Sharing the Space | Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild

Exhibition design, banners and visual concept: Susanna Ronner Graphic Design

Catalogue design: Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild

SHARING the SPACE

curated by Anne Arden McDonald

October 25 - November 30, 2025

Kleinert/James Center for the Arts

36 Tinker Street · Woodstock, NY · 12498

About the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild

The Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild is a regional center for the arts located in Woodstock, New York. From its 250-acre mountainside campus and its arts and performance venue located in the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts in the village of Woodstock, Byrdcliffe offers an integrated program of exhibitions, performances, classes, workshops, symposia, and artists’ residencies. The Kleinert/James Center for the Arts presents exhibitions and organizes events that honor both the cultural legacy established by the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in 1902 as well as contemporary artists in a variety of disciplines. All exhibitions, opening receptions, and gallery talks are free and open to the public.

About the Permanent Collection

The Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild’s permanent collection includes nearly 200 examples of Arts and Crafts furniture, decorative arts, and two-dimensional works created during the golden age of the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, founded in 1902 by Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, Jane Byrd McCall Whitehead, Bolton Coit Brown, and Hervey White.

2025 BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Katerina Barry

Byron Bell

Joe Belluck

Stephen Bergkamp

Kerrie Buitrago

Oscar Buitrago, Secretary

Henry T. Ford

Eva Har-Evan

Douglas C. James

Garry Kvistad

Katharine L. McKenna, President

Catherine McNeal, Vice President & Treasurer

Karen K. Peters

Ed Sanders

Lester Walker

Sylvia Leonard Wolf

Anne-Marie Russell, Executive Director

ABOUT THE CURATOR

ANNE ARDEN McDONALD is a Brooklyn based visual artist who was born in London England and grew up in Atlanta Georgia. From age 15 to 30 she made photographic self portraits by building installations in the landscape or in abandoned interiors and performing privately for her camera in these spaces. She published a book of this work in 2004. More recently she has been making process- and science-inspired images which involve both photography and sculpture. Her work has been exhibited in contexts that range from self portrait, staged, ritual, plastic camera, antique process and experimental photography; to sculptural installations as large as a room and as small as a pocket watch.

McDonald’s work has been exhibited widely: in the past 40 years, she has had over 50 solo exhibitions in 10 countries (about 600 total shows in 20 countries) and has been published in over 215 places in 20 countries, including in Aperture, European Photography, and Eyemazing Magazines. Her work is in the collections of 6 major museums, including The Houston MFA, The Denver Art Museum, The Detroit Institute of Art, and the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris. She was a Lapine Fellow at the Millay Colony and has been a resident at Saltonstall, Byrdcliffe, Oak Spring Garden, the Sharpe Foundation, and Schrattenberg in Austria. She taught for 6 years at Parsons School of Design in New York, and has lectured about topics such as staged photography, self portraiture, Czech and Slovak photography, alternative photography, and her own work.

SHARING the SPACE

Throughout time, people have escaped to nature in search of beauty and quiet, although each generation expresses it differently. The original Byrdcliffe inhabitants were followers of the Arts and Crafts movement, a reaction to the impersonal mechanization of the industrial revolution, and the noise, pollution, and repetitive nature of factory work. This movement was born in a time of great change: the invention of photography and the steam engine, Darwinism, and the rise of communism all happened concurrently with the migration of workers from farms to cities. Our present time is also one of significant change, with the earth taking center stage. We can no longer take her for granted and must embrace change or suffer the consequences. With our daily use of the internet, the rise of AI, and the erosion of trust in images, we look to the natural world for stability, for connection to what is real, and for a sense of awe and wonder. This exhibition brings together antique landscape paintings from the Byrdcliffe collection, in a dialogue across time with 50 vastly different landscape photographs from 16 contemporary women artists, all sharing the space of the Hudson Valley.

