The Lockwood Gallery has for the second year running put together an exhibition of works by a group of the Woodstock School of Art’s accomplished instructors past and present as a benefit for this important institution. 25 percent of the proceeds generated from sales will go to the WSA. Curator Alan Goolman has bought together pieces by 36 artists working in a range of styles and media in the Lockwood’s relatively modest confines in a way that flows beautifully and activates engaging conversations between the works of art on view.

 

There are many reasons to make art: the pleasure of a well executed brush stroke, a deftly rendered pencil line, a well thrown pot, pulling a perfect print, bringing a composition, a palette of colors, or an arrangement of sculptural forms into balance; in short, creating work one wants to share because it coveys something intangible about being alive. There must be an artist gene, because most artists seem drawn to the flame inevitably. There is no choice. The WSA has embodied this truth for some time now, with roots going back to the Arts Students League days in Woodstock history. A visitor to its’ print making studio will find a press once owned by George Bellows there (one among many well- maintained presses) where students both amateur and professional gather to make art under the tutelage of instructors who make a living ( and a life) out of making and showing art. North light bathes the painting and drawing studios, where artist/instructors generously convey the knowledge and wisdom beginners and seasoned practitioners alike seek to realize their own takes on the seen and unseeable.

 

Funds generated from the Lockwood benefit show will support the WSA’s mission to continue to provide a high level of art instruction and also to expand its capacity to do so. There are plans to double the space devoted to sculpture by constructing a new building- a twin to be located next to the existing sculpture studio. The WSA’s exhibition program, now back after being interrupted by Covid, will explore both the history and the current concerns of the artists of Woodstock. Nina Doyle, Executive Director of the WSA is committed to continuing the institution’s evolution taking the pause necessitated by Covid “to take look at who we are, what does the community want us to be, what are the instructors inspired by, and how do we meet those needs.”

 

A visitor to the WSA exhibition at Lockwood will find paintings by Donald Elder a master of gestural abstraction, psychologically charged landscapes by Christie Scheele, and elegantly rendered painted collages by Jenne M.Currie to name just a few. The brilliantly executed and slyly comic ceramic sculptures of Tricia Cline are also on view as well as large mysterious monochrome works by Kate McGloughlin, an abstract of forms in motion by Meredith Rosier, and Wendy Hollander’s meticulous, yet whimsical watercolor tinted drawings of fruit. There are many pleasant surprises such as familiar artists working masterfully in unexpected genres and the adaptation of high art to footwear. The list of artists at Lockwood reads like a who’s who of our region’s best.

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The Woodstock School of Art exhibition will be open through December 30th. The Lockwood Gallery is located at 747 Route 28 in Kingston, NY.

The gallery is open Mondays - Saturdays 11am to 5pm and on Sundays by appointment. To schedule an appointment call: 917-327-7156