Exhibition Works of: Lauren Daccache, Elizabeth Orr, Eleanor White
Lauren Daccache, Elizabeth Orr, Eleanor White
Livingston Manor, NY—Catskill Art Space (CAS) will present an exhibition of work by Lauren Daccache, Elizabeth Orr and Eleanor White. The exhibition opens on Saturday, March 8, with an artist talk from 3 to 4 p.m. and a reception from 4 to 5 p.m.; it remains on view through April 26. The closing day of the exhibition will be marked by an Art and Ecology Symposium moderated by artist and writer Hovey Brock on April 26 at 4p.m.. The exhibitions explore the relationship of humans and the environments they inhabit, with close attention to the degradation of consumerism, resource extraction and geopolitical conflict. With urgency and empathy, the exhibitions inspire greater ecological awareness and action.
Eleanor White’s work incorporates organic, textured, granulated, fibrous, powdery, glassy, chunky, and sharp materials. She works with crushed stones, dirt, charcoal, sulfur, bonded copper, iron pyrite, wood ash, dog hair, shed snake skins, feathers, sand, and porcupine quills. For her presentation, she will show a series of works on paper exploring the element lithium, its historical industrial uses, and its contemporary significance in lithium batteries. These works address its role in everyday products and the broader implications of resource extraction and exploitative land use. The materials in her works on paper reference the historical use of minerals in paint making, the role of stones as new-age panaceas, and the associative power of matter.
About the Artists
Lauren Daccache (b. Dallas, TX) is a Lebanese-American visual artist raised in the United States and Beirut, Lebanon. She primarily focuses on long-term, image-based projects that explore the impact of time and age on people and places and the tension it creates between personal and collective memory. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and featured in publications such as Vice Magazine, National Geographic, and Der Greif.
Elizabeth Orr lives and works in New York and Livingston Manor. Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include VIN VIN, Vienna (2023, 2021); 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA (2022); Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Troy, New York (2016); and Bodega (Derosia), New York (2017, 2015). Group presentations, screenings, and lectures include Kunsthal NORD, Aalborg, Denmark (forthcoming, 2023); Sharp Projects, Copenhagen (2022, 2021); Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA (2019); CAC Brétigny, Brétigny-sur-Orge, France (2018); The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2017); Artists Space, New York (2015); Anthology Film Archives, New York (2018, 2016); and The Swiss Institute, New York (2016). In 2018, she received a Public Affairs Grant Program from the US Embassy, and in 2016, she won the MAAF NYC award for her video MT RUSH (2016). She has taken part in various residency programs, including EMPAC at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY), Shandaken (New York), Bemis Center (Omaha, Nebraska), Real-Time & Space (Oakland, CA), and Recess (NY, NY).Orr manages the estate of her late father, artist Eric Orr (1939-1998), and is on the board of KAJE, Brooklyn, NY. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and graduated with Honors from the Bard MFA program in 2015.
Eleanor White is based in the Hudson Valley, NY. Her work has been included in exhibitions such as Prima Materia: The Periodic Table in Contemporary Art, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, CT; Mountain High, Valley Low: LabSpace, NY;Artists Draw Their Studios, Hewitt Gallery of Art, Marymount Manhattan College, NY; Another World, charity postcard sale, Frieze London; Cross-Pollination, Boscobel House Gallery NY; Tick, Tock, Time in Contemporary Art, Lehman College; Case Studies, Gallery Aferro, NJ; Materiality, Westchester Community College, NY; and numerous exhibitions at Kenise Barnes Fine Art. Her work is included in The Montefiore Fine Art Program, The Deutsche Bank Art Collection, and many private collections. Eleanor received her MFA from the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, MD, on a full Jacob K. Javits Foundation scholarship. She earned her BFA. from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. She has participated in several artist residencies, including the Bemis Center in Omaha, Nebraska, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Sweet Briar, Virginia.
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.
