Awakening Art Project in the Grove
Installations, Art Panel & Performances · August 14, 15 & 16, 2026
Awakening Art Project in the Grove
Installations, Art Panel & Performances · August 14, 15 & 16, 2026
Between the trees in the Grove at the Bearsville, there’s a footpath. This August, we add to that way space to reveal what was always there enacted: the uncanny oscillations breathing, giving and receiving, between things in their manner of cooperation.
The Awakening Art Project is a relational art installation in the Grove at Bearsville Center, August 14–16, 2026. The 11 artists below will install individual, outdoor pieces here, each work abiding in continuum with the forest, with each other, and with the people who walk through.
On Saturday, August 15, at 1:15 PM, the Awakening Talks series will host the Awakening Arts Project Panel, moderated by Jen Dragon, made up of many of the visual artists in the Grove.
Visitors will also encounter Dina Ostrovsky of Terrapia, who will guide people in mask/unmask-making throughout Saturday and Sunday. (See her situation on the path in the Grove for special hours.)
On Sunday, August 16, the Grove hosts a series of events, from a Mapping the Sawkill Watershed Project (knowledge, art and action) and poetry readings by Christopher Stackhouse and Vladimir Nahitchevansky to a chicken dance by Linda Montano and Anna Hafner, and special guests.
Welcome to this inaugural, pop-up exhibition of contemporary artists: we await this revealed and innate wonder to unfold.
Curated by Peter Acheson and Sam Truitt
About “InsideOut”
This sculpture is built from paintings I considered expendable. However, I wanted to honor their existence by incorporating them into a structure that would forgive their failings. Perhaps we learn more from our failures than successes. I like the dappled light in the Grove and the chance to make a structure, something akin to an igloo or a temporary shelter.
Peter Acheson is a painter who has lived in the Hudson Valley since 1998. His paintings deal with the intersection of language and landscape. Language, both spoken and written, originates in biology. The curves and shapes of leaves, the scale of the bark, distinguish the ash from the oak. Landscapes are comprised of porous zones between which one can find no hard divisions, only scales descending down to the microscopic and out to the universal. Painting enacts this as does poetry and music. “One can never be outside of Nature,” even in the city. Acheson has shown his work at Steven Harvey, Teffia Projects, and Anton Kern Gallery.
For over 35 years, Jen Dragon has been involved with art, artists, and the arts community as a curator, gallerist, art writer, exhibitions strategist, and art advisor. Ms. Dragon has participated in numerous community-based arts programs, including events associated with the Walkway Over the Hudson opening ceremonies, and curation for International Sculpture Day, Saugerties (2017–19), Kaatsbaan Cultural Park (2021–23), Byrdcliffe Biennial Sculpture Park at the Woodstock Spa (2025), and co-curator for the 2026 Woodstock Artist Association & Museum Sculpture Park. Jen Dragon’s latest curatorial projects are currently installed at Castello 925 Gallery in Venice, Italy, during the 61st Venice Biennale.
About “Celestial Milkweed”
The inspiration of this piece came from a Milkweed flower I saw in India. The shape and color were memorable and I wanted to do something in response to it. I constructed it at the time the 3 I Atlas was circling so that too was an inspiration.
Mary Flinn (b. 1962, Baltimore, MD) is an artist living in Chatham, NY, who works mostly in oil paints and also water colors and pastels. Her most recent one person show was at Equity Gallery on Broome Street in NYC in March 2024. She has had three solo exhibitions at The Prince Street Gallery in NYC and has been in numerous group shows at Anton Kern Gallery, Steven Harvey Fine Art Project, and the Jason McCoy Gallery. In 2022 she was in “11 Women of Spirit” at Gallerie Zurcher in NYC. Her paintings have been influenced by the many years she studied Mysore style painting in India and calligraphy in Japan.
