Lake George Arts Project

Still, a solo exhibition of work by Sarah Sweeney
2017-01-28 - 2017-03-03 | Courthouse Gallery, 1 Amherst St, Lake George, NY, 12845, United States
January 28 – March 3, 2017
Curated by Rachel Seligman, Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs, Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College.
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 28, 4 – 6 pm
This event is FREE and open to the public.
Gallery Hours: Tues – Fri 12 – 5 pm, Sat 12 – 4 pm

In her work, Sarah Sweeney explores the space between information that is stored in our memory and the information that is captured by documentary technologies, such as cameras, phones, stereoscopic images and home videos. She explains: “When a photograph is taken, or a voice is recorded, or a video is captured, there is a duplication that occurs. One is a memory stored internally by the body to be reconstituted later, while the other takes a physical form and enters into the archive of memory objects. It is the relationship between the two forms – one living and malleable, the other rigid and enduring – that my work takes as its subject.”
Still, Sarah Sweeney’s recent series of work, comprises large scale archival pigment prints and animations created from video footage and photographs captured at different sites in Iceland. Each work is constructed from dozens of images of the landscape combined with images of tourists taken at the same location. Sweeney digitally repositions bodies like theatrical props or mannequins among the the waterfalls, glaciers, and lava fields. Sweeney says: “Iceland’s tourism board describes their natural landscapes as a contrast between majestic mountains, picturesque lagoons, catastrophic glaciers, and raging torrential rivers. Close to a million tourists overrun Iceland every year hoping to capture and bring home these landscapes in the form of photographs. In the photographic series Still I explore the paradox that arises when hundreds of tourist bodies armed with cameras around their necks invade these remote landscapes hoping to capture a sense of wilderness, isolation, and untouched space.”

