Hudson River Museum Presents Fall Exhibitions that Explore the Landscape, with Watercolors by James McElhinney and Photographs by Janelle Lynch

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YONKERS, NY, July 30, 2019 — The Hudson River Museum announces its fall exhibitions, with works by two contemporary artists—James McElhinney and Janelle Lynch—who take different but complementary approaches to exploring the Hudson Valley landscapes to create evocative works of art that are keenly attuned to the environment around them. The exhibitions will be on view at the Museum from September 13, 2019–February 16, 2020 and are organized by the Hudson River Museum.

Laura Vookles, Chair of the Museum’s Curatorial Department, says: “The Hudson River Museum is ideally poised to make connections between contemporary artists, our collection, and the Hudson Valley landscape. James McElhinney and Janelle Lynch approach nature from different vantage points; McElhinney’s panoramas give us a broad overview of nature’s splendor, while Lynch’s photographs focus our attention on the meaningful connections in natural still lives. Together, they demonstrate and inspire a deep appreciation for the Hudson Valley.”

James McElhinney: Discover the Hudson Anew

Big ideas often come in small packages. James McElhinney (American, born 1952) has journeyed around the world with a pocket-size sketchbook and watercolor tin, communing with nature, and stopping to observe and record the glorious views around him. Fourteen years ago, during a period of convalescence, he used a sketchbook and watercolor to paint views from his hospital windows. That pragmatic decision was pivotal for the artist. He fell in love with the mobility and intimacy of this small-format media, which can be packed into the lining of a hiking vest, as he follows in the footsteps of historical expeditionary artists. Since then, he has engaged in pictorial conversation with the Hudson River, always with materials on hand.

This exhibition presents the painter’s sketch books and prints related to the River in a comprehensive showing for the first time. A video program, animating turning pages, will allow visitors to see additional sketchbook paintings. McElhinney says he wants his art to demonstrate “that constructive dialogue between humanity and nature is alive and well, while underscoring how art provides durable and dynamic modes of engagement.”

McElhinney also collaborated with Laura Vookles, Chair of the Museum’s Curatorial Department to select relevant nineteenth-century pieces from the Museum collection by William Guy Wall (Irish, 1792–1864), Jacques-Gérard Milbert (French, 1766–1840), and Samuel Colman (American, 1832–1920) to display side-by-side with his art. These artists also depicted the River as part of travels or over a period of time. Painting the Hudson in 1820, Wall likely embarked on this project because of a perceived public demand for American scenery. Milbert, on the other hand, used art for scientific reasons, to record his naturalist observations. He published his views in books to promote public knowledge. Like Wall and Milbert, McElhinney has recently turned to printmaking to allow the images in his sketchbooks to reach a wider audience. He believes in the process of coming to the River and drawing its scenery as a commitment to personal enrichment: “I promote mindful travel and engagement with nature, as a process that benefits both humans and the environment.” McElhinney encourages all of us to engage in the age-old art of seeing and mindfulness, slower paced and offering insights that often prove elusive in the momentary snap of our phone cameras.

McElhinney earned art degrees from Tyler School of Art and Yale University. He has taught painting and drawing throughout his career, including at the University of Colorado at Denver and the Art Students League in New York. His work is in numerous collections, including the Albany Institute of History and Art, the Asheville Art Museum, Avery Fine Art and Architecture Library at Columbia University, Boscobel House and Gardens, the Chrysler Museum, and the Denver Art Museum. He was the recipient of a prestigious 2017 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, which funded the production of his limited-edition archival pigment prints: Hudson Highlands: North River Suite Volume One and O.T.W. The Schuylkill River, both published by Needlewatcher Editions.

The exhibition will be featured on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter via the hashtags #JamesMcElhinney #DiscovertheHudsonAnew and #HRM100.

James McElhinney’s work can also be found on Instagram and on Facebook.

Janelle Lynch: Another Way of Looking at Love
Also on view this fall will be a selection of color photographs of Catskills landscape from Janelle Lynch’s series Another Way of Looking at Love. Finding subjects on her property during all seasons, Lynch (American, born 1969) explores the interconnectedness of all life forms and supports a renewal of human relationships to each other, and to the natural and spiritual worlds.

The exhibition comprises fourteen photographs and, from the Museum’s collection, an accordion portfolio of five original prints. Speaking about her project, begun in 2015, Lynch says, “Another Way of Looking at Love is borne of awe for the power of nature, and seeks to reimagine our connection to one another, to the planet, and to the generative possibilities of the moment.” The resulting photographs reward time spent in their presence, to look long and look again.

Lynch uses an 8×10 inch view camera, which affords her a contemplative approach to perception and image-making. For Another Way of Looking at Love, she found precise vantage points that created points of connection on her 8×10 ground glass viewfinder among elements from the same species—Japanese Barberry or Burdock, for example. For other images, she combined multiple species, such as Goldenrod and Pokeweed or Burning Bush and Pine trees. The space within the created geometric formations represents an area where new realities can be envisioned. The depiction of unity, together with color and light, shows the beauty and magic of the Catskills.The series’ title is a quote from contemporary Swiss philosopher Alain de Botton, who upholds neuroscientific research that humans are biologically hardwired to connect and that our personal and cultural well-being depends on our connection with others and with nature.

Lynch’s Another Way of Looking at Love has been shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Pictet 2019, recognized as “the world’s leading award for photography and sustainability.” This year’s theme is “hope.” In November, an exhibition of twelve shortlisted artists will open at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. From there, a global tour of the show will continue to twelve venues.