Mary Frank (b. 1933) is an influential British-American artist celebrated for her deeply expressive work spanning sculpture, painting, printmaking, and photography. Born in London, she emigrated to the United States in 1940 to escape World War II. Although she initially trained in modern dance under Martha Graham, Frank transitioned to the visual arts, remaining largely self-taught while briefly studying with masters like Hans Hofmann and Max Beckmann. She first achieved widespread critical acclaim in the 1970s for her innovative, fragmented ceramic sculptures of the human form and animals. Throughout her long career, Frank has masterfully integrated her artistic practices with passionate humanitarian and environmental activism. Her work is housed in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
About the Wind Chimes Series
My wind chimes are constructed from repurposed materials—for example, the galvanized pipes that were part of a trampoline taken down in a storm as the sounding tubes, and the galvanized sheet metal lids from maple sugar buckets as the sails. I make the chimes to be part of my musical practice of tuning and playing guitar in relation with the sounds of the wind chimes hung from trees and the accompanying ambient sounds, the music of birds and the sounds of cars and the blast of gun fire from the neighbor’s target range. For me this musical practice is about an interactive listening. My wind chimes along with all the sounds of a place give me a sonic sense of space, a sense of how the breeze finds its way around.
Jared Handelsman is a visual artist based in Catskill, New York, whose artistic practice of over thirty years includes land-based site-specific works, found object sculptures, landscape photograms, videos and photographs that explore the nature of light. He has had solo exhibitions at Kentler International Drawing Space, NYC; Rockland County Museum; the Center for Photography, Woodstock; and Bard College at Simon’s Rock. He has received fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell Colonies, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Vassar College.
About “Discs” and “Cosmic Walk”
For years now I have been working with old compact discs. I like them for their shape, their rainbow reflections and their obsolescence. At the Festival of Awakening I will suspend discs from trees at regular intervals to generate reflections on the path alongside the fairground. In addition, Peter Acheson and I intend to construct a “Cosmic Walk” on the forest floor in the tradition of Sister Miriam MacGillis. This is a visual retelling of the story of creation, at its center, The Big Bang, and at its periphery, the impossibly short nanosecond of human life on Earth.
Born in New York City, Benjamin La Rocco is an artist, writer, and teacher focused on drawing, assemblage, and ecology. He is the recipient of a Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program Fellowship and the S. J. Wallace Truman Award for Painting from the National Academy Museum. In 2024, he was awarded a Founder’s Grant from Trellis Art Fund for a continued project documenting unusual trees through drawing. His art and writing have appeared in numerous periodicals including Hyperallergic and The Brooklyn Rail, where he was managing arts editor from 2006 to 2011. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, where he teaches at Pratt Institute.
Chris Martin (b. 1954) is an American abstract painter known for his vibrant, large-scale canvases and dynamic use of unconventional materials like craft glitter, sequins, and found objects. Since the mid-1980s, he has maintained a studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, becoming a central figure in the local arts community. Following the early 1990s art market crash, Martin shifted focus to earn a degree in art therapy and spent 15 years working as an art therapist, primarily with HIV/AIDS patients in New York. This experience deeply informed his democratic, deeply human, and inclusive approach to art-making. His practice draws inspiration from diverse sources, including the Catskill Mountain landscapes, Eastern spiritual traditions, jazz, and astrology. He has exhibited globally, with solo exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, David Kordansky Gallery, Anton Kern Gallery, and Timothy Taylor. His work is held in major public collections.
About “Untitled”
My paintings, installations, and sculptures come out of the tradition of the sublime and lie at a cross section between nature and representation. It is this collision of nature, this representation of, and our experience and encounters with which interest me the most. My arch sculptures allude abstractly to monuments found in nature and simultaneously to man-made signage found in contemporary culture.
Colin O’Con (b. Natchitoches, LA) is a visual artist and musician. His work presents viewers with the mystery of nature through paintings, sculptures, and immersive installations. O’Con earned an MFA from Hunter College, garnering the Tony Smith Sculpture Award, and a BFA cum laude from the University of North Texas. His work has been included in exhibitions at Half Gallery (New York), Marathon Gallery (Ellenville), Fresh Window (Brooklyn), and Lesley Heller Workspace (New York), among others. Alongside his visual art practice, he plays in the bands Dark Carpet, Big High Hills, and OCON. He lives and works in the Hudson Valley.
