Chronogram February 2023

Hey New York! FOSSIL FUELS PROHIBITED BY 2030!

You heard right NY! Beginning in 2030 the above headline will be a reality! In December 2022 the Climate Action Council came up with a plan for getting New York off of fossil fuels. They recommended that NYS adopt codes prohibiting propane, gas and oil equipment from being installed in new homes BEGINNING IN 2024 and by 2030 adopting zero emission standards by prohibiting the replacement of this equipment in existing homes. This council recommends replacing such systems with heat pumps.

february

DEPARTMENTS

6 On the Cover

Sunset One, by Erik Daniel White, is an oil painting, not a photograph of a Play-Doh diorama.

10 Esteemed Reader

Jason Stern reflects on the idea that eating is participation in a cosmic ecosystem of life.

11 Editor’s Note

February is almost as moody as Brian K. Mahoney.

FOOD & DRINK

12 Piaule: The New Catskills Cuisine

Michelin-starred chef Ryan Tate brings subtle sophistication and high-wattage flavors to the restaurant at the Piaule resort in Catskill.

16 Sips & Bites

Recent restaurant openings across the region include Upper Depot Brewing Co. in Hudson, Post Road Brew House at the CIA, Gnome Bistro in East Chatham, The Notch in Tannersville, and Chleo in Kingston.

HOME

18 Reservoir of Words

In West Hurley, writer Lissa Kiernan has crafted a home and refuge for other creatives at the Poetry Barn.

WEDDINGS

28 Unconventional Venues

Not every couple wants to get married in a church or catering hall. Some other options for the adventurous!

HIGH SOCIETY

32 The Healing Mushroom

New York lawmakers are pursuing progressive legislation to legalize psychedelics in 2023.

HEALTH & WELLNESS

35 Beating the Winter Blues

Tips from local doctors, therapists, and trainers on surviving and thriving during the dark and cold months.

COMMUNITY PAGES

38 Poughkeepsie:

The Momentum of Change

The Queen City is humming with activity in a way it hasn’t in over 50 years.

47 Oral History: Poughkeepsie Q&A

A new project documents residents in their own words.

48 Pop-Up Portraits by David McIntyre

The good citizens of Poughkeepsie represent their city.

Natalie Hillman, photographed at the Trolley Barn in Poughkeepsie on January 14, part of our pop-up portrait shoot.

Photo by David McIntyre COMMUNITY PAGES, PAGE 38

ARTS

54 Music

Dan Epstein reviews Bellevue by the Bobby Lees. Mike Cobb reviews Today! by David Greenburger & the Waldameer Players. Peter Aaron reviews Transmissions from the Outer Sun by Century Plants. Plus listening recommendations from author, musician, and podcaster Tony Fletcher.

55 Books

Seth Rogovoy reviews Big Swiss by Jen Beagin. Plus short reviews of Summer Lightning by Roberta Silman; Reclaiming the Sacred: Healing Our Relationships with Ourselves and the World by Jeff Golden; The Gods of Clown Alley: A Memoir by Tara O’Grady; Light Skin Gone to Waste: Stories by Toni Ann Johnson; and Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance by Joseph Luzzi.

56 Poetry

Poems by Ryan Balas, A. Bass, Paige Barr, Stampie Dear, Joy Mendez, Leonard Nalencz, chelsea rae, Mykyta Ryzhykh, Claire Scott, J. R. Solonche, Meg Tohill, and Sarah Wyman. Edited by Phillip X Levine.

february 2 23

GUIDE

58 “Love from Vicki Island,” an exhibit of sculptures by Daniel Giordano, opens this month at Mass MoCA.

60 The Loeb Art Center at Vassar College explores its collection with the exhibit “What Now (Or Not Yet).”

63 The 2023 Hudson Hall Jazz Fest features Meshell Ndegeocello, Endea Owens, and Marquis Hill.

64 Live music this month: Joe Louis Walker at the Falcon, Ida at Levon Helm Studios, and Facs at Tubby’s in Kingston

66 Museum and gallery shows from across the region

HOROSCOPES

68 Electric Currents and Puddles of Pure Love Astrologer Cory Nakasue reveals that February is full of disruptions and rebellions. Plus horoscopes.

PARTING SHOT

72 Come Sail Away

Adam T. Deen’s photos of ice boats on the Hudson River are being exhibited at the Stewart House in Athens.

Carson Monahan’s Meditation with Orange from his solo exhibition “Habitual Moments” at Monument Gallery in Kingston.

GALLERIES & MUSEUMS, PAGE 66

Sunset One

Based outside of Millbrook, Erik Daniel White paints figures, symbols, objects, and scenes modeled with never-dry clay. The playful, innocent nature of his work disarms viewers while White presents cultural critiques and meditations on America’s attitudes toward the environment, food consumption, peace, liberty, tax policies, religion, and an obsession with competition.

Sunset One features three dinosaurs and a smoldering volcano—the image is an unsubtle nod to the creatures’ inevitable destruction. The painting was made in concert with Sunset Two, which depicts an automobile, plane, and a factory with spewing smoke. “They formally relate together as a way for me to show the dark irony that the leftover carbon from one extinction is being released into the Earth’s atmosphere and being used to create cities and industries that are ultimately causing a new mass extinction,” White says.

White began as an environmental studies major at Portland State University but switched his studies to art while retaining a focus on the philosophical and political aspects of

environmental change. “What I learned during those years still has a great influence over me and occasionally comes out in what I paint,” he says.

He first started making paintings from clay models in 2012, initially working from found photographs. Wanting to gain more control over his entire process and make something completely his own, he began using plasticine, the same clay that Claymation artists use, and moved away from found imagery.

“I use plasticine because it never dries, it’s easy to form, and it can be recycled. I liked the contrast of making a very accurate rendering of clay that is less refined and raw. It wasn’t until graduate school at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln that the clay began to look like identifiable objects, scenes, and symbols,” White says.

At the heart of his work is a playful seriousness that’s reminiscent of Play-Doh and Claymation movies. “You don’t need to know any deeper meaning to enjoy the painting,” White says. “At the same time, many of the paintings have a deeper, sometimes sadder or more critical intent. The dents and the imperfect surfaces take on a

new layer of meaning. My aim is to comment on these things without being rude, didactic, or polarizing.”

He begins with many loose drawings followed by cardboard models, the best of which he makes into clay models. His paintings are built up with many layers of gesso, which he spends many hours sanding until smooth.

White’s work will be part of the group show “Frozen Warnings: A Salon for the Chilly Months” through March 5 at Bill Arning Exhibitions in Kinderhook. Other artists in the show include Susan Wides, Dan Devine, Shirley Irons, and Carter Hodgkin. White and Arning met in Lincoln, Nebraska, after grad school and have stayed in touch since. During the pandemic, both relocated to the Hudson Valley. Arning asked White to be a part of “Frozen Warnings.” “I am very grateful to be included in the show amongst extremely talented artists who live in the Hudson Valley. Their intelligence and skill is humbling. I love it here,” he says.

Portfolio: Erikdwhite.com

—Mike

Cobb

ERIK DANIEL WHITE oil on linen, 2019

EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Brian K. Mahoney brian.mahoney@chronogram.com

CREATIVE DIRECTOR David C. Perry david.perry@chronogram.com

DIGITAL EDITOR Marie Doyon marie.doyon@chronogram.com

ARTS EDITOR Peter Aaron music@chronogram.com

HOME EDITOR Mary Angeles Armstrong home@chronogram.com

POETRY EDITOR Phillip X Levine poetry@chronogram.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Anne Pyburn Craig apcraig@chronogram.com

contributors

Jane Anderson, Winona Barton-Ballentine, Mike Cobb, Dan Epstein, Noah Eckstein, Jeffrey Kosmacher, Jamie Larson, David McIntyre, Cory Nakasue, Seth Rogovoy, Sparrow, Carl Van Brunt

PUBLISHING

FOUNDERS Jason Stern, Amara Projansky

PUBLISHER & CEO Amara Projansky amara.projansky@chronogram.com

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ad operations

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by Jason Stern

From food all things are born, by food they live, towards food they move, into food they return.

Taittireeya-Upanishad, Book III

Leading up to New Year’s, I stopped eating as I was down with the flu. I lay on my back for two days, drinking chicken broth, herbal tisane, and lots of water. Looking at any kind of glowing screen was painful so I spent most of the time staring at the ceiling, occasionally trying to read from a book. However uncomfortable, the illness was a delicious conclusion to the year, replete with a feeling of gratitude to my body for its intelligence to undergo a timely psychophysical reset.

On New Year’s Eve I was feeling a lot better and took the opportunity to drop in to a festive gathering of friends. At first my senses were overwhelmed by the people, the table laden with dishes, the lights brighter than I could tolerate during my retreat with the grippe. I felt like a serpent who had just shed his skin, but gradually I relaxed into the warmth of the atmosphere, soothed by the melodic sound of people talking in different corners of the house.

The ritual of the celebration required that I eat something and I chose a black olive. In my slow, delicate state I first held the glistening, oil-cured fruit between my fingers admiring its shape. I put the slick black olive in my mouth and felt its wrinkled surface, tasted the pungent oil, letting the ineffable scent waft through the back of my throat into my nose.

As I began to chew and the olive became pulp, the image of an olive tree arose in my mind. It was an ancient tree with a strong trunk, and green and black fruit nestled within a thick canopy of delicate leaves. The tree shimmered with life and as I chewed I made a connection—I was eating something living. I was eating a life.

Separating the pit from the meat of the olive with my tongue, the implication of life deepened. I was chewing a being whose life might span hundreds or thousands of years. I saw that we are always eating something that is alive, and that eating is participation in a cosmic ecosystem of life. Everything that lives, eats. Everything that lives is eating life and being eaten by life in an eternal process—life is continuously transforming life into life.

I chewed slowly, noticing the olive meat mix with saliva, and swallowed, following it down my throat, and then lost sensation in my esophagus but had a general awareness of the olive arriving in my stomach.

After several days of not eating, the single olive was deeply satisfying and I knew I didn’t need any more food. So I sat quietly, talking to a friend about the cuisine of the ancient Egyptians. As I spoke and listened, I noticed that I was breathing. The conversation continued but another realization blossomed in connection with a Hermetic teaching I read about somewhere.

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Breathing is eating. Air is food in a gaseous state. With every breath, I am eating and being nourished. All of us in the room were breathing and partaking of the same air. We were breathing one another’s exhalations, continuously taking nourishment from the same volume of air that extends everywhere.

Then the question arose, is there an analogue to the food of air, as air is to food? I looked into the eyes of the person I was talking to and I saw the rich brown of her irises, the blackness of her pupils, the whiteness within her lids, and I realized this was the third food, a food in electronic state, the food of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches directly nourishing my nervous system with an input of sensory impressions.

Dumbfounded for a moment at the enormity of the realization I lost my train of thought and the conversation trailed off. “What’s wrong? Are you feeling OK?” my companion asked.

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I didn’t know how to describe what I was seeing. This body is a mysterious instrument of transformation. It takes in these three foods—solid, gaseous, and electronic—like notes in three octaves of vibration combining to transform food into all the energies of our body and inner life. The olive I just ate is transformed not only into vitality but also into the thoughts I am now thinking, and the awareness of the thoughts.

Not just me, but every living thing is transforming food. All life it seems is but a part of a larger cosmic body transforming food in precisely the same way.

“I’m ok,” I said. “But I need to go.” I excused myself to return home and cross the threshold of the new year with a moment of private silence in the company of all life. And with an intention to ponder, observe, and come to a deeper understanding of food.

“AT

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PHOTOGRAPHY

MAGGIE MARGUERITE STUDIO

“When it comes to customer service, the sky is the limit.”

Midwinter is a definite mood. You look up at the night sky and there are hairline fissures between dense cirrus clouds that look like cracks in the ice of a pond. (Not like in summer when those cumulus puffballs go sailing by in fluffy flotillas. Not like that at all.) Ice cracking beneath you, splintering out in all directions from beneath you, the center of the cracking. The shore seems so far very from where you are.

On the early morning radio, the sports report—were there always this many injuries?— followed by the weather. “Pockets of freezing rain” are expected. You check your pockets. Pockets full of cough drops, more like. You’ve been sick, but everyone’s been sick. Suck it up, buttercup. Remember that pain is inevitable; suffering is optional. Rehearsing your sorrows isn’t helping.

Is it really only February?

Don’t Be SAD

Perhaps what you need is a strategy for weathering the winter doldrums. This magazine is itself a roadmap of sorts for navigating your way through the month, but I’ll point you in two specific directions. Anne Pyburn Craig asks local doctors, therapists, and fitness experts for tips on surviving this cold and punishing season in “Beating the Winter Blues” (Health & Wellness, page 35).

The advice may be along expected lines, but selfawareness is key. Get ahead of the curve of your own symptoms and treat yourself before a doctor needs to attend to you.

One treatment option for depression that might soon be available in New York is psychedelic therapy. This year, two different bills are

before the legislature that seek to enable training and treatment with psychedelics. If you don’t think it can happen here, know that Oregon and Colorado has already legalized psilocybin and psilocin, the psychedelic compounds in magic mushrooms. These states were ahead of New York on cannabis legalization—are psychedelics next? Noah Eckstein reports on the movement to decriminalize and legalize in “The Healing Mushroom” (High Society, page 32).

Hudson Can Take It

This month, Seth Rogovoy reviews Jen Beagin’s new novel, Big Swiss, a hilarious romp in and around everyone’s favorite hipster punching bag of a town, Hudson (Books, page 55). I’ll leave the book review to Seth, but I want to express appreciation to Beagin for adding to the growing compendium of delightfully cracked descriptions of the city. A couple I have heard recently: “Mayberry with an edge” and “a college town—without a college—for old people.” This one, from Big Swiss, sounds like a rejected slogan from a tourism campaign targeting elderly swingers: “Hudson is where the horny go to die.” I encourage you to read Beagin’s comic tour de force, a fictional companion that belongs on the shelf next to another recent novel that dissects the city—albeit in a much darker vein, Sam Miller’s The Blade Between.

Department of Corrections

Last month, in a feature on Great Barrington, “Mind(ing) the Gap,” we erroneously reported that Byzantium, a four-decades-old clothing

by Brian K. Mahoney

Hairline Fissures

boutique on Railroad Avenue, was closing due to the rise of online sales. While Byzantium did close on January 31, the store’s owner, Annie Minifie, reached out to explain why she was shutting her business. Byzantium may be gone, but Minifie’s indomitable spirit feels like the beating heart of small business entrepreneurship itself. I’m sharing what she wrote as it transcends the narrow boundaries of shopkeeping and offers a wise and hard-won perspective on the power of perseverance and the necessity of cherishing our shared humanity.

Byzantium has weathered five recessions, the opening of the Berkshire Mall, the opening of the Lee Outlets, internet competition, COVID, and the supply chain crisis. It still is a successful business after 43 years. I want fellow retailers of the newer generations to know that with hard work, focus, and a positive outlook, it is more than possible to surmount difficulties and thrive. I chose to retire to pursue my art work, volunteer, and spend time with my family.

I do not want fellow merchants to think that they cannot compete with online sales. They indeed can. People want customer service. People want to see and feel things. People want to experience shopping. In the process of storefront shopping, we experience other people. Interacting with humans rather than plastic and metal certainly has its upside. Interaction is crucial in maintaining our humanity.

—Annie Minifie

I’ve never set foot in Byzantium, but I miss it already.

Photo by David McIntyre

The New Catskills Cuisine

By Brian K. Mahoney Photos by Sean Davidson

When you’re served an amuse-bouche shortly after being seated, you know you’re in fine dining territory. This small dish, offered as a gift from the kitchen, sets the tone and expectations for the experience to come, announcing that you’re not in Kansas anymore. (Apologies to the Restaurant Association of Topeka.)

The evening I ate at Piaule in early December, our server brought out tempura-battered-andfried delicata squash, the two rings placed seemingly haphazardly atop a puddle of maple cream in an irregularly glazed ceramic bowl. The ethereal batter was grounded by the earthiness of the squash; the cream finish a sweet, round note—this is the flavor profile all mediocre sushi joint vegetable tempura wants to be when it grows up. It’s a heavy lift to make food that tastes this good look this effortless. Welcome to Piaule. It’s a long, winding drive through the woods to get to the restaurant, which is located on the grounds of the Piaule hotel, a few miles

from downtown Catskill. There are two dozen freestanding modernist cabins tucked into a gravel clearing amidst the trees on the property. Travel + Leisure named Piaule as one of the best new hotels in the world in 2022. Cabins start at $450 per night.

Piaule is part of a trend of boutique Catskill hotels featuring ambitious food programs, a whole subgenre of restaurants tucked into lodges, inns, and mountain houses. A partial list includes Deer Mountain Inn, Prospect at Scribner’s, Foxfire Mountain House, the Public House at Urban Cowboy Lodge, the Clubhouse at Shandaken Inn, and Trotwood at Glen Falls House. Set to open later this year: restaurants at the recently debuted Hotel Lillien and sooncoming Eastwind Oliverea Valley. It’s a boom time for fine dining in rustic settings.