Sarah Sweeney earned her BA in Studio Art from Williams College and MFA in Digital Media from Columbia University School of the Arts. Her work has appeared nationally and internationally in exhibitions at locations including the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, the New Jersey State Museum, the Black and White Gallery, and the UCR/California Photography Museum. Her work was recently featured at Laughter and Forgetting, Bucharest Art Week, Bucharest, Romania; Screening Scholarship Media Festival Exhibition, Annenberg School Of Communication, University Of Pennsylvania; and Slingshot Festival of Music, Electronic Art, Tech, Film & Comedy, Athens, Georgia. Other recent exhibitions include Re-Picturing Photography, Union Street Gallery, Chicago Heights, Illinois;This into That: Found Object Art, Assemblage, and Other Transformed Work, Nave Gallery Annex, Somerville, Massachusetts; The Dam Show, Reservoir Art Space, Ridgewood, New York; Selected Art Faculty Exhibition, Schick Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York; public media, private media, curated by Nick Montfort, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, Massachusetts. She is currently Associate Professor of Digital Media and Interactive Design in the Art Department at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY.
You can learn more about her at sarahelizabethsweeney.com.
Sarah Sweeney in Conversation with curator Rachel Seligman:
RS: Could you start by sharing a little about your background as an artist?
SS: I grew up with photography because my grandfather was a serious collector. I was a photographer in high school and I wanted to be one in college. My junior year I went to the Museum School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. There I studied digital photography for the first time and I was introduced to the computer. That was first time I had any type of experience with a computer and I made a piece that was really important to me. My father died when I was 17, right before I went to college. I loved photographs but I felt that in the time after he died photographs let me down. They had been promised to be memories, and I was terribly disappointed because I used the same photographs over and over and they stopped bringing back my father. And I just felt very much like it was photography’s fault that I was losing my memories. With the computer, I could do things that reflected the way I was thinking about memories, so my first real piece was called My Father Died Four Years Ago and it involved removing him from all the photographs I had of him. And one of the ideas was that you could see the hole that he left, which was a much more present reality than actually seeing his body, which was no longer here. So it was a way to alter the photographs to reflect the present reality, as opposed to something that was in the past.
Since that time, all of my work has been about exploring photography without taking photographs. Instead, I work mainly with found photographs, slides I buy from eBay, things like that. I hadn’t taken photographs in 10 years before the Still series, and I haven’t taken them in any of my projects since.
RS: What do you think about the relationship between the photograph as a perceived document – we like to think they are snapshots of reality – and the fact that your work involves altering or fabricating the photograph?
SS: My work relies upon that perception – of photography as reality – because it allows for a sense of wonder when seeing my work. But I believe that all photography is completely constructed. While we consider photographs to be really near and dear (they’re the first thing you grab in a fire, right?) I actually think that photographs are really problematic. I think that they’re false and artificial in ways that we don’t readily perceive. And I think that’s one of the reasons all my work is in photography, and is why I alter them, because I think that when we see photographs, we don’t think about all the ways that they don’t actually equate to reality or memory…
RS: And do you feel like your personal experience of loss was the moment that you had that realization?
SS: Yes. I think because I love photography so much, and felt so betrayed.
RS: I’m interested that you had such a powerful and emotional feeling of betrayal, but that instead of completely rejecting photography and going in another direction, you ended up diving in deeply, creating your own path into photography.
SS: Every one of my works questions a different aspect of photography and our relationship to it. Not to suggest that people shouldn’t love photography, because I think photography is incredible. But to see how strange and awkward photography is, instead of just familiar, and warm, and cuddly, and all those things people generally feel about it.
RS: Tell me about the current series: how did you come to make this work, which is different from all your previous work in that you’ve actually taken these photographs yourself?
SS: People are not still in reality. We don’t see that. We don’t know what that looks like. But in photographs, we totally accept that moment. Stillness is weird and strange, but to make people see that, I rotate people 90°, because then the awkwardness seems more obvious. Also, when you’re vertical you don’t notice how rigid our bodies are, but when you turn them, they’re so rigid, almost like rigor mortis. And there are all these postures and gestures that we’re not even conscious of, because they’re so familiar. So by turning people on their side it becomes unfamiliar, and we start thinking a little bit more about what it is to be still. The other thing that really got me excited was taxidermy, and thinking about photography as visual taxidermy. Because taxidermy has all the same things as rigor mortis, it’s unnatural, but very lifelike.
The related artifice with photography is this sense… (and that goes back to my dad) …that it can bring someone back. I think our culture is very obsessed with this.
RS: Did you go to Iceland with this particular project in mind?
SS: I did. I’d been working with old slides for a long time and I decided I wanted to work with contemporary images. For this project I started looking at Flickr, but none of the photographs were a big enough size for me to use. I decided Iceland was the best place to go to make my own images because I was looking at a lot of Caspar David Friedrich, and thinking about the Rückenfigur [a figure placed in a landscape painting, seen from behind, contemplating the view]. I knew that Iceland looked a lot like some Caspar David Friedrich paintings. And one of the best things about Iceland is that it’s so compact, with many different kinds of landscape. I had a map that I had planned out with 28 sites that I would visit in 14 days. I would visit a site, and just sit there and wait for tourists to come. And it was a very odd experience of feeling like I was hunting tourists, because I’d get very excited when they would show up en-masse, armed with cameras around their necks, swarming into these remote landscapes. And then I would “shoot” them. I also took a lot of photographs of the backgrounds, so I could put them together piece by piece, because I wanted some of the work to be really big.
RS: I want to talk a little bit about the role of humor in this work.
SS: My work is not usually funny; I don’t intend it to be funny.
RS: Why do you think that people think this work is funny?
SS: I think maybe because it’s kind of uncomfortable. If you’ve ever been to a place and been one of these people, I’m somewhat poking fun at you. If you’ve ever been a tourist, you’re somewhat implicated through these people. I also think there is irony in the images: that masses of tourists descend on these sites to capture a sense of wilderness, isolation, and untouched space.
RS: It seems to me that this is a critique of how we flock to places that have been designated as being special, and we try to capture them in some way, to own them, to possess them.
SS: Yes, and I don’t understand that. I guess that’s one of the weird parts for me about this series, is that I don’t usually do this. If I go to a foreign country, I don’t take images. I don’t take pictures of my children (my husband does). I don’t take pictures of myself, I don’t take pictures pretty much at all. So this is very foreign to me.
And there’s this sense that because we’re taking all these photographs with cameras that we’re not taking anything away from a place.
RS: What do you think about that?
SS: I do think that we are taking something away from a place. I do. And I think it’s strange that on a given day in Iceland, hundreds of people have the same exact photograph. It seems incredibly wasteful. It’s digital so nobody thinks it’s wasteful. And so part of this trip was a lot about me coming to terms with, “Is it Okay? Is it not Okay? What does it mean when all these people travel through this place? What does it mean when you take something? What does it mean to own a digital piece of a place?” And so I guess one of the things that occurred to me about this is that I really think photographs are not necessarily just for memory. I think they’re a lot about communicating what it is we’re doing at a given time. I guess I’m interrogating the act and the culture of it.
RS: So you think – because you started to allude to this – that it’s about both the moment of taking it, but also the moment of sharing it with others? Maybe even more about the sharing?
SS: Yes, I think a lot of it is sharing. And I think the sharing is, on one level, tied to capitalism and colonialism. “I went to this place. You should see it… These are the most amazing things…” People who have enough money go to a country that’s not theirs, take photographs (among other things) from that country, and bring them back as a way to show off their wealth and power.
RS: Photography as a mode of conquest…
SS: It is a mode of conquest and that’s the part that is very intriguing to me. I’ve read a lot on tourism and conquest. To be in someone else’s country to “experience” it… I’m interested in what that means, and how the camera becomes a tool in service to the impulse for control and possession.
But I also don’t take photographs of my life now because I find it to be a really strange practice. You have this very odd moment where everyone is stopping, becoming still, to take the photograph. At least for me, that’s very odd. But I love photographs. That’s the paradox for me, because I love photography. And in my work, I’m trying to bring to the surface some of the paradoxes that exist for me in photography. We hold photography very close but I feel it needs to be more closely examined.
This exhibition is funded in part by The Community Exchange Foundation, Adirondack Studios and the New York State Council on The Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The Courthouse Gallery hours during exhibitions are Tuesday through Friday 12 – 5 pm, Saturday 12 – 4 pm, and all other times by appointment. The Courthouse Gallery is located at the side entrance of the Old County Courthouse, corner of Canada and Lower Amherst Streets, Lake George, NY.<

