What: The high-summer show at the Art Garage, The Setting: Of Land & Dreams

Who: Elizabeth Schula, Nightscapes & More, Megan Adams Irving, Clay Paintings, Alanna Rose, Watercolors

Where: The Art Garage 689 Beaver Meadow Road, Middlefield

When: Saturdays 11-3, Sundays. noon-3, and every day with a text or call, just name a time & wait for confirmation: 315-941-9607 or telephone 607-547-5327. @ artgarageCooperstown  Free admission.

All three artists live and work in Otsego County, and each feels a deep connection to the Earth and the land around her. After years in other locations, they have chosen life here. Irving (Westford, NY) will explore 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 the hamlet of Center Valley builds her magical nightscapes from starlit walks, memories, and dreams. The Art Garage (689 Beaver Meadow Road), located halfway between Origins Café and Bassett Health Center. The exhibition will be on view through Saturday, August 13, and will offer several free artists talks on Thursdays at 4PM, July 28 and August 4. Watch FB and Instagram for details. Reservations highly recommended.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

ELIZABETH SCHULA, though trained as an artist, is better known as the inspired and inventive star chef at several area restaurants such as Table on 10 (now closed) and Origins. For a short time, she co-ran The Porch with artist Roy Kortick at the ‘little golf club’ 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 in the Saltie cookbook, “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 the city of 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 has been further afield featured in a number of shows in San Francisco and Seattle.

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, the Cherry Branch Gallery, 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 and South East Asia as well as both coasts and has traveled nationally and internationally for long periods of time. Now settled 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 Steering Committee for the Glimmerglass Film Days, 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 Cairncrest 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. ###