The Piaule restaurant is located in the main building, a low-slung edifice of cast concrete and unfinished oak that’s minimalist but not aggressively so. There’s a spa and pool downstairs.

The top floor is a large open room with a reception desk, lobby at one end and dining area/ semi-open kitchen at the other, and bisected by a two-sided fireplace. (This is what I imagine most of Stockholm looks like, or how a Swede would design the waiting room to the afterlife.) The entire western wall is windows with uninterrupted views on the Catskills. Through the glass is a sprawling stone deck.

Michelin Pedigree

The executive chef at Piaule is Ryan Tate, formerly of Crimson Sparrow, Shale Hill Hospitality (Millstream Tavern, the Old Dutch), and Deer Mountain Inn. Before moving upstate, he worked in and opened some notable kitchens in Manhattan. Here’s how Alexandra Marvar summed up Tate’s CV in a profile of his time at Deer Mountain Inn in 2018: “When Tate helped open Tribeca’s Le Restaurant, his food— artful, adventurous, and surprising dishes offered exclusively as a five-course $100 tasting menu—

Opposite:

earned him a star from Michelin (and several from other critics). Before that, he had been chef de cuisine at Soho’s Savoy. After Le Restaurant closed, the West Village’s Blenheim welcomed him with open arms as executive chef. Blenheim got a nod from Michelin as well—inclusion in the Michelin Guide—the review stating: ‘When a restaurant sources ingredients from its own farm in the Catskills, it clearly takes its farm-totable ethos to heart.’ But, as Tate’s upstate move goes to show, when it comes to farm-to-table, you can always up the ante.”

At Deer Mountain Inn, Tate was serving a sevencourse tasting menu that was scrupulously local, with maple syrup from trees on the property and foraged moss and clover. At Piaule, the menu is still mostly locally sourced—about 70 percent, according to Tate— but not in a doctrinaire way.

“Locavorism as a religion is hard,” says Tate. “I want to find a local farmer who grows the best carrots and buy them until the farmer runs out of carrots. But then what are you gonna do? Not everybody has a neighbor who grows carrots or raises chickens.” Piaule’s network

of local vendors includes Veritas Farms, Black Horse Farm, and Farms 2 Tables

When asked who the restaurant was designed for, Tate admits it was created with hotel guests in mind—it’s a hotel restaurant after all; but don’t let that dissuade you, it’s open to the public. “Piaule is designed to be an immersive experience,” Tate says. “You’re going to this place, you don’t know where it is. You’re on an adventure just driving down the road. You have to surrender to the experience. The element of surprise is really important in hospitality.”

Dinner at Piaule consists of a three-course, prix-fixe menu for $95 per person. (There is a supplemental caviar menu with one-ounce portions ranging from $40 to $180.) The limited menu—there are four choices for the starter, main, and dessert courses—changes every six to eight weeks depending upon the season, availability of ingredients, and the whim of Tate and his chef de cuisine, Colin Crompton, who oversees dayto-day operations in the kitchen.

After the amuse-bouche, we ordered drinks. My dining companion had a glass of Cava, a perfectly

The main building at Piaule includes the hotel lobby and restaurant on the top floor and pool and spa below.

Some of what’s being served at Piaule, clockwise from top: Vintner’s Specter (a riff on a New York sour using red wine and wild blueberry syrup); sea urchin in miso broth; asparagus carpaccio with mustard seed; strawberry consomme, toasted meringue, preserved green strawberries and rhubarb curd; roasted duck breast with beets.

serviceable Mestres 1312 Reserva Brut ($15). I ordered one of the signature cocktails, Sap & Smoke ($18), an adventurous take on the Old Fashioned. I’ve had whiskey drinks with bacon in them before—there’s a piece of maple-candied bacon in this one as well—but never had I been served a booze that had been mixed with bacon fat. Sounds gross, tastes divine. The bartender, Khristoph Marczinkowski, who oversees the cocktail program, explained the process to me: A bunch of bacon fat is dumped into a vat of rye and left to steep overnight in the freezer. The next day the fat is scooped off and you’re left with delicious, artisanal, bacon-scented rye.

For the first course, I had beef tartare, which was served with horseradish gelee and pomme galette. A brief aside on the pomme galette: These two Tater Tot-sized, fried potato balls— with tiny stacked layers of potato and fat dusted with chunks of salt—are worth the trip to Piaule alone. The tartare itself was about as subtle as raw beef topped with onions can be while not drawing too much attention to itself.

“The preparations are complex, but I never want it to appear that way,” says Tate about his approach at Piaule, which combines French technique with Japanese and Korean ingredients. “Math and cooking are both magic to me; you shouldn’t have to show your work. You should be able to enjoy something without it feeling contrived or garish.”

My dining companion had the chicken consomme, which was served delightfully as a pour-over: Our waiter brought a bowl with the matsutake mushroom, caramelized leek, pine, lemon, and chive, and then doused it in broth needles. Suffice to say that the simplicity of

consomme has always been lost on me. It tasted fine to me, my dining companion quite liked it. For mains, I ordered the suckling pig and my companion got the roasted duck breast. The pig was a pork-three-ways with a piece of belly, loin, and chop served with mustard greens that were the best version of creamed spinach—take that, Peter Luger. Both the pork and duck were succulent and the sauces—a rich brown butter foie gras in the case of the duck—were restrained. For dessert, I ordered the cheese plate. It was fine. I’m not knocking the River’s Edge Maple Smoked Chevre—a delightful goat cheese, especially when paired with roasted beets and drizzled with cherry gastrique—but don’t make this mistake yourself. Get the Burnt Wood Ice Cream, which my dining companion ordered. The dish consists of vanilla ice cream—into which a piece of burning wood has been thrust—next to marshmallow fluff on top of a cake of chocolate ganache with feuilletine (crisp crepe batter crumbs) sprinkled over the top. You guessed it: The fanciest s’more ever made in the Catskills, and likely the most delicious.

There were lots of dishes we didn’t get to try, like the kanpachi crudo and the cauliflower chawanmushi (a Japanese steamed custard; add a gram of black truffle for $30) for starters; ricotta gnudi with chanterelles and herb-basted wild monkfish for mains; and blueberry shortcake and sticky toffee pudding for dessert.

The wine list is small but well curated, featuring a few local standouts like Milea Estate Vineyard’s 2021 rose and Eminence Road’s Lamb’s Quarters 2020 Chardonnay along with some interesting orange and pet nat selections (Tate is a self-proclaimed wine

autodidact). Bottles range in price from $46 to $300, with most under $80. The beer list is regionally focused, offering cans from the likes of Crossroads, Arrowood, Subversive, and Hudson Valley Brewery ($8-$9).

The bill, for two, with a few drinks, was over $300 with tip. Which raises the question: Is Piaule worth it? A common lament I hear (and say) is that dining out in the Hudson Valley is more expensive than ever. Burgers are $25. Bottles of wine can’t be had for less than $50. Even a plate of pasta at a neighborhood “family” restaurant might be $30. Talk to a restaurateur and they’ll tell you why: Their basic inputs—food and labor—have gone up in price as well. But the restaurant at Piaule is a breed apart, rarified air. If you’re paying $500 a night for a cabin, perhaps $300 for dinner isn’t a big deal. Value is relative. And some might say that the view of the Catskills from the deck is priceless.

The food at Piaule is painstakingly crafted, inventive but not showy, and tasty. Comfort food at the edge of its comfort zone. There’s a damn good reason Tate is a Michelin-starred chef. If I could afford to eat there more, I would. It’s definitely a birthdays-and-anniversaries joint for most of us locals. And for the record, my birthday is November 5, in case anyone wants to join me at Piaule.

From left: The entire western wall is of the dining room is windows with uninterrupted views of the Catskills; the view of the mountains from the deck.

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sips & bites

Upper Depot Brewing Co.

708 State St #1, Hudson

For being the proverbial it-town of the Hudson Valley, Hudson has lagged in the region’s craft brewery trend. But at the end of 2022, the city got its second brewery when Upper Depot opened in a historic circa-1871 train station. Raised in nearby Stuyvesant Falls, friends and co-owners Montgomery Bopp and Aaron Maas pitched the building’s owners on the brewery concept back in 2019. It’s been a long road with plenty of bumps, but on December 28 the brewery opened its doors with eight freshly brewed beers on tap inside the industrial-chic space. Skipping the headache of an onsite kitchen, the team has opted to tap into the local circuit of food truck operators, with Whale Belly as a regular fixture.

Upperdepot.com

The Gnome Bistro

1267 Route 295, East Chatham

The Cottage on Route 295 in East Chatham was a beloved stop for locals and tourists. After it closed, several iterations followed but none had the requisite staying power. Now, as The Gnome Bistro, run by accomplished chef and Chatham local Zak Russell, the restaurant offers a varied assortment of comfort food with all-day breakfast items like Gnomecakes, the Gnomelet, and the Hangry Gnome. But fear not: The gnome theme doesn’t get in the way of the creative menu items and the well-stocked bar.

Thegnomebistro.com

Post Road Brewhouse at the CIA

946 Campus Drive, Hyde Park

The Culinary Institute of America revives its beloved pop-up the Post Road Brew House this winter for a casual gastropub experience run by students. Located inside the General Foods Nutrition Center on campus, Post Road serves up CIA-made and local beers on tap, plus Hudson Valley wine and spirits. The menu is split into large and small plates. Start with the tuna Nicoise salad ($16) or perhaps the smoked brisket poutine ($15). For mains, the ramen dish fuses cuisines with a pozole broth, braised pork belly, a six-minute egg, scallions, and cilantro ($20). Beet bourguignon offers a vegetarian twist on the Julia Child classic ($18). And port-braised ribs offer wintery heartiness served over local polenta with bacon lardons, pearl onions, mushrooms, and crispy onions ($28).

Ciarestaurantgroup.com

Chleo

288 Fair Street, Kingston

After long delays, the much-anticipated Uptown Kingston wine bar Chleo is finally open at the corner of John and Fair streets. The renovated spot (formerly Ecce Terra) sports an elegant, neutral color palette and serves up locally sourced eats. For a teaser, order grilled bread or seed crackers and carrot ‘nduja spread, made with a mix of lacto-fermented and slow-cooked carrots, Calabrian chilis, and roasted garlic ($8). Dishes like the charred cabbage with anchoiade and kraut krispies ($12) and the wild mushrooms with porter vinaigrette, egg yolk, and breadcrumbs ($17) offer an umami-packed vegetarian option. If you want meat, though, go for the grilled short rib with black trumpet duxelle and jus ($32). The natural-leaning wine list ranges from an Oregon Syrah to a Catalonian Malvasia with some 30 selections, almost half of which are available by the glass ($11-16).

Chleovin.com

The Notch

55 Allen Lane, Tannersville

Tannersville’s apres-ski game just got kicked up a notch with the new Asian street food concept from the owners of nearby restaurant Tabla. The Notch, which opened in early December in the Colonial Country Club, serves up a short list of drool-worthy dishes like pork belly bao buns ($15), dan dan noodles ($17), and fried chicken with spicy gochujang or soy ginger sauce ($16). A $12 classic Aviation and the Kundalini, with rye, yuzu, ginger, and basil offer a sampling of what the bar can do. Munch some fried dumplings and sip on a drink while you take in the epic mountain view at sunset. Inside, a foosball table entertains while the outdoor ice rink offers fun for all ages.

—Marie Doyon

Organic

roasted in the heart of the Hudson Valley

Opened in 2017 on Lissa Kiernan and Chris Abramides’s four-acre property, the Poetry Barn grew out of Kiernan’s popular poetry website and is open to the public. The barn also offers workshops, events, and ample space for members to work on projects. Currently, the space is showcasing a collection of photos by Dennis Kiernan, Lissa’s father, which are featured on either side of the windows.

Reservoir of Words

Lissa Kiernan’s Poetry Barn in West Hurley

By Mary Angeles Armstrong

Photos by Winona Barton-Ballentine

Across from the Ashokan Reservoir Spillway where the watershed releases a deluge each spring, Lissa Kiernan and Chris Abramides have created a home dedicated to their love of poetry. Surrounded by Catskill woodlands, the fouracre property is a mixed-use mashup between the couple’s personal space and their shared passion project: the Poetry Barn, a poetry library open to the public for browsing and workshops. “Both the house and the barn have a very colorful history,” explains Kiernan, who first stumbled onto the property in 2015 when searching for a place to physically manifest her online poetry community. “Really, we bought a barn with a house attached to it, and the amazing panoramic views don’t hurt.”

Abramides’s and Kiernan’s contemporary cottage features a light soaked second floor living space with views to the neighboring mountain ranges. The two have decorated the space in a mix of styles. “It’s a work in progress, but the room is mid-modern leaning by design,” says Kiernan, here shown sitting on the couch. Along with antiques they’d collected over the years, the couple added pieces sourced from the former Scandinavian Grace on Route 28, Vintage Modern in Woodstock, and Lost & Found in Accord. On the wall behind the couch, artist Renee Zhang’s Ephemeral Layers was inspired by one of Kiernan’s poems. In the kitchen, Abramides looks through a window at the Catskills.

Like a near-rhyming couplet, the couple’s lightsoaked contemporary home is paired with a colorful barn housing Kiernan’s extensive poetry collection, an upstairs studio, and a space for workshops. The surrounding grounds include writing and reading areas for guests, a fire pit, and an abundance of natural inspiration. “It ’s an enchanted forest,” says Kiernan. “I’ve heard it said that places that are on the edges of things, that straddle distinct ecosystems or habitats, are the most varied in terms of biodiversity, and that certainly feels true. After it rains, the trees literally glow.”

Wild, Precious Life

Kiernan grew up in the Berkshires, where she developed her love of poetry early in life. After high school, she moved to New York City to attend the New School and graduated in 1998 with a degree in media arts right as the internet was exploding. That led to a career working for various dot-coms, but she never forgot her early love of words. “Poetry was always at the back of my mind,” she explains. “But it was definitely on the back burner for a long time.” When her father was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2003 and then died within four months, she began to reevaluate her priorities. It occurred to her that her love of poetry was a way to contain her grief. “I think I was seeking an outlet for all that emotion,” she says. “And because it happened so quickly it made me think about the time I had left.”

Kiernan enrolled in the Stonecoast MFA program in creative writing at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. Her time there led to her cross-genre prose work Glass Needles & Goose Quills, which explores the connection between her father ’s death and environmental destruction. After graduating in 2011, Kiernan decided to put her two degrees together— combining her technical skills and website-

building experience with her writing abilities, and began offering online poetry workshops. After that, “It really just caught on,” she explains of the online venture that started as a private invitational space where people could contribute works and attended online workshops. “People formed connections and then they began to ask if we could meet in person,” she says. The timing coincided with Abramides’s retirement and her growing desire to leave Brooklyn. They knew the Hudson Valley would be the ideal place to try out their poetic experiment.

Cottage Industry

Staying with friends, they began scouring the area for a property where they could manifest their particular vision of a live-work space. “ The main requirement was that the property have a barn that could be converted into a poetry center, or at least had land to build on,” Kiernan says. She set up an Indiegogo campaign to help fund the project and focused her attentions on Dutchess County, which appealed both because of its pastoral landscape and its proximity to the rail line. However, there were no properties that fit their vision. Then, one weekend, inspiration struck.

The open barn doors offer views to the surrounding woods and glimpses of the Ashokan Spillway. Originally constructed by Khem Caigan, the barn once served as the Harry Everett Smith Memorial Library. The oak tree installation on the front-facing wall was created by artist AnneLouise Burns and features names of project donors. Jena Argenta of Brush & Reed created the handmade hanging lighting.

Top: The barn’s second floor includes a large open space. This year, Kiernan is offering the workspace, which includes a bed, for a week-long residency through the Aim Higher Foundation

Bottom: The barn also includes a small retail nook with a selection of poetry books for sale as well as journals, pens, inks, and teas. “A local ceramic artist, Bobby Barry of Lucky Cat Studio, is in the process of creating custom whiskey flasks and I’d like to procure other wares by local artists,” says Kiernan.

Kiernan’s clawfoot tub is one of her favorite features of the main house. The space looks out over the backyard—once part of the Su Casa nudist and swingers resort. “A woman in my Brooklyn poetry group had been a guest there,” says Kiernan. “She blushed when she told me and made me swear not to tell her daughter.”

“I didn’t have any appointments in Dutchess, so I did a Zillow search of the area around the reservoir, which we’d just discovered by driving around,” Kiernan recalls. “I stumbled across a listing that included a photo of a barn with its doors partially open. I could see bright yellow bookshelves inside and just knew it would be the future Poetry Barn.”

They ’d been planning to build something similar from scratch, but it seemed what they were imagining was already built. Kiernan and Abramides went to see the property and realized they ’d found exactly what they ’d envisioned. “ When I walked in I could not believe how perfect it was, how much love had already been poured into it. And from the house, the view, particularly of High Point mountain, was just breathtaking.”