Sol Survivors: Solo exhibition of work by Andrea Hersh
2017-03-11 - 2017-04-14
March 11 – April 14, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 11, 4 – 6 pm
Click HERE to see performance choreographed by Andrea Hersh, with dancers Liz Fillipone and Louisa Barta
This event is FREE and open to the public.
Gallery Hours: Tues – Fri 12 – 5 pm, Sat 12 – 4 pm

Andrea Hersh is a painter and multi-media artist examining the relationship between nature and humanity. In “Sol Survivor” she has created a world where strange hybrid, “post human” creatures have inherited an over populated and polluted planet. Her colorful paintings combine her love of the natural world with her alarm over society’s destructive disposable culture, where these anthropomorphic creatures are caught in a drama, fighting for resources. She says: “My work represents fragments of dreams, fantasies, and moments in time. My protagonists are part human, part vegetable. By insinuating these fanciful hybrids into precarious and toxic situations, I can explore themes of vulnerability, desire, greed, and industry gone awry… This work hopes to balance the beauty I see in nature with the ugliness that I have contributed to it as an active member of a disposable culture.”
Andrea Hersh earned her Masters of Fine Arts degree from the University at Albany, and her Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts from Skidmore College. Her solo exhibitions include “Celestial Bodies” (2016) and “Flora & Fauna” (2011) at The Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy, NY; and “Community Garden” at the Masery Gallery, College of St. Rose. She was recently voted “Best in Show” at the Laffer Gallery’s 2016 juried Upstate Artists exhibition, and was an exhibiting artist in the 2016 Hudson-Mohawk Regional at the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls. Her work has also been shown at Clement Gallery in Troy, NY, the Albany Center Gallery, the Albany International Airport Gallery and the Saratoga Arts Center. Her awards include a Painting Fellowship from the New York Foundation of the Arts, two NYFA Special Opportunity Stipends, as well as Artist Residency awards from The Arts Center for the Capital Region, the Millay Colony in Austerlitz, NY, and a Boreas Residency in Reykjavik, Iceland. She lives and works in Slingerlands, NY, and has taught mixed-media, painting and drawing classes as an adjunct professor for the past 15 years in and around the Capital District. You can learn more about her and her work at www.andreahersh.com.
This exhibition is funded in part by The Community Exchange Foundation, Adirondack Studios and the New York State Council on The Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The Courthouse Gallery hours during exhibitions are Tuesday through Friday 12 – 5 pm, Saturday 12 – 4 pm, and all other times by appointment. The Courthouse Gallery is located at the side entrance of the Old County Courthouse, corner of Canada and Lower Amherst Streets, Lake George, NY.