Arden McDonald

GAILALBERT

BIO

Gail Albert is a Fine Art Photographer, clinical psychologist, Jewish meditation teacher, National Book Award Finalist, and lover of the outdoors. Having taken photographs of the natural world for her entire adult life, she became a serious photographer about 2005, some years after she moved to Woodstock NY and began taking classes in person and online. In the last decade, she has exhibited in the Hudson Valley in multiple shows, and in a few national and international shows as well. Her work has been exhibited most recently at Woodstock Artist’s Association and Museum, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Arts Society of Kingston, Byrdcliffe Guild, Lev Shalem Gallery, Wired Gallery, Olive Free Library, Vanda Gallery, Circle 46, and New York Artists Equity Association. Recent awards include an honorable mention in the PhotoPlace Gallery exhibit, “Quiet Landscapes,” as well as Honorable Mention in the 19st and 20th Annual International Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers.

STATEMENT

I am a Fine Art Nature Photographer, and the outdoors are my sanctuary, my place of emotional safety, particularly in times of turmoil, as ours is now. Since childhood, I have also been puzzled by both the extraordinary beauty of the natural world and my sense of something behind it that I could touch, another level of reality, although I had no name for it. I still feel that way as an adult, although now I have more spiritual language for naming through my experiences with Jewish mysticism. And so I take photographs because I am captivated by the material features of the natural world as they cry out with insistent presence even though they are also—and always—impermanent, transient, dissolving. Each scene is temporary, mortal just as I am, whether the time scale is one of cosmic eons or mere seconds as the light shifts. Our world is created out of endless process: even the rocks are eroding into new forms as we watch; even the sun is growing older. Yet the scenes reverberate with an implacable and often unsettling glory even as they dissolve. These three photos in this exhibit of the Catskill landscape are about the continuing and glorious unfolding of creation in the half-acre vernal pond that is behind my house in Woodstock, NY.

JOAN BARKER

BIO

Joan Barker is a Hudson Valley artist who employs both traditional and experimental methods in her painting and photography. She is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Artists’ Fellowship, The Village Voice Photography Grant and two Center for Photography at Woodstock Fellowships, the New Visions Award and most recently, the Leilani Claire Award for Photography from the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions including OK Harris in NYC, Photographers’ Gallery in London, Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY, and the California Museum of Photography in Riverside.

Joan’s work is included in numerous collections such as The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ, The Dorsky Museum, New Paltz, NY, The New York Public Library and Bibliotheque Nationale de France. Jahmal Williams adapted Joan’s paintings and photographs for designs on HOPPS skateboards and Tech Decks as part of their Artists Series. Joan completed her MFA at SUNY New Paltz where she taught for over 20 years. She was the recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching for the academic year 2013-2014. Joan is a member of the Women Photographers Collective of the Hudson Valley and The Elm Street Art Salon.

STATEMENT

Snow Trees

In this series, I explore the intersection of movement, duration, and perception in landscape photography. By deliberately introducing gesture, the subtle motion of the camera guided by my body, and combining it with slow shutter speeds, I move beyond traditional representation. The landscapes are not framed as distant objects to be surveyed, but as environments in which I am present, and in which presence leaves a trace. A slow shutter speed extends the moment, recording a flow of time. Water, wind and light become visible as motion, rendering the land alive and temporal. Gesture records the rhythm of my interaction, introducing curiosity, hesitation and touch into the image. The resulting photographs are fleeting, intimate and kinetic. The images emphasize being with rather than looking at. For me, the photographs describe not only how a place appears, but also how it feels to move through it, in time, with body and breath.

ANABERGEN

BIO

Ana Bergen was born into a family of Art Historians in Trier, Germany and later raised in Muenster where her father was the director of the Museum of Modern Art. She obtained a BA in Art Restoration from the Roman/Germanic Museums in Mainz, Germany. She now lives in Woodstock/Saugerties NY.

Ana Bergen was born in Trier, Germany, into a family of art historians and grew up in Münster, where her father directed the Museum of Modern Art. The corridors of that museum became her early landscape lined with artists whose language of color and form quietly shaped her own. She earned her B.A. in Art Restoration and in 1985 relocated to the United States and has since made Woodstock, NY her home.

STATEMENT

My work grows out of stillness, tracing the beauty in passing moments and the quiet connections between things. Exploring how seeing closely can change the way a moment feels.