Kiernan soon learned the property ’s colorful history. Built in 1979, the house was the residence of the operators of Su Casa. “It was a summer resort reported to be a swingers and nudist hotspot in the `70s and `80s,” Kiernan explains. The barn was actually built in 2007 by Khem and Emily Caigan to serve as another kind of library. “Mr. Caigan worked as assistant to Harry Everett Smith, an important figure in the Beat scene,” says Kiernan. “ The barn then operated as the Harry Everett Smith Memorial

Library and included hundreds of books on the occult, alchemy, Kabbalah, astrology, and tarot.” After buying the house, the barn remained off limits for a few months while the rare book collection was inventoried and then transported to a Masonic temple in Maine.

Interior Design Villanelle

Meanwhile, Kiernan and Abramides focused on turning the 1,650-square-foot home into their new nest. “ When we moved in, the vibe was very boho, with the unfinished ceiling beams and a slap-dash, partially stuccoed brick wall behind the wood stove,” she says. The couple left the ceiling beams unfinished but repainted the open-concept interior to give the space a more cohesive and light-washed ambiance. With windows in all four directions, the second-floor living space takes full advantage of its views. “ We enjoy 180-degree views of the Shawangunks and Catskills, but especially the Burroughs Range, including Slide Mountain,” says Kiernan. Adjacent to the main living space, two decks allow the couple the chance to enjoy the views in the warmer months. They worked with Ben Bowers of Ben Bowers Construction in Saugerties to replace the rotting wood with Trex decking. The living space also includes the primary bedroom and a bath with a clawfoot tub.

Two additional bedrooms and a bath are outfitted for guests to use on the first floor, which also houses Abramides’s office.

Throughout the home’s interior, Kiernan’s poetic decorating style is on full display. “Color is very important to me,” she explains. “I like to connect disparate styles by color, shape, texture, and repetition. I enjoy similar objects in different contexts.” A painting in the entrance features Kiernan’s childhood home in the Berkshires, but is also remarkably similar to the view right outside the front door. An antique Japanese rice paper wallet and a piece of McCoy pottery on display in the living room are both also depicted in a painting by artist Nancy Hagin. In the couple’s bedroom, a collection of landscape paintings echo the mountain view through the bedroom window. A long, first-floor hallway features Abramides’s collection of Wallace Nutting and Nutting-like hand-tinted art photographs.

When the couple were able to take possession of the barn, they wanted to stay true to its original design, but add more poetry-friendly updates. They kept the barn’s yellow, red, black, and white painted walls, which were chosen by Caigan to

represent both the four humors and the four seasons. “He ground the colors for them himself and sourced the ceiling’s remarkable blue pigment from Germany,” says Kiernan. The couple did add windows to the space as well as a large rolling ladder to make the extensive poetry collection more accessible. Kiernan also commissioned the artist AnneLouise Burns to create an oak tree sculptural installation with the names of donors who helped make the space possible. Since its opening in 2017, the Poetry Barn has steadily gained a loyal following, even despite the pandemic. “ My main hope is that people will continue to discover the Poetry Barn and take advantage of its library,” says Kiernan, who is especially excited to hear when people make pilgrimages to the space. As well as her regular members, she and her library have connected would-be poets, engaged couples, and even the brokenhearted with the exact right words, arranged in the exact way they need at the time. “ I love being able to do that—pair poems with people,” says Kiernan. “ There is something life-changing about finding that poem that speaks to you at the exact time you need to read or hear it.”

The view of the house and barn from the driveway entrance. Working with Bill Stack of Mountain Garden Landscaping in Woodstock, the couple installed a bluestone patio connecting the two buildings as well as new bluestone steps. Stack also replaced the stone retaining walls throughout the property. Karin Ursula Landscapes created the garden beds.

unconventional venues

Places to Say ‘I Do’ That Defy Tradition

By Jane Anderson

Throughout the Hudson Valley and the Catskills, there are hundreds of venues that cater to wedding whims of all kinds. But you and your significant other are different: You don’t want a barn wedding, and all the recent events you’ve attended just didn’t have that spark that set them apart. Perhaps banquet halls scream “wedding factory” to you. Maybe traditional parties just aren’t your jam. You’ve both been hunting high and low for that special place that just speaks to you. So here are some places in the area that might not be the first to come to mind when you think “wedding”—but that’s exactly what makes them perfect for you.

Opus 40

Imagine exchanging vows in a sunlit meadow overlooking a six-and-a-half-acre bluestone sculpture. Crafted by hand—stone by stone—by professor/artist Harvey Fite, Opus 40 has been called the “Stonehenge of North America.” It is a monument to discipline and patience, two qualities that are helpful in any marriage— making it the perfect jumping-off point for years of wedded bliss. The sculpture itself is off-limits for ceremonies or receptions, but the meadow has

a great view of the artwork and can accommodate up to 400. Opus 40 offers a cocktail area near its pool and fountain, and an on-site office space/cabin with a bathroom and shower for wedding prep. The space has hosted countless live performances, so it’s well-equipped with electricity and outdoor lighting for all kinds of catering, bars, dance floors, and more. Overnights are available at the onsite one-bedroom Fite House or at the four-bedroom House on Fite Road nearby. If your shindig involves 50 or more guests, you’re required to work with event coordinator Gina Maloney.

50 Fite Road, Saugerties Opus40.org

Storm King Art Center

Forget the flower-festooned wedding arbor: At Storm King Art Center, you can be wed in the shadow of one of 100 curated, bigger-than-life sculptures on a winding 500-acre landscape. Amidst the beautiful grounds, most couples choose Museum Hill, which has bountiful views of the Storm King property and the c.1935 Museum Building as a backdrop (plus access to outdoor restrooms). Events can range in size

from 50 guests and fewer, up to 150. Be aware that hosting a private event here is a benefit of membership in Storm King Art Center— meaning you need to shell out between $1,750 and $5,500, depending on the membership tier, before you can even book your day. (The good news is that, as a member, you can enjoy all the benefits of membership for an entire year.) Facility rental fees of $2,000 to $3,500 come next, followed by the usual fees for event planners, florists, caterers, and other rentals (the art center can provide a preferred vendor list upon request). But for some couples, the opportunity to have your wedding at such an iconic art center is priceless.

1 Museum Road, New Windsor Stormking.org

A wedding at Four Brothers Drive-In in Amenia features all of the site's amenities, including mini-golf and movies on the big screen after dark.

WEDDINGS

Mohonk Preserve

The Mohonk Mountain House is a dream of a wedding venue, with a price tag to match. But those in the know can celebrate their nuptials among those same mountain views, without the high cost, at Mohonk Preserve. The preserve offers two event sites on its 8,000 acres: the Slingerland Pavilion and the Visitor Center. The Slingerland Pavilion is a handicappedaccessible cedar gazebo with a capacity of 120 guests. It’s got gorgeous Gunks views, a room with a sink and counters for catering, electrical outlets, and accessible bathrooms with flush toilets and running water. There’s parking near the site, and a preserve staff member will be on hand before and during the event. The site rental fee is $5,000, plus an additional $500 damage deposit. If the open-air gazebo is too, well, airy, the Preserve’s Visitor Center is available for rentals Monday through Sunday from 4pm to 10pm. Designed with the “Adirondack Great Camps” in mind, the center is a wonder in cedar, stone, and glass. The main exhibit hall, conference room, terrace, Discovery Room, and outdoor patio and amphitheater are all included in the rental. The visitor center’s rental fee is just $1,500 and includes an onsite staff member and access to select trails around the center. For either site, renters need to buy a Mohonk Preserve membership ($70-$600+, depending on desired tier) and secure event insurance).

New Paltz Mohonkpreserve.org

Bannerman Castle

Built in 1901, the stone-and-brick building perched on Pollepel Island in the middle of the Hudson River was fashioned after a Scottish castle. Surrounded by terraced gardens that are

maintained by a hardy group of volunteers, the castle is a beautiful backdrop for a wedding ceremony (there’s dressing space inside to get ready pre-ceremony, but no running water on the island). And the boat ride from Beacon, on the roomy and comfortable Estuary Steward, is a treat. Ceremonies can be held on a raised platform overlooking the castle and river, or among the gardens. Be warned that it’s a 72-step climb from the dock up to the island proper; however, once you’re up there, the panorama is incredible. The island hosts ceremonies only: Fees start at $6,000 for a four-hour time slot (including transportation time) during the week and can be as much as $10,000 on a weekend. Costs include chairs and set-up, staff to assist in guiding guests, and planning by Dana Dalton, who also offers a list of local vendors and venues for the reception.

Bannermancastle.org

Wing’s Castle

In the late 1970s, visionary artists Peter and Toni Ann Wing hand-constructed a stone castle next door to a dairy farm that’s now Millbrook Vineyards & Winery. Today, the Wing’s Castle bed and breakfast is a fairytale setting for a wedding. Outdoor ceremonies are magical, and there’s room outside for tented events. Apreswedding, five guestrooms are available for overnight stays for the bridal party—including the Dungeon Room with a tunnel to an annex suite.

717 Bangall Road, Millbrook Wingscastle.com

Four Brothers Drive-In Theater

How about a wedding at a drive-in? No, not a tacky Vegas-style drive-through, but a real wedding at a real, old-fashioned, drive-in movie

theater. Four Brothers Drive-In boasts that “the couples that choose us enjoy the freedom to craft their own wedding experience. They are adventure seekers and march to the beat of their own drum.” And they’re not wrong: A wedding here includes mini-golf, dinner from the onsite Four Brothers Restaurant, a playground for pintsize wedding guests, a fire pit, seating for up to 200, food-truck snacks for departing guests at the end of the night, and—the best part—movies of your choice on the big screen throughout the reception. All of that is included, at a price of just over $29,000 for 120 guests. Couples can spend the night onsite in one of two Airstreams; there’s room for more guests nearby at the 11-room Millerton Inn, also run by Four Brothers. 4957 Route 22, Amenia Playeatdrink.com

The Ark Bowl & BBQ

The Ark Bowl & BBQ opened in 2018 in a renovated circa-1960s eight-lane bowling alley. It has since grown to be much more than that, including a two-story kitchen and a huge smoker that churns out “detour-worthy” smoked ribs. A big back room has a stage that hosts live performances, corporate outings, and—you guessed it—weddings. The Ark Bowl & BBQ can cater weddings of up to 130 guests; an expansive wraparound porch that captures the surrounding Western Catskills countryside. Decor that defies description (stained glass from a church; a vintage column from a nearby bank; outdoor space that includes corn hole setups) adds a quirky feel that’s just right for eclectic-minded couples.

42366 Route 28, Arkville Thearkbowl.com

Art lovers can get wed amongst the sculptures of Mark di Suvero at Storm King Art Center in New Windsor.

Photo by Melissa Kilner

The Healing Mushroom

Will New York Legalize Psychedelics?

By Noah Eckstein

Last year was another momentous step forward for the American psychedelic movement. Colorado voters approved a ballot measure legalizing psilocybin and psilocin, the psychedelic compounds in magic mushrooms, for adults over the age of 21. Oregon was the first state to do so in 2020, and lawmakers in about a dozen states are laying the groundwork with active legislation to do the same in the near future. If that surprises you, well, it shouldn’t. A groundbreaking study in the Journal of the American Medical Association published in December estimates that most states will legalize psychedelics by 2037. This is due to the profound therapeutic effects psychedelics have for treating depression, grief, PTSD, addiction, and anxiety.

Psychedelics have proven to provide real healing for various disorders. So much so that a diverse range of hallucinogens have now entered the mainstream. They are no longer exclusive to counterculture movement aficionados anymore, or ravers, or hippies reminiscing of a bygone era at a Grateful Dead-adjacent festival. Today, around the world, scientists and therapists from the most prestigious universities and practices are administering psychedelics in therapeutic settings and their patients are embodying longlasting results.

This work is so well researched and widely accepted that even celebrities are opening up on

social media about seeking psychedelic therapy with hallucinogens like ayahuasca and psilocybin, a divulgence that public relations experts would have probably advised against just a few years ago. But the world is changing. Mental health struggles are not the shameful depressive internal battles they once were. People are opening up. Prince Harry, in interviews for his memoir Spare, stated psychedelics helped his grief. Immediately, all of western media jumped at the opportunity to delve into the subject. While the idea of mainstream psychedelics is new, indigenous cultures throughout the world have used psychedelics like ayahuasca and psilocybin to treat underlying symptoms of depression and grief for thousands of years. So, it’s no surprise that psychedelics are experiencing a resurgence of sorts, akin to Jennifer Coolidge’s renaissance.

A Treatment for PTSD and Depression

In New York, lawmakers are pursuing progressive psychedelic legislation in 2023. One bill, sponsored by Assemblymember Patrick Burke (142nd District, which includes parts of Buffalo), seeks to enable medical professionals to receive training to administer psilocybin therapy to treat PTSD, depression, and alcohol dependency, among other conditions. Another bill, sponsored by Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal (67th District in Manhattan),

would legalize the “possession, use, cultivation, production, creation, analysis, gifting, exchange, or sharing by or between natural persons of 21 years of age or older of a natural plant or fungus-based hallucinogen.” This would include the legalization of natural psychedelics like psilocybin, psilocin, ibogaine, DMT, and mescaline.

“I’ve gotten a lot of hate mail about this,” says Assemblymember Karines Reyes (87th District in the Bronx), a co-sponsor on the legislation sponsored by Rosenthal. She stresses that the bill, if passed, would not legalize natural psychedelics in New York. Instead, what the bill says is that if the federal government reschedules psychedelics, New York will then follow suit with legalization.

“The impetus for this really is all the clinical research that has been happening around MDMA and psilocybin, that has shown really promising results for the treatment of PTSD and depression,” says Reyes. “It’s really been curative for many people, unlike any other medication that’s being used for the treatment of these mental health issues. And I think it’s important to make sure that New Yorkers have access to that treatment.”

Rosenthal previously introduced a bill in 2021 that would constitute a “psychedelic research institute” for the study of the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. The science-led

initiatives behind the different bills New York will consider is why Reyes, a registered nurse, is not fazed by the hate mail she receives. “I am not afraid of the perceptions that people paint based on prejudices that they may have about these drugs and these compounds,” she says. “They’re naturally occurring. They don’t kill people like fentanyl and morphine. This is kind of in the same vein of marijuana, right? You don’t see deaths from it. And I really do believe in the medicinal properties that this in a controlled environment can have for people who really, really need it.”

Decriminalization Legislation

Aaron Genuth, policy and outreach director of the Hudson Valley Psychedelic Society, colaunched Decriminalize Nature New York City and State, an educational campaign that started when entheogenic plants were decriminalized in Oakland, California, in 2019. He and other psychedelic advocates worked with Rosenthal to expand the New York bill to include other natural psychedelics in addition to psilocybin.

“Over the next several months, there’s going to be a lot of direct advocacy to state level lawmakers as it relates to these bills and to psychedelics overall in New York,” Genuth says. “There’s been some speculation of doing something like what they did in Colorado,

where they merged two bills, one of which was focused specifically on decriminalization and one that was specifically focused on unregulated use. While imperfect, it is the most far-reaching and impactful piece of state-level psychedelic legislation that we’ve seen yet.”

Co-Presidents Pammy Jackson and Avery Stempel of New Yorkers for Mental Health Alternatives, an organization focused on educating the public and policymakers about reasons to end the prohibition of psychedelic substance believe that no one should face jail time or any form of criminalization for wanting to heal.

“We have people from all walks of life asking about alternative medicinal help. We’ve spoken with military veterans with PTSD, sufferers from cluster headaches, people wanting to get off of SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a class of drugs that are the most commonly prescribed antidepressants] that keep them emotionally numb, and the list goes on,” Jackson says.

“We are in a severe mental health crisis,” Jackson continues. “The current treatment options for pain management and mental wellbeing are insufficient, and we desperately need alternatives. We hope others will join us in the fight to help those suffering and allow them the opportunity to heal.”

Hudson Valley Psychedelic Society members at the group's summer solstice event at Rosekill in Rosendale. Li Wojehowski, executive director of HVPS, is second form left and HVPS founder Daniel Grauer is to her right.

February may be the shortest month of the year, but it can feel like the longest. All but the most fanatical winter sports fans among us are tired of gray skies, short days, slippery footing, and layering up like Eskimos. Intellectually, we know that springtime starts in a few weeks. Emotionally, it can feel a million years away.

So how best to make it through the dark tunnel of winter’s hind end? On this topic, perhaps unsurprisingly, the experts sound a lot like wise grandmas through the ages: Eat right, exercise, get sunshine, fresh air, and a good night’s sleep.

But first of all, be reassured that you’re not imagining it: Winters in the Northeast are grueling, and there are solid physiological reasons for your dragged-out feeling. “Getting cold causes your blood vessels to clamp down,” says Dr. Elizabeth Costley, DO, who treats patients of all ages at her offices in Kingston and Poughkeepsie. “That puts stress on your whole system, and contributes to that overall feeling of not being at your best.”

