Livingston Manor, NY — Catskill Art Space (CAS) is pleased to present a three-person exhibition featuring Daniel Giordano, Davana Robedee, and Kathy Ruttenberg, on view from March 7 through April 25, 2026. The exhibition opens on Saturday, March 7, with an artists’ talk from 3–4 p.m. and a reception from 4–5 p.m. Bringing together three distinct yet resonant practices, the exhibition explores transformation—of materials, perception, and our connection to the natural world. Each artist examines how human and natural systems intersect, inviting viewers to reflect on the relationships between bodies, objects, and the environment.

Daniel Giordano creates work that ranges from intimate assembled objects to large-scale constructions. Drawing materials from his local ecosystem, he combines organic matter with carved wood, raku-fired ceramic, and cast aluminum components produced en masse. These forms are treated with substances that reference the body—lipstick, hosiery, marzipan, and urinal cake—materials that evoke personal and cultural memory. Giordano preserves these charged surfaces through layers of resin and sealant, immortalizing fleeting associations in sculptural form.

Davana Robedee centers her practice on experiences of visual aura, lucid dreams, and hallucinations, questioning the nature of consciousness and perception. Working with indigo she grows in her own dye garden, Robedee uses meditative stitch-resist shibori as a drawing tool. Her process is indirect and intuitive—she guides and coaxes her marks, allowing images to slowly emerge. The resulting works function as metaphors for the liminal space between thought and matter, dream and waking life.

Kathy Ruttenberg is widely recognized for her ceramic sculptures depicting a “wonder world in which species merge and figures serve as landscapes.” Her multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, painting, and animation. Oscillating between intimate works and monumental installations, Ruttenberg employs ceramic, bronze, and light to explore ecofeminism, animal liberation, sexuality, and emotional vulnerability. Her symbolic language portrays inner landscapes where fantasy becomes a vehicle for exploring human relationships and the natural world.

On Saturday, April 25 at 3 p.m., the exhibition culminates in an Art and Ecology Symposium featuring the participating artists in conversation. The symposium will be facilitated by artist and writer Hovey Brock and will expand upon the ecological frameworks, material strategies, and philosophical inquiries presented throughout the exhibition.

About the Artists

Daniel Giordano (b. 1988, Poughkeepsie, NY) is based in Newburgh, NY. He earned his MFA from the University of Delaware in 2016. He participated in the Millay Arts Core Residency Program in 2024, the AIM Fellowship at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in 2021, and the EmergeNYC Fellowship in 2015. Recent solo exhibitions include the Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY (2024); JDJ, New York, NY (2023); and MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2023). Recent group shows include High Noon, New York, NY (2024); Grimm, New York, NY (2024); and The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Bronx, NY (2024).

Davana Robedee is an artist, curator, and educator. She creates large-scale indigo drawings and fiber art installations using pigment sourced from her own dye garden. She cultivates community arts practices as the Director of the Tyler Art Gallery at SUNY Oswego and through her work with Quilting by the Lake. Robedee was part of the American Craft Emerging Artist Cohort 2024 and is a NYSCA 2025 Artist Awardee. She served as the 2024 Fiber Arts Resident, jointly hosted by Catskill Art Space and Gael Roots Community Farm.

Kathy Ruttenberg (b. 1957, Chicago, IL) is a multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture, painting, and animation. Emerging from New York's early 1980s East Village art scene, her allegorical paintings contributed to the vitality of new figurative expressionism. Over the last four decades, her work has gradually shifted from painting toward sculpture. Oscillating between intimate and monumental scales, she uses ceramic, bronze, and light to explore themes of ecofeminism, animal liberation, and sexuality. Ruttenberg lives and works in upstate New York.

