Events | Hudson Winterwalk

Saturday December 7 marked the 17^th Winterwalk; this annual event, produced and organized by the Hudson Opera House, presented several public arts events. All the events were free and engaged the local community along Warren Street\ —\one on the main antique centers in the USA. Winterwalk events run from 5-8pm on the first Saturday of December and include several street art performances, from mines to fire eaters; icons of the Christmas celebration, such as reindeer and alpacas, also make an appearance in the street. The evening ends with firework on the Hudson river background.

Aerial silks with Robin Lynch at the Hudson Opera House

 Memories from the 2007 Winterwalk

Vernissages | Hudson, July 17: Carrie Haddad Photography, Damiani and BCB Art

A lively evening, strolling in the Warren Street art galleries of Hudson ---blessed as usual by the sunset light which contributed to the fame of the Hudson School of Paintings.

Sun setting in Warren Street

Art Strolling: Enid Futterman and John Isaacs, editors and publishers of the quaterly magazine Our Town

A remarkable exhibition of photography ---mixed with other media and processes-- at Carried Haddad Photography. The exhibition of works by David Seiler and Cuban photographer Adrian Fernandez is on view from July 15 to August 15, 2010.

"David Seiler works in sepia tones and dusty grays, instilling a nostalgia in his photographs, most of which are portraits of one kind or another. The vintage quality that this color palette evokes suggests these photographs were excavated from someone's personal archives, transported from private to public view for the first time... Movement and fixity, life and death are in tension, imparting a spectral air to these works."

Six vibrant still lifes by Adrian Fernandez, part of a series entitled To Be or To Pretend, provide a complement to Seiler’s sepia tones. Just as Seiler’s photographs exhibit pseudo-wear and tear to belie their modernity, Fernandez’ works feign false identities: after sustained attention, one becomes aware that the blossoms are fake, lifeless. The artificiality in each of these photographs adds dimension to these works, lending them an element of irony and play.

Carrie Haddad and her artists

Nancy Goldring combines vision and revision in drawing, photography and projected images to create pictures and installations.

Margaret Saliske, a sculptural artist who uses digital photography as a primary element in her work, presented a new series titled, “Photo Deconstructions.”

Another remarkable photography exhibition at Damiani Gallery: former dancer and dance photographer Roy Volkmann explores the beauty in the human body and movement in the almost sculptural plasticity captured by his photographic portraits..

Enid Futterman conversing with Roy Volkmann

At BCB Art "using historical references and subtle, humorous, graphic symbols Scott Reynolds examines America’s current political, economic and cultural wars in his latest drawings. He employs an economical and iconographic language along with ideas of social commentary (similar to those found in his sculpture) to explore the fragmented conditions that substitute for a current American ethos."

Places | Hudson, Winterwalk

Another winter and another winter celebration in Hudson, one of my favorite places in this side of the planet. Winterwalk, the annual winter celebration organized by the Hudson Opera House, populates Warren Street with mimes, acrobats on stilts, surreal windows and grand finale with fireworks.

Although I usually experience Winterwalk as a spectator, in 2007 I greatly enjoyed it as a participant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBHOow2Iyzk

This winter the tone of the celebration was not as festive and energetic as in the past years ---the weather combined with the economy? But yet Winterwalk is always a wonderful way to win the winter blues before the holidays consumistic madness, in a small city where diversity is very much part of the community.