Back and Forth, Between Names
Summer 2024 Workshop and Program SeriesAugust 4 Water, Ink, Breath, Movement with Suzy Sureck
August 18 To Cleanse the River with Koyoltzintli
August 24 Glacier Elegy Newburgh with Jaanika Peerna
Free public programming supporting ASG’s summer exhibition, Back and Forth, Between Names: An exhibition about bodies of water, included engagements with several regional artists, beginning with an interactive Water, Ink, Breath, Movement workshop with artist Suzy Sureck on August 4.
On August 18, there was a procession from Ann Street Gallery to the river and back that included a participatory performance and elemental listening event at the waterfront with Koyoltzintli.
A participatory performance by Jaanika Peerna at People’s Park, Newburgh riverfront followed by a closing reception at Ann Street Gallery was on August 24.
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On August 18, there was a procession from Ann Street Gallery to the river and back that included a participatory performance and elemental listening event at the waterfront with Koyoltzintli.
A participatory performance by Jaanika Peerna at People’s Park, Newburgh riverfront followed by a closing reception at Ann Street Gallery was on August 24.
Water, Ink, Breath, Movement
A Workshop with Suzy Sureck
Sunday, August 4, 2:00pm - 4:00pm
Ann Street Gallery
104 Ann Street, Newburgh, NY
This workshop was free and open to the public, but reservations were required and the workshop was capped at 12, with a waiting list. All were welcome, regardless of experience level. Materials were provided.
Email amcnulty@safe-harbors.org to reserve your spot by Friday August 2 at 9pm.
Thank you for joining us for a day of playful discovery and artistic liberation in a free ink workshop with Ann Street Gallery exhibiting artist, Suzy Sureck. Suzy’s workshop offered the public a glimpse into the processes informing her Indigo Series, some of which were included in the exhibition, Back and Forth, Between Names: An exhibition about bodies of water.
The workshop began in Ann Street Gallery, with an introduction to the exhibition and Suzy’s practice. The artist discussed examples from her Indigo Series, which show water's fluidity and structure, translucency, and unpredictability. Working with ink and water, Suzy tunes in to a dance between intention and chance, starting with gestures from the hand and body. The group moved to a workspace with tables, where Suzy led us through dynamic mark making, using guided gestures and movements to loosen us up to water’s flow. Let creativity roll with this free-drawing process! Participants were guided through gestures and serendipitous ink techniques, unleashing fluid forms and vibrant colors.
With hesitation or confidence, we make a mark, then let go of expectation, flowing with surprise, alive with wonder. This process of direct experience continues to be Suzy’s grounding practice and a lot of fun; she looks forward to sharing it with you!
Suzy’s ink process is seen in the images that move through pages of her first book of poetry and drawings SEE /SAW published by LumenDot in December 2023. Signed copies will be available.
Suzy Sureck is a multidisciplinary artist whose sculpture, installation, and drawing involve physical and metaphoric qualities of wind, water, and the poetics of shadow and light. Cross-pollinating disciplines, she merges traditional media and technology to bring nature’s wisdom to audiences experientially through text, image, audio, and video. Suzy’s works have been exhibited in galleries, museums, sculpture parks, biennials, art foundations and alternative spaces in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Korea, Australia, and India. Recent works include projection performances in the Hudson Valley, Germany and Lincoln Center. She has been awarded multiple residencies including MassMOCA, Yaddo, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Art Omi and Studios of Key West. Her works have been reviewed in the NY Times, Hyperallergic, Sculpture Magazine, World Art, Flash Art and. New Observations. Suzy received a MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook and BFA from Cooper Union. She lives and works in New York, and is an educator at Pratt Institute and DIA.
https://suzysureck.com/
@suzysureck
To Cleanse the River
A performance by Koyoltzintli
Sunday, August 18, 5:00pm
Starting at Ann Street Gallery
104 Ann Street, Newburgh, NY
A procession from Ann Street Gallery to the river and back including a participatory performance and elemental listening event at the waterfront with Koyoltzintli.
Free and open to the public. No reservations required.
In a soon to be dystopian reality, there will be an instrument that alongside mushrooms and algae will help decompose debris and plastic from the waters.