So, layer up—and do get outside, especially when the sun is shining. “Living here, most of

us just aren’t getting enough vitamin D in the winter,” says Juli Colotti, owner of the Kingston personal training studio Bodies by Colotti. “Increase your intake, and do try to get out in the sun when it shines, even if just for a quick walk.”

Along with sunshine and supplements, it helps to include foods high in vitamin D, such as oily fish like salmon and sardines, egg yolks and foods that are vitamin D-fortified, says Costley. Along with vitamin D, vitamin C and zinc are important nutrients that keep your immune system amped up and ready to fight off the latest wintry crud.

Gut Health & Sleep

Overall health is the foundation of immunity— both to physical germs and the winter blues— and it begins with gut health. “Thriving in winter or any other time relies on our parasympathetic nervous system—that’s what governs our ability to rest, digest, and heal,” says Dr. Erika Gabriello, DACM, LAc, who practices acupuncture and integrative healing in New Paltz. “It starts with healthy spleen qi. That’s the system that governs digestion, absorption,

Beating the Winter Blues STRATEGIES FOR SURVIVING AND THRIVING THIS SEASON

By Anne Pyburn Craig

assimilation, and energy metabolism. If your stomach pH isn’t right—if you lack hydrochloric acid there—you can’t digest protein or carbs. That impacts everything else. Around 80 percent of your immune system is in your gut.”

Beyond eating well, sleep hygiene is key to winter thriving and can be harder to manage amid short days and decreased activity. “It’s hard to do, but try to get on a steady sleep schedule of at least seven hours a night,” says Costley. “It’s incredibly important for immunity, gut health, brain health, and mood. And it gets harder when our bodies aren’t getting enough warmth, light, and activity. Activity is another key factor here; even if you’re just getting up and doing stuff around the house every so often, it’s better than sitting all day. Quick walks are great. If you can do at least 20 minutes of brisk activity three times a week, you’ll sleep and digest better.”

Gabriello gives her clients a list of tips for better sleep: reduce evening caffeine, shut down your screens (keep the TV and computer out of the bedroom entirely), darken your bedroom (ideally, your bed should be north-south aligned, with your feet to the north), and take deep, slow breaths from your diaphragm to activate that all-important parasympathetic system. “It’s during deep sleep that we rebuild tissue and detoxify waste,” she says. “It’s also when the cognitive mind shuts down, enabling the subconscious mind to process deep-seated thoughts and emotions. The physical, mental, and emotional self heals during satisfying rest.”

Don’t Be SAD

About those emotions: Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which manifests as deep sadness, loneliness, increased sensitivity to feeling rejected, oversleeping, poor appetite, weight gain, hopelessness, and fatigue, usually isn’t diagnosed unless you experience major depressive symptoms with the changing seasons two years in a row or more. But that doesn’t mean the simple winter blahs aren’t a real thing.

“SAD can get very serious, so don’t ignore feelings of encroaching misery,” says Allison Chawla, MA, LMSW, a certified coach and alternative therapist in Rhinebeck. “Talking to your doctor is always a good first step—physical ailments can intensify depression. If you’re not against taking medication, there are many treatments out there that can be prescribed temporarily while our hormone levels are thrown off by the shifts in circadian rhythm.”

Beyond that, Chawla says, there are self-care tactics that will help. Get outside, even if just for a few minutes. Try a gratitude practice to start the day off on a positive note. Move around, stretch, and stay in touch with the people you love. “They say misery loves company, but so does someone curled up by the fire feeling blah,” she says. “Be the person who takes the initiative and keeps connections vital—a simple call or message can lift someone out of their funk.”

Chawla points out that making commitments on a calendar can help you stay motivated to keep them—a view she shares with Colotti. “I can’t tell you how many times clients have told me that if it weren’t for our attendance policy, they’d have stayed on the couch,” Colotti says. “Most of us respect the commitments we make. Making that commitment to a fitness community gets you out and talking and laughing with people, and it seems less like work—I think that’s why group fitness training studios have become so popular.”

It’s also important to keep those commitments realistic. “If you tell yourself you’re going to work out an hour a day six or seven days a week, you’re likely to end up just quitting,” says Chelsea Streifeneder, owner of Body Be Well Pilates, which has studios in Red Hook, Catskill, and Windham. “If one day is what you can do, start there, and then maybe add another day. Think about your time, your budget, what you can handle, and schedule it just as you would any other important appointment in your life and you’re more likely to stick with it.”

Costley concurs: When it comes to beating the winter doldrums, approach every aspect of wellbeing at a manageable scale. “Break things into smaller bits,” she says. “Eat a healthy snack. Step outside for some deep breaths of fresh air. Don’t overburden yourself with tasks, because then it just becomes all the more depressing.”

The Momentum of Change Poughkeepsie

By Jamie Larson Photos by David McIntyre

The seal of the City of Poughkeepsie features a swarming beehive, sitting on a low table, in a field of tall grass. The symbolism feels apt these days. Surrounded by natural beauty, the city is humming with development, activity and excitement—in a way it hasn’t for more than 50 years. As pretty a picture as it may be, longtime residents worry openly about who all the recent change is actually for. Despite tension, it’s clear this dynamic period has made Poughkeepsie one of the most interesting places to visit in the Hudson Valley for entertainment, dining, and culture.

Open for Business

The recent opening of new apartment and commercial properties in the city center, and the completion of the massive Vassar Brothers Hospital expansion (and major COVID migration from New York City), has driven a significant increase in more affluent residents moving to Poughkeepsie.

After slogging through the past few years of the pandemic, Gina Sullivan, co-owner of Revel

32, says people have come back to the business district in droves, attending events at her venue and others like the Bardavon, the Chance, and Mid-Hudson Civic Center, before hitting up restaurants downtown like Brasserie 292, River Station, Essie’s, and many others. “You should have seen it on New Year’s Eve,” Sullivan says. “Cannon Street was like New York City. There were so many people excited to be back out together again.”

Jim and Gina Sullivan, of James J. Sullivan Corp. are a couple of the city’s busiest developers. After rebuilding 40 Cannon Street into a large mixed-use apartment building, they sold it in 2022, and are now building up 47 Cannon Street, raising it from five to eight floors. “We need to get people downtown,” Jim Sullivan says. “Dutchess County residents don’t realize how much there is to do here.”

Around the corner, another development, the Academy, has become a model for how some stakeholders see the future of the city. With apartments above, the ground floor offers a onestop food hall, boasting the Kitchen restaurant,

The food hall at the Academy features numerous food stalls—including EastWest, Smoke 33, and the Flour Shop bakery—as well as a brewery, bar and the farm-to-table Kitchen restaurant.

Opposite, top: Vassar College is in the process of building the Vassar Institute for Liberal Arts, a $34 million hotel and conference center across from its campus on Raymond Avenue. The netzero facility is scheduld to open in 2024.

Opposite, bottom: A child playing inside the recently updated Mid-Hudson Discovery Museum (formerly the MidHudson Children’s Museum).

and numerous food stalls like Smoke, East-West, and the Flour Shop bakery alongside a market and the Hudson Hopworks Brewery.

The 47 Cannon project was recently awarded a $500,000 grant through the Empire State Development Corporation toward the establishment of a distillery supporting the support the growth of “artisan craft manufacturing.” The main floor operation is estimated to cost $3.1 million of the $20 building price tag and adds to Poughkeepsie’s new role as a craft beverage destination, joining Mill House Brewing Company, Blue Collar Brewery, Zeus Brewing Company, and King’s Court Brewing Company.

Above the businesses, in their apartments, the Sullivans say they believe in mixed-income housing as the best way to preserve local culture and increase population density. Ten percent of housing units in their downtown buildings are designated low income.

“What about 20 percent?” says Ariel Cordova of Pancho Villa Deli and Restaurant. “All the development is good for Poughkeepsie as a whole, but politicians are tasked with insuring people like us don’t get pushed out,” says Cordova, who’s owned his Main Street business for 25 years. “There has always been a hard-working immigrant and African American community trying to survive and thrive. The last three years there have been a lot of new monetary pressures—inflation, rent, cost of everything.”

A New Chapter Begins

Elected officials are well aware of the economic pressure residents and business owners find themselves under as the Mayor’s office and Common Council try to balance affordability concerns with simultaneously striking while the development iron is hot. The Common Council recently passed a Comprehensive Plan, Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan, and are nearing passage of major zoning code overhaul. “It’s one of the key issues of our time,” says Mayor Marc Nelson of the city’s gentrification. “And it’s not just the City of Poughkeepsie. We have a housing crisis at all financial levels. We need to look at it holistically.”

In November of 2022, with a year left in his second and final term, Poughkeepsie Mayor Rob Rolison was elected to represent the 39th district in the New York State Senate. Nelson, who had been working as city manager, was appointed to the position in January.

In 2015, the Rolison administration inherited a budget with a $13 million deficit. “The lights were barely on in City Hall back then,” says Nelson, who has led a long career in fiscal management. By the end of this year, the city is projected to finally be out of the red. This is a huge deal, the mayor stresses, because now the city’s bond rating can improve, allowing it to access new borrowing opportunities for all its plans. It’s hard, however, for some residents to believe there will be much positive impact on the city’s predominantly minority North End community.

Eastdale Village is a mixed-use project in the town of Poughkeepsie featuring luxury apartments, retail and office space, as well as outposts of beloved Poughkeepsie eateries like Rossi’s Deli.

Top: Lynn Varuzzo, owner of Daffodills Gift Shoppe, outside her store. Middle and bottom: Eastdale Village was designed as live, work, play community that replicates the small-town experience in a 35-acre suburban setting.

Opposite:

Heroes Making Heroes is a job skills program for the currently or recently unhoused run out of the Poughkeepsie Underwear Factory on Mill Street. Pictured is job skills coach Victoria Liverchio (second from left) with program participants.

Barista Amber Dellacamera at the original Crafted Kup location near Vassar College on Raymond Avenue. Owner Tanner Townsend is in the background. Crafted Kup now has three locations, including Eastdale Village and the Poughkeepsie Galleria.

“My position is: Stop letting developers run the city,” says Carmen McGill, who’s lived in Poughkeepsie for over 40 years and is the co-founder of Celebrating the African Spirit, a nonprofit that researches and presents the history of the pivotal contributions enslaved Africans made to the construction of Poughkeepsie and the region.

McGill says Dutchess County misallocates funding in Poughkeepsie—spending $147 million to expand the jail and $12 million to refurbish the minor league baseball stadium when the money could go to direct community support and the schools. “The city has moved laterally not vertically,” McGill says. “The school district is a good example. Our children remain pawns in the system. It’s worse now than when my kids were there.”

Children at Risk

Poughkeepsie high school currently has a 56 percent graduation rate, well bellow the state median. Nelson says Poughkeepsie’s youth remains “top of mind,” in all policy discussions and he’s proud of what the administration has achieved in recent years.

School Superintendent Dr. Eric Jay Rosser and the mayor lead the Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet, a collective of city youth and officials tasked with guiding local policy that effects children from “cradle to career.” The common council also created a new Division of Youth Opportunity and Development and has begun converting a long-abandoned YMCA into the Youth Opportunity Union (YOU).

“So much of what happens with the kids is outside of school time,” says Nicole Fenichel-Hewitt, executive director of the Art Effect, a youth-focused arts organization that operates the Trolley Barn gallery and arts center. Through Hudson River Housing, the Trolley Barn recently received a $500,000 state grant to develop a media arts studio in the historic building. The new resources will support programing geared towards developing career pathways in the arts. The Art Effect is now also the center of a Youth Empowerment Zone, established through funding by the National Education Association and last year they successfully hosted the first Youth Arts Festival.

“The art scene in Poughkeepsie is evolving and getting younger,” says Jeffrey Amen, founder of Poughkeepsie Open Studios and the chair of the Public Arts Commission. “I’m really optimistic. I’m a strong supporter of art in public, it brings people together and you end up with a more inclusive society. The energy is still coming back from COVID but there is fun stuff going on. It’s our job in the arts to get momentum and keep things moving.”

A New Generation of Support

While long-invested stakeholders like McGill bring valuable context and insight to conversations about equitable growth, a new generation of younger community activists allow their own skepticism to be tempered with the hope that this dynamic period is an opportunity for Poughkeepsie residents to finally get a piece of the city’s success.

From top: Andrew Burgreen, executive director of the Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center inside the center’s Vassar Street location.

MaryVaughn Williams, co-owner of Canvas and Clothier, at the newly opened microdepartment store on Garden Street.

Ariel Cordova, owner of Pancho Villa Deli and Mexican Restaurant on Main Street, in front of a mural by Lady Pink on the side of his building.

L’Quette Taylor founded the nonprofit Community Matters 2 after organizing a number of park and street cleanups in his neighborhood and across the city in 2018. Since then, the organization has grown to include afterschool education, arts and sports programs for kids, and, soon, a full STEAM-based summer camp. Taylor grew up in the North End and went to Dutchess Community College for architectural drafting. Now he works for Urban Green Builders, a development firm downtown.

“We need to prepare our children for what is coming to Poughkeepsie,” says Taylor, who gave the keynote address at the Poughkeepsie High School graduation last year. “I’m optimistic to a point. I’m working on two different sides. I have relationships with developers and with my community, who think they are coming to take over. It feels like there is a separation between what’s old and what’s new. It is shaky right now but we have the momentum to make change.”

Some areas where community improvement is visible are Poughkeepsie’s parks. Both the city and Poughkeepsiebased nonprofit Scenic Hudson have invested millions in establishing and restoring parks from the North End to the riverfront. While the eventual plan for the waterfront is massive, smaller projects are already making an impact.

Nick Jackson runs the Pershing Avenue Park

Neighborhood Farm, just down the street from his parents’ house in the North End. The farm was started and funded by Scenic Hudson. Last year was the first full growing season at the small but bountiful farm. Jackson, with the help of volunteers, was able to grow 500 pounds of produce, which was used to feed over 200 local families. Jackson also led workshops, partnered with the Culinary Institute of America on programming, and hosted a harvest festival with live music and performances. Jackson says he wants to do more this year, for the farm and his neighbors. The work he’s doing feels like a part of a movement. “When I started, the reaction was genuine surprise and excitement,” he says. “They couldn’t believe you could have something like this in a neighborhood like ours. I’ve always been wary of change. One of the main reasons I wanted to be involved in this project was to have a say and representation. If we are not trying to create a foothold in the midst of change, we will get swept away. People are slowly seeing there has been more investment in revitalization. It’s brought out care and respect in the community.”

Optimism lives on a spectrum in Poughkeepsie, but this moment in the city’s history has brought a vibrancy to events and businesses that people are drawn to. Like the hive on the city seal, Poughkeepsie is buzzing.

John David Baez making drinks at Goodnight Kenny on Academy Street.

Queen City Oral History

Poughkeepsie Q&A

by Jeff Kosmacher

Oral history is fair and empowering. It provides an evenhanded platform for people from different walks of life to share their experiences uninterpreted. Invariably, valuable and rare insights arise.

Such is the purpose of Poughkeepsie Q&A (PQ&A), an oral history project documenting the lives of city residents on the Dutchess County Historical Society website. With support from the Dutchess County Community Grants Fund of the Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley, the first interviews include people from varied ages and backgrounds, including singles and parents, a maintenance director, small business owners, and a retired police officer. Overcoming misperceptions of the city and its residents is a driving force behind PQ&A.

“It’s usually the people who don’t live here who have the most negative things to say,” observes Frank Johnson, a lifelong resident. “Crime and problems exist in some of the more affluent towns but are not publicized as they are in the City of Poughkeepsie.”

Isis Benitez, a Gen Z’er, credits Poughkeepsie’s influence in her journey from outspoken teen agitating for better textbooks to now working as a public health advocate. “I got my backbone here,” she points out.

City school teacher Shanna Didymus, a fourthgeneration resident, recounts joyful gatherings of family and friends in College Hill Park. Didymus also rebuts stereotypes of young single parents by sharing her experience and her mother’s. Case in point: Didymus completed her doctorate in educational leadership and management in her early 40s.

Consider how the city is perceived through the lens of violent crime. Such acts do occur more often in urban Poughkeepsie than elsewhere in the smaller, largely suburban and rural municipalities of Dutchess County. Big local headlines often follow. Statistically, however, violent crime in the city has largely declined over the past decade, except for the same recent spike seen nationwide since the Covid pandemic began.

Still, violent crime, including gun violence, remains a serious concern here, especially to the extent that young people are involved. As our society seeks solutions, the personal context provided through oral history helps us connect with our affected neighbors and learn from them. In their PQ&A interviews, Dwayne Douglas and Ykim Anderson address how violence in the city has struck them, their families, and their friends. These sons of Poughkeepsie also describe the compassionate ways they have responded.

Poughkeepsie Q&A adds two distinct features to its efforts. Its website spotlights city talent, through commissioned photo portraits of the interviewees taken by young residents. And the text of each interview is provided in English and Spanish; this speaks to the city’s Latinos, who at nearly 21 percent of the population continue to be Poughkeepsie’s fasting-growing demographic group.

Poughkeepsie Q&A founder Jeff Kosmacher is a communications and community development specialist based in the city of Poughkeepsie. The Poughkeepsie Q&A oral histories can be found at Dchsny.org/pqa.