About “What was smoke”
My paintings explore the threshold where chaos begins to cohere—where noise starts to read as language. I am interested in how meaning forms within environments overloaded with signals. Rather than offering fixed narratives, the work creates a space where forms hover between observation and hallucination. Recently my focus has shifted toward what I think of as circling the wound. Instead of explaining an image directly, I move around it through layers of color, gesture, and atmosphere. The wound becomes less a subject than a point of passage—a place where attention gathers and meaning begins to open. By orbiting these small luminous incidents rather than resolving them, the paintings allow space for ambiguity and transformation.
Linnea Paskow is a New York City–based visual artist whose solo exhibitions include Equity Gallery, New York; Kunstoffice, Berlin; Michael Steinberg Fine Art, New York; and John Davis Gallery, Hudson. She has participated in numerous artist residencies and exhibition programs throughout the United States and internationally. Her work has been reviewed in Hyperallergic, Time Out New York, and NY Arts Magazine. Paskow is a faculty member at Parsons School of Design. She received an M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. from Haverford College.
About “The Gatekeeper”
Since the early 2000s, I have used discarded objects and reclaimed fabrics as my primary sculptural materials, creating works that are tactile, meticulously fabricated, and organic in form. I transform discarded materials into complex assemblages that defy easy categorization. My choice of materials reflects my interest in reuse, transformation, and a deep desire to connect with a rich, often overlooked lineage of feminine craft and labor. Much of my work questions the historical dismissal of “feminine” materials and modes of making, drawing connections between domesticity, sentimentality, and the environment.
Courtney Puckett (b. 1979) lives and works in the Hudson Valley. Select exhibitions include Hesse Flatow (NY), Geary Contemporary (NY), Megan Mulrooney (Los Angeles), Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz, and NADA x Foreland. Residencies include Monson Arts, Yaddo, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and LMCC’s Workspace Program. From 2019–2022 she ran the backyard art space White Rock Center for Sculptural Arts with her artist-musician husband Colin O’Con. She is an Assistant Professor and Visual Arts Program Coordinator at CT State Northwestern and has taught at FIT, Parsons, and Pratt Institute.
Christopher D. Stackhouse is author of PLURAL (Counterpath Press) and co-author of the image/text collaboration SEISMOSIS (1913 Press), featuring his drawings with text by writer John Keene. His poetry, essays on art, literature, and culture have appeared in many periodicals and journals. Stackhouse is a Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College alum, and a Cave Canem Writers Fellow. He has taught at Ohio State University, Bloomfield College of Montclair State University, and the Maryland Institute College of Art, among other institutions.
About “Ecco”
A 3′×3′×6′ site-specific, hanging sculpture made of used and discarded metals suspended in air from a chain bound to a tree limb hanging over a large mirrored surface directly below, “Ecco” is intended to react dynamically with the elements via movement and sound, chiming in the wind as well as interacting with its own mirrored reflection below, yet not touching. The title “Ecco” derives from the Italian meaning “here is,” “here are,” or “there it is,” but is also a homophone for “Echo” (Greek myth) or “eco” (short for ecological).
Kimber Truitt’s work is influenced by her grandfather, a tool-and-dye machinist who operated and owned a factory adjacent to his home located west of Dallas, Texas. The workers were like family. (His tools were used in the making the work “Ecco.”) Her paintings more generally flow by the spatial and rhythmic aspects of land itself based in part on roadtrips and the static parade of hours of mile markers, the vanishing point of rows of crops in a field from the window of a passing car giving the optical illusion (parallax) of movement. Truitt studied collage with Larry Walker at Georgia State University, received an MFA at Hunter College in NYC and has participated in group shows in New York, New Jersey, and upstate NY, including works in T&T Art/works, among other Woodstock-local projects.