Lynch earned an MFA in Photography and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in 1999. Since then she has completed long-term projects in the landscapes where she has lived, including New York, Mexico, and Spain. River (2000–2006), her series from Manhattan, is also represented in the Museum’s collection. Her photographs are in other public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Brooklyn Museum; the Museum of the City of New York; New-York Historical Society; the George Eastman Museum, Rochester; the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; and Fundació Vila Casas, Barcelona. She has three monographs published by Radius Books, Los Jardines de México (2011), Barcelona (2013), and Another Way of Looking at Love (2018), which is available in the Hudson River Museum’s Shop.

The exhibition will be featured on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter via the hashtags #JanelleLynch #AnotherWayofLookingatLove and #HRM100.

Janelle Lynch’s work can also be found on janellelynch.net, Instagram, and Facebook.

RELATED PROGRAMS

Lecture

Sunday, October 6, 1:30pm
Seeing Landscape Anew: A Journey with Artist James McElhinney
Expeditionary artist James McElhinney will start off with an introduction to the philosophical underpinnings of his landscape practice and then take us on a tour through his watercolors of the Hudson River, in small format sketchbooks and larger prints, displayed alongside select 19th- century works from the Museum’s collection.

Concert

Sunday, October 13, 3:30pm
Music Under the Dome: The Romantic River
The Hudson River Museum hosts Chaminade Music Club, which will present Metropolitan Opera Soprano Korliss Uecher, in collaboration with Jerry Grossman, principal cello of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and Grammy Award nominee Christopher Oldfather on keyboard. The program will feature Schumann, Brahams, Mendelssohn, and selections of 20th-century music that echo the flow of the river and the sounds of both the Hudson Valley’s natural surroundings as well as its cityscapes. The musical performance, which will take place in the Planetarium, will be complemented by projections under the dome.

Tours

Sunday, September 15, 1:30pm
Curator’s Tour of James McElhinney and Janelle Lynch Exhibitions
Travel through the Hudson Valley with Laura Vookles, Chair of the Curatorial Department, as she guides us through the watercolor views in James McElhinney: Discover the Hudson Anew and the photography of Janelle Lynch: Another Way of Looking at Love.

Saturday, September 28, 2:30pm
Family Tour: Another Way of Looking at Landscapes
Dive into Janelle Lynch’s detailed landscape photographs and their composition, and use a selection of natural materials to create a take-home work of assemblage.

Sunday, October 20, 1:30-3:30pm
Hiking Through Hudson River History on the Croton Aqueduct
Learn about the history of the Hudson River while admiring and composing pictures of the colorful autumn foliage from the vantage of the Croton Aqueduct, a location that has figured into the history and lore of New York state and city. Following a two-hour hike that starts at the HRM, return to sketch the dappled Palisades from our overlook while enjoying hot cider and donuts.

Workshops

Sunday, September 22, 2pm
Watercolor Workshop
With the guidance of professional artist Ellen Hopkins Fountain, capture your vision of the Hudson River and its atmosphere of light and color in this plein air workshop. Some painting experience suggested.

Saturday, October 19, 1:30-3:30 pm
Painting with Marsh Grasses
Explore two different local river grasses, phragmites and cattails, with naturalists and artists from Strawtown Studio, led by its Director and Lead Artist/Educator, Laurie Seeman. Participants will learn to paint with grasses, and how to work with different strokes and ink techniques. They will also observe the plants under microscopes, comparing the inner structures of the two types of grasses, and learning about how they provide habitats for different creatures in the Hudson River marsh.

Saturdays, 1–4pm
Family Studio: Science
Working with close-ups of the surface of the Moon, Earth, and Mars, hone your powers of observation and search for things of interest to biologists, geologists, and planetary scientists. Make a guidebook of your favorites to take home.
Sponsored by Domino Sugar.

Saturdays and Sundays, 1–4pm
Family Studio: Art
Art lovers of all ages can create and personalize wind chimes that play the sounds of our natural environment.
Sponsored by Domino Sugar.

Fall Teaching Artist-in-Residence

The Fall 2019 Teaching Artist-in-Residence is Jia Sung, a versatile artist and educator who was born in Minnesota, raised in Singapore, and is now based in Brooklyn. She is currently a 2018-2019 Smack Mellon Studio Artist and Van Lier Fellow, and an art director at Guernica magazine. Her paintings and artist books have been exhibited in galleries across North America, including the Knockdown Center, RISD Museum, Wave Hill, EFA Project Space, Lincoln Center, Yale University, and MOMA PS1, and in publications including Hyperallergic, Jacobin Magazine, Asian American Writers Workshop, and The Guardian. She has taught workshops at organizations like the AC Institute, Abrons Arts Center, Children’s Museum of the Arts, and Museum of Chinese in America. She received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2015.

Jia Sung’s work and resulting initiatives, lessons, and workshops will reflect, support, and enrich the themes of the exhibitions and offer participatory learning experiences to diverse audiences of all ages. She will create hands-on Weekend Family Art Projects that reflect and build upon the theme of landscapes; work to train the Museum’s Junior Docents in these projects at their after school meetings; and create and present four participatory weekend workshops incorporating diverse media, from drawing to watercolor to embroidery, to journalling and poetry, that will engage museum-goers of all ages.

Jia Sung will begin her residency with a Halloween-inspired program, “Symbol of Self: Art Workshop for Humans of All Ages,” in which participants will choose an animal that they most identify with and create a symbolic self-portrait and surroundings through transformative drawing and collage. In “Sense of Place,” Sung will guide visitors through ways in which artists have captured the moment and the mood through their use of color and language, as they make their own notebooks out of recycled paper, filling them with observational drawings, drawings from memory, and journal entries. During the holiday season, “Stitch Diary” offers the chance to make practice the ancient and meditative craft of embroidery on recycled fabric, creating an image and playing with color choices that convey feelings inspired by the native plants and animals of the Hudson River.

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