Linear Landscapes: Solo exhibition of work by Rachel Kohn
2017-05-06 - 2017-06-09
May 6 – June 9, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 6, 4 – 6 pm
This event is FREE and open to the public.
Gallery Hours: Tues – Fri 12 – 5 pm, Sat 12 – 4 pm

Rachel Kohn’s imagery comes from real and imagined landscapes inspired by cycles of growth and decay. She will exhibit a series of miniature three-dimensional paintings that are carved and built up from layers of plaster, foam, and aquaresin. A final layer of either encaustic wax or acrylic medium is added to create a deep and luminous surface. Kohn will also exhibit a series of drawings on handmade paper. In addition to making the paper herself, she uses a variety of drawing media, including charcoal, graphite, watercolor, paper mache, and acrylic. By deconstructing and reconstructing paper pulp, rough and torn areas create images that appear to be fragile and deteriorating landscapes. She says: “My work has a focus on nature, and is also inspired by human fragility. I am influenced by cycles of deterioration, devastation, and renewal. These perpetual cycles are a natural process, and in my work I attempt to find beauty in these sometimes harrowing experiences. I look for balance from the unbalanced, control from chaos, and light from darkness.”
Rachel Kohn earned her Bachelor of Arts from Skidmore College, and Her Master of Fine Arts from Hunter College in NYC. Her recent solo exhibitions include Ground Gradation, Azarian McCullough Art Gallery, St. Thomas Aquinas College, Sparkill, NY; Harmonious Decay, Crossing Art Gallery, Queens, NY; Moments in Weeds, Greenport Art and Design, Greenport, NY; Existing Caves, Tarryn Teresa Gallery, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, CA. Her work has been included in many group exhibitions, including Mile Square Exhibition, Roig Gallery, Hoboken, NJ; Salon Art Mora, Art Mora Gallery, New York, NY; Existential Navigation, Omni Gallery, Uniondale, NY; Paradoxes, Mooney Center Gallery, College of New Rochelle, New Rochelle, NY; Your Presence is Requested, Resobox Gallery, Long Island City, NY; The Right Amount of Wrong, ISE Cultural Foundation Main Gallery, New York, NY; Waxing, Denise Bibro Fine Art, NY. Her awards include an Artist Residency at Coohaus Art, New York, NY, Kenise Barnes Fine Art Award, Larchmont Arts Festival and a Going Green Award from Crossing Art, Queens, NY. She currently lives and works in New York City, and teaches in the Graduate Art Department at The College of New Rochelle.
This exhibition is funded in part by The Community Exchange Foundation, Adirondack Studios and the New York State Council on The Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The Courthouse Gallery hours during exhibitions are Tuesday through Friday 12 – 5 pm, Saturday 12 – 4 pm, and all other times by appointment. The Courthouse Gallery is located at the side entrance of the Old County Courthouse, corner of Canada and Lower Amherst Streets, Lake George, NY.

Story Time: Children and Young Adult Authors and Illustrators
2017-07-07 - 2017-08-11
Featuring the work of Bruce Hiscock, Marika McCoola, and Jennifer Sattler

