Hailing from as about as down south one can get — Brownsville, Texas — singer-songwriter Jules Taylor, 36, has penned what he calls “solvent poetry” in the Catskills for nearly a decade, moving hearts and hips and bringing a swatch of his native land up to Saugerties.
After over 10 years in the music industry, Long Island-born indie singer-songwriter Laura Stevenson debuted on the Billboard charts this March at No. 11 for her alternative album The Big Freeze. With the milestone attained, she ditched fast-paced Brooklyn for new-yet-familiar, songbird-morning Saugerties.
A sketch in the premiere episode of this season’s Saturday Night Live took aim at our region’s most well-known autumnal activity for day-trippers: pick-your-own apples. The format is a television commercial hosted by two sisters (Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon), the owners of “Chickham’s Apple Farm,” which is “located in the part of New York State that has confederate flags” where “for just $45, you can bring home $10 worth of apples.”
A robust schedule of events has been released for October’s month-long Shout Out Saugerties festival, which aims to showcase local artistic talent and bring culture and creative activities to the community.
On the songs on Give Me Color, Flanigan attempts to strike a universal emotional chord. Flanigan said while the lyrics on his previous albums were gnawing at him to be written, those on this album were composed more deliberately — simultaneously for the women that bring wholeness to his life and for the everyman.
Never count Jen Dragon or her Cross Contemporary exhibition services out. When she closed her own gallery space on Partition Street in Saugerties last holiday season, the parting party was as celebratory as one of the opening receptions Dragon’s become known for. Where would she pop up next?
Dragon soon hooked up with Jennifer Hicks of the burgeoning 11 Jane Street Art Center. She started curating new shows for Hicks in and around in the old JJ Newberry’s space on Main Street as well as the more intimate gallery on Jane Street.
This weekend: Unlike the gallery experience, in which one rarely meets the exhibiting artist, an open studio tour is a two-way street, where visitors get to ask questions of the artists and the artists get feedback. Visitors have the opportunity to see works-in-progress as well as completed works, and some of the artists offer a hands-on experience.
Michael Lang tossed in the towel on his Woodstock 50 dream on July 31 after a tumultuous week in which he was turned down for permits at Vernon Downs Racetrack & Casino in central New York, announced a move to the 52-year old Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, halfway between Baltimore and Washington, D.C, then said the festival would be free, and finally saw most of the engaged artists pull out.
An abandoned paper mill from the late 19th century that has been of late a waterfront canvas at Tina Chorvas Park for graffiti has been fenced off and slated as the future permanent home for the nomadic puppeteers of the Arm of the Sea Theater and an educational site for children.
One of a handful of enterprising Color Field painters who took up acrylic gel paint for its own unique properties in the early 1970s, and hence influenced entire schools of modern abstract painters throughout his 50-plus year career (including the New New Painters of the 1980s and 1990s), Bradley will discuss his various careers as an artist, a gallerist, and a social mover in a special Woodstock School of Art event this Sunday, May 19, held in collaboration with Saugerties’ Emerge Gallery at its home at 228 Main Street in Saugerties.