Participants in the Poughkeepsie Q&A oral history project, clockwise from top left: Micahel Bennett (photo by Kaleceia Douglas); Ykim Anderson (photo by Kaleceia Douglas); Dr. Shanna Didymus and son Taji Parker (photo by Phyenix Young-White); Dwayne Douglas (photo by Phyenix Young-White); Flo Duncan (photo by yoagi projects).

Top row: Amanda Schmadel, graphic designer; Ankur Bhatt, product specialist at UKG, pictured with Luna; Amishi Bhatt, senior account manager at Virgin Pulse; Anthony Slade, community development manager.

Second row: Brandon Walker, chef/owner at Essie’s; Brianna Davis, screenwriter and director; Carlos T. Russell, owner Queen City Lounge; Carlos Wood, chef at Geneva’s Blues House Southern BBQ.

Third row: Carrie Decker, artist; Chanel Reed, youth curatorial team assistant at the Art Effect; Christopher Grant, Sixth Ward Councilmember; David Henningsen, photographer and artist, organizer of PorchFest.

Bottom row: Demaj Ffriend, community mortgage specialist; David Wojcichowski, art dealer, James Wojciechowski, student, and Ena Wojciechowski, retired; Jaime Ransome, manager, Trolley Barn Gallery.

Poughkeepsie Pop-Up Portraits

Photos by David McIntyre

On January 14, Chronogram held a pop-up portrait shoot on a frigid afternoon at the Art Effect’s Trolley Barn gallery at the east end of Main Street in Poughkeepsie. Proud citizens responded to the call and braved a snowy afternoon to be photographed by David McIntyre. Thanks to all who showed up and to Jaime Ransome, Nicole Fenichel-Hewitt, and the staff of the Art Effect for hosting us. Thanks to Rossi’s for the sandwiches and Goodnight Kenny for the apres-shoot cocktails. Come out to the February issue launch party at Goodnight Kenny, 27 Academy Street, on Monday, February 6, from 4:30-7pm.

Top: The staff of the Bardavon: Ila Carnes, general manager, Stephen LaMarca, managing director; Betsy Garthwaite, facilities manager; Brian Whitney, videographer, box office, and marketing; Dana Lamberti, box office manager; Adelina Borman, director of education and house manager; Joey Taylor, box office associate and education assistant; Kristopher Konyak, design and marketing; Jess Kelly, facilities and special events.

Left: Nile Clarke, CEO/EIC of the Goodie Drop

Top row: Elizabeth M. O’Raffity, CEO and founder, the Growing Stemz Foundation; Hamar Clarke, realtor and owner of Clarke Realty and Associates; Dennis O’Neill, sales representative; Jayden Thomas, artist; Jazylo Alexis-Taylor, student. Second Row: Nikki Hung, gallery director, Womenswork.art; Stephen Haff, teacher and founder of Still Waters in a Storm; Jessica Dell, lawyer, dahlia hybridizer, mama; Juanita Canty, owner Worthy Empire apparel; Jenay Scarchilli Parson, baker and cake artist. Third row: Shontice Roberts, member services at the Bardavon; L’Quette Taylor, CEO of Community Matters 2, Inc.; Lea Rivera, lactation consultant; Ovid Reichelt, co-owner, Reason and Ruckus; Marc Nelson, mayor, city of Poughkeepsie. Fourth row: Mary Reynolds, event producer; Nestor Madalengoitia, artist; Aqua Jackson, direct support professional at Wraparound services of the Hudson Valley; Julia Whitney Barnes, artist, and Sean Hemmerle, photographer; Nicole Fenichel-Hewitt, executive director, the Art Effect. Bottom row: Ken Stier, writer, agent provocateur; Lynn Varuzzo, owner Daffodils Gift Shoppe; Nicholas G. Kalogris, office assistant, New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision; Keshonn Hatcher, co-owner, Reason and Ruckus; Vincent Pedi, outreach coach at Dutchess Community College.

Top row: Nicole McArthur, producer; Nick Jackson, farmer at Pershing Street Farm, and Kaela Miller, singer; Julian Smith, student, artist, puppet maker.

Second row: David Dell, business adviser and strategist, and Penny Dell, mixed-media artist; Luis Nobondo, Hudson River Housing employee, and Samuel Nobondo, student; Hudson River Housing board members Jeff Kosmacher, Dwayne Douglas, Zhanna Kljyan, and Lorna Thompson

Bottom row: Jaron Reyes, supervisor at Spins Bowl, and Tamara Ross, bartender at Spins Bowl; Randi Chalfin, artist and educator; Davina Thomasula, owner of Goodnight Kenny; Isabella Staniscia, director of Marketing and Communications at Poughkeepsie Day School, and Spiro Gouras, assistant head of school at Poughkeepsie Day School.

CENTRAL DUTCHESS

It’s little wonder that there’s so much to see and do in Dutchess County. Its 800 square miles covers everything from dense cityscape to sweeping mountain views and comprises several distinct regions, each with their own winning personalities. At its heart is Central Dutchess. From the bustling Queen City of Poughkeepsie to the historic estates of Hyde Park to the smalltown shops of Millbrook, Central Dutchess hits all of the Hudson Valley’s high notes.

Hello Wellness Coaching

Health coaches help improve outcomes and quality of life during and after diagnosis. Create a realistic plan that enables you to make positive and sustainable changes. Coaching sessions focus on a client’s strengths, interests, and natural motivation. Contact Michelle Andrick, NBC-HWC, PCC, National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach, to learn more. info@hellowellnesscoach.com 845-518-4373 www.hellowellnesscoach.com

Hyde Park Antiques Center

This sprawling facility, over 9,500 square feet of antique vendor area, sits on a prominent site on Route 9 in the central corridor of Hyde Park. A premier antiques vendor mall has an ever-changing landscape of authentic antiques and collectables from yesteryear. 4192 Albany Post Road (Route 9), Hyde Park, NY. 845-229-8200 hydeparkantiques.net

Charlotte's

Originally a c.1830's church, now an established restaurant in the Millbrook Hunt Country serving all your favorites. In winter, relax by one of the wood burning fireplaces and enjoy a bottle from the award-winning cellar. In the summer, enjoy a Mango Margarita in the outdoor garden. Perfect for a dinner for two or a family reunion. Private rooms available. 4258 Route 44, Millbrook, NY. 845-677-5888 charlottesny.com

The Village of Millbrook

A bucolic village surrounded by rolling hills and much to offer–Orvis Sandanona, Innisfree Garden, Trevor Zoo, two of the best shops in the world (Veranda Magazine 2022), Cary Institute, an authentic diner, Millbrook Winery, a hardware store founded in 1907, a classic French bistro, a volunteer fire department, and so much more. www.millbrooknewyork.com @millbrooknewyork

Millbrook, NY

The Bobby Lees Bellevue (Ipecac Records)

The cover of Bellevue, the Vance Powell-produced third album from Woodstock quartet the Bobby Lees, finds frontwoman Sam Quartin crouching in a farm pen with mud-splattered coveralls, a discarded microphone, and a distracted pig. The image immediately calls to mind Linda Ronstadt’s classic 1970 LP Silk Purse—which, like Bellevue, was recorded in Nashville—but anyone searching for a similarly bucolic listening experience would be advised to look elsewhere. Pastoral vibes and country-fried tunefulness are not what the Bobby Lees do; but if you’re in the mood for snarling, agitated garage punk that quivers and flails like a skeleton desperately trying to shed its skin, then Bellevue has definitely got what you need.

Onstage and on record, Quartin is the band’s obvious focal point. Whether sinking her fangs into delusions of stardom (“Hollywood Junkyard”), wrestling with her overactive brain (“Monkey Mind”), or coming on like an unhinged torch singer (“Little Table”), she injects Bellevue’s songs—many of which were inspired by a nine-month mental breakdown she experienced a few years before the band’s formation—with menace and dark humor. You’re never entirely sure where she’s going, or how much of herself is in the character she’s portraying, which makes for a deeply compelling sense of tension. Bandmates Nick Casa (lead guitar), Kendall Wind (bass), and Macky Bowman (drums) telepathically follow Quartin’s every mood and move, amping up the chaos (“Ma Likes to Drink”) or dialing it down to an unsettling simmer (“Strange Days”) as needed. And they put the maraschino cherry on this 13-track Molotov cocktail with a rumbling Link Wraystyle closing track (“Mystery Theme Song”), leaving you stunned, exhausted, and wanting much, much more.

—Dan Epstein

sound check

Tony Fletcher

Each month here we visit with a member of the community to find out what music they’ve been digging.

At the beginning of a new year I often find myself catching up on releases I missed from the old year.

I have to thank my singer-songwriter friend Dusty Wright, who splits his time between Chatham and New York City and made another great album last year, Lonelyville, for introducing me on his end-of-year playlist to the song “Be Careful,” a collaboration between Madi Diaz, S. G. Goodman, and Joy Oladokun. I’m wary of calling it a feminist anthem because it also checks “all the queers and trans and binaries,” but, any which way, it’s an extraordinarily delicate yet powerful piece of modern political Americana. The sleeve is a hand-designed throwback to simple Jamaican releases of old and adds to the folk-art charm. I’m also excited by the return of husband-and-wife duo Everything but the Girl, due to release their first album in 24 years. The teaser song “Nothing Left to Lose” finds them in the melodic electronic vein they occupied when we last heard from them together, and hopefully the new album will break new ground, too.

Tony Fletcher is an author, musician, and podcaster. The biographer of R.E.M., he will be hosting an audio-visual presentation on the band’s legacy at the Orpheum Theatre in Saugerties at 2pm on April 12. As half of Hudson Palace, he has just released an acoustic ballad interpretation of Buzzcocks’ punk-pop anthem “Love You More.” Tonyfletcher.net

Century Plants Transmissions from the Outer Sun (Carbon Records)

The Capital Region free improv duo of Ray Hare and Eric Hardiman, each of whom doubles on guitar and electronics, has been releasing recordings under the Century Plants banner since 2007 while making similarly experimental/psychedelic sounds in a musically incestuous circle of projects that includes acts like Burnt Hills, Rambutaan, Sky Furrows, and Spiral Wave Nomads. Titled for the localities they were captured in, Transmissions from the Outer Sun’s two lengthy tracks, “Albany” and “Troy,” are wonderfully ambient space-outs that each feature a different guest drummer (Barn Owl’s Matt Weston on the former; Burnt Hills’ Phil Donnelly on the latter). When Hare repeats the vocal mantra “Are you really free? / Really, really free?” during the 25-minute “Albany,” which was taped live at the Upstate Artists Guild in 2011, one can only answer in the affirmative. Cool stuff.

—Peter Aaron

David Greenberger & The Waldameer Players

Today!

(Pel Pel Recordings)

Today!, Capital Region writer and spoken-word artist David Greenberger’s recent CD with the Waldameer Players, has 40 short tracks featuring all manner of strings, woodwinds, percussion, and more unusual instruments like jaw harp, glockenspiel, and sitar. Conceived with the recently deceased percussionist Michael Evans, the text is based on Greenberger’s conversations with seniors at nursing homes throughout the US. Beefheart-ian titles such as “Tropical Hotdog Night” or “Dinosaurs and Their Problems” are multilayered compositions employing a wide sonic palette. Complex yarns dispense venerable wisdom or speak of vampires revealing unusual editorial choices and recurring fears of the elderly. Though the songs often contain harmonies and intriguing musical compositions, there is no vocal melody. It’s almost as if Studs Terkel were backed by a Tom Waits-ian junkyard orchestra, reading someone else’s memoirs, or what Greenberger calls, “a band with a guy talking.” Recommended for adventurous listeners.

—Mike Cobb

Summer Lightning

Roberta Silman

CAMPDEN HILL BOOKS, 2022, $15

Great Barrington

Readers who love to get swept away by an epic saga will be enthralled by the twists and turns encountered by the Kaplows, a JewishAmerican family in the 20th century. The story begins with daughters, themselves elderly, pondering their mother’s life; then we’re back in 1927, when their parents, Isaac and Belle, happened to meet at Lindbergh’s takeoff from Roosevelt Field. The Depression, World War II, McCarthyism, the mid-century art scene, and the Civil Rights era will deepen and ripen these open-minded, good-hearted New Yorkers leading examined, adventuresome lives in this well-told slice of life.

Reclaiming the Sacred: Healing Our Relationships With Ourselves and the World

Jeff Golden

GOLDEN, 2022, $18

A Fulbright scholar, writer, teacher, and activist focused on animal rights and prison reform, Hudson Valley resident Golden pulls together three decades of meticulous, wide-ranging research, spiritual practice, and lived experience into this prescription for our current situation, starting with an overview of the science of happiness and an examination of our longstanding epidemic of toxic materialism before forging onward and offering measures we can take to get back to center, all of it clearly stated and refreshingly free of jargon. Reclaiming the Sacred has been selected as one of the best nonfiction books of 2022 by the Best Indie Book Award.

The Gods of Clown Alley: A Memoir

Tara O’Grady

BOOKBABY, 2023, $14.99

Mother-daughter travel is a birthday tradition for singer-songwriter O’Grady, a Beacon resident, who frames this tale within one such trip to an Arizona spa in the wake of a deep depression. She side-treks into her dream life, an ongoing dialectic with the essence of Ernest Hemingway, and other trips with her Irish immigrant mom to take us with her on an often hilarious journey inward, back to bliss and conscious cocreation told with rock ’n’ roll candor. O’Grady is impishly irreverent with a spot-on BS detector, making the revelations she experiences ring fresh and genuine.

Light Skin Gone to Waste: Stories

Toni Ann Johnson

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS, 2022, $22.95

Award-winning author Johnson sets these intersecting tales in the Orange County town of Monroe of the 1960s. It’s a provincial blue-collar burg where a Black family—psychologist Phillip Arrington, his daughter from a previous marriage, new wife (who will open an antiques store) and impending baby Maddie—relocates to buy property and put down upper-middle-class roots, playacting the American Dream. This apparent triumph looks quite different to young Maddie, however. She’s one of the only Black kids in her school, a journey that would be tough enough without narcissists for parents.

Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance

Joseph Luzzi

W.W. NORTON, 2022, $28.95

When the Medicis ruled Florence and Sandro Botticelli was a darling of the art scene, he was tasked with the impossibly highstakes project of illustrating all 100 cantos of The Divine Comedy, only to fail and die broke and unknown. The masterworks he created in his attempt, missing for centuries, would stun the global art world upon their rediscovery in the 19th century. Bard professor and scholar of Italian culture Luzzi’s take on the tale and the light it sheds on cultural discourse, Renaissance and recent, was named a New Yorker Best Book of 2022.

—Anne Pyburn Craig

Big Swiss Jen Beagin

SCRIBNER, 2023, $27

With Big Swiss, Jen Beagin leaves behind Mona, the house-cleaning protagonist of her first two novels, Pretend I’m Dead and Vacuum in the Dark, in favor of Greta, a worthy and no less loveable successor to Mona. Whereas the latter snooped around her clients’ homes and through their belongings, Greta does a different kind of snooping: She transcribes therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. This gives Greta direct access to the innermost thoughts and secrets of Om’s patients and also provides Beagin—the recipient of a 2017 Whiting Award for fiction—with an innovative narrative device, wherein the reader is made privy to the transcripts of the sessions as Greta types them up.

Greta is discreet with these secrets for the most part—she needs the work and does not want to jeopardize her gig by blabbing—but she finds herself fixating on the title character, a much younger, married gynecologist who, oddly and tantalizingly, has never had an orgasm. Greta nicknames her Big Swiss, because she is originally from Switzerland. She regularly creates such signifiers for Om’s patients, whose true identities are withheld from her. But the city of Hudson, where the story takes place, is a very small place, and it never takes long for Greta to match up Om’s ostensibly anonymous clients with their real-life counterparts. As soon as she overhears her distinctive voice, with its trace of a Swiss accent, at the dog park, Greta IDs her new acquaintance, Flavia, as the Big Swiss of Om’s sessions, the object of her fantasies.

The two women become friends and more, and much of the book’s comic aspects revolve around Greta’s efforts to pretend she does not know all that she knows about Flavia as they embark on a torrid affair. Inappropriate relationships are de rigueur in Beagin’s fictional worlds, but rather than being put off by Greta’s gross invasion of Flavia’s privacy, the reader is pulled in by the excitement and drama of the relationship that ensues between them. They garner our sympathies even after they have shown their willingness— indeed, their willful eagerness—to violate their own integrity and the thin veneer of a social contract intended to keep all hell from breaking loose. And without giving too much away, let’s just say it does.

As in her previous novels, Beagin is highly attuned to class distinctions. At her best, Beagin is an acute social satirist, and now that she has lived in Hudson for a good number of years, she nails the quirks of this community-in-transition with recognizable tropes, including “Hudson was overflowing with people who’d successfully reinvented themselves” and “Like most people in Hudson, they were better looking than average and dressed like boutique farmers.”