This instrument that emits sound frequencies that dissolve waste and bodily ailments (not) oddly enough sounds like a pre-american water whistle. So it happens that the answers to our future environmental and soul-based dilemmas are stored as artifacts in museums, when in fact they are ancient future technologies ready to assist us. conclusion : get those instruments out of the museum; let's hear them play!
Join Koyotzintli as we walk from the gallery to the river holding embracing gathering tuning aligning dissolving through sound.
Koyotzintli started making pre-columbian instruments from a place of grief; making and hearing them taught her about grief, as the environmentalist of the soul. It healed something in her, and since then, making has turned into inquiry: When were these instruments played, what rituals enveloped them, how did their rites of passages, and funerary rites sound? In addition, she explore pathways for indigenous and diasporic communities to reclaim these technologies, challenging colonial narratives through the essential act of listening.
Through crafting these instruments, Koyotztintli stitches together fragmented stories and revives one of the oldest and most obscure sonic heritages--Abya Yala's legacy. She seek guidance from celestial constellations as she shapes flute beings, water whistle beings, rattle beings, serpent beings--each endowed with unique patterns and frequencies. These inter-dimensional mechanisms are imbued with sonic codes, they are ancient future technologies, carrying memory about land and self.
MEETING POINT & PROCESSION
We met at 5:00pm inside Ann Street Gallery at 104 Ann Street, Newburgh.
Koyotzintli led a procession from Ann Street Gallery to the river, a .6 mile walk with a significant 100 feet of elevation change. Following her participatory performance and elemental listening event (about 40 mins), we returned to the gallery and replaced the instrument within Koyotzintli’s constellation of seeds and ceramic figures at the Gallery.
For audience members who wished to meet the procession at the riverfront, they met us at 5:15 at the gate to People’s Park at the bottom of Washington Street, next to the boat launch. Parking was available in the ferry parking lot,as indicated on the map posted below for Glacier Elegy Newburgh.
Koyotzintli led a procession from Ann Street Gallery to the river, a .6 mile walk with a significant 100 feet of elevation change. Following her participatory performance and elemental listening event (about 40 mins), we returned to the gallery and replaced the instrument within Koyotzintli’s constellation of seeds and ceramic figures at the Gallery.
For audience members who wished to meet the procession at the riverfront, they met us at 5:15 at the gate to People’s Park at the bottom of Washington Street, next to the boat launch. Parking was available in the ferry parking lot,as indicated on the map posted below for Glacier Elegy Newburgh.
Koyoltzintli, is an interdisciplinary artist, healer, and educator living in NY. She grew up on the pacific coast and the Andean mountains in Ecuador, these are geographies that permeate her work. She focuses on sound, ancestral technologies, ritual, and storytelling through collaborative processes and personal narratives. Nominated for Prix Pictet in 2019, and 2023 her work has been exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, the United Nations, Parish Art Museum, Princeton University, Aperture Foundation in NYC, and Paris Photo, She has had two solo shows at Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery and a solo show at Leila Greiche in 2023. She has taught at CalArts, SVA, ICP, and CUNY. Koyoltzintli, has received multiple awards and fellowships including the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, NYFA, We Woman and most recently, the Latinx Artist Fellowship by US Latinx Art Forum (USLAF). Her first monograph Other Stories was published in 2017 by Autograph ABP. Her work was featured in the Native issue of Aperture Magazine (no. 240) and was included in the book Latinx Photography in the United States by Elizabeth Ferrer former chief curator at BRIC. Koyoltzintli has performed at various places among them, Whitney Museum, Wave Hill, Socrates Park, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum.
https://koyoltzintli.com/
@koyotzintli
Glacier Elegy Newburgh
A performance by Jaanika Peerna
Saturday, August 24, 2:00pm
At People’s Park, Newburgh riverfront
followed by a closing reception at Ann Street Gallery
A participatory performance by Jaanika Peerna
at People’s Park, Newburgh riverfront
followed by a closing reception at Ann Street Gallery
Free and open to the public. No reservations required.
What would you do if you were handed the last piece of natural ice left on Earth? This silent question guided Jaanika in her Glacier Elegy Newburgh performance as she invited audience members to ponder the question with her.