Opening July 7 and running through August 11, 2017, the Lake George Arts Project’s Courthouse Gallery will present “Story Time: Children and Young Adult Authors and Illustrators”, a 3 person exhibition featuring the work of Bruce Hiscock, Marika McCoola, and Jennifer Sattler. The opening reception takes place on Friday, July 7, from 6 – 8 PM. We will also present a panel discussion with the artists on Tuesday, August 1st at 6 pm at Northshire Bookstore, 424 Broadway in Saratoga Springs, NY. Our exhibiting artists will discuss their creative process and relationship between visual illustration and storytelling. All events are free and open to the public.
Bruce Hiscock is the author/illustrator of many natural history books for children. His stories, like “The Big Rock” and “The Big Tree,” are based on actual objects, near his home, and contain enough information to enlighten grade school kids as well as most adults. These books, among others, have been designated as Outstanding Science Trade Books by the Children’s Book Council. “The Big Rock” and “The Big Storm” were honored on the John Burrough’s Riveby Award List of Books for Young Readers. Well versed in many aspects of science, Bruce studied chemistry in college and graduated from the University of Michigan, B.S. 1962 and Cornell University, Ph.D., 1966. At age 40 he decided to combine his artistic talents with science and begin a career in children’s books. His journeys across the North American Arctic from Alaska to Labrador form the basis of several works, including “Tundra,” “The Big Caribou Herd,” and most recently, “Ookpik- the Travels of a Snowy Owl,” a finalist for the Charlotte Award of New York State. Bruce lives in Porter Corners, NY, in a house he built by hand using the native rocks and trees. He often gives programs in schools and libraries, teaching kids to draw and encouraging them to read and write stories for themselves. You can learn more about his work at brucehiscock.com.
Marika McCoola is an illustrator, educator, and the New York Times bestselling author of “Baba Yaga’s Assistant.” She studied illustration, art history, creative writing, and ceramics at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland and received her BFA in Illustration in 2009. Marika then went on to study creative writing and children’s literature at Simmons College, receiving an MFA in Writing for Children in 2012. In addition to writing and illustrating, Marika teaches Studio Art, Illustration, and Children’s Literature online for the State University of New York, Empire State College, works as an indie bookseller, and teaches classes through the Emerson Umbrella Arts Center in Concord, MA. She’s also taught Children’s Literature for the K-6 Classroom for Skidmore College’s Education department. Her awards include a 2016 Ivan Gold Fiction Fellowship from Writers’ Room of Boston; 2015 Finalist for JP Reads Flash Fiction Contest; Rusty Drugan Scholarship from New England Independent Booksellers’ Association, 2012, and CHIRP Scholarship for Winter Institute 7 from Candlewick Press, 2012. Marika grew up in Glens Falls, and currently resides in Somerville, MA. You can learn more about her and her work at marikamccoola.com.
Jennifer Sattler is the award winning author and illustrator of several children’s books, including “Sylvie,” which won the Mockingbird Award and the Georgia Children’s Book Award, “Uh O DoDo,” and her newest book “Frankie The Blankie.” She is also the author of the popular “Chick-N-Pug” and “Pig Kahuna” series. Jennifer earned her BFA in painting from the University of New Hampshire and MFA from Indiana University, Bloomington. In 1996, she won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Although she has worked as a landscape painter and professor of painting and drawing, her real passion is creating books for children. After her first daughter Mayzie was born, she found it harder and harder to get out to the painting studio. “I couldn’t wait to read to Mayzie. She slept most of the time, but I kept reading, silly voices and all! The magic of picture books excited me so much more than making pictures to hang on the wall.” Jennifer began drawing elephants, Mayzie’s favorite animals at the time. A year later her first book was published, “Bella’s Saratoga Summer,” starring Bella the Elephant (named after their 100 lb. dog). The following year her second book was published. “All Aboard Owney! The Adirondack Mail Dog” was based on the true story of a scruffy dog that rode the rails in the early 1900’s. She says: “I’ve been asked why I only use animals as my characters in my books. It’s simple, really. I want children to identify with the personalities of my characters, their situations, worries and joys… When the characters are animals, it’s much more universally relatable.” Jennifer lives and works in Saratoga Springs. You can learn more about her and her work at jennifersattlerbooks.com.
This exhibition is funded in part by Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga Springs, Adirondack Studios, Price Chopper’s Golub Foundation and the New York State Council on The Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The Courthouse Gallery hours during exhibitions are Tuesday through Friday 12 – 5 pm, Saturday 12 – 4 pm, and all other times by appointment. The Courthouse Gallery is located at the side entrance of the Old County Courthouse, corner of Canada and Lower Amherst Streets, Lake George, NY.