But Beagin digs deeper than the awful cliches about the gentrifying river town that everyone has already heard, coming up with original gems like, “She’s heard Hudson described as a college town without a college, or summer camp for adults, but it seemed more like a small community of expats. Everyone behaved as if they’d been banished from their native country.” That last bit had never occurred to me, but, bingo! Now I know why I feel at home here.

Beagin portrays a host of other colorful characters, including her old friend and current roommate, Sabine, with whom she shares an early 18th-century farmhouse, one of the few remaining in the region that has yet to be updated for the 21st century. The farmhouse plays host to a number of other colorful creatures, including dogs, bees, roosters, maggots, and a couple of miniature donkeys. (What is it about donkeys all of a sudden popping up everywhere, in movies, TV shows, and, now, in novels?)

Toward the end of Big Swiss, Om tells Greta, “If you stick around Hudson, you won’t be able to enter a room without having weird, sometimes horrifying history with at least four different people.” I can’t speak to that personally, as I pretty much stick to myself. Besides, one can probably say the same about any small town. But after 323 pages filled with lively and incisive descriptions of my adopted hometown and its wild, albeit imaginary, goingson, I trust Beagin as a most reliable (and witty) narrator much more so than I trust the gaggle of her mostly unreliable yet compelling fictional creations.

Jen Beagin will read and sign Big Swiss at Spotty Dog Books & Ale in Hudson on February 10 at 7pm.

—Seth Rogovoy

This is Just to Say (Homage to W. C. Williams)

I have buried my car keys in the compost heap behind the softball field. Maybe some kids will turn them up digging for nightcrawlers; maybe they’ll decompose among the coffee grounds and eggshells.

Still, when I’m running late for the noon game at the gym I find myself by the driver’s side door searching my pockets. When my father calls I steer him toward safe ground: Grapefruit league baseball or Patrick O’Brian.

Sweet spring is right around the bend but now my grocery run is a cold mess. The heavy bags threaten to tear away from my handlebars; by the time I get home all the fruit is bruised.

—Leonard Nalencz

What All Poets Should Know

All poets should know the first poem they ever wrote by heart. All poets should know a hawk from a handsaw. All poets should know what their names mean. All poets should know Susie like I knew Susie.

All poets should know their worth in salt.

All poets should know seven words that rhyme with womb. All poets should know at least one poem by Emily Dickinson other than “I never saw a Moor” by heart.

All poets should know at least one poem by William Carlos Williams other than “The Red Wheelbarrow” by heart.

All poets should know what a Moor looks like. All poets should know what kind of hat Marianne Moore wore. All poets should know what Wallace Stevens once said. All poets should know what their name looks like in Chinese.

All poets should know that a poem should be read with one’s nerves. All poets should know William Stafford’s cure for writer’s block. All poets should know what baseball team Marianne Moore rooted for. All poets should know that the Irish bards wore the king’s colors less one.

All poets should know when to lower their standards.

All poets should know that the Irish bards sat at the king’s right hand.

All poets should know the muse’s cell phone number by heart.

All poets should know their limits.

All poets should know how ink is manufactured.

All poets should know how to play tennis without a net.

All poets should know how pens are manufactured.

All poets should know their wife’s birthday.

All poets should know how paper is manufactured.

All poets should know their wedding anniversary.

All poets should know how PC’s work.

All poets should know their cholesterol level.

All poets should know the back of their hand.

All poets should know how pencils are manufactured.

All poets should know what to do with a red wheelbarrow.

All poets should know their heart by heart.

—J. R. Solonche

Winter Trees

I like the trees best now With their hands where I can see them

I like the white oaks most of all Black brawn and brainy These are the sadhus I know

Caught by the shocking strobe of season Arms in frantic mad apology Scratching the sky for one more sun

—p

Quiet Love

It’s easy to love someone loudly. It’s easy to make a big show. It’s easy to tell your mom, your dad, and everyone you know.

While falling happens quickly, it’s the staying that takes a while. Soon enough, you and your love will have traveled mile after mile.

It’s easy to love someone loudly. It’s easy to make a big show. It’s easy to tell your mom, your dad, and everyone you know.

Loving in the silence is the hardest part. You take a risk, a skip, and a jump and you begin to share your heart.

It’s easy to love someone loudly. It’s easy to make a big show. It’s easy to tell your mom, your dad, and everyone you know.

The day to day is silent but its value is more than gold. It’s the kind of love that happens everyday, while together, you grow old.

—Meg Tohill

Untitled—Series of Scars

She would have collected nectar. She would have collected pollen. She would have made you honey.

—Stampie Dear

Death Cannot Stop True Love

what if all we do is make terrible choices and die?

i think it sounds lovely with you

—chelsea rae

Full submission guidelines: Chronogram.com/submissions

Atheist

At seven I stopped believing in Santa after Mary Lou whispered to me betrayed by adults lured into an unreal world I stopped believing in the tooth fairy with her late-night dimes, the Easter Bunny with jelly beans and pastel eggs and God

But I am not a good atheist I slip into the back of Saint Anthony’s some Wednesdays at noon and sit in silence with the stained-glass saints I read Simone Weil, longing for her unwavering faith if we ask our Father for bread he does not give us a stone I find my hands in prayer for hungry children, for their exhausted mothers holding signs on street corners I see yellow crocus burst through spring snow

I watch my grandson take his first steps grinning with delight and I know God is still in this world even though I don’t believe

—Claire Scott

My Body, The Museum now, my body is a museum. she remembers the good, the bad, the whimsical, a dialect of Pollock splatter and a rococo. in a triptych of faith, it holds gothics of a Madonna, revered but robbed, where the whores gather and sing, a complexity.

where Ophelia’s bones freeze, and illness creeps.

where there are impressions of past lovers, and all the beauty, beyond the carnage.

—Joy Mendez

Our Booth at The Bonnie

We’ve made room for each otherIn a booth at the Bonnie

Getting cozy, mulled cider on our lips and from our lips, come little secrets like little bruises on your legs, they are hidden messages of sweetness we live in our little windows sometimes short walks other times, complete daysand on these days, when we are in different houses, I miss our little windows

Memory Boxes

Plastic preserves your letters. Preserving your young voice.

When you had hair, when your brother’s shadow loomed. It felt safe but defining. Smooth typed pages express your mutual adoration with facts.

“Thank you for sending such an interesting article” or “I have enclosed a research study.” Trading innovations like boyish hugs. Men shake hands in greeting.

I only saw you embrace him a few times. You have the same hands.

—Paige Barr

Novelty Item

I am a fun toy to pick up until the good time gets too repetitive. I am wanted, but never taken when offered.

I am your manic pixie that gets tossed into a fever dream at the drop of a dime. I am sought out when times get tough and never thought of when the good times roll. I am the first person called when the bottom falls out, but never tapped when at the top. I am a prize in public and put on a shelf at home.

I am the body craved, with a soul that gets starved. I am an ego boost, dropped when you’re full up

—A. Bass

What Do You See

the inner kitten will bring the devils slippers in his teeth in the morning in exchange for living space with Wi-Fi

what do you see being blind

the sexual joy of a mouse pressed to the floor by a cat ’ s paw hate pornography with guts out sun bunnies devoured by air wolves

what do you see

the deceased son comes every night in a dream in tears and asks to be resurrected

—Mykyta Ryzhykh

Nova Kakhovka, Ukraine

Whaling Ship in Storm

On the great whale ship slicked with blubber sailors hustle fore and aft, each with a task to accomplish right down to the rag-tag coal boy who keeps the pots boiling, days’ distant from the kindling shore.

He tweaks the flames to lick the pot of turtle stew broth augmented with roots pulled from the latest isle. Over high seas, the ship bounds, brine caked on the gunnels salty tears set in squinting eyes.

One stormy night darkness turns their flight to a chaotic roll, and they plunge deep in a solid cloud of wet. Fish throw themselves upon the deck, ropes fray. The boy hangs fast from the transom, his body a pennant of determination his windy thrill emblematic of a disregard for danger: the crazy side of courage. His clutch holds through the night and when dawn breaks so does the storm, and the boy melts back from his frozen flag to return to his post and serve a soup still warm.

—Sarah Wyman

—Ryan Balas

In a Creative Vein “LOVE FROM VICKI ISLAND”

February 4-February 2024 at Mass MoCA Massmoca.org

“I consider my derrière a national treasure,” declares Daniel Giordano, his face displaying an intense yet impish gaze. Giordano is in his Newburgh studio, the top floor of his family’s former garment factory on Grand Street where women’s coats were once crafted, and where the young sculptor—he’s 34—now creates his own outré line of art.

Nearby, a cast of his posterior tops a sculpture of a colorfully stylized, richly textured, and wildly oversized cowboy hat. The big hat is one of the many themes, or “veins of work” as Giordano calls them, that figure prominently in the sculptor’s often outrageous and aggressive art. He calls this vein of work “Talent.” Another hat, Talent 1(Titanic) is black and includes a stylized six shooter emerging from its crown that seems to be firing at an unseen foe. All this rests on a stack of tomato sauce cans—the total height of the concoction reaches 48 inches.

Like the competitive tennis player he once was as a teenager traveling on the international circuit, the psych out is part of Giordano’s game. His intent is to shock the viewer, to undermine fixed expectations of what art should be and perhaps in doing so deliver a rocket serve of truth. With his provocative statement, and more importantly his art, he may be channeling a Louhan—one of the ancient Chinese Buddhist masters who inhabit the fantastical landscapes manifested in the watercolors of Wu Bin, a Ming dynasty painter whose work Giordano admires—transmitting a koan to an adept. Or perhaps, he’s role playing a “big hat” who just rode into town in a Spaghetti Western to deliver a message. His statements, verbal and/or artistic, are often enigmatic.

Giordano is in the midst of preparing for three solo exhibitions. One of these will occupy three rooms at Mass MoCA for a year beginning February 4, another is at the Turley Gallery in Hudson beginning March 4, and the third is at JDJ Gallery in Manhattan opening March 8. Giordano is ambitious and not prone to wasting time. “I am competitive with myself in the arts,” he says. “I do have aspirations to achieve the highest accomplishments within the art industry.” He uses the term “industry” in part because he sees himself continuing the family history of making products to be sold, though he considers the actual process of making art as something undefinable and often painful.

Family and his hometown of Newburgh, where the Giordanos have lived for three generations, are especially meaningful to him and shape his work. Giordano came back to Newburgh after getting an MFA at the University of Delaware and a few years in New York City. He realized that all he needed for subject matter and inspiration was here in this post-industrial city on the banks of the Hudson.

Daniel Giordano's exhibition "Love from Vicki Island" opens at Mass MoCA on February 4. This page: Study for Brother as Merlin's Beard, 2015-2017 Opposite: (top) My Scorpio I, 2016-19; (bottom) Talent I (Titanic), 2016-2020

The line of coats the Giordanos manufactured in their Newburgh factory was named for his Aunt Vicki, and Vicki’s name fittingly appears in the title of Giordano’s show at Mass MOCA: “Love from Vicki Island.” Vicki was an entrepreneur who ran Vicki’s Video Villa and later Vicki’s Cool Delights, an ice cream store. She also was the manager of a Little League baseball team that won a championship. He still has pasta with her every month or so and mentions with a smile that “she has strong opinions.” He professes to challenge himself with questions like “Do I have it in me to be Vicki, to channel Vicki, to be the force that Vicki is, and to sublimate it into the work?… these are the sorts of funny things that go on in my head.”

Giordano’s older brother Anthony has been his personal guru in many ways, opening the doors of culture. For instance, it was Anthony who first introduced the artist to the British 20thcentury painter Francis Bacon’s intensely expressive work. “My brother took me to the Met and we came upon a painting called Head 2 by Francis Bacon and I almost fell on the floor. I didn’t know that art could be so badass. I remember thinking ‘Oh my God, this cuts out all the BS and it’s straight emotion and it’s intense and it’s got a commanding presence and that’s what I want my work to do.’”

Other brotherly influences were less highbrow but equally important. With their mother, the Giordano brothers made annual pilgrimages to the Dutchess County Fair, where they were fascinated by the work of a local artist who made figures of wizards out of tin, often incorporating crystals. These are referenced in Giordano’s vein of work dubbed “Study for Brother”; mostly tabletop sculptures that look like small, bizarre humanoids with an overabundance of energy. The sculptures also alluded to Anthony’s fantasy films and books, video game and card game obsessions, warlocks, gnomes, and fairies.

My Scorpio 1 was inspired by his brother’s zodiac sign and his love of the Etruscan Chariot at the Met. Another familial reference is the fact that his mother’s brother was a motorcycle daredevil. Reconciling these two snippets of family history, this work is a prime example of the visual power that Giordano is capable of delivering with his homebrewed approach to art making.

The angle of the motorcycle parts contacting the gallery floor generate a sense of tremendous momentum abruptly interrupted. The swooping airborne arcs above the disabled machine suggest an unplanned flight for the rider but also summon up a frozen moment of wordless reality for the viewer. During the construction of the assemblage, most of the piece was fried in cooking oil. The complete list of materials for the sculpture includes: 1970s Husqvarna motocross bikes, aluminum, Canadian maple syrup, cattails, ceramic, deep-fried batter, epoxy, phosphorescent acrylic paint, plastic wrap, railroad spikes, steel, stockfish, and urinal cake. Similar lists of materials can be found in the descriptions of most if not all of Giordano’s work, sometimes including bodily fluids, dead insects, and bald eagle excrement. These lists become a kind of word art or concrete poetry extending the dimensions of his pieces into literary space-time. While this might seem to be simply an attention-grabbing gambit, the unusual materials are in fact integral to the artist’s creative process. And while other works reference the Commedia dell’arte clown Pulcinella—his very prominent mythic nose is rendered by the artist in mascarpone mixed with epoxy— Giordano is deadly serious about his art. He sees many of his works as reliquaries that include real objects from his life as a way to help communicate his being’s actuality.

Though his works may appear abstract at first, they are representational, often inspired stylistically by monsters from sci-fi and horror movies like Aliens and Pumpkinhead. Though static, they emerge through an associative visual logic where one volume, shape, found object, color, or texture leads to another seamlessly, creating a sense of dynamism. Though sculptures, they can be read as paintings rendered in space that the viewer assimilates over time. “I’m interested in the sheen or the matteness, the glossiness, and whether it’s metallic, as well as the inherent color that’s involved in the material,” Giordano says. In a lot of ways I’m approaching the work like a painter.” He likes to think of these processes and others as “Giordanophying”—a way of making his work more authentically his own.

That Giordano confronts us with such a visual no-holds-barred screed of who he is can help us awaken to who we are as human beings. We are what we eat. We are how we make a living. We are the families we come from. We are the places we live. We are the history we inherit. We are the times we live in. We are the people we love.

When considering Daniel Giordano’s challenging art, it is worth remembering this quote from another badass, Pablo Picasso: “Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain conceive beyond any canon.”

—Carl Van Brunt

When the Past Was the Future

“WHAT NOW (OR NOT YET)”

Through September 10

at the Loeb Art Center at Vassar College Vassar.edu/theloeb

All around the world, curators are questioning the idea of a museum. Can it be something besides a Hall of Fame for deceased white men? Artworks that were purchased years ago and shelved are now seeing the light of day—or at least the fluorescent lights of a gallery. The Loeb Art Center at Vassar College addresses this rethinking with “What Now (Or Not Yet),” an exhibit that juxtaposes well-known “hits” of its collection with new items and borrowed works. Represented are artists from Chile, Kenya, Germany, Jamaica, Cuba, France, and South Korea, as well as this nation. The show opened on January 21.

One of the mainstays of the Loeb collection, Marsden Hartley’s Indian Composition (1914), appears in the same room as two works by Sky Hopinka, a contemporary Native American artist. Hartley’s work, which was painted in Berlin, is a collage-like array of colorful symbols, including a stylized teepee. Hopinka inscribes prayerful messages (such as: “Free me from this body, my voice can carry only so far”) on photographs of clouds. Perhaps these are visual puns on the cloudlike “thought balloons” in comic strips. Last year, Hopinka received a MacArthur Fellowship, the socalled “genius grant.”

The image on the poster for the show also has a Native American theme. Martine Gutierrez’s Girlfriends (Anita & Marie 7) (2014) is a photograph of two women dressed in traditional indigenous buckskin, hitchhiking together on a desert road. In fact, one of the hitchhikers is Martine, who is a trans woman, and the other is a mannequin. The “girlfriends,” with their glazed expressions, makeup, and brand-new clothing, resemble Vogue models—but does this picture also

protest the dispossession of Native peoples?

The installation Untitled (L.A.) (1991) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres consists of “green candies, individually wrapped in cellophane, endless supply,” to quote from the checklist: free treats on the floor, for any visitor to have. Torres died in 1996 from AIDS; it’s nice to see his generosity continue.

“Art at Vassar has always been contemporary. The bequest from Matthew Vassar in 1864—he gave over 3000 paintings and prints that seeded the collection— was by Hudson River School painters, who were still living,” observes John Murphy, curator of prints and drawings. “Vassar wanted students here to see original works of art by living artists. And that’s something we’re continuing today.”

