junior Committee, she has co-hosted discussions on racial and economic justice in the dance field at the Dance/NYC Symposium and the Arts Administrators of Color Network Convening. Nadia served as cultural consultant for National Queer Theater’s 2020 Criminal Queerness Festival, connecting programming to international communities.
Sandra Koponen
Sandra Koponen is a visual artist/oil painter who also works in music (sax, composition), photography/videography and writing. Though she was engaging with downtown artists and playing sax on NYC's LES in the '80s, she only began oil painting in 2012. She first exhibited in 2013, and in 2015 her painting "We Can't Breathe" was one of the few to receive mention in The New York Times' cover story about Smack Mellon's Respond show, which showcased over 700 artists' work around the police murder of Eric Garner. She also received mention in Vice News and other publications for her submission to the Nasty Women show in Bushwick and subsequently for a corresponding participatory public performance. In 2017, she had her first solo show of abstract landscapes, Transmogrified Weather, at SLA Gallery in Chelsea, NYC. (SLA founders now run Undercurrent in DUMBO NYC.) While continuing to paint in oils, Sandra is always expanding her oevre, and recently has made some multi-media installations and sculpture. Always an activist in spirit, her work often takes on current events. In her Calendar Project, she mixes abstraction with references to troubling events within this calendar year of 2022.
Jim Krewson
Jim Krewson has been using airbrush as his main instrument since the age of 14. He hails from Bucks County, PA and is an art school dropout. Currently living in Catskill, NY, he did a previous residency with Basilica Hudson in 2018. He has shown with Zack Feuer’s Retrospective Gallery, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and Andrew Kreps among others. This new series of paintings seeks to visit a psychedelic landscape completely oriented by the imagination, heavily influenced by the Krautrock movement of the early 70s and the Japanese band Acid Mothers Temple. With the use of black light and fluorescent airbrush paint he invites the viewer to escape reality and hopes to help subvert the bland moralizing of much of contemporary art. He describes the paintings as “the cosmos you visit when you close your eyes too hard”. Freak out. Have fun.
Joseph La Piana
For more than two decades, artist Joseph La Piana has drawn upon a diversity of scientific and mathematical theories to create an ongoing body of work that foregrounds materiality and process in its exploration of creative and deconstructive forces alike. Encompassing a multi-media practice which includes paintings and works on paper, to site-specific installations and sculpture, La Piana’s pieces are defined by the sequences and processes—akin to the replication of DNA or the recursion of fractals—applied to their creation. Drawing from his own archive of existing works, La Piana’s pieces are, in essence, off-spring of earlier works by the artist. Understood as inheritors of prior pieces, La Piana’s creative process has established an on-going creative continuum that links his most recent works to earliest. Each respective body of work—from his “Tension” to his “Photonastic” series—can be viewed as related variants to each other. La Piana’s works have been included in numerous exhibitions and site-specific installations internationally, including solo-exhibitions at the Robert Miller Gallery (New York) and The Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh). His site-specific installations have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2011 as part of the Warhol Museum’s “The Venice Text Project and in 2019 his “Tension Sculpture Installation” were featured along Park Avenue in collaboration with theNew York City Department of Parks & Recreation and The Fund for Park Avenue.
TOM MCGILL
Tom McGill is the first born child of his parents. Tom continues to be the oldest of my siblings. He was born in Jamaica, Queens and raised in NJ. Tom studied History and Religion towards his BA from Drew University and he has a MTS from Harvard University. Tom has been a college instructor and administrator, stay at home dad, bartender, waiter, carpenter, contractor, designer, and artist. Tom likes to take things apart and, to a lesser degree, put them back together. He has a favorite fork (and all the other forks know it). Since early 2013, he has lived and worked in Hudson, New York. Tom is the artist-in-residence and on-site manager at 46 Green Street Studios. Also, he co-owns and co-curates Circle 46 Gallery.
Will McLeod
Will McLeod (b. 1985) is a mixed media artist that currently lives in Hudson, New York. Before working as an artist, Will had a promising career in fashion design and development in NYC. McLeod became disillusioned with “Fashion” and pivoted his life and career to focus on creating his own work away from the shadow of industry. Will now works in two main mediums: paintings on paper, and in textiles. The paintings rely on pure intuition, while the textiles are expertly designed. Will’s aesthetic ethos is to portray existential friction through his work and utilizes studio practices that mirror this philosophy. McLeod’s mixed media paintings are piecemeal compositions. Each work is a narrative told through a cumbersome but poetic amalgamation of bold stroked shapes. The paintings are aesthetically reactionary stories told through a balancing act of veiled symbols, shapely gestures, and a hi-low take on color coordination. They are energetic and calming. Will’s textiles are designed interpretations of these paintings. These fabric paintings exude a similar energy to the works on paper, but they have additional technical and sculptural qualities to the compositions. McLeod’s fashion design background lends knowledge of precise material utilization. The textile pieces transcend their paper counterparts and become like soft, stained-glass assemblages. Will currently lives in Hudson, New York.