Electron │ Photon
2017-09-23 - 2017-10-27
September 23 – October 27, 2017
3 Photographers’ Unique Approach to Image-Making – Dee Breger, Suran Song and Eleanor Sweeney
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 23, 4 – 6 pm
This event is FREE and open to the public.
Gallery Hours: Tues – Fri 12 – 5 pm, Sat 12 – 4 pm
Read: Albany Times Union Review Here
Dee Breger
Eleanor Sweeney
Suran Song
Dee Breger’s images stand at the intersection of art, science, education and technology. The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) she worked with could magnify a specimen over 300,000 times. The structures seen in her images are preserved, while their aesthetic presentation is manipulated through an array of graphics techniques. She says: “In using a research laboratory’s high-tech visualizing instrument to produce revelatory – and relevant – art, my goal is to offer arresting pictures of the microworld that inspire a sense of wonder at its elegance, astonishment at its diversity, and delight in the stories it has to tell. As a scientist grounded in the disciplines of research, I seek to maintain the integrity – the truth – of the specimens. As an artist, I want my images to speak to the viewer’s heart.”
Dee Breger received a degree in Art from the University of Wisconsin and began her career as a scientific illustrator at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, switching to electron microscopy soon after. She founded Lamont/Columbia’s first professional SEM and X-ray microanalysis facility, which she directed for 22 years. Her work has been exhibited around the world and was featured in the BBC documentary “Hidden Visions.” Her book “Journeys into Microspace: The Art of the Scanning Electron Microscope” was featured in the New York Times magazine. Besides specializing in the technology, scientific application, and artistry of the SEM, Breger also led or participated in several Earth science programs on over 30 field expeditions, with a specialization in Antarctic oceanography. From 2004 to 2009 she served as Director of Microscopy at Drexel University. She retired from academia in 2009 to return to her first love: art. She launched Micrographic Arts that year in Saratoga Springs, NY, where she lived until her death, working as a consultant and artist. Dee Breger passed away in September of 2016 after a battle with leukemia. More information about Dee Breger can be found at www.micrographicarts.com,and her TED Ed talk, “Visualizing Hidden Worlds Inside Your Body,” can be seen at https://ed.ted.com/lessons/visualizing-hidden-worlds-inside-your-body-dee-breger.
Sanskrit and the civics of politics, as well as a routine practice of Yoga, are both strong influences for Suran Song. Her work encompasses printmaking, painting, installation, sculpture, photography, video and performance art. A recent project “There’s More to Life Than Increasing Its Speed! We need each other here!” contains a series of limited edition c-prints depicting flower mandalas projected on to the hands of participants held in various mudras (symbolic hand gestures), while practicing yogic breathing. The work is inspired by her routine practice of Yoga and the Sanskrit Pushpam Veda mantra, a Vedic hymn that expresses water as the basis of the universe and is used at the time of offering flowers to the deities at the very end of the Pujas (a prayer ritual performed to honor one or more deities). Song conceived of the project as a means for participants to practice fasting from cell phones and other screens by returning to their breath and presence, and to experience colors often used in yogic therapy to transmit uplifting and healing vibrations. She says: “I am interested in engaging with the public by making experiential art that transcends the viewer. Working in a multitude of disciplines further allows me to continually test the boundaries of the senses, the embrace of Sanskrit and the breath, all core elements that inform my artistic path.”
Suran Song earned her BFA from University of The Arts in Philadelphia, PA and her MFA from Parsons School of Design, New York, NY. She has received awards and residencies from the Queens Council for the Arts and the New York Artist and Community Council: The Laundromat Project. Her work has been exhibited at numerous venues, including The Villa Terrace Museum of Decorative Arts, Milwaukee, WI; Chashama Windows Project, Harlem, NY; Art in Odd Places, New York, NY; The Walk Exchange, London, England & New York, NY; Southview Co-operative, Queens, NY; Shirin Gallery, Chelsea, NY, NY; Queens Museum, Queens, NY. Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC; The Experimental Space, Long Island City, NY; and Fabio Scalia Art Space, Brooklyn, NY. In addition to being a multi-media artist and performer, she is a student of Sanskrit, and a yoga instructor with an International Teacher’s Certification in Himalayan Yoga. She lives and works in Jackson Heights, Queens, NY. More information about Suran Song and her work can be found at www.suransong.com and also at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn2P7snwycY, where she is a featured artist in a brief video describing her work.
Photographer Eleanor Sweeney makes digital transfers on metal, paper, wood and fabric, as well as traditional photographic prints. Her eye is often drawn to small, ordinary things, which she likes to manipulate a bit. She says: “I have been making photographs for a long time, starting out with classic black and white images. Gradually I became interested in color, doing a little hand coloring and working with colored slides. For many years, I made Polaroid transfers, and later began to teach myself to make transfers using digital photographs. This way I can play around with color and shape in the computer. All the photographs in this show are reflections in silver Mylar. I place a sheet of Plexiglas covered by a piece of Mylar against a tree or wall or something, set up the tripod to the side, and photograph what is reflected. The Mylar is not very tight, so it ripples in the slightest breeze, creating the wavy abstract result in the photograph. Some of the photographs are printed on paper, while others are transferred onto metal or wood.”
Eleanor Sweeney, born in Cincinnati, Ohio 1937, earned a BA in Russian from Middlebury College in 1959. She studied photography at North Country Community College from 1974-1976, and took various photography workshops around the country. In 1997 she co-founded Adirondack Artists Guild in Saranac Lake, NY. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the Northeast, and featured in solo exhibitions at Adirondack Artists Guild and Pendragon Theatre, both in Saranac Lake; St Louis Artists Guild; Visitor Interpretive Centers in Paul Smiths and Newcomb, NY; Geonomics Center at Middlebury College, VT; and For ArtSake in Malone, NY. Recent group exhibitions include “Catching Water,” Bluseed Studios, Saranac Lake and “Imagined Landscapes,” Lake Placid Center for the Arts. She is the recipient of three NY decentralization grants, and was awarded Best In Show at Frederic Remington “Members’ Show” (2017) and First Place in Photography in “Central Adk Art Show” at View Old Forge, NY (2017). She lives and work in Saranac Lake, NY.
This exhibition is funded in part by The Community Exchange Foundation, Adirondack Studios and the New York State Council on The Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The Courthouse Gallery hours during exhibitions are Tuesday through Friday 12 – 5 pm, Saturday 12 – 4 pm, and all other times by appointment. The Courthouse Gallery is located at the side entrance of the Old County Courthouse, corner of Canada and Lower Amherst Streets, Lake George, NY.

