Mary McTamaney

Open Studios comes to our fair city this weekend, September 28 and 29. It is a weekend to delight in the creative energy that sparks our community year-round and see it up close at your own pace. It is also a chance to meet the artists who work among us. Art studios will be open to visitors both afternoons and creators will gladly chat and answer questions about their processes. There will be group shows in larger venues like the Glenlily Grounds on Grand Avenue where sculpture pieces will be set on the lawns and along the garden trails and there will be pop-up galleries around town offering additional exposure for emerging artists. Newburgh Open Studios will be hosting visitors between noon and 6 both Saturday and Sunday. An illustrated guide map will be available each day at Newburgh Art Supply, 5 Grand Street, where the tour concept was born fourteen years ago by owners Gerardo Castro and Michael Gabor. Gerardo’s unexpected passing in March did not extinguish his dream and Michael promised to carry out the popular tour this year. For more details, visit NewburghOPENstudios.org.

Open Studios should trigger the understanding that Newburgh, New York has long been a center of beautiful art. Its scenic geography attracted painters and writers in the early nineteenth century. From its gradually rising streets, the Hudson River flows through its most beautiful gorge and the natural light that is reflected is captivating to artists. That light is demonstrated in hundreds of local landscape paintings that are housed in galleries around the world. Photographers, all the way back to those who patronized the early Daguerrean camera industry down along the Quassaick Creek in the 1850’s, have stood mesmerized by scenes they click and capture for posterity.

Paint and photo paper are only some of the media of local expression as this year’s Open Studios will demonstrate. Sculpture from small museum pieces to giant public installations stands at indoor and outdoor settings around the globe created by local artists like Elsworth Kelly and Henry Kirke Brown. UAP, Inc., founded as Polich Art Foundry, is a world-renown fabrication studio in Rock Tavern where art castings of every material and size have come to life for a generation and gone on to public plazas and parks.

Equally captivating has been Newburgh’s built environment and its history. Architects created buildings to both reflect and complement the scenery around them, designing the romantic flourishes that delight passersby. The details they pioneered attracted the best of carpenters, joiners and masons to come to Newburgh and learn their trades and the care they invested in those skills is central to why so many old buildings still stand as masterpieces of style.

This weekend, wander among Newburgh’s art studios and realize how dreams and vision combine to capture the fleeting beauty of place and the delight of inspiration.