One of the new acquisitions is Dorothy Tanning’s To Climb a Ladder (1987), a column of flesh comprising disordered body parts, which don’t evoke the bathtub of a serial killer so much as a gleeful orgy. Tanning produced the surrealist canvas when she was 77.

“What Now (Or Not Yet)” fills three rooms, divided into

the themes of past, present, and future—but the themes are metaphoric, not literal. In the “future” room, for example, is a 16th-century painting by Ludger tom Ring: The Open Illuminated Manuscript (circa 1570), a thick trompe l’oeil book, its pages being turned by an invisible hand. In the same room are photographs by the African-American artist Arnold Joseph Kemp, from the series “Possible Bibliography” (2015). In each of them, Kemp’s hands hold—almost caress—a book he admires. With just his left hand, for example, he brandishes Angela Davis’ Women, Race & Class. (Does his left hand symbolize the left?)

“What Now (Or Not Yet)” is a strange name for an exhibition, and the show itself has some eccentricities. Midway through the exhibition, a committee of students will rewrite the captions, reorder the pieces, and possibly devise an even stranger title for the show. That second version of the exhibit opens May 27.

—Sparrow

To Climb A Ladder, Dorothea Tanning, oil on canvas, 1987, collection of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College

Opposite: Netherlandish, An Open Illuminated Manuscript, oil on oak panel transferred to Masonite, 16th/17th century, collection of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College

It’s the depths of winter, a time in which there aren’t a lot of music festivals happening around Hudson Valley. But thankfully the Hudson Jazz Festival will return this month to once again bring two weekends of creative warmth to the region. The event, which will run from February 16 through February 26 at the historic and acoustically magnificent Hudson Hall, presents six evenings and two days starring some of the most imaginative artists on today’s jazz scene.

The festival, which has been curated by Live Music Society Executive Director and former Lincoln Center Vice President Cat Henry, will begin on February 16 with an opening reception (5-7pm) for “Body & Soul,” an exhibition of jazz-inspired paintings, textiles, and clothing by artist and fashion designer Marine Penvern, a French-born Hudson resident. The live music gets underway on February 17 at 7pm with a concert by vocalist and composer Sarah Elizabeth Charles and her band Scope alongside works by visual artist Laetitia Kiang. “It’s a mixture of many things,” says Charles about her group’s newest album, 2022’s Blank Canvas “Jazz is definitely the foundation, but there’s also indie rock, hip-hop, trap…lots of different feels.”

On February 18 at 7pm, trumpeter Marquis Hill will make his first festival appearance to perform pieces from New Gospel Revisited, his 2022 reimagining of the music of his 2014 debut New Gospel, with his quartet. Innovative singer Michael Mayo will feature

on February 19 at 3pm, bringing his fluid, playful style (think Stevie Wonder or Bobby McFerrin) in a special solo set. Weekend number two begins on February at 7pm with drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr. and his sextet Generation Y. The percussionist and band leader is well known for his Grammy-winning work with Christian McBride and his completed world tours with Kurt Elling and Joey Alexander. New York vocalists Lucy Yeghiazaryan and Vanisha Gould will appear on February 24 at 7pm to deliver a mix of new compositions and interpretations of jazz classics. Pianist Aaron Parks and his group, which includes singer Samantha Rise and erstwhile Hudsonian and famed bassist Meshell Ndegeocello, will premiere “Dreaming Home,” a new work specially commissioned for the festival, on February 25 at 7pm. “Meshell is one of my all-time heroes,” says Parks. “Knowing that she’s connected to Hudson, when the festival came to me with the commission I immediately wanted to ask her if she’d be part of it. I’m so happy that she agreed. This will be the first time that we’ve played together.”

The festival closes out on February 26 at 3pm with a show by bassist Endea Owens of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s” house band, Stay Human. For the Hudson date,

—Peter Aaron

A Swingin’ Affair

THE 2023 HUDSON JAZZ FESTIVAL February 16 through 26 Hudsonhall.org

Owens will lead her own band, the Cookout, in a program of joyous jazz imbued with a spirit of community and activism.

Clockwise from top left: Aaron Parks (photo by Deneka Peniston) with Samantha Rise (photo by Eric Tsurumoto, inset); Marquis Hill (photo by Chollete); Lucy Yeghiazarian and Vanish Gould; Sarah Elizabeth Charles (photo by Shervin Lainez); Michael Mayo (photo by Lauren Desberg); Ulysses Owens Jr (photo by Rayon Richards).

Al Olender

February 4. “This show is for the broken-hearted, the new relationship energy you don’t know where to put, the crushes you’ve had and have and maybe will meet at this show,” says local singer-songwriter Al Olender about “Alentine’s Day,” the all-ages concert she’ll perform at the Old Dutch Church this month to raise funds for her new album. “I want to bring you something tender, intimate, special—something your younger self (and mine) wish they had gone to.” Easy Crier, Olender’s 2022 debut, was produced and engineered by James Felice of the Felice Brothers and also features that band’s Ian Felice—either of whom just might be among the show’s “special guests.” 8pm. Kingston. $15, $20. Alolender.com

Ida

February 5. Formed in Brooklyn in the early 1990s by singer-guitarists

Daniel Littleton and Elizabeth Mitchell, the influential indie sadcore outfit Ida has sporadically reunited over the years. This rare reconvergence at Levon Helm Studios is one of only two such events planned for 2023 (the other is in Los Angeles), and for it the lineup will include original bassist Karla Schickele (Babe the Blue Ox, Beekeeper, Low), original drummer Miggy Littleton (Daniel’s brother; White Magic), guest violinist Jean Cook (the Mekons), and multi-instrumentalist Storey Littleton (Elizabeth and Daniel’s daughter), who will open with her own set. (Nefesh Mountain climbs February 9; Phil Cook simmers February 24.) 7:30pm. $30, $40. Woodstock. Levonhelm.com

Franz Nicolay/St. Lenox/John and Dan

February 10. Known for his membership in the Hold Steady, World Inferno/Friendship Society, and other projects, local singer-songwriter Franz Nicolay is also a Bard College professor and author whose fourth solo album, New River, appeared in 2022. St. Lenox is the alias of singer-keyboardist Andrew Choi, a maker of melodramatic, gospeltinged gothic pop with themes of American history, religion, and inner angst. John and Dan, the experimental side duo of Barbez members John Bollinger (vibraphone, bass, drums) and Dan Kaufman (guitar), is currently recording their debut album with producer Martin Bisi (Sonic Youth, Swans). (Jak Lizard and Sam Lisbeth visit February 3; Nisa, Fraternal Twin, and Ben Seretan play February 9.) 8pm. $12. Catskill. Theavalonlounge.com

Facs

February 15. Chicago trio Facs treads in the tradition of arty, abstract, mechanistic postpunk and post-rock that has made that city famous— think Shellac, Slint, or Tortoise. Featuring ex-Disappears guitarist and vocalist Brian Case and drummer Noah Leger, the band, which here hits Tubby’s, recorded its 2018 debut, Negative Houses, at the vital Electrical Audio Studio with Case on bass and his fellow Disappears guitarist Jonathan Van Herik in the ranks; when Van Herik left, Case switched back to guitar, where he has remained for the group’s next three albums, the latest of which is 2021’s Present Tense. (Chris Brokaw and Jennifer O’Connor come by February 5; the Royal Arctic Institute, Minibeast, and Overheard rule February 17.) 7pm. $10. Kingston. Tubbyskingston.com

Joe Louis Walker

February 24. Rambunctious bluesman Joe Louis Walker came into the music via the 1960s psychedelic rock scene in his native San Francisco, playing in the house band at the legendary Matrix club and making friends there with visiting great—and his future Chicago roommate— Paul Butterfield. Walker, who here arrives to set the Falcon alight, played in the Spiritual Corinthians Gospel Quartet before stepping out on his own with 1986’s Cold is the Night, has since become a blues festival and club favorite who has released and appeared on a rack of acclaimed albums; among the latter is B.B. King’s 1993 Grammywinning Blues Summit. His own newest is 2022’s Weight of the World (The Alexis P. Suter Band is back February 18; Abraxis lionizes Santana March 2.) 7pm. Donation requested. Marlboro. Liveatthefalcon.com

Shawn Colvin/Marc Cohn/Sarah Jarosz

March 1. The Bardavon boasts a big night of prime, Grammy-winning singer-songwriters with this top triple bill. Shawn Colvin won Song of the Year and Record of the Year for her 1998 hit “Sunny Came Home” and Best Contemporary Folk Album for 1989’s Steady On. March Cohn, who’s best known for “Walking in Memphis” from his 1991 self-titled album, picked up his Grammy for Best New Artist in 1992. Though still a young upstart, Texas-born Sarah Jarosz has netted an astonishing four Grammys in the Folk and Americana categories. A master class in songcraft, indeed. (Jazzed Up jams March 23; Amadou and Miriam sing March 24.) 7:30pm. $47 and up. Poughkeepsie. Bardavon.org

Bailey manufactures their famous pottery equipment in Kingston’s Midtown Arts District. World-renowned kilns, wheels, studio hardware, and ceramic supplies are available to ship or for curbside pick-up.

(800) 431-6067 | baileypottery.com | 62-68 Ten Broeck Ave., Kingston, NY

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2/18:Ukrainefundraiser

ShadowsofForgottenAncestors(1965)

2/19: Foreword!

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OPENING2/24: Emily (aboutEmilyBronte)

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Providing fine art services for artists, collectors and gallerists in the Hudson Valley, Massachusetts, Connecticut and surrounding region 518-822-7244

510 WARREN ST GALLERY

510 WARREN STREET, HUDSON.

“Kate Knapp: Recent Works.” Paintings. Through February 25.

THE ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY ART

MUSEUM

258 MAIN STREET, RIDGEFIELD, CT

“Kathleen Ryan: Head and Heart.” Large-scale sculptures. Through May 14.

ART GALLERY 71

71 EAST MARKET STREET #5, RHINEBECK

“Kathy Schmidt.” Paintings. Through February 5.

“Mark Dixon: Floral Photography.” February 1-28.

ART OMI

1405 COUNTY ROUTE 22, GHENT

“Shared Space—Collective Practices”. Curated by Julia van den Hout, the show presents the work of four international collaborative design practices—WIP, FUNdaMENTAL Design Build Initiative, Colloqate Design, and Assemble— bringing people together through communal work to realize projects with broader social impact. Through May 7.

BANNERMAN ISLAND GALLERY

150 MAIN STREET, BEACON

“Virginia Donovan and Mary Ann Glass.” Hudson Valley landscapes and photo mixed media works. Through February 5.

BERKSHIRE BOTANICAL GARDEN

5 WEST STOCKBRIDGE ROAD, STOCKBRIDGE, MA

“Volumes.” Ceramics by Karlene Jean Kantner. Through February 26.

BILL ARNING EXHIBITIONS / HUDSON VALLEY

17 BROAD STREET, KINDERHOOK

“Frozen Warnings, A Salon for the Chilly Months.” Featuring work by Eric Wolf, Susan Wides, Donna Moylan, Judy Fox, Suzanne Joelson, Richmond Burton, Shirley Irons, Stephen Lack, Dan Devine, Reed Anderson, Carter Hodgkin, Michael Walden, Betsy Friedman, Kevin Larmon, Erik Daniel White, Jim Goss. Through March 5.

BEACON ARTISTS UNION

3 BEEKMAN STREET, BEACON

“Studies.” Photographs by Robert Olsson. February 11-March 4.

CAROL COREY FINE ART

6 NORTH MAIN STREET, KENT, CT

“..beating undercover of woods.” Works by John Alexander, Dozier Bell, Sue Brearey, Dina Brodsky, Emily Eveleth, J. C. Fontanive, Daniel Murray, Shelley Reed, Alexis Rockman, and Jane Rosen. Through February 28.

CARRIE CHEN GALLERY

281 MAIN ST LEVEL 3, GREAT BARRINGTON, MA

“A Perfect Echo.” Paintings by Nancy Hagin and Stephen Niccolls. Through March 25.

THE CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY AT WOODSTOCK

474 BROADWAY, KINGSTON

“Race, Love, and Labor (an excerpt.)” Photographs by Endia Beal, William Cordova, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Tommy Kha, Deana Lawson, Pixy Liao, Dawit Petros, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Xaviera Simmons, and Joanna Tam, artists who participated in CPW’s artist-in-residency program. Through March 5.

CLARK ART INSTITUTE

225 SOUTH STREET, WILLIAMSTOWN, MA

“Promenades on Paper.” Eighteenth-century French drawings from the Bibliotheque national de France. Through March 12.

CREATE CATSKILL GALLERY

398 MAIN STREET, CATSKILL

“Catskill Portraits by David McIntyre.” Portraits of Catskill residents by David McIntyre originally shot for Chronogram. Through February 25.

CUNNEEN-HACKETT ARTS CENTER

9 & 12 VASSAR STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE

“Biographical Mimesis.” Paintings by Adrian Lee. Through February 28.

“Yes, You.” Mixed-media diptych collages by Renee Samuels. Through February 28.

D'ARCY SIMPSON ART WORKS

409 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“Elements of a View.” Paintings by Zach Neven.

February 11-March 11.

DAVID ROCKEFELLER CREATIVE

ARTS CENTER GALLERY

200 LAKE ROAD, TARRYTOWN

“Inspired Encounters: Women Artists and the Legacies of Modern Art.” Pairs pieces by a dozen groundbreaking women artists of the postwar period with new commissions of contemporary art presented publicly for the first

time. Through March 19.

DIA BEACON

3 BEEKMAN STREET, BEACON

“Jack Whitten: The Greek Alphabet Series.” Forty works from Whitten’s Greek alphabet series. Through July 10. "Melvin Edwards." Long-term view.

FRONT ROOM GALLERY

727 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“Anthropocene: Invisible Changes.” Work by Sasha Bezzubov, Pamela Longobardi, Stephen Mallon, Lucie Svoboda Micikova, Edita Pattova, Jan Pfeiffer, Petra Gupta Valentova, and Kathleen Vance. Through February 19.

GALLERY 40

40 CANNON STREET, POUGHKEEPSIE

“Rhinebeck Fine Art.” Works by Joyce AronsBeymer, Jennifer Axinn-Weiss, Sean Bowen, Thomas Cale, Tarryl Gabel, Rosemary Hanson, Pat Hart, Betsy Jacaruso, Kate Kester, Ann Moring, Harvey L. Silver, Julia VanDevelder, and Lisa Winika. February 4-26.

GARRISON ART CENTER

23 GARRISON’S LANDING, GARRISON

“59th Annual Member Exhibition.” Through February 12.

“Anna West: Blue Edge.” Paintings by Anna West. February 18-March 19.

“Lindsey Guile: Uncensored.” Figure drawings. February 18-March 19.

GREEN

92 PARTITION STREET, SAUGERTIES

“Margaret G. Still: New Paintings.” Road trip Americana in paintings on canvas, wood, and paper. Ongoing.

FRONT ROOM GALLERY

727 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“Anthropocene: Invisible Changes.” Work by Sasha Bezzubov, Pamela Longobardi, Stephen Mallon, Lucie Svoboda Micikova, Edita Pattova, Jan Pfeiffer, Petra Gupta Valentova, and Kathleen Vance. Through February 19.

HEADSTONE GALLERY

24 HURLEY AVENUE, KINGSTON

“Almost Simpatico.” Work Anne Currier and George Hrycun. February 4-26.

HOWLAND CULTURAL CENTER

477 MAIN STREET, BEACON

“Beacon Photography Group 2023 Members

Showcase.” Work by Debra Ashton, Markie Baylash, Alison Bogart, Tom Conroy, Patti Devine, Ron Donofrio, William Flamholtz, Mary Ann Glass, Cindy Gould, Zinnia Gutowski, Emily Hague, Ron Hershey, Larry Kerschberg, Philomena Kieran, Nancy LeVine, Bill Loeb, Suzanne Moss, Jean Noack, thomas Orlando, Liz Pipitone Phillips, Noah Rosaler, Barbar Stern, Jenna Stern, Alan thomas, Sandra Belita-Vasquez, Sharon Watts, Bill Winter, Trisha Wright, and Dylan Wood. Through February 26.

HUDSON BEACH GLASS GALLERY

162 MAIN STREET, BEACON

“Linnea Pergola: Paintings.” Through February 5.

HUDSON AMTRAK STATION

69 SOUTH FRONT STREET, HUDSON

“Subway Ontology.” Photographs by Richard Sandler. Through March 15.

HUDSON VALLEY MOCA

1701 MAIN STREET, PEEKSKILL

“Through the Eye of the Needle.” Group exhibition of handcrafting featuring Inez Andrucyk, Jan Baracz, Jill Bell, Anita Bracalente, Jodi Colella,Jaynie Crimmins, Adrienne Cullom, Sandi Daroza, Natasha Das, Sherry Davis, Sophia DeJesus-Sabella, Donise English, Philippe Halaburda, Jill Kerttula, Natalya Khorover, Barbara Korman, Carole P. Kunstadt, Lori Lawrence, Nicole Mazza, Sharon Pierce McCullough, Patricia Miranda, Elizabeth Morisette, Ellie Murphy, Diana Noh, Erik Jon Olson, Karla Rydrych, Michael Seri, Arlé Sklar-Weinstein, and Mary Tooley Parker. Through March 18.