Open Immediately: Collages by Sarah Nicole Phillips
2017-11-11 - 2017-12-15
November 11 – December 15, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 11, 4 – 6 pm
This event is FREE and open to the public.
Gallery Hours: Tues – Fri 12 – 5 pm, Sat 12 – 4 pm

Sarah Nicole Phillips is a Toronto-born, Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist. Her recent work is a series of collages created with hundreds of recycled, patterned security envelopes. She says: “I began playing with security envelopes when I had an office job. I would tear open the mail every day and started noticing the intricate patterns printed on their insides. Security envelopes are used to camouflage sensitive and private documents. Their decorative patterns make it impossible to read what is inside. For this body of work, the imagery is inspired by naturally occurring camouflage. That’s what the printed pattern is for, to hide documents, and it made sense to echo the botany and camouflage idea in the work… some scenes are benign, such as a square of monotonous grass, suggestive of a wider expanse of more of the same. Recent collages include office and lobby imagery such as cubicles, elevators and artificial floral arrangements. These collages represent a fantasy in which the material of the reliable, boring disappointments of life, are transformed into a means of escape.”
Sarah Nicole Phillips earned her B.A. in Visual Studies from the University of Toronto in 2003, and her MFA from Brooklyn College in 2006, with a concentration in printmaking. From 2006-07 she participated in a year-long artist residency at the Lower Eastside Print Shop where taught monotype. Sarah exhibits widely in Canada and the US and has recently been included in shows at the Queens Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and The McKinley Arts & Culture Center in Reno, NV. In 2009 and 2014 she was a recipient of Brooklyn Arts Council Grants. Her other awards include residency fellowships from The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Nebraska City, NE, and Blue Mountain Center, Blue Mountain Lake, NY. Her work is in the permanent collection of NYU Langone Hospital. For more information about her work, please visit www.sarahnicolephillips.com.
This exhibition is funded in part by The Community Exchange Foundation, Adirondack Studios and the New York State Council on The Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The Courthouse Gallery hours during exhibitions are Tuesday through Friday 12 – 5 pm, Saturday 12 – 4 pm, and all other times by appointment. The Courthouse Gallery is located at the side entrance of the Old County Courthouse, corner of Canada and Lower Amherst Streets, Lake George, NY.