Stacy Petty
Stacy Petty is from Fort Myers, Florida and received his B.F.A. in Sculpture from Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, FL. He won the Dr. Arland Christ- Janer Public Sculpture Award and participated in the New York Studio Residency Program in New York City. His work has been in solo and group exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe. He is currently based in Brooklyn and Hudson, NY. His last solo show was Transmutation and took place earlier this year in Easthampton, MA. He currently has a large sculpture, Wishbone, installed at the Hudson Area Public Library in Hudson, NY. Sculpture Graveyard, making its debut at Window On Hudson, asks questions about the longevity of art. Petty wonders, “Does art die? Have a lifespan? Bleed or decay? Without maintenance decay could happen literally and without discussion or thought, sometimes metaphorically. Our landscape is littered with public art in dire need of maintenance. Life span of art can be eternal if the public finds it in fashion otherwise it meets its fate in the purgatory of museum basements, gallery back rooms or studio storage spaces. I am inspired by the thought of archeological digs in the distant future where another world finds our art and attempts to interpret our society and culture based on its findings. Imagine a valley of ruins, or an elephant graveyard, comprised of our contemporary artwork waiting for another chance at exhibition and reinterpretation. Or a glimpse into another dimension where sculpture becomes a sentient being. I like to think of my work as alive. A free-flowing dance of gestural, twisted, extra-terrestrial forms. Sculptural visitors from another dimension. Something beyond my control where only I act as the conduit for its emergence.”
emilio rojas
Emilio Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with the body in performance, using video, photography, installation, public interventions, and sculpture. He holds an MFA in Performance from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA in Film from Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada. As a queer latinx immigrant with indigenous heritage, it is essential to his practice to engage in the postcolonial ethical imperative to uncover, investigate, and make visible and audible undervalued or disparaged sites of knowledge, narratives, and individuals. He utilizes his body in a political and critical way, as an instrument to unearth removed traumas, embodied forms of decolonization, migration, and poetics of space. His research based practice is heavily influenced by queer and feminist archives, border politics, botanical colonialism, and defaced monuments. Besides his artistic practice, he is also a translator, community activist, yoga teacher, and anti-oppression facilitator with queer, migrant, and refugee youth. His work has been exhibited in exhibitions and festivals in the US, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Austria, England, Greece, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, Columbia, and Australia, as well as institutions like The Art Institute and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Ex-Teresa Arte Actual Museum and Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, The Vancouver Art Gallery, The Surrey Art Gallery, The DePaul Art Museum, and The Botin Foundation. He is represented by Jose de la Fuente in Spain, and Gallleriapiu in Italy.
HALA SHAH
Hala Shah is a performing artist, choreographer, and writer. She performs primarily with Jonah Bokaer Choreography and Ping Chong + Company (PCC). At the moment, her movement and writing are centered on the body as memorial, inherited gesture, and ritual revisited. As a teaching artist for PCC’s Secret Histories: Arts in Education program, she has worked with students in New York City Public Schools to develop identity-driven narratives presented in theatrical performance. With PCC and director Jesca Prudencio, Hala collaborated in the creation of the docu-dance theater work “Calling: a dance with faith,” presented by La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival, which unpacks her experiences as a Muslim dancer. Hala also co-choreographed “NOHING: a docu-dance on sexual assault” with Prudencio / People of Interest through Performance Project at University Settlement. She recently joined playwright Zizi Azah and director Nana Dakin for the production “I Know I Would,” featuring women of Muslim faith or familiy heritage, presented by Strong and Wrong Theater. She has also enjoyed performing in productions of “From The Horse’s Mouth,” honoring writer Deborah Jowitt and Egyptian ballet dancer Magda Saleh. Hala has choreographed works for the Voices Transposed: Refugee Crisis Benefit Concert and LaGuardia Performing Arts Center’s Beyond Sacred program. She holds a BA in Journalism and Middle Eastern studies from NYU, and a MFA in Dance from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. Hala is a freelance writer for Dance Magazine and Dance Teacher magazine.
william singer
William Irving Singer is an artist, painter and studio manager for a prominent contemporary artist, currently living and working in Hudson New York and originally from Detroit Michigan. Singer received his BFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2008. During that time he began focusing on painting while studying abroad at VSUP in Prague, Czech Republic. He received his MFA in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2013. Singer's work explores portraiture and the history of painting through a lens of abstraction with a focused use on found and collaged source materials. He has held group and solo exhibitions in Detroit MI, Denver CO, Savannah GA, New York NY and Los Angeles CA. Singer has had residencies at the Redbull House of Art in Detroit Michigan, The Boulder Creative Collective in Boulder Colorado and most recently at the Bedstuy Residency in Brooklyn New York.
