Thursday July 28  / Triad  to Discuss Artwork //  FREE  

Cooperstown NY- Critically acclaimed area artists, Elizabeth Schula, Megan Adams Irving and Alanna Rose will discuss their intriguing work in a free Artists Panel Discussion, Thursday July 28, 4PM at The Art Garage 689 Beaver Meadow Road, Cooperstown. Space is limited: reservations recommended. The gallery will open at 3:30 for preview of their work in The Setting: Of Land & Dreams, on view through August 13. All three live and work in Otsego County and feel a deep connection to the land—and after years living in other locations, they have each chosen to be here.

For reservations: Call or text 315-941-9607.  

Irving (Westford, NY) explores low-relief landscapes built of clay, better understood as “clay paintings” than traditional sculpture. Rose (West Winfield, NY) uses watercolor to observe and absorb her rural surroundings. Schula (Roseboom, NY), who lives just outside a tiny  hamlet, builds her magical nightscapes from starlit walks, memories and dreams.  The following week, Thursday August 4, artist Roy Kortick – another transplant to the area—will moderate a discussion with Elizabeth Schula and Megan Adams Irving. More information to follow next week.  

The Art Garage is located in Middlefield halfway between Origins Café and Bassett Health Center, and is open Saturdays 11-3, Sundays noon-3, and seven days a week by appointment (call or text 315-941-9607). See FB and Instagram for images and more.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

ELIZABETH SCHULA, trained as an artist, is better known as the inventive star chef at several area restaurants including Table on 10 (now closed). For a short time, she co-ran The Porch with artist Roy Kortick at the north end of Lake Otsego. She also was a hit in New York City as a pastry chef and co-founder of the legendary Saltie “sandwich shop.” She is co-author and illustrator of Saltie: A Cookbook. She is also a contributor to Diner Journal, providing articles and illustrations.   “An effortless pioneer,” as described by Carolina Fidanza of Saltie, “she has roots deeply planted in the land and the art of living off of it. She has a uniquely bright and exhaustive understanding of and reverence for the natural work.” These characteristics are duly evident in her paintings.  Originally from Minnesota, where she was born and raised in Rochester, Schula studied at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the San Francisco Arts Institute, concentrating in painting and experimental film. Even in the present exhibition, one can sense a filmic quality to her tableaux: the shifting clouds and skies of her dramatic yet serene night scenes. The Art Garage exhibition is a rare opportunity to see Schula’s oeuvre. Previously, the Cherry Branch Gallery exhibited her ‘water’ paintings and her work was featured in a number of shows in San Francisco and Seattle back in the day.

MEGAN ADAMS IRVING studied studio art at Bard College. She has exhibited her work in artist-run pop-up spaces as well as traditional venues including the Samuel S. Dorsky Museum (New Paltz, NY), the Corcoran College of Art Design (Washington, D.C.), and locally at the Smithy Center for the Arts, Roxbury Arts Group, The Art Garage and the Community Arts Network of Oneonta (CANO).  Travel, gardening, and living generally close to the land are all critical aspects of her lifelong study of the landscape and its connection humanity. “You can’t see any human/animal story in abstract landscapes,” Irving notes. “What you see is the erosion and geometry of the earth with the sky sliding into the water…the scale is both expansive and miniature.” Irving sees her work as storytelling, yet “the whole story in not available from this view of the landscape, so they appear uninhabited.”   Her parents were New England transplants to Cherry Valley, NY, where she grew up. She has lived in the Hudson Valley, South East Asia and both coasts and has traveled nationally / internationally for long periods of time. Now in Westford, NY, where she keeps a studio, she works and teaches at a community clay studio. She is committed to fostering art in her community as a consultant, helping to improve the web presence of small businesses, artists, and nonprofits in the region. Irving has served on the Cherry Valley Artworks Board and the Glimmerglass Film Days Steering Committee where she produced the companion art exhibitions for the festival for many years.

ALANNA ROSE: The watercolor landscape paintings on display by Rose grew out of meditation on her surroundings. “Originally, I was unfamiliar with our farm and painting was fueled by a desire to know where I was in space,” she explained. “Gradually, it became an embrace of what had become common place.” She began to ask herself, “What was unique in this moment that might never appear again?” “Could the atmosphere be translated directly with just two tones against each other?” she wondered, setting herself an artistic and perceptual challenge. She described this new way of seeing and creating, saying, “I am pleased when the image can shift before me as I look at it- colored shapes fitting just so against their neighbors, and then, a second later, begin drawing my eye through space to meet the horizon.”   Rose studied at the University of Pennsylvania (BFA), the New York Studio School Drawing Marathon, and the Pennsylvania Academy for Fine Arts. She has been awarded residencies in Orient NY and at the Vermont Studio Center, and her work has earned numerous exhibition awards including the Cadwalader Prize for Landscape at the Penn Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Now running Cairn crest Farms in the country with her husband and another couple, she is also the mother of two young children—and she continues to make art in stolen moments. Her work was most recently on display at the Bushel Collective (Delhi, NY) in the exhibition Farm Hands. Prior to that, Rogue Space (Chelsea, NY) exhibited her work. Locally, she has been featured at The Pioneer Gallery (Cooperstown, NY) and the Hilton Bloom Gallery (Gilbertsville, NY).

For further information please contact The Art Garage at 689 Beaver Meadow Road, Cooperstown ,NY 13326. Tel: 607-547-5327, email leartgarage@gmail.com, text 315-941-9607, see FBArtGarageCooperstown and Instagram artgaragecooperstown.   ###            

Artists from Left to Right: Megan Adams Irving, Alanna Rose, and Elizabeth Schula