Highlights From Upstate Art Weekend 2025

Staying in Germantown for an artist residency in 2024, Giangiacomo Rossetti grew accustomed to the space where he is now exhibiting. Thinking about what to display in the country house-turned-gallery, the Milan-born, New York-based artist drew inspiration from Marguerite Duras’ novella, Summer Rain, which follows the journey of a large, uneducated immigrant family as they struggle to survive in the indifferent society of suburban Paris. 

Focusing on one of the children, a boy who manages to succeed in the world, Rossetti created three realistic paintings for the intimate exhibition that depict three subjects who ventured into the world at different stages of their lives. Complementing the canvases are two light fixtures with shades made from painted monotypes, inspired by two early works Francis Picabia created during his Orphic period, and a vintage piece of Italian decorative fabric that poetically emphasizes the domestic nature of the space.

Image: Installation view, Giangiacomo Rossetti: Summer Rain, Mendes Wood DM, Germantown, NY.

Born in Lima, Peru, and raised in the United States and Spain, Emil Alzamora is widely recognized for his figurative sculptures that explore themes of transience, beauty, harmony, uncertainty, and hope. Starting his practice in the Hudson Valley after graduating magna cum laude from Florida State University and working for three years in an art foundry, the Beacon-based artist has spent the past 25 years reshaping the human figure while experimenting with a variety of sculptural materials. 

The gallery’s survey of recent works created between 2023 and 2025 features over 40 sculptures in various materials and sizes. Deconstructing the body and creatively depicting it in new and sometimes unexpected ways, Alzamora fearlessly transforms wood, gypsum, clay, metal, cement, and other industrial materials into surreal figures and their fractured forms.

Image: Installation view, Emil Alzamora, Reclining Man, 2024. Ethan Cohen Gallery at KuBe Art Center, Beacon, NY. 

Olana, designated as a New York State Historic Site and a National Historic Landmark, is the best-preserved historic artist’s environment in the United States. Landscape painter Frederic Church designed its 250-acre naturalistic setting, featuring architectural and agricultural elements, between 1860 and 1900. Although Olana is remarkably well-preserved, some structures from Church’s era no longer remain, or only limited evidence persists, leaving their history shrouded in mystery. 

The exhibition What’s Missing? Artworks in the Olana Landscape features site-specific installations that respond to the missing structures. Ellen Harvey responds to Olana’s Summer House, whose existence is uncertain, with an interactive installation called Winter in the Summer House, while Gabriela Salazar draws attention to Olana’s onetime icehouse and woodshed through two interconnected works titled A Measure of Comfort (Cake and Cord).

Image: Installation view, Ellen Harvey, Winter in the Summer House, 2025. Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, NY. 

Born and raised in Oklahoma, John-Paul Philippe spent over twenty years as a painter living in London before moving to New York, where he worked on art and design projects for Barney’s department stores in the United States and Japan. In 2007, seeking refuge from city life, he purchased a small cabin in the woods, once occupied by ornithologist John McNeely, and turned it into his new home and studio. 

Since then, Philippe has earned a living by creating paintings and objects for galleries, private clients, and stores like West Elm. His latest project involves converting McNeely’s old shelter for his prized condor into a small gallery called BOX, where he invites friends and neighbors to display their art in themed exhibits. The first exhibition, pineBOX, showed off the pine-plank design of the gallery with pine-related artworks, while the current oddBOX show features an eclectic mix of eye-catching paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Philip Taaffe, Jeannette Montgomery Barron, Janis Provisor, Elvin Rodriguez, Gretchen Carlson, and other community artists.

Image: Installation view, Philip Taaffe, Rangavalli Painting (F), 2014. oddBOX, Sharon, CT. 

A new, independent art fair, dubbed Loading..., took place over the five days of Upstate Art Weekend at The Caboose, a stylishly-designed 3,500-square-foot event space in Hudson. Showcasing artwork in various media by mostly emerging artists, a select group of New York City galleries—ABRI MARS, Dutton, Franklin Parrasch, and Post Times—built out the space with birch-plywood walls, which complemented The Caboose’s sleek wood facade and beamed interior. 