NANCYDONSKOJ

BIO

Nancy Donskoj began her interest in photography when she bought her first camera in 1972. While living in Manhattan she took courses at the International Center for Photography, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and Hampshire College while working various jobs in the photography industry from PR photography to catalog work to commercial color printing. When she moved to the Hudson Valley in the early 80’s she established her own commercial photography business while also running an art gallery. She recently retired from her photography business devoting more time to her own work. Attracted to the symmetry in nature and urban decay she continues to explore the world around her with her singular vision to present both the beautiful and the absurd.

Donskoj has exhibited widely in the Hudson Valley including the Carrie Haddad Gallery, Samuel Dorsky Museum, Barrett House, and the Reher Center of Immigrant Culture and History. She exhibited in NYC and abroad in Cologne, Germany, and Belfast Northern Ireland with a one-person show. .

STATEMENT

I am attracted to the symmetry in nature as well as how humans affect the landscape all around us. The photographs in this show were captured during the early morning just as the sun was rising. A quiet time with perfect light.

JILLENFIELD

BIO

Jill Enfield is a fine art photographer, author and educator who has accomplished international acclaim, in all three of these capacities, as a leading authority in Alternative Photographic Processes. In addition to expertise in current standard digital photo techniques for the last 10+ years, Enfield is also known for her instruction of hand coloring, wet plate collodion, and an array of other photo processes at Parsons The New School for Design, Fashion Institute of Photography, New York University, Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus, and the International Center of Photography in New York City as well as RISD. For years Jill has also appeared annually for workshops around the world including Cairo, Croatia, Edinburgh, Italy, Lisbon, London, Norway, and dozens of other cities around the globe as well as many cities in North America, including Anderson Ranch, Maine Media Workshops, Palm Beach Photo Workshops, Penland School of Crafts, and Santa Fe Photographic Photo Workshops.

As for her own photographs, Enfield’s work is in the permanent collections of The Amon Carter Museum of Art, Bellagio Hotel, Bibliotheque Nationale, The Boca Raton Museum of Art, Canyon Ranch Spa and Resort, The Crocker Art Museum, The Florida Senate, Hilton Hotels, Marriott Hotels, Southeastern Banks, The Toledo Museum of Art, and Museo de Arte Moderno de Medillin, Bogota and Cartagena, in Colombia, where her work was shown during a three month exhibition that traveled throughout the country including her personal engagements for lectures and openings. As for exhibitions, Enfield has been the subject of dozens of solo exhibits over the years, in galleries and museums around the world. Her work is also included in hundreds of group exhibitions.

A partial list of Enfield’s commercial clients include American Baby, American Express, American Heritage Magazine, AT&T, Con-Ed, Disney, Discover Channel, Fortune Magazine, Guatemala Tourism, Hasselblad, Hershey Park, Kodak, LIFE Magazine, National Geographic, Nikon, Penguin Putnam, Inc., SC Johnson, St. Martin’s Press, The New York Times Magazine, Vassarette Lingerie, Woman’s Day Magazine and many others.

Jill’s personal work has appeared in such publications as American Photo, Archive Books, Camera Arts, Camera & Darkroom Techniques, Digital Camera, Hasselblad’s FORUM Magazine, Modern Photography, National Geographic, Nikon World, PDN, Photo Techniques, Popular Photography, Shutterbug, Step by Step and ZOOM.

Jill’s first book on non-silver techniques titled Photo Imaging: A Complete Guide to Alternative Processes was published by Watson-Guptill, Amphoto in November 2002 and won the Golden Light Award for Best Technical Book of 2003 through the Maine Photographic Workshop. Her second book, Jill Enfield’s Guide to Photographic Alternative Processes: Popular historical and Contemporary Techniques, was published by Focal Press in 2013, has already sold out and is currently being prepared for a third printing.

MARYANN GLASS

BIO

My work has been described as spiritual and sensual, serious and elegant. I enjoy experimenting with a wide range of medium from acrylic to watercolor. digital to infrared photography, manipulated Polaroids, solarized etching plates, encaustics, cyanotypes and other mixed media. My focus now is on iPhoneography, and I have been teaching the phone apps to students for several years.

