OAC Presents “Workshoppers” - Opening Reception Thursday, May 10th, 7-9 PM

(click photo for larger image)Come and see some fun and wonderful art being created by local adults—from workshoppers, to beginning students, to instructors and workshop leaders! Find out what kinds of art classes and workshops are going on in this area—and see what the participants are producing.

Join us on Thursday evening to meet the artists, celebrate their achievements, and talk to the teachers. Admission is FREE and light refreshments will be served.

OAC Steamer Firehouse Gallery - 117 Main St., 2nd Floor, Ossining, NY 10562 (The building is right across from the Ossining Post Office

Richard Serra: Post-Abstract Expressionism

Richard Serra - Trip Hammer - 1988 (reproduced 1997) - Steel - Unconfirmed: 2743 x 3315 x 1346 mm - Tate Collection, London (click photo for larger image)Richard Serra (born 1938) is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. He is one of the preeminent American artists and sculptors of the post-Abstract Expressionist period. 

Beginning in the late 1960s to the present, his art has played a major role in advancing the tradition of modern abstract sculpture in the aftermath of Minimalism. His work draws new, widespread attention to sculpture's potential for experience by viewers in both physical and visual terms, no less often within a site-specific, if not highly public setting.

Serra's concern with the implicit relationship between his sculpture's conception and its intended site has led directly to a new international discourse (often a heated one) regarding the role and governance of art in public spaces such as municipal parks, corporate plazas, and memorial sites—where the work of art might virtually interrupt viewers' daily routines in ways that are not necessarily universally welcomed among a given community.

The work featured here “consists of a pair of large thin steel plates of equal dimensions assembled in a T-shaped formation. Made from a rust-coloured weathering steel, which is particularly resistant to corrosion, each plate is over two and a half metres in length, almost a metre and a half in width, and only five centimetres thick. One plate stands vertically on the floor in a corner of the gallery, positioned diagonally so that one of its edges points towards the centre of the room, while balanced on its top edge is the second plate, lying flat with its corners just touching the walls. The plates’ surfaces bear marks and patches of orange and brown, which are interspersed with the base tones of black and grey. The edges are a rusty orange colour, and one side of the vertically oriented plate features a serial number.” (Tate Collection, London)

Gerhard Richter: The Power of Images

Gerhard Richter - Cathedral Corner - 1987 - Oil on canvas - 48 1/16" x 34 1/4" (122 x 87 cm) - Private Collection, New York (click photo for larger image)Gerhard Richter (born 1932) is a German visual artist, who has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, and also photographs and glass pieces. Originally trained in a realist style, he later developed an appreciation for the more progressive work of his American and European contemporaries.

Richter has maintained a lifelong fascination for the power of images and painting's long, uneasy relationship with photography: while either medium may claim to reflect or express reality truthfully, either ultimately suggests only a partial, or incomplete view of a subject.

Richter borrows much of his painted imagery from newspapers, or even his own family albums. Often he begins by mechanically projecting such an image onto the canvas, a technique for thinking about how images often seem to have a life of their own, like mysterious ghosts haunting our psyche. This act of visual compression, in which photography, projection, and painting merge to make a finished art work, suggests that all vision is a kind of conversion of the "real" into the “imaginary." Richter often blurs his subjects and embraces chance effects in his own painting process, in order to show the impossibility of any artist conveying the full truth of a subject in its original condition.

William Kentridge: Ambiguity and Subtlety

William Kentridge - General - 1993 (published 1998) - Engraving and watercolor - composition and sheet: 47 5/8 x 31 7/16" (121 x 79.8 cm) - Publisher: David Krut Fine Art, London - Printer: 107 Workshop, Melksham, England - Edition: 35 - MoMA, New YorkWilliam Kentridge (born 1955) is a South African artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films. These are constructed by filming a drawing, making erasures and changes, and filming it again. 

“Having witnessed first-hand one of the twentieth century’s most contentious struggles—the dissolution of apartheid—Kentridge brings the ambiguity and subtlety of personal experience to public subjects that are most often framed in narrowly defined terms.” (Art 21)

The work featured here was “created a year before South Africa's first nonracial democratic election, as right-wing opposition escalated and police brutality persisted, General isolates one of Kentridge's heartless protagonists. The vigorous line work here was printed from a rigid polycarbonate sheet the artist incised using an electric engraver. Kentridge made several experimental impressions, including this one, on sheets of paper that he first painted with watercolors—creating vivid coloration uncharacteristic of his work overall.” (MoMA exhibit gallery label)

The 2018 Living Art Event

The 2018 Living Art Event presented by Ossining Arts Council and Westchester Collaborative Theater will take place from March 2nd - March 24th.  The 2018 production of the highly acclaimed collaboration between Ossining Arts Council (OAC) and Westchester Collaborative Theater (WCT) will be held at the Steamer Co. Firehouse, 117 Main Street, 2nd Floor, Ossining, NY 10562. This is the fourth iteration of the Living Art Event. 

Docent-led tours will take place through the OAC gallery, full of artwork created by OAC members. When the tour, which runs approximately 90 minutes, reaches an artwork that inspired a WCT playwright, the short play based on that piece will be performed.

Plays this year include: The Bees Are Watching by C.J. Ehrlich; Friends by Choice by Howard Lipson; The Image of Women by Evelyn Mertens; The Loud Hours by Pat O'Neill; Mr. Green by Angelo Parra; and Clam Diggers and Mussel Suckers by Jane Ann Valentine. The ensemble of WCT actors includes: Enid Breis, Keith Bulluck, Michelle Daneshvar, Anne Glickman, Tom Lloyd, Sandy Oppedisano, Roberta G. Robinson, Dan Slavin and Jack Joseph Turell. 

Artworks included are by Keith Gordon, Judith Gordon, Liv Gus, Barbara Levine, Brynley Lazar, Margaret Zeitlin and more. There will also be an array of wonderful artworks featured in the OAC Steamer Firehouse Reception Area. 

Tickets are $20, discounts are available. The Thursday, March 15th performance is a special evening, Buy One Ticket Get One Free! No other discounts apply for this performance. Tickets for all dates are limited, so advanced purchase is highly recommended. Buy your tickets HERE. Access to the firehouse is via one flight of stairs. Elevator access is not available in this historic building.