
Joy Brown installing work for her show at the Tremaine Art Gallery at Hotchkiss.
Natalia Zukerman
Joy Brown installing work for her show at the Tremaine Art Gallery at Hotchkiss.
This year, The Hotchkiss School is marking 50 years of co-education with a series of special events, including an exhibition by renowned sculptor Joy Brown. “The Art of Joy Brown,” opening Saturday, Feb. 22, in the Tremaine Art Gallery, offers a rare retrospective of Brown’s work, spanning five decades from her early pottery to her large-scale bronze sculptures.
“It’s an honor to show my work in celebration of fifty years of women at Hotchkiss,” Brown shared. “This exhibition traces my journey—from my roots in pottery to the figures and murals that have evolved over time.”
Co-curated by Christine Owen, Hotchkiss ceramics instructor, and Joan Baldwin, curator of special collections, the scale and scope of the exhibition was inspired by a recent Ed Ruscha retrospective in Los Angeles. “I thought it would be incredible to showcase all these different aspects of Joy’s work,” said Owen, who has known Brown for over 30 years.
Brown’s father, a Presbyterian missionary and medical doctor, opened a hospital in Japan where Brown grew up and cultivated her love of clay. Her first apprenticeship was in Tomba, a region in Hyogo Prefecture known for its ancient pottery kilns and Tambayaki pottery. “There are thousands of years of continuous history of clay there and I was working with a 13th generation potter.” Brown recalled that as part of her early training, her teacher handed her a sake cup and said, “make these.” With no extra instruction given, Brown proceeded to make thousands of copies of the cup. Never fired, she realized that the pieces were an exercise. She explained, “You’re not really making something, you’re participating in a process that these things emerge from.” From there, she embarked on an apprenticeship with master potter Shigeyoshi Morioka. As part of the process she learned from Morioka, Brown has built a 30-foot-long wood-firing tunnel kiln on her property in Kent, Connecticut, where she fires her work once a year in an intensive month-long process. The fire’s natural interaction with the clay creates unique earth tones and ash patterns, highlighting the raw beauty of the material.
Natalia Zukerman
“I learned not just pottery but a whole way of life,” she recalled. “The work is a continuous process—like practicing a signature until it evolves into something uniquely yours.” Her figures, initially emerging as playful puppets, have since evolved into large-scale sculptures now found in public spaces from Shanghai to Broadway to Hotchkiss’s own campus.
Brown’s seven-foot “Sitter with Head in Hands” was installed near Ford Food Court in October, followed by “Recliner with Head in Hands” near Hotchkiss’s Main Building in November. She welcomes interaction with her sculptures, encouraging visitors to touch them and even dress them with scarves or hats. “These figures transcend gender, age, and culture,” Brown noted. “They’re kind of like when you’re 4 years old and you didn’t know or care what you were, you know? All of us meet in that field and I think people resonate with that.”
In conjunction with the exhibition, Hotchkiss will host a screening of “The Art of Joy Brown,” a documentary by Eduardo Montes-Bradley, followed by a panel discussion with the artist and filmmaker on March 6 in Walker Auditorium. Brown will also serve as an artist-in-residence, collaborating with students on special projects.
On being part of the celebration of women at Hotchkiss Brown said, “Fifty years ago, I was deep in the mountains of Japan, immersed in clay.” With a soft spoken and almost childlike quality, Brown spoke about and interacted with her pieces with curiosity, reverence and wonder.
“The practice of working with clay for all these years is grounding and centering for me. It challenges me,” she said. “The work forces me to put myself out there. It’s not just the making of the pieces that make me more whole, the pieces themselves become more present.”
Brown reflected on the retrospective nature of the show and shared that putting it together has been like looking at a family album. “It’s kind of like I’m seeing my whole life in front of me,” she said. “It’s humbling and makes me think about why I do what I do. It comes back to the idea of those thousands of sake cups, you know? We’re just here, being as present as we can be. We’re not making things, we’re participating in a process of being more present, and all that spirit is reflected in the work.”
“The Art of Joy Brown” opens Saturday, Feb. 22, and runs through April 6. For more information, visit www.hotchkiss.org.
This story has been updated to reflect a change in the scheduled opening date due to forecast extreme weather conditions.
AMENIA — A resolution to authorize a $3.9 million bond issue to repair and improve the facilities providing water to customers within the Water District was approved unanimously at a special meeting of the Town Board on Tuesday, March 11.
The project will include replacement of the Lavelle Road pump station, reconstruction of the existing water tank, upgrades to existing town wells, building a new booster pump station and reconstruction of water mains as needed to expand capacity.
The functional life of the improvements is estimated to be forty years as detailed in the resolution.
A second resolution rejected all bids received for the purchase and installation of a digital LED sign at the Town Hall. A new request for bids will be issued. The vote was unanimous.