I’m one of the owners of RiverWinds Gallery in Beacon, NY, which celebrated its 15th anniversary this year (making it the longest-running gallery in Beacon)

I grew up in a village in Ohio, attended Ohio State University and the American Graduate School of International Management and moved to Manhattan to pursue not only a career but the dream of big-city sophistication. Eventually I ended up at Chase Manhattan Bank, using my writing and editing skills to become a Vice President. After 13 years there, I took a leave of absence and attended the summer intensive program at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography in Montana. In 1999, I left my corporate job and settled in the Hudson Valley as a professional photographer.

I've studied with such photographers as Eric Lindbloom, Dan McCormack, Joel Meyerowitz, Joyce Tenneson and Arlene Collins. My images have been exhibited in group shows curated by Joyce Tenneson; Nat Trotman, Associate Curator, Guggenheim Museum of Art; Malcolm Daniel, Curator of Photographs, Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Steven Evans, former Managing Director of Dia:Beacon.

I've been invited to participate in two International Artist Residencies in Myslenice, Poland, and in Beacon, NY. My work has been chosen for shows at the New Century Gallery in Manhattan; the School of International Photography Center in NYC; the Center of Photography at Woodstock, NY; Collaborative Concepts in Beacon, NY; 721 Gallery in Kingston, NY; the 1212 Gallery in Richmond, VA; The Front Gallery in Patterson NY: The Albert Shahanian Gallery in Poughkeepsie; The Cork Gallery at Lincoln Center, and the Montauk Library Gallery. I've had solo shows at Montgomery Row in Rhinebeck, Locust Grove, Bannerman Gallery, RiverWinds Gallery, the Amacord Gallery, Barnes & Noble and Chill. One of my photos won a Red Ribbon at the Front Gallery in Patterson, NY !

In addition, I’ve taught photography at the Barrett Art Center and galleries in the area and have led workshops to Italy and photo tours of the Hudson Valley. I also judge photo contests for photography clubs throughout the area. Since moving to the Hudson Valley, I have curated more than 130 exhibits.

LORI GRINKER

BIO

A native New Yorker, Lori Grinker is an award-winning photographer, artist, educator and filmmaker. Author of MIKE TYSON (powerHouse fall 2022), Afterwar; Veterans from a World in Conflict, and The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women. Two additional books and a documentary film are also in progress. Her projects, which revolve around the themes of history, culture, and identity have garnered many awards, including a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fellowship, the Ernst Hass Grant, an Open Society Audience Engagement Grant, Hasselblad Foundation Grant, the Center (Santa Fe) Project Grant, a World Press Foundation First Prize, and is a 2005 Ochberg Fellow of the Dart Center on Journalism and Trauma.

Internationally published and exhibited in solo and group exhibits in such diverse venues as the United Nations, secondary schools and universities, art galleries, and recently in War/Photography, at the Brooklyn Museum (2013-14). Her work is held in many private and public collections including: Akron Art Museum, Ohio; Centre National de l'audiovisuel, Dudelange, Luxembourg, International Center of Photography, NYC; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Jewish Museum, NYC City; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; New York Historical Society, The Museum of Modern Art, Portland Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam; US Embassy to Kenya, Nairobi. Grinker received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Design at The New School University, an adjunct professor of photography at New York University’s Aruthur L Carter Graduate Journalism program, and teaches workshops around the world. Lori Grinker has been a member of Contact Press Images since 1988, and is represented by CLAMP Gallery in New York City .

STATEMENT

Employing photography, video, audio recording, text, installation, books and collage, my work straddles the intersection between documentary and fine art, with long-term non-linear narratives that address history, memory, identity and social constructs. Revealing the macro in the micro is the common thread. In my book AFTERWAR: Veterans from a World in Conflict, a century of war is represented by and through the individual body. In Dear Grinkers, a photographic series on diaspora, Six Days From Forty, an installation revolving around my brother’s life and his death from AIDS, and A Portrait of Audrey and All the Little Things, which considers my mother’s struggles with cancer and dementia in documentary and still life images, the micro is my own family — projects that originate from the personal, but speak to our commonalities and the ephemeral transcendence of everyday experience.

