NOTEBOOK: Upstate Art Weekend!

A dispatch from the Hudson Valley's carnival of creation

The bracelet said it all: SAW ART FELT BETTER. It was a promise, and it came true.

Upstate Art Weekend is a sprawling, cornucopic festival of creation across the Hudson Valley region of New York State. It is: artists opening their homes and studios to anyone who drives by for a look; museums and galleries putting on elaborate shows; readings and performances in abandoned farmhouses and the ghost factories of deindustrialization; and a lot of smash burgers, as my children would tell you. It is put together by the brilliant, indefatigable Helen Toomer, a real champion of artists.

It has become a treasured annual summer ritual for our family. My wife, Priya Parker, spends days and weeks looking through the offerings ahead of time and plots a journey for us. This would daunt most people, because the offerings have multiplied over the years, and it’s a little like eating at a buffet 100 miles long — should you have the ribs, or wait to see what’s down there? But this is, puzzlingly, a fun task to Priya.

And then we’re off. This year we hit everything from a tiny gallery operated by the Upstate Art Weekend organizers themselves, to a show of sculptures and performances on an abandoned estate that used to house working-class vacation homes, to a barn showing off the work of an artist residency, to a fancy-pants gallery show big enough for many weekends of perusing, to a group show featuring the greatest floor I have ever encountered.

So…come with me upstate. (And if the images make this too long for your email reader, view this post on the web here.)

Presence

Our first stop was Upbringing, both a gallery and the headquarters of Upstate Art Weekend. The theme of the show was something we all could use more of — presence — featuring artists Zoë Buckman, Tamar Ettun, Nona Faustine, Qiana Mestrich, Cheryl Mukherji, Rebecca Reeve, and Keisha Scarville.

I loved these boxing gloves:

And these two figures stopped me mid-stride:

Repair

Our next stop, around sundown, was Shadow Walls, for a show about “repair,” curated by Anne-Laure Lemaitre.