Although 12 bids had been submitted, the solicitation process that invited those bids had been flawed and not in accordance with state law. As a result the Town Engineer will be asked to prepare new solicitation documents with bid specifications to invite a new round of bidding.
Dutchess County Sheriff’s Office Harlem Valley area activity report Feb. 27 through March 12.
March 2 — Deputies responded to 671 Butts Hollow Road in Wassaic to investigate a property damage auto accident involving an ambulance — Northern Dutchess Paramedics — and a parked car.
March 2 — Deputies investigated a past occurred domestic on Sprague Road in the Town of Dover. Matter resolved without further police intervention.
March 3 — Deputies responded to S. Center Street in the Village of Millerton for a father/son verbal domestic dispute. Matter resolved without further police intervention.
March 6 — Deputies responded to John Street in the Village of Millerton for a mother/son domestic dispute. Matter resolved without further police intervention.
March 6 — Deputies responded to 9 Willoughby Lane in North East for an enclosed trailer equipment trailer containing electrical equipment which was stolen. Matter currently under investigation.
March 8 — Deputies arrested Pedro Colon, age 38, for Aggravated Unlicensed Operation of a Motor Vehicle in the third degree subsequent a vehicle and traffic stop on Route 22 in Dover. Colon to appear in the Town of Dover Court at a later date.
March 9 — While conducting a property check at Boice Park in the Town of Dover, Deputies contacted one Aaron C. Timpson, age 36, who was found to be wanted on an active Parole Warrant. Timpson was taken into custody without incident and transported to the Dutchess County Justice and Transition.
March 10 — Deputies report the arrest of Rudolfo Xol Tzi, age 37, for driving while intoxicated subsequent to a traffic stop on Old Route 22 in the Town of Amenia. Subject to appear in the Town of Amenia Court at a later date
March 11 — Deputies responded to 152 Cooper Road in Northeast for a boyfriend/ex-girlfriend verbal domestic dispute. Matter resolved without further police intervention
A cease-fire is likely in Ukraine. But ask yourself why?
For three years, actually for 6 years since Russia invaded and recaptured the Crimea from Ukraine, India and all the sub-Sahara nations have been suffering food shortages. Shipping of Ukraine’s vital supplies of wheat and safflower oil have been disrupted, transshipped via three or more countries, blockaded from Odessa port, and price-hiked by more than 50%. Of course this penalty for Ukraine’s farmers has been horrible on top of bombs falling. But what has also happened is that people in Africa starved to death who could not afford the higher prices of life-dependent food and cooking oil.
Now, you may think safflower oil is not a big deal — but in a largely vegetarian country like India that is the world's largest consumer of safflower oil, a price hike of over 150% thanks to the Russians invading your principal grower and supplier can, and quite simply does, kill people, especially those on the lowest income levels.
India and the African Union — a large voting bloc in the United Nations General Assembly — are fed up with Russia’s onslaught against their food supplier. Recently, in the past year, they have been voting against Russia or at least not voting with them — abstaining — and Russian needs their support in a myriad of matters, especially now that China had recently been showing trends of not supporting Russia either in the UN Security Council. In short, Russia’s traditional supporters are waning — and Joe Biden’s team worked really hard to increase that pressure.
What pressure? India, for example, was buying Russian arms and planes for decades, but two years ago began to purchase or negotiate to purchase U.S. war planes instead. That’s a massive blow to Russia. And the sub-Saharan countries, traditionally using Russian mercenaries to help stabilize their government forces, have begun to work with our Africa Command in Germany. Our Africa Command helps finance troops from, for example, the Uganda People’s Defence Force, to keep the peace in many conflict areas. The US labels this support as capacity-building programs, security assistance, military equipment sales, military education and linked-purpose hospitals — U.S. boots without U.S. feet. The Russian mercenaries, clearly under Putin’s control, are being phased out. And with them go access to industrial resources — ore and chemicals.
In short, Putin wants to stop fighting if he can, and seem to be the savior supplier of grain and safflower oil to countries with whom Russia had built up multi-decade positive relationships with. He will claim he is not a colonizer like Americas is, but he’s lost control of his dependent nations and, what’s worse, at a local politics level, Russia is seen as the reason for raised prices, lack of affordable fertilizer and staple food stuffs — despite propaganda from Moscow claiming it is all the West’s fault. Safflower oil and wheat are to India and sub-Saharan African nations as bread and milk are to you and me. Vital, staple, irreplaceable.
Putin may claim he’s the savior of the coming cease-fire, but in truth he’s got little option. It is what the previous administration was working toward and this administration will claim credit for. But the truth can be seen in the UN General Assembly votes for the past two-plus years as Putin lost supporters at a fast pace.
Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, lives in Gila, New Mexico.