MARIE FERNANDAHUBEAUT

BIO

Maria Fernanda Hubeaut is an Argentine-American photographer and performance artist whose rich ethnic background and roots in Eastern philosophy inform her life and work. Nothing is at it appears, and Hubeaut’s composition and timing capture those encounters in which superficial societal constructs break to reveal our human story of survival and joy, and our astounding capacity to hope, grow, and create beyond our self-imposed limits.

Her solo works as well as her collaborative projects have been exhibited both nationally and internationally, in New York, Boston, France, Japan, Czech Republic and Argentina, namely: Performeando, Queens Museum; Museum Fueguino of Art; Museum of Fine Art,Octavio de la Colina (Argentina); Grace Exhibition Space, BK; Panoply Performance Lab,BK; Open Studios (BOS) Bushwick, BK; The Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (NoMAA);The IMC Lab + Gallery, NYC; Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival; Villa Victoria Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; and English Kills Art Gallery, BK, to name a few.

Maria Fernanda Hubeaut has long lived and worked in New York and recently transferred to Kingston in the Mid-Hudson valley. She is a certified Plant-Based Nutrition Coach (T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies and Cornell University) and Food for Life Instructor (PCRM. Physician Committee for responsible medicine).

STATEMENT

Water has always been an element I feel deeply connected to. It carries life—and the memories of life. For me, water is both a vessel and a mirror, reflecting my ancestors, my emotions, and the territories I inhabit and encounter. It also holds a deeper truth: a remembrance of who we are. This body of work, which I call Water Territories, emerged not as a project but as a calling. It appeared before me like a whisper from the past, a reflection flowing from within my blood. The movements, memories, and histories that water holds—within me and within the land—started to rise to the surface.

For the past two years, I have lived beside the Rondout Creek, a tributary of the Hudson River and ancestral land of the Lenape. The Lenape called the Hudson Shatemuc, meaning “the river that flows both ways.” This powerful name reflects not only the tidal nature of the river but also the spirit of this work—flowing in two directions: as testimony and memory, and as an invitation to perceive new, inner territories. As I walked the creek’s edge each day, I began to perceive the ephemeral presence of the water—its silent messages and ancient rhythms. The creek became a collaborator. Its tides and seasons sketched abstract shapes and fleeting visions before me, which I captured with my camera. This is my first body of abstract work, and it arises from a place of listening. The images are meditations—on presence, on transformation, on our relationship with nature, and with those who walked these lands long before us. Each photograph is an invitation to pause, to look again, to see differently. In their abstraction and transience, these images open a doorway to inner landscapes—ones you bring forward from within yourself. Water, in this sense, becomes not just a witness to memory, but a mirror of identity—a gentle yet powerful reminder of our shared humanity. As we stand before it, we are asked to remember not only where we come from, but who we are: ever-changing, fluid, and deeply connected. This is my aim: to share the miracle of presence, the wonder of truly seeing, and the subtle wisdom carried by water through time.

KAYKENNY

BIO

Kay Kenny received her BFA from Syracuse University, MA from Rutgers University, and MFA from Syracuse University (all in Visual Arts). Along with her practice ainter, photographer. Kenny is an art writer and journalist for the visual arts for various arts magazines.

A photography teacher for over thirty years at New York University, and the International Center of Photography in New York City, Kay Kenny was awarded a 2016 NJSCA Individual Artist Award, a 2015 Arthur Griffin Legacy Award from the Griffin Museum of Photography, a 2009 Honorable Mention in Fine Arts Photography Lucie Awards and NJSCA fellowship awards for the years 1985,1987,1993. Kenny has participated in numerous solo exhibitions, most recently in the Griffin Museum (Chicago, IL), Hunterdon Museum (Hunterdon,NJ), Casa Colombo Museum (Jersey City, NJ), as well as national international exhibitions in Colombia,Taiwan,Texas and New York City.

Kay Kenny has curated several exhibits, including Memory & Loss, a five-person photo-based exhibit at the Mary Anthony Gallery (New York, NY) Her work is in several notable corporate, museum and private collections.