IBM TECH CITY

101 ENTERPRISE DRIVE, KINGSTON

“Parallel Lives: Photography, Identity, and Belonging.” Organized by noted curator Maya Benton. Through February 5.

JOYCE GOLDSTEIN GALLERY

19 CENTRAL SQUARE, CHATHAM

“Continuum.” Paintings by Chiarra Hughes-Mba. Through February 11.

KATONAH MUSEUM OF ART

19 CENTRAL SQUARE, CHATHAM.

“Young Artists 2023.” Group show. February 5-26.

KENISE BARNES FINE ART

433 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“Cool & Collected '23.” Amanda Acker, Kristi Lamb, Matu Tooley Parker, Yayoi Asoma. Curated by Lani Holloway. Through March 5.

Dakini, a ceramic sculpture by Pamela Sunday from the exhibition "Life Science" at Pamela Salisbury Gallery through February 12.

Hole, a painted steel sculpture, from Alexi Antoniadis's exhibition "Play" at Turley Gallery through February 26.

KLEINERT/JAMES ARTS CENTER

34 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK

“One on One: A Survey of Contemporary Monotypes & Monoprints.” Work by Gregory Amenoff, Zoe Anderson, Christine Beneman, Gregory Crane, Ford Crull, Peggy Cyphers, Maxine Davidowitz, Katie de Groot, Mary Anne Erickson, MB Flanders, Deborah Freedman, Randy Garber, Michel Goldberg, Jane Goldman, Brandon Graving, Judy Haberl, Catherine Howe, Catherine Kernan, Jennifer Marshall, Kate McGloughlin, Debra Olin, Eileen M. Power, Wendy Prellwitz, Susanna Ronner, and Joanne Simon. Curated by Jen Dragon. Through February 26.

LABSPACE

2642 NY ROUTE 23, HILLSDALE

“Holiday.” Small works group show. Through February 19.

LOEB ART CENTER AT VASSAR

124 RAYMOND AVENUE, POUGHKEEPSIE

“What Now? (Or Not Yet).” Work by Andrea Carlson, Andrea Geyer, Jeffrey Gibson, Marsden Hartley, Jenny Holzer, Sky Hopinka, Arnold J. Kemp, Wangechi Mutu, Dorothea Tanning, Nari Ward, and Audra Wolowiec. Through September 10.

LONGYEAR GALLERY

785 MAIN STREET, MARGARETVILLE

“Member’s Winter Group Exhibit.” Group show. Through February 12.

MARK GRUBER GALLERY

NEW PALTZ PLAZA, NEW PALTZ

“Snowscapes.” Group show. Through March 11.

MASS MOCA

1040 MASS MOCA WAY, NORTH ADAMS, MA

“Love from Vicki Island.” Playful and provocative sculptures by Daniel Giordano. February 4-September 30.

MONUMENT

394 HASBROUCK AVENUE, KINGSTON

“Habitual Moments”. Recent oil paintings by Carson Monahan. Through February 24.

OLANA STATE HISTORIC SITE

5720 ROUTE 9G, HUDSON

“Chasing Icebergs: Art and a Disappearing Landscape.” Highlights Frederic Church’s iceberg sketches from his 1859 intrepid voyage to the Arctic alongside wory by contemporary artists. Through March 26.

PAMELA SALISBURY GALLERY

362 1/2 WARREN STREET, HUDSON

“Life Science.” Ceramic sculptures by Pamela Sunday. Through February 12.

“Arne Svenson: Sightline.” Photographs. Through February 12.

“Still in Bloom.” Sculpture by Jon Isherwood. Through April 23.

PINKWATER GALLERY

56 NORTH FRONT STREET, KINGSTON

“Evolution.” Work by Anne Sanger Joan Ffolliott, Chi Yun, Helena Palazzi, Melanie Delgado, Meredith Rosier, Monique Robidoux, Nancy O'Hara, and Susanna Ronner.

February 3-March 26.

PRIVATE PUBLIC GALLERY

530 COLUMBIA STREET, HUDSON

“Contact.” Paintings by Stephen Maine. Curated by Chris Freeman Through February 26.

SAMUEL DORSKY MUSEUM OF ART

1 HAWK DR, SUNY NEW PALTZ

“Be Who You Are: Portraits of Woodstock

Artists.” This selection of photographs from the 1980s series “100 Portraits of Woodstock Artists” by Harriet Tannin (1929-2009) documents residents of the legendary artistic community.

February 4-July 16.

“The Historic Woodstock Art Colony: The Arthur A. Anderson Collection.” Illuminating America’s first intentional Art Colony, this exhibition presents more than 100 artists whose paintings, sculptures, and works on paper together form an artistic history of national and international significance. February 4-July 16.

“Hudson Valley Artists 2023: Homespun.”

The 2023 edition of the annual Hudson Valley Artists exhibition explores how 18 artists are reinterpreting traditional crafts and “women’s work.” February 4-April 2.

SEPTEMBER 4 HUDSON STREET, KINDERHOOK

“in the presence of.” Work by Dee Clements, Ellen Siebers and Kathranne Knight.

February 4-March 26.

SOHN FINE ART

69 CHURCH STREET, LENOX, MA

“Oceans & Odysseys.” Oceanic photographs by Rachael Talibart. Through February 6.

STEVENSON LIBRARY

BARD COLLEGE, ANNANDALE-ONHUDSON

“Hedwig Meyer-Thoma.” Paintings. Through March 30.

SUPER SECRET PROJECTS

484 MAIN STREET, BEACON. “Elin Lundman.” Paintings. February 11-March 11.

SUSAN ELEY FINE ART

433 WARREN STREET, HUDSON.

“Surpassing Structure”. Work by Mike Childs and James Isherwood. Through February 19.

THE STEWART HOUSE

2 NORTH WATER STREET, ATHENS

“Hard Water Sailing: The Ice Boats of the Hudson River.” Photographs by Adam Deen. Through March 31.

THE WASSAIC PROJECT

37 FURNACE BANK ROAD, WASSAIC

“No Misery Can Tell, No Word of Farewell.”

Featuring the work of Clint Baclawski, Richard Barlow, Esy Casey, Raul De Lara, Eric Garcia, Ambrus Gero, Kate Johnson, Cate Pasquarelli, Lauren Phillips, Farwah Rizvi, and Christina Hunt Wood. Through March 18.

TURLEY GALLERY

98 GREEN STREET, SUITE 2, HUDSON

“Indepth.” Work by Chris Fitzwater, Nick Naber, Elliot Purse, and Margaret Inga Urias.

February 4-26.

“Play.” Work by Alexi Antoniadis. February 4-26.

WIRED GALLERY

11 MOHONK ROAD, HIGH FALLS

“Split Vision.” Paintings by Raul Serrano. Through May 6.

WOODSTOCK ARTISTS

ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM

28 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK

“Pressure and Presence: Contemporary Printmaking.” Through February 26.

“On This Site.” Photographs of sacred, culturally significant, and historical Native American landscapes on Long Island by Shinnecock Nation tribe member Jeremy Dennis. Through February 26.

“Restoring Indigenous Voices: Landscapes from the Permanent Collection.” Twenty works that explore the historical contexts of a selection of landscapes from the permanent collection acknowledging the Native American significance of well-known mountains, rivers, fields and sites in the region. Through April 9.

Horoscopes

By Cory Nakasue

Electric Currents and Puddles of Love

Aquarius is the season of cold, crystalline genius. Imagine a shard of ice cutting through clouds to reveal a clear blue sky, and the crackle of electricity in the air. This is the feeling of the beginning of February, made even more exciting because all major planets are moving direct. Ideally, we put the visionary prescience of Aquarius to use by sharing ideas that will benefit everyone, as opposed to a select few. Watch for opportunities to make more egalitarian choices around full Moon in Leo on February 5. What’s the worth of a new idea or invention if it doesn’t benefit most of us? The ideas, along with the disruptions and rebellions, will be coming in like high-speed downloads all month, especially in the days surrounding Mercury’s entrance into Aquarius on the 11th.

In the middle of all this cool logic and future-gazing, a wildly romantic Venus in Pisces conjoins Neptune, melting hearts just in time for Valentine’s Day. Before you completely dissolve into a love puddle, take note that the Sun conjoins Saturn on the 16th, creating tension between heart and mind. Luckily, with innovative Aquarius and imaginative Pisces in the mix, you could create a bridge between the two. The only requirements for experiments to work right now are that they be novel in some way and actionable. It must work on the ground.

The sun enters Pisces on the 18th, inviting us to find our bliss by surrendering. Does everything need to be such a fight? The peaceful new Moon in Pisces on the 20th is inclined to want to hug it out. However, on that same day, Venus moves into Aries, the sign of the warrior. Odds are, we may take great pleasure in being at odds.

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ARIES (March 20–April 19)

Venus enters your sign towards the end of the month to join Jupiter. It’s all about you, and that’s okay. Actually, could you take up even more space? Boldly claiming your desires now could heal some old wounds springing from negative responses to your self-centered nature from the past. . Some healthy selfishness may even be rewarded! Just remember, your expansion doesn’t have to come at the expense of others. Chances are, that if you’re overly concerned with other people right now, you’re missing the point of Venus in Aries. Self-satisfaction doesn’t depend on anyone else’s opinion, situation, or position.

TAURUS (April 19–May 20)

Your sign is positioned at the apex of a tense full Moon configuration in Leo. Looks like you’re caught between demands from your personal life and professional life that trigger the need to reinvent yourself, which would be no small feat given your preference for steadiness and comfort. Forces from within or without are poised to expand roles that are too cramped to fit the person you’re becoming. Feelings of restlessness are cueing a need for liberation. The full Moon peaks on February 5th. An explosion is in order. Clear some space and hand out the safety goggles.

GEMINI (May 20–June 21)

Now that Mars has picked up speed and is moving direct through your sign, you’re on the move as well. After several months of wildly fluctuating energy levels, you may feel a greater sense of consistency. By nature, you’re still thinking in terms of multiples—identities, goals, and relationships. Only now, instead of feeling like this scatters your efforts, you’re better able to synthesize them. This will be useful for pursuing opportunities that look ideal, yet elusive. It will take the unique dexterity of your mind and body to find what’s real in these inspirations while preserving their enchantments.

CANCER (June 21–July 22)

Your heart and mind are boundless this month! They’re feeding on one another. Each new thought or change of perspective seems to spur a profound emotional experience, dare I say “religious?” I don’t mean this in terms of any organized religion, but in terms of your life’s overarching narrative. The same goes for anything that touches your heart. If the feeling is powerful enough, you could experience quantum leaps in your understanding of the world around you. Open yourself up to experiences of awe. You are poised to regain your faith, shift your paradigm, or expand your consciousness.

LEO (July 22–August 23)

You’ve been learning so much about relationships over the last couple of years. Ready for your final lesson in this series? The full Moon in your sign on the 5th, has a surprise in store for you. What you think you need from others might get completely turned on its head, and of course, this affects what you think you know about yourself. Our relationships teach us so much about the bondage we impose upon ourselves, and our fear of freedom. The relationship revelation coming up doubles as a test. Pass or fail, an old sticking point is released.

VIRGO (August 23–September 23)

You’re so practical and efficient, and no one has more discriminating standards. Who would guess that you, of all people, have a soft spot… or blind spot? Around mid-month gird yourself for a besiegement of tenderness. Is it love, compassion, or a rescue mission? Best case scenario: You’re moved to see beyond someone’s usefulness and faults, and enjoy being baffled by your own feelings. Worst case scenario: You see an opportunity to help someone “less fortunate” and play the role of savior. In the first instance, you lose yourself to find yourself. In the second, you lose yourself to keep yourself hidden.

LIBRA (September 23–October 23)

Your horoscope ruler, Venus, moves into Aries on the 20th. This puts both of the cosmos’s benefic planets (the other being Jupiter) in the relationship sector of your chart. Whether you’re looking for a romantic partner, sparring partner, or creative collaborator, you’re going to find someone to work with. They may be challenging, and they may push your buttons, but it looks like you could use the extra spice in your interactions with others. Get out there and mingle! The people coming into your life have something to teach you about the joys of playing with fire.

GLENN’S SHEDS

STACK IT UP & STAY WARM

Horoscopes

SCORPIO (October 23–November 22)

There’s one last storm to weather at the top of the month. Lately, it may feel like you’ve been battling constant upheaval on one hand and intense restriction on the other. The situation comes to a head at the time of the full Moon on February 5. Succeed or fail, this turbulence is subsiding, and the Pisces new Moon on the 20th marks a period of healing. Scorpio is the sign of the emotional warrior who sees things through to their final conclusion, and then transforms. Pisces is your natural ally and midwife in the rebirthing process. One last push, then rest.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22–December 22)

More than any other sign in the zodiac, yours might be the most relieved that Mars is now in forward motion. Whatever confrontations, redirections, and energetic fluctuations have been plaguing you these past few months, they should begin to clear up. Mars in Gemini isn’t quite done with you yet though. Every Sagittarian has something to gain from the barrage of questions Gemini has for them: “What makes you think your way is right?” “Why do you believe as you do?” “How did you come to that conclusion?” These questions help you fulfill the ultimate Sagittarian mandate of expansive thought without self-righteousness.

GLENNSSHEDS.COM

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CAPRICORN (December 22–January 20)

This is the last month that Saturn, your ruling planet, will be in a Saturn-ruled sign for a couple of decades. Whether the past six years were to your liking or not, at least you had a basic affinity with your environment. Next month, you get dropped into an entirely new element, but more about that in March. Mercury also leaves your sign this month after a lengthy stay due its retrograde. February is a month of goodbyes. It may feel like leaving home to go on an adventure. Use this bittersweet time to reflect on how much you’ve grown.

AQUARIUS (January 20–February 19)

The month starts off with much electricity between you and a special person, or with those you consider family. Unexpected changes are sometimes rooted in desires we’ve suppressed for too long. That’s why they can “slip” out with great force at inconvenient times. This could benefit your relationships right now. It could be a time when a deadlock is broken. By mid-month you’ll have Mercury and Saturn’s support for inventively communicating your way out of any skirmishes, and taking a stand if you have to. This hint of seriousness will balance a simultaneous urge to play fast and loose with your resources.

PISCES (February 20–March 19)

Fainting couches were popular in the 19th century. They’re perfect for napping, dreaming, and having somewhere soft to land when overcome with emotion. I prefer the term “swooning couch,” and you might need one in February because there’ll be much to swoon over. Having Venus and Neptune co-present in your sign spells waves of feeling and a softer-than-soft vulnerability. This makes you susceptible to everything: love, fantasy, inspiration, hurt, melancholy, and the common cold. Set yourself up with some supports to catch your fall, or, just enjoy the tumble. By month’s end you should find your feet.

FIREWOOD SHEDS/ UTILITY SHEDS/ CUSTOM SHEDS

Custom-built Firewood Sheds

Come Sail Away

The extraordinarily chill image above is the work of photographer Adam T. Deen, whose solo exhibit “Hard Water Sailing: The Ice Boats of the Hudson River,” is on view through March 31 at the Stewart House in Athens. The series is the product of weeks spent on the ice with the enthusiasts of the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club in early 2022, when the river blessed them with a workable expanse of ice off the coast of the town of Athens.

“The previous year, I saw them out on the on the ice and I was asking some of them about the whole thing and they were telling me how much of an occasion it is when they do get to go out,” says Deen. “And so when I saw them last winter, I’m just like, I gotta go out as many days as they go out. So I tried to get out there as much as I could, just because it was very special and unique that it was happening. They definitely have that same sentiment.”

Before an ice boat can catch the wind and glide, several factors need to fall perfectly into place: Not only must the ice be smooth and at least seven inches thick, it needs to have been cleared of snow by the wind,

which still needs to be blowing briskly enough to fill the sails of the craft. Ice boaters do a lot of waiting, hoping, and checking. But when the glorious moment comes, it’s on: Ice boats can achieve a speed of up to 70 mph.

“They’re all just hooked on that thrill. I also think they really love hanging out with each other,” says Deen. “It was great hearing their stories. And that moment when the wind picks up and everybody just drops whatever else they’re doing—the boats are stunning in motion. Back when the whole river froze over, the ice boaters used to race the trains, but having enough ice is rare these days. You can’t really plan for it, and I found myself loving the patience and passion it took to be right there in that moment.”

And should you be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the boats yourself, Deen says their captains will welcome your company. “When they’re out, they love it if you want to come check it out up close. They’ll give you a ride—they’re super excited to do that.”

Portfolio: Adamtdeen.com

—Anne Pyburn Craig

An untitled photograph by Adam T. Deen from his "Hard Water Sailing" series taken on January 23, 2002. The ice boat Vixen is being piloted by Reid Bielenberg near Murderer's Creek in Athens.