October welcomes pleasant cozy vibes defined by harvest bounty, crisp temperatures, and pumpkin-inspired pleasures. The charms of autumn abound this month, culminating in the funky fun and frisky frights of Halloween. This October, Upstate New York is ablaze with fiery solo exhibitions including Kristen Mills’s giddy solo show of cardboard creations and comical video works at Turley Gallery and Susan Wides’s colorful abstract photographs of organic substances at Private Public Gallery. Artist-couple Ellen Letcher and Julie Torres’s two-person exhibition at Columbia-Greene Community College in Hudson includes their paintings and mixed media works, respectively, and their exhibition space, LABspace, presents a series of endearing artworks by Susan Carr. A group exhibition at Opalka Gallery in Albany in collaboration with Collar Works in Troy highlights the work of artist-professionals who dedicate their lives to caring for others, while another at Roxbury Arts Center in Roxbury presents works by artists who explore flora, biomaterial matter, and the effects of climate change. We might have 30 days to decide our Halloween costumes, but some of these exhibitions will close before then — so hop on your broomstick of choice and zip off to see some of the best art in Upstate New York this fall before it’s too late!
Painting at Night
Opalka Gallery, 140 New Scotland Avenue, Albany, New York
Through October 12
Curated by artist-caregivers Sean Desiree and Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, Painting at Night celebrates the work of artists who make a living tending to the needs of others. Now in its fourth year, this thematic show was originally founded by the community around the Artist/Mother Podcast to honor those who balance their creative practices with the realities of their caregiving roles. This iteration is a collaboration between the podcast, Collar Works (which is currently between permanent spaces), and Opalka Gallery, and includes more than 50 works by 39 artists. The range of art on view reflects the structures of caretaking as vital social engagement, such as Raul Gonzalez’s painting “Sewing with Cecelia, Doing Werk Series” (2019), in which a loving familial bond is felt between father and child as they work together to sew a stuffed animal. Other works express more complex modalities, such as Francena Ottley’s bright yarn piece titled “I’m not me I’m just mom” (2023), which seems to hint at the challenges caregivers experience.
John DeSousa: Eating Grass
The Green Lodge, 80 Center Street, Chatham, New York
Through October 12
John DeSousa’s style is anthropological-meets-crafty: He combines a digital archive of personal photos with content generated by artificial intelligence and overlays the resulting imagery onto various fabrics. His first solo show includes a series of recent fabric collages and quilts. Some of these works feel fragmented and distorted, such as “Frog Kiss” (2023), a collaged piece that includes a balding man, yellow flowers, and a large toad with red lips. “to String is forbidden” (2024) is among the most compelling of DeSousa’s detailed fabric collages. In it, a border of zebras flanks an amalgamation of random images including a sitting couple, a mother and baby deer, and grassy woods.
Plant Matter
Roxbury Arts Center, 5025 Vega Mountain Road, Roxbury, New York
Through October 19
Plant Matter at Roxbury Arts Center extols the multitudes of meaning offered by Mother Nature. The 20 artists in this show explore the complexities of biomaterial, invasive plants, and the effects of climate change through mixed media and found material, as well as one sound piece. Margot Glass’s acrylic-on-paper “Wild Geranium 1” (2022) is dramatic and moody in true Halloween fashion, while Amy Wilson’s “Everything that is living is part of us…” (2024) embodies the theme with a magical scene of two figures amid a thriving wood. Other highlights are Kamilla Talbot’s lush oil painting “Ferns and Things” (2023), which is a pleasant peek into an isolated verdant corner of the planet; Gerda Van Leeuwen’s “Berries” (2024), a gorgeous monoprint in richly macabre tones; and Susan Weisend’s trompe-l’oeil paper, clay, and paint hanging sculpture “Symbiosis: Lichen” (2021), whose happy mushrooms attached to a tree leave a smile on one’s face.
Ellen Letcher + Julie Torres: feeling uncomfy
The Foundation Gallery at Columbia-Greene Community College, 4400 Route 23, Hudson, New York
Through October 20
Artist power couple Ellen Letcher and Julie Torres — also curators and co-directors of LABspace in Hillsdale — celebrate their many years of creative synergy in the exhibition feeling uncomfy at the Foundation Gallery at Columbia-Greene Community College in Hudson. Letcher and Torres take turns and reflect each other’s sensibilities in paintings, installation, photography, and 3D works. Letcher’s strange and charming gouache and inkjet print on panel piece “Gertrude, Hildegard & Lilypad” (all works 2024) features an orangutan, lotus flowers, and a massive cave animated by bursts of blue and green. Torres’s works are smaller, playful, and more abstract expressionist. “licked,” for instance, features a bold red mark against a white background, and the bright yellow border in “stickie” projects the same jubilant energy as Letcher’s work.
James Esber, Jane Fine, Tracey Goodman, Jim Lee
Catskill Art Space, 48 Main Street, Livingston Manor, New York
Through October 26
At Catskill Art Space in Livingston Manor, the work of James Esber, Jane Fine, Tracey Goodman, and Jim Lee alternate between speaking together and individually. Jim Lee’s sensibility, for instance, comes through in the austere, Zen-like grace of “Untitled (CO|HO No.8 – Night Spots)” (2024). And Tracy Goodman’s idiosyncratic vision comes through in the sprawling installation “Choose any hour on the clock” (2023–24), which features objects, including clocks, dyed New York Times newspapers, and a chrome-cast sculpture of the Virgin Mary, on the floor and crawling up the wall. A series of drawings by J. Fiber — a pseudonym for James Esber and Jane Fine — toggle between abstraction and figuration in works such as “Yes, Love” (2021), in which text such as “love” and “yes” make up the oversized eyeballs to a strangely wonderful head. That work combines elements of their individual practices; Fine’s “In Fine Spirits” (2023), for instance, includes her initials in giant green letters amid a hallucinogenic landscape, while Esber’s “Sleeper” (2021) is a bloated heap of color that melts into itself.