DANAMATTHEWS

BIO

Dana Matthews is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the porous boundaries between human and landscape. Rooted in an early intimacy with the land of her family’s Alabama farm, her practice reflects a lifelong reverence for the natural world and its cycles of growth, decay, and renewal.

Now based in NewYork for over 30 years, Matthews works across photography, installation, and time-based media to investigate how touch, gesture, and light reveal interdependence between body and earth. Her recent exhibitions include the Byrdcliffe Guild (Woodstock, NY), the Griffin Museum of Photography (Boston, MA), and the Center for Photography at Woodstock’s Community Gallery (Kingston, NY). Her large-scale installation Garden Goddesses was recently on view at Motherinlaws (Germantown, NY), and her Farm Work series was published in The New Farmers Almanac (#7).

Matthews holds a BFAfrom the University ofAlabama and an MFAfrom the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, includingThe Farmers Museum, Opus 40, and the Fries Museum in Holland

STATEMENT

My work is rooted in a sacred responsibility to honor and care for the natural world with a deep connection to the feminine. "River of Two Minds or Drowned River" arises from an immersive dialogue with the Hudson River—known to the Lenape and Mohicans as Muhheakantuck, “the river that flows both ways.” For years, I returned to the river’s edge, attuning myself to its shifting light, weather, and sound. I sought to let the river reveal itself through a process of quiet reciprocity, transforming photography into a conversation rather than an act of capture.

This series embodies both devotion and inquiry: How might an image hold the pulse of place? How might we learn to see not as observers, but as communal participants in a shared ecology?The photographs invite the viewer into that liminal space where human and landscape converge—where reflection, movement, and light become acts of communion.

As climate change and human disruption alter our ecosystems, River of Two Minds calls attention to the enduring wisdom of natural systems that thrive through reciprocity.The river’s “two-way flow” becomes both metaphor and lesson, urging us toward balance, humility, and renewed reverence for the living world that sustains us all

DOROTHEAMARCUS

BIO

Dorothea Marcus is a lifelong art collector who in the last decade turned her eye to creating her own work. Dorothea is known for her collages, photographs and monoprints. She is a founding member of the Women Photographers Collective of the Mid-Hudson Valley, Her work has been shown at the Lockwood Gallery, the Lace Mill, Wired Gallery, WAAM and the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, among others. She had a solo show at the Old Glenford Church Studio in 2019.

Her photography, collages and prints are often combined, playing with depth, texture, geometry and color. Dorothea’s travels to Morocco, Cuba and Japan have been fertile ground for inspiration. In 2025, Dorothea became a freelance curator and juror. She curated the art show Cool/age, a group collage exhibit, which ran from July to September 2025 at the Queen of Rogues Gallery. Dorothea’s next project will be to curate a show at the Lockwood Gallery in Kingston, NY in March 2026.

Dorothea lives in Woodstock, New York where she has served on the board of the Woodstock Library and works as an Associate Broker at Halter Associates Realty.

STATEMENT

I am a lifelong art collector who has always had a love of art and an eye for choosing it. In the last several years, I have turned my focus to creating my own work. My “eye” now has a “hand” too, so I can manifest my vision. I work primarily in collage and photography, often combining them. I favor abstract imagery, and look for synergy in composition, color and texture. I work from the “id” rather than the “ego”, quickly and intuitively. My travels often inspire my work. For Sharing the Space, I created two collages which “deconstructed” scenes from the local Hudson Valley landscape, cutting and rearranging photos of Cooper Lake and the Ashokan Reservoir.

MERYLMEISLER

BIO

Meryl Meisler was born in the Bronx, raised on Long Island. Inspired by her dad's family photos and Diane Arbus, she enrolled in a photo class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that set her path. She moved to New York in 1975 to study with Lisette Model—and has been in love with the city ever since. After years teaching art in NYC public schools, Meryl began sharing her vast archive of images—work full of a sense of place, humanity, and a distinctly queer eye with a Jewish sense of humor. She is represented by CLAMP in NYC and Polka Galerie in Paris and continues to document the world with the same sharp curiosity. Meryl lives and works in NYC and Woodstock, NY.

