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Oct 18, 2024 | 
timesunion.com | Michelle Falkenstein
The tree-covered hills surrounding the hamlet of Wassaic were tinged with yellow and orange on a recent sunny Saturday afternoon. They made for an inspiring view from the window of artist Eve Biddle’s studio at the Wassaic Project, a nonprofit arts organization that offers artist residencies, exhibition space and arts programming.
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Oct 9, 2024 | 
artswestchester.org | Michelle Falkenstein
On entering the light-filled west wing of the Hudson River Museum (HRM), visitors will find dozens of white shirts hanging upside-down from the ceiling, their arms pointing at the floor. Shroud, an installation by artist Rachel Breen, is a memorial to the garment workers who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 and the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2013. Breen purchased the shirts by the pound from Goodwill, a poignant reminder of our disposable culture.
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Jun 28, 2024 | 
artswestchester.org | Michelle Falkenstein
American composer Aaron Copland wrote “Fanfare for the Common Man” in 1942 when the U.S. entered World War II, its title inspired by a speech given by Vice President Henry A. Wallace. The vice president had predicted that the world would see a dawning of the “Century of the Common Man” after the war. Copland himself was, by all accounts, simple, unpretentious and modest, if not common.
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Apr 16, 2024 | 
artswestchester.org | Michelle Falkenstein
Phylisha Villanueva says she wasn’t much of a reader as a child, until stresses in her family life led her to books. “I didn’t want to be in the house after school, so I joined a book club,” she says. Villanueva credits Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes, in which teens tell their stories using poetry, with making her into a writer. “My first poem was about being mad at my mom because she wouldn’t let me go to a school dance,” Villanueva says.
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Mar 20, 2024 | 
timesunion.com | Michelle Falkenstein
Composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies is having a moment. Last fall she received an email informing her that her composition “Motor Tapes” had been selected for the 81st Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, the longest-running survey of American art.
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Mar 18, 2024 | 
timesunion.com | Michelle Falkenstein
Artist, composer, filmmaker and academic Suzanne Kite’s house in Ancram stands between sprawling fields of clover that are harvested in season for animal feed. In the front yard, a Toyota Tacoma’s bumper stickers read “The Truth is Out There” with a flying saucer and “I <3 Lakota Language,” its Lakȟóta language translation printed below. Kite, a member of the Oglála Lakȟóta Nation, sat in her living room drinking coffee on a recent cold winter morning, the air warmed by a woodstove.
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Mar 15, 2024 | 
artswestchester.org | Michelle Falkenstein
In May of 1967, financier Roy R. Neuberger was invited to the Pocantico Hills estate of his friend, then-Governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller. During the visit, Rockefeller told Neuberger that if he donated works from his outstanding modern American art collection to New York State, the state would build a museum on the campus of a newly planned college in Purchase, N.Y. to display it.
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Dec 13, 2023 | 
artswestchester.org | Michelle Falkenstein
Choreographer and pedagogue Carole Alexis saw The Nutcracker as a child and thought of it as one beautiful ballet among many. When Alexis, who grew up in Martinique, Senegal and France, moved to the U.S., she was surprised to find it was a holiday tradition. “This is the country that produces Nutcracker the most,” said Alexis, who began dancing at age four and already had a choreography commission at age 13.
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Dec 12, 2023 | 
timesunion.com | Michelle Falkenstein
On a recent cold, sunny Saturday, business was brisk at the Raven & Boar Farm stand in the Hudson Farmers Market. Emilie Latham worked the booth, cooking sausage samples on an electric burner. Nearby, packages of frozen meat, including bone-in porchetta, pork chops, pork flank steak and pork short ribs sat alongside sausages in unusual flavors like Butternut Chorizo, Lime Shallot Anchovy and Miso Scallion.
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Dec 12, 2023 | 
timesunion.com | Michelle Falkenstein
On a recent cold, sunny Saturday, business was brisk at the Raven & Boar Farm stand in the Hudson Farmers Market. Emilie Latham worked the booth, cooking sausage samples on an electric burner. Nearby, packages of frozen meat, including bone-in porchetta, pork chops, pork flank steak and pork short ribs sat alongside sausages in unusual flavors like Butternut Chorizo, Lime Shallot Anchovy and Miso Scallion.