Long-term Installations

Following a major renovation and expansion, Catskill Art Space reopened in October 2022 with a long-term presentation of James Turrell’s Avaar (1982) in a custom-built gallery on the building’s second floor. A room-sized installation, Avaar is an important example of the artist’s early, wall-based “aperture” works, which function by creating two areas within a room. There is a “viewing space,” where one stands to see and experience the work, and a “sensing space,” which is an ambiguously defined area of diffused light. Avaar is one of the rare examples of Turrell’s aperture works to make use of white lighting only; no colors will be present in the installation. This work is in the collection of the Seattle Art Museum, which has granted CAS a special long-term loan to exhibit the work. The presentation at CAS marks the first time the work has been shown since the 1970s, giving audiences from the Catskills and beyond the rare opportunity to experience a major Turrell work that has not been seen in nearly five decades.

On the second floor’s central landing, Sol LeWitt’s vibrant Wall Drawing #992 unfolds in three sections, each consisting of 10,000 straight lines drawn in color marker, to create a mesmerizing arrangement of primary colors. On the fourth wall, presenting LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #991, straight, arced, and organic lines will encompass the wall in black marker and pencil. The conceptual, minimalist artist conceived guidelines for his two-dimensional works to be drawn directly on the wall. Much like Turrell’s Avaar, the LeWitt works were realized for CAS’s space; in this instance, they are generously loaned by the artist’s estate. This work was overseen by a draftsperson, who determines the length and placement of the lines, and executed by five artists local to the area over nearly two weeks.

The newly realized performance space on CAS’s second floor hosts British sculptor Francis Cape’s A Gathering of Utopian Benches—an installation of meticulous copies of benches built and used by communal societies. Cape’s installations have always argued that design and craft express belief. Utopian Benches, which has toured extensively throughout the US, was built from poplar grown near Cape’s studio in Narrowsburg, NY. To be considered both as contemporary sculpture as well as furniture that visitors can actively use, the benches reference the societies who first used them, inviting visitors to utilize them for exchange, discourse, and community. The installation, which is meant to be used by visitors both for contemplation and may be used for performance seating, overlooks an expansive wall of windows onto the Willowemoc Creek.

Ellen Brooks inaugurates an intimate gallery space, framed by a partially open staircase, with Hang (2022), an installation suspending over 30 feet of scrolls of film negatives from the ceiling. The artist hangs transparencies and negatives in all formats and from clips attached to the ceiling, mimicking the practice of film photography. Hanging negatives reference the surrounding natural landscaping, evoking a cascading waterfall with coils of film collecting on the ground floor gallery.

About Catskill Art Space

Catskill Art Space (CAS) explores contemporary art practices of emerging and established artists. Through exhibitions, performances, classes, lectures, and screenings, CAS fosters creative community in the Catskills.

Established as Catskill Art Society in 1971, CAS reopened in October 2022 as Catskill Art Space following a major renovation and expansion of its multi-arts center, located in the picturesque hamlet of Livingston Manor in the Western Catskills. CAS presents a rotating slate of exhibitions, performances and other events featuring national and regional talents, alongside long-term installations of works by James Turrell, Sol LeWitt, Francis Cape, and Ellen Brooks. Learn more at catskillartspace.org.

Notes to Editor

Opening date: March 7, 2026

Address: Catskill Art Space, 48 Main St. Livingston Manor, NY 12758
Opening: Saturday, March 7. Artists talk 3-4pm, Reception 4-5pm

Exhibition on-view: March 7 – April 25, 2026

Long-term installations on view: Long-term presentation (through 2027) of James Turrell’s light installation Avaar (1982) and two site-specific wall drawings from Sol LeWitt, as well as solo presentations of well-established artists from the local area, Francis Cape (through 2027) and Ellen Brooks (through 2027).

Instagram: @catskillartspace

For media inquiries, please contact:

Sally Wright, Executive Director

sally@catskillartspace.org

646-696-1044

Kathy Ruttenberg, Frogs Eggs, 2023, 41 x 12 x 11 inches, ceramic

Davana Robedee, Dreammap and Leafgate, 2023, each, 180 x 204 inches, stitch resist shibori; dyed with homegrown indigo on cotton,

Daniel Giordano, Pleasure Pipe LVI, 2020, 7 x 3.75 x 4.5 inches, Banksia pod, epoxy, hardware, polishing bit, rose wood