Photo Credit: Kirby Crone.
TSL
(TIME & SPACE LIMITED THEATRE CO., INC.)
Linda Mussmann founded Time & Space Limited Theatre Co., Inc. (TSL) in 1973 in New York City and Claudia Bruce joined as co-director in 1976. In 1991, TSL refused a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that mandated an anti-obscenity pledge. This, combined with rising costs in NYC led TSL to relocate to Hudson, NY. When Claudia and Linda first walked into what would become the new TSL building on Columbia Street (formerly known as Diamond Street in its seedy hey day) in Hudson, they knew it was a dream come true – finding an art space that could be ever evolving.
TSL brings to this community and the entire region, programs of creative energy, that testify to the hopes and dreams of great art and artists past, present, and future. The belief that art is what holds us all together is why TSL does what it does.
Linda Mussmann was born in Gary, Indiana, and grew up on the family farm in Lowell. After high school, she attended Purdue University, earning a BA degree in English and Theater. In 1969, she moved to New York City where, during the day, she worked for the City of NY in the Youth Services agency from 1971 to 1975. In 1973, she founded Time & Space Limited Theatre Co., Inc. (TSL), dedicated to alternative, experimental theater. In 1990, TSL moved to Hudson NY and took up residence in a former bakery warehouse building where TSL’s mission was expanded to include community outreach programs of all kinds including the screening of documentary, independent, and classic films, broadcasts of live simulcasts events, year-round youth programs, gallery exhibitions, and live performance. Linda has been the creative, administrative, and fundraising spark plug throughout the 48 years of TSL’s existence.
Claudia Bruce was born in Mississippi and grew up in a small town in northeast Georgia. She graduated from Mary Baldwin College (Staunton, VA) in1968, attended one year of graduate school at Catholic University to study theater, and migrated to NYC in 1969. She worked, part time, as a waitress and at Majority Report, the women’s newspaper, from 1970 to 1975, as a copy editor, administrator and data entry, and graphic artist. She began working with Linda Mussmann in 1976 and has been the co-director of TSL since then. She is a performing artist as well as graphic designer and administrator and shares the day to day operations at TSL with Mussmann.
Photo Credits L to R: Claudia Bruce © Karen Crumley Keats, Linda Mussmann, © Linda Mussmann.
RICH VOLO
aka
trixie starr
Rich Volo moved to the City of Hudson in 2006 and shortly thereafter, Trixie Starr was “born”. Dance parties, “Trixie’s Whorehouse” started in Hudson in 2008 with DJ Gio, and Trixie decided it was time for a Pride Parade in Hudson in 2010. Since then, Trixie Starr has organized ten Pride weekends, including Parades, Festivals, and dozens of other events for the community over the years. You can buy cookies, from “Trixie’s Oven” at the Hudson Farmers’ Market on Saturdays 9am-1pm.
Photo Credit: JR MAC Photography.
Arnie Zimmerman
Arnie Zimmerman (b. 1954, Poughkeepsie, NY; d. 2021, Hudson, NY) was best known for creating ceramic sculptures that redefined ambition and scale in the field of ceramics. His work, ranging from the monumental to the miniature, from the figurative to the abstract, embodies his fearless exploration of surface, color, and form. For Zimmerman, “clay is the mother of all physical art materials. Humans used it first for utilitarian objects and to express the mysterious connections to the spirit world. They processed it with water, shaped it by hand, dried it in air and made it permanent with fire.” He was a lover of history and the ways in which ceramics can provide a deep connection to humanity as a form of historical record. His lifelong commitment to clay was his continued endeavor to “walk in the truth of the infinite ways humans have used this material.” Zimmerman’s art is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Everson Museum, and Philadelphia Museum among others. In 2021, his work appeared in the Metropolitan Museum exhibition, "Shapes From Out of Nowhere." He received fellowships and awards from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and New York Foundation for the Arts. He was an invited artist at residencies and art in industry programs in Germany, Korea, Japan, Portugal as well as in the U.S.
Osun Zotique
Osun Zotique (“Ocean Zoh-TEAK," [they/them/theirs]) is a somatic artist, music director and PhD candidate: native to Atlanta, a Hudsonite of 7 years, and a New Yorker since age 18. Professionally, they are a NYS certified educator, special adviser to the City school district, Executive Director of LGBTQIA+ nonprofit OutHudson, and recently our nation's first transgender non-binary individual to stand for federal elected office. As co-chair of the 2022 Hot Topics, Osun looks forward to sharing their passion for highlighting creativity (in concert with Hudson Eye's mission to do the same), and also: with special reverence for the historic LGBTQIA+ entrepreneurship and general American ingenuity which have been a backbone of the Hudson River Valley School region's creative economy: past, present and future.
Photo Credit: Bobby Miller.