Kristen Mills: Seats for Everyone
Turley Gallery, 609 Warren Street, Hudson, New York
Through October 27
Years ago, my understanding of contemporary art was forever changed by an installation of found cardboard by Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn. I felt that sense of wonder again upon encountering Kristen Mills’s clever use of the same material. Seats for Everyone at Turley Gallery in Hudson features a series of chairs covered in cardboard (a friendly sign encourages us to sit), including buckets, office chairs, and an Adirondack chair. The exhibition also features digital images mounted on aluminum and a series of precise drawings — all depicting various seats, of course. While the full-scale space station installation “Cardboard Cockpit” (all works 2024) steals the show, her hysterical video works present another absurdist dimension of her cardboard world. “Audience for an Audience 01” had me giddy. In it, Mills enters a room holding a different chair all of eight different times. With each new arrival, a version of herself reacts agitatedly to the new guest — also herself — before the fade-out. A show not to be missed this gallery-going season!
Susan Wides: Voice of Silence
Private Public Gallery, 530 Columbia Street, Hudson, New York
Through November 3
When I first met Susan Wides at a community gathering this past spring, I was swept up in her genuine concern for Mother Earth. It was a joy, then, to see her surrounded by her bright, bold photographs of liquid photographs of natural environments along the Hudson River during the lively opening for her solo show at Public Private Gallery in Hudson. In “Voice of Silence 7931” (2024), a plane of black at the top of the work eventually gives way to organic shades of red, orange, and brown toward the bottom. Some works, such as the verdant “Voice of Silence 0305” (2024), are recognizable, yet others, such as “Voice of Silence 9896” (2023) offer more exotic visions of unfamiliar biological realms. The exhibition also includes the single video work “Voice of Silence” (2024), in which the same color schemes seen in the photos digitally morph and bleed into each other without pause, providing an opportunity to meditate on the synergies and transformations of light, water, and foliage that make up our interconnected cosmos.
Susan Carr: rituals
LABspace, 2642 NY Route 23, Hillsdale, New York
Through November 24
The celebratory and silly mood of Susan Carr’s paintings kindles the heart and stirs the soul. This month, LABspace in Hillsdale presents paintings, sculpture, and ceramic works in her sixth solo show with the gallery. “Flowers” (all works 2024) is pleasantly poised, while “Keeper of the Bees” suggests a feeling of loving kindness: A woman in a flowery red top gazes, cross-eyed, at the bumble bee resting peacefully on her nose — the scene is serene, with no feeling of possible threat. Other works feel distinctly Halloween-inspired: “Travelers” features a couple in costume — he in a black top hat and skeleton suit, she in a red dress and white mask — while a smiling skeleton flails a whip astride a masked naked woman in the gleeful “Plaything.”
Alannah Farrell: Erect
Alexander Gray Associates, 224 Main Street, Garden Level, Germantown, New York
Through December 21
We turn to art for its unbridled capacity for expression and explorations of the human experience, and Alannah Farrell delivers. Featuring a series of provocative and psychologically charged recent works on paper, Erect at Alexander Gray Associates in Germantown is an exhibition ripe for over-analysis. Taking inspiration from the uncanny imagery of artists who dabble in magical realism, such as Hans Bellmer and George Tooker, Farrell conjures cinematic yet intimate scenes that draw from queer and trans culture. In works such as “Lee/AI (Choke)” (all works 2024), two androgynous figures engage in a moment of loaded foreplay — one loosely grasping the neck of the other — on a twin-sized bed in a nondescript room, while “J & J” features two similarly androgynous figures in corporate suits sitting wrapped into each other: One looks nonchalantly off to the side, while the other looks right at us with a quizzical expression. “Limbo/SNAP (14th St.)” brings us into an eerie, vacant green room with a tacky tiled ceiling, while “Silver” features a lone figure, looking out upon a melodramatic cityscape from beside a wide glass window. Around this inert figure are seemingly random objects such as an aging spray bottle, inviting curiosity into the ulterior symbolism and possible metaphorical meanings of Farrell’s loaded tableaux.
Field Notes: Tali Burry-Schnepp, Henry Murphy, Bethann Parker
The Ruffed Grouse Gallery, 144 Main Street, Narrowsburg, New York
Through December 29
The Ruffed Grouse Gallery in Narrowsburg brings together the work of Tali Burry-Schnepp, Henry Murphy, and Bethann Parker for the first time in Field Notes. A painter, printer and self-taught weaver, Burry-Schnepp explores memory in a series of works that highlight natural scenes among humans and animals. “Dreamers” (2023), for instance, consists of acid and vegetable dyes and wool with acrylic on cotton, and features a naked woman half-submerged in water while a figure in a boat reaches down toward a trio of koi fish in that water. Murphy cites direct observation, classical landscape traditions, and folk art as primary influences on his practice. Those inspirations are clearly seen in the pleasing painting “Chess Players” (2024) in which a group of abstract figures spread out among yellow tables and chairs play the titular game in a half-urban, half-suburban setting. A series of thickly painted works by Parker, who embraces spirituality and intuition to tease out rural narratives in layered landscapes, rounds out the show. “Split Rails and Burning Bridges” (2022), which features a red barn caught in flames against a hazy and seemingly unfinished background, induces a jolt of raw emotion that awakens something within us.