Ceramics by Regis Brodie and Paintings by Leslie Yolen
2018-01-13 - 2018-02-15
January 13 – February 15, 2018
Artists Reception: Saturday, February 3rd, 4 – 6 pm.
This event is FREE and open to the public.
Gallery Hours: Tues – Fri 12 – 5 pm, Sat 12 – 4 pm
Regis Brodie

Leslie Yolen

Regis Brodie works in porcelain and stoneware. His colorful, surface-layered ceramics are the culmination of his training as a painter and sculptor. Both painting and sculpture are parallel and overlapping experiences in his works. He says “My methodology of making art is exploratory in nature. It deals with the direct manipulation of materials and processes. My vessel or sculptural forms are elegant and classical. The surface painting, drawing, and textural treatment on the other hand, is out of the Abstract Expressionist and Post-Modernist Schools. I love the interplay that is created between the refinements of the form and the spontaneously decorated surface. It contrasts the elegant with the organic. I am tight and at the same time loose… I do not establish a hierarchy or dominance of the form (mass) verses the surface (decoration). As I consider the form, the surface reveals itself as it becomes intrinsic and essential to the whole.”
Regis Brodie is an Emeritus Professor of Art at Skidmore College. He earned his B.S. and Masters in Art Education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art of Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. Regis taught for 41 years in the Studio Art department at Skidmore College until his retirement in 2011. In addition to his regular teaching duties he directed Skidmore’s prestigious “Summer SIX Art Program” for 35 years, as well taught in the Summer SIX Art Program for 39 of those years. His work was recently shown at Laffer Gallery and the Saratoga Clay Studio, both in Schuylerville, NY. Regis continues his ongoing body of work with lectures and exhibits worldwide.
Leslie Yolen has worked predominantly in clay until recently, when encaustics became her favored medium. She finds her process of encaustic painting, (beeswax and tree resin mixed with pigments) similar to the additive and subtractive processes of working with clay. Her paintings on wood panels are created using brushes, torches, knives, and scraping tools. Her series of work for this exhibit is titled “Treescapes”. She says “These paintings were inspired by my lifelong fascination with trees and the way they frame our world in different light and through different seasons. The genesis for these paintings was the clearing of brush at the edge of the woods around my home, opening new and inviting views into and through the woods.”
Leslie Yolen earned her B.F.A. from Bennington College and an M.S. in Visual Arts Education from the College of Saint Rose. She is the Arts Education Associate for the New York State Education Department’s Office of Curriculum & Instruction, where she provides statewide leadership in relation to the implementation of the NYS Learning Standards for the Arts, supporting arts teachers, administrators and students across the state. Prior to working with NYSED, Leslie taught Visual Art in the public schools, focusing on curriculum development, instructional planning, and professional development for arts teachers. Her recent exhibitions include a solo show at Carey Institute for Global Good in Rensselaerville, NY, and “Great Places and Spaces”, Albany Center Gallery’s satellite exhibit at the New York State Museum, Albany NY. She lives and works in rural Albany County, NY.
This exhibition is funded in part by Adirondack Studios, Mirror Lake Inn, Lake Placid, The Community Exchange Foundation, and the New York State Council on The Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The Courthouse Gallery hours during exhibitions are Tuesday through Friday 12 – 5 pm, Saturday 12 – 4 pm, and all other times by appointment. The Courthouse Gallery is located at the side entrance of the Old County Courthouse, corner of Canada and Lower Amherst Streets, Lake George, NY.
