![Down County Jump returns for year two](https://millertonnews.com/media-library/rosy-and-the-bros-at-the-down-county-jump-sept-30-2023.jpg?id=52506349&width=1200&height=580)
Latest News
Catherine Haggarty and Dan Gunn at Geary Contemporary.
Nnatalia Zukerman
Catherine Haggarty and Dan Gunn’s joint exhibition at Geary Contemporary in Millerton opened with a reception on Saturday, June 15. The work offers a compelling exploration of contemporary themes through distinctly personal and artistic lenses. Both artists, each with their unique backgrounds and approaches, create a dialogue that is both introspective and engaging.
Catherine Haggarty, born in 1984 and currently residing in Brooklyn, has had her work on the pages of Bomb Magazine, Artnet, Hyperallergic, and other beacons of cultural resonance. She is a visionary force behind NYC Crit Club and The Canopy Program where she channels her artistry into mentoring the next wave of creative voices. The NYC Crit Club is an alternative, education-based platform that offers inclusive, low-cost courses in critique, connection, and community, fostering growth without financial stress. “We built a program for people who want to be connected to the New York art world while avoiding the system that’s really difficult to gain entry to,” said Haggarty. “The program helps bridge the gap between ageist, classist opportunities for people that are interested in being artists”
Jack and Dolly Geary, the owners of Geary Contemporary, have been working with Haggarty since 2022. “We’d known about Catherine through the Crit Club and then Dolly and I both did a studio visit and we’ve been working with her ever since,” said Jack Geary.
In Haggarty’s pieces entitled “Just Drawing,” abstract and figurative elements dance together, creating narratives that blur the line between reality and dreams. Drawing is at the heart of her practice, and her playful experimentation with light, planes, and textures invites viewers into a world that is both whimsical and deeply introspective. Through the use of repetition, there is an added layer of engagement that creates an immersive experience.
“I think you have to make something for it to teach you something,” said Haggarty. “So, I draw a lot and that’s why this show was really important; to make a show just about drawing as a serious medium, not just something that often is used as a preparatory system for making larger things.” Cost was also a factor in the decision to have a show of drawings on paper. Haggarty explained, “Drawing for me is incredibly important, and philosophical, and also materially diplomatic. The whole show is just about drawing, which is enough.”
In a captivating contrast to Haggarty’s introspective drawings, Dan Gunn unveils his series “The Ungrateful Son,” (which takes its name from a Brother Grimm fairytale) where larger-than-life stoneware toads, which double as functional floor lamps, merge folk art tradition with contemporary resonance. Drawing inspiration from his suburban Kansas roots and weaving in cultural and political reflections, Gunn’s amphibious creations delve into themes of masculinity, myth, and intergenerational tales, prompting viewers to reinterpret familiar symbols through a fresh and thought-provoking lens.
Tara Foley, one of the assistants at the Geary Contemporary shared, “I like the mix of the mundane and the mystical, that pull between almost opposites.”
The show runs through July 28 at Geary Contemporary (34 Main Street, Millerton).
Keep ReadingShow less
Peter Gerakaris
Provided
For the last three years, in an old Cornwall farmhouse, Peter Gerakaris has been developing “Microcosms,” his show dedicated to endangered species and their habitats. His kaleidoscopic icons and mosaics, psychedelic “tondos” (paintings in the round), and vivid origami sculptures—“I love color,” he says, and you can tell—are on view at the Berkshire Botanical Society’s Leonhardt Galleries in Sheffield, Mass. through August 4.
It is the icons that are, perhaps, the most arresting. Traditional icons are venerated Christian images, typically paintings of Christ or the Madonna, that serve worshippers as an opening into the realm of the sacred unseen. Gerakaris began making icons of endangered species shortly after a 2017 trip to Rome delivered him to a Byzantine basilica in Trastevere, where he was struck by the power of the form.
A piece on display in Gerakaris' new exhibit.Provided
As an art student in Rome, he had learned the traditional technique, using egg tempera and gold leaf to paint a Madonna and Child icon, which his Greek grandmother later had consecrated. In 2017, he had recently begun to work with depictions of endangered species, he said, “and I thought of this crazy parallel—these ancient art forms of iconography are almost as endangered as these animals. What better way to reinforce the contemporary scarcity of these creatures than by using this very rare, sacred, time-honored but kind of endangered process?” The resulting paintings reframe these animals and their endangered habitats as windows into the sacred, and demand that we look these rare beings in the eyes.
“There’s a pygmy owl painting in the show. Pygmy owls are endangered and threatened in American southwest because their habitats are being destroyed, due to many reasons but mostly because of brush fires. The figure of the owl is a static silhouette, but in patterning the internal plumage, I allow myself to just kind of cut loose. I found myself painting—and this just kind of came out—if you were to crop that and forget about the rest of the painting, it could be an abstraction of fire and smoke,” Gerakaris said. “I’m deeply humbled by the natural world. For me personally, walking in the forest is my own version of going to a cathedral. I experience a sense of wonder that makes me realize there is some power out there far greater and transcendent than us mere mortals. For me painting is a matter of evoking that feeling.”
Keep ReadingShow less
loading