STATEMENT

Photographing landscapes is not second nature to me. The turn of the 21st century was a time in my life when I felt lost, worried about my parents’ health, and clueless about what to do in my personal work. I had grown tired of a decade-long series in which I digitally submerged NYC landmarks. So, I brought my medium-format camera with color positive film to explore reservoirs and waterways throughout the Hudson Valley that supplied NYC with water. Appreciating Mother Nature helped me calm down.

SUSAN PHILLIPS

BIO

Susan Phillips resides in New York City and Woodstock, NY. Her mediums are photography and collage. An active member of the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum, and the National Association of Women Artists, in New York City, Ms. Phillips is also a member of the Women Photographers Collective of the Mid-Hudson Valley, the Woodstock Center for Photography in Kingston, NY, the International Center for Photography in NYC, and the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild.

Susan Phillips received the Elizabeth Harmon Memorial Award for Photography at The 2025 Annual Exhibit and was awarded the 2023 Suzanne M Bianchi Award for Photography from The National Association of Women Artists. In 2019, Phillips was granted a European art residency at Arte Studio Ginestrelle, (Assisi Italy). In 2018 she received the highest Photography Award form The National Association of Women Artists. (Jurors: Anita Rogers, Anita Rogers Gallery NYC, Lisa Small Senior Curator European Art, Brooklyn Museum). Susan Phillips photographs have been published in “Sanctuary”, “New York Magazine”, “Art Ascent”, “The Fat Canary”, and "The Catskill Mt Region Guide”. She was awarded the juried NAWA Merit Award for her photograph ”Greek Woman”, in the exhibition entitled “Women Who Tell Their Stories”. She has recently been selected to curate an exhibition at the Leonovich Gallery, Chelsea NY.

CARLASHAPIRO BIO

CARLA SHAPIRO is a photographer and educator based in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate New York. Her photographic projects explore loss and longing, memory and nostalgia, womanhood, aging, and the human condition, often situated in the rural and natural landscapes that surround her home and studio in the mountains. She frequently employs the use of alternative photographic equipment, processes, and materials, such as platinum printing, the wet-plate collodion process, pinhole cameras, and specialty papers, all of which have the effect of creating unique and tactile works.

KELLYSINCLAIR BIO

Kelly Sinclair is a photographer based in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. Born in Manhattan, she studied black-and-white film photography in college and has exhibited her work in galleries, print, and digital publications. She is a member of the Center for Photography in Kingston, NY, and the Women Photographers Collective of the Hudson Valley. She also co-owns and curates work at HappyLife Productions, an independent shop in Woodstock, NY.

STATEMENT

Kelly’s photography reflects her love for the intricate beauty of nature and her deep connection to the land. She considers photography a practice of presence, a way of seeing the sacred in the everyday. Through her images, she explores cycles of life, death, aging and impermanence with reverence and curiosity. Kelly believes that art and creativity have the power to heal, not just ourselves, but the world around us.

RUTH WETZEL

BIO

Ruth Wetzel uses photography to bring viewers an intimate look at waterscapes. Recent solo shows include Davis-Orton Gallery in Hudson, NY and The Arsenal Gallery at Central Park. Group shows include Millepiani Exhibition Space, Rome Italy, and Foley Gallery, NY, NY. Ruth has received fellowships from Baer Art Center, Iceland, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Women’s Studio Workshop and New York State Council on the Arts. She has a M.F.A. from Maryland Institute, College of Art, and a B.S. in Design from Buffalo State College. Her work has been shown and collected nationally and internationally.

STATEMENT

Landscape painting and photography historically has focused on presenting beautiful images. The content of this photographic series lies on the edge between what is beautiful and what is a mysterious or unappreciated beauty. The palette of silvers and grays is muted with small sections of color. Low Tide shows the mud flats of the Spuyten Duyvil creek viewed from Inwood in Upper Manhattan. Romancing the Stone captures a scene that could be set in a man made or vernal pool. Both works play with perception of depth and flattening space.