Ever since Jaanika Peerna was a little girl dreaming of becoming an Olympic figure skater in the northern European country of Estonia, the material of ice has been close and dear to her: its toughness, transparency, beauty, as well as fragility. As we are witnessing a massive and furious melting speed of glaciers in polar regions these past decades, Jaanika has been looking for ways to face the facts, heal the soul, as well as act as an artist in order to help slow the destruction down.
Jaanika’s Glacier Elegy Newburgh performance took place on the shore of the Mahicannituck/Hudson River, which itself flows in a glacier carved bed. Glaciers that covered and moved through what is now known as the Hudson Valley over 20,000 years ago carved grooves into the landscape, deepened the river bed, and shaped the landscape.
For Glacier Elegy Newburgh, we proceeded together from our meeting point and grounded ourselves at the riverfront. Jaanika’s gestures and movements invited the audience to collectively imagine connections between the landscape when it was sculpted by ice, the water moving both ways, and the pending absence of ice from the earth.
MEETING POINT, PARKING, RECEPTION
Jaanika’s performance began at 2:00pm.
The audience navigated to People’s Park, Newburgh. People’s Park is on the South Side of the riverfront boat launch at the end of Washington St. Enter the park at the fence pictured above, and walk toward the meeting point at the edge of the tall grasses, ahead and to the right upon entering the park.
Parking is not available in the lot adjacent the park; please navigate to the ferry parking lot as indicated on the map above or walk from the the Gallery. The park is .5 mi walk from the gallery at 104 Ann St. with 100 feet of elevation change.
Thank you for joining us back at the gallery for a closing reception following Jaanika’s performance!
Jaanika’s performance began at 2:00pm.
The audience navigated to People’s Park, Newburgh. People’s Park is on the South Side of the riverfront boat launch at the end of Washington St. Enter the park at the fence pictured above, and walk toward the meeting point at the edge of the tall grasses, ahead and to the right upon entering the park.
Parking is not available in the lot adjacent the park; please navigate to the ferry parking lot as indicated on the map above or walk from the the Gallery. The park is .5 mi walk from the gallery at 104 Ann St. with 100 feet of elevation change.
Thank you for joining us back at the gallery for a closing reception following Jaanika’s performance!
Jaanika Peerna is an Estonian-born artist living and working in New York since 1998. Her work encompasses drawing, installation, and performance, often dealing with the theme of transitions in light, air, water and other natural phenomena. Her art practice stems from the corporeal experience of our existence and reaches towards enhanced awareness of the fragility, interconnectedness and wonder of all life. She has exhibited her work and performed extensively in the entire New York metropolitan area as well as in Europe and Australia. Her work is in numerous private collections in the USA and Europe and is part of the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris. Her performance Glacier Elegy was acquired by the Glyn Vivian Museum in the UK and her drawing is in the Royal Collection of Sweden. In 2022 a monograph Glacier Elegies was published by Terra Nova Press, distributed by MIT Press.
https://www.jaanikapeerna.net/
@jaanika_peerna_studio
Curated Reading List
Lauren Rosenthal McManus’s Curated Reading List 006 has been commissioned to coincide with the exhibition Back and Forth Between Names: An exhibition about bodies of water at Ann Street Gallery in our Open Reading Room. Lauren’s reading list includes an introduction, title list, and annotations for each title.
View or download the list here.
Ann Street Gallery is on the 2024
Upstate Art Weekend (UPAW) Program
We are excited to share our participation in the fifth edition of Upstate Art Weekend, July 18-21, 2024! Over 140 cultural organizations will participate in this year’s edition, celebrating art and culture in ten counties in the Catskill Mountain and Hudson Valley.
Follow @upstateartweekend for more information and regular programming updates.
Return to Exhibition Overview
Ann Street Gallery wishes to thank our generous supporters for sharing their time and talents to our summer exhibition:
Volunteers: Patricia Phillips, Jasmine Beauvilaire, Travis Schaben
Reception and Performance Documentation: Brian Wolfe
Gallery Assistants: Ferris Ramirez and Maedeh Ojaghloo
Ann Street Gallery’s summer exhibition and programming are made possible with support from the Dominican Sisters of Hope Ministry Fund and The M&T Charitable Foundation.