Standout pieces included Jeremy DePrez’s abstract canvases at Post Times, Colin Brant’s colorfully enchanting landscape paintings at Dutton, Teresa Tolliver’s vividly painted sculpture of a doll-like figure with arms reaching upward at Franklin Parrasch, and Martyna Pinkowska's mysterious canvases featuring foggy figures that walk a fine line between hiding and revealing, vulnerability and vigor. Daily events, from a private VIP opening and panel discussion to an evening soiree and an afternoon poetry reading with bread tasting, added to the liveliness of the intimate fair. 

Image: Installation view, Loading... (Post Times), The Caboose, Hudson, NY. 

A nonprofit organization and art space dedicated to all forms of abstract art, Kino Saito was founded by Mikiko Ino Saito, the widow of Japanese-American abstract painter Kikuo Saito, two years after her husband’s death in 2016. She transformed his short-lived studio, which was once a Catholic school building, into a space featuring two large art galleries, a multi-purpose theater, dance, and performance area, two studios for rotating resident artists, a classroom for arts education and public programs, a coffee bar, a library, and a vibrant garden—that opened to the public in 2021. 

The exhibition Reminiscence in Color presents a selection of colorful canvases created by Saito between 1995 and 2006, which combine the artist’s experiments with Color Field painting and his unique series of Alphabet Paintings, emerging from his challenge to learn English upon arriving in New York at the age of 20. Gridded to hold an array of stenciled letters and layered with abstract brushwork to create a monochromatic color field or an emotional mix of colors and marks, the paintings express Saito's initial confusion in understanding a new language while inventing a new painterly vocabulary from it.

Image: Installation view, Kikuo Saito: Reminiscence in Color, Kino Saito, Verplanck, NY.

This brilliant exhibition showcases the floral art of Emily Cole, daughter of the renowned American landscape painter Thomas Cole, in dialogue with the colorful works of eight contemporary women artists. Bringing to life the home and studio where she lived and worked for 70 years until her passing in 1913, the show pairs her painted porcelain plates, tea services, and floral studies on paper with ceramics, paintings, sculptures, photographs, furniture, and installations by Ann Agee, Jacqueline Bishop, Francesca DiMattio, Valerie Hegarty, Courtney M. Leonard, Jiha Moon, Michelle Sound, and Stephanie Syjuco. 

While all the artists created magnificent pieces for the show, our favorites are Hegarty’s layered installation, which combines elements of the Coles’ art with memories of her mother teaching her crafts using decorations from her childhood home; DiMattio’s decorative ceramics and furniture that explore domesticity; Agee’s presentation of ornate porcelain vases and a floral garland that circles a room; and Moon’s ceramics that blend Eastern and Western art histories in an enchanting bedroom display.

Image: Installation view, Valerie Hegarty, Emily Cole and Her Father, My Mother and Me (Thomas Cole’s Lake with Dead Trees, Blackberries, Sparrow, and Wallpaper), 2025. Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, NY. 

Boundless Color, curated by Deborah Goodman Davis, showcases the vibrant creations of 10 contemporary artists, featuring painting, sculpture, fiber art, photography, and printmaking. The works emphasize intuition, rhythm, and repetition while intentionally avoiding symbolism and strict structure. Inspired by an Instagram comment about Hasani Sahlehe's paintings by the late Walter Robinson, which he categorized as unstructured color, Davis examined the artists she already admired and created an exhibition centered on their work and her interpretation of the theme. 

Standouts in the show include Pam Glick’s improvisational paintings of calligraphic marks on a loosely gridded, multicolored background; Sheila Hicks’ circular wall sculptures that mimic paintings using yards of yarn and thread; Stanley Whitney’s editioned silkscreen print of intersecting vibrant, hand-drawn lines; and Mary Heilmann’s paintings of solidly colored Small Floating Spots. 

Image: Installation view, Boundless Color, curated by Deborah Goodman Davis, James Barron Art, South Kent, CT. Courtesy James Barron Art.