June 19 & 20, 2021
The Poughkeepsie Open Studios will once again resume their “in person” tours for 2021 on Father’s Day Weekend – June 19 & 20 – but on a much smaller scale. Visit Poughkeepsie Open Studios or Poughkeepsie Open Studios Facebook for the complete roster of participants and locations.
The Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center will be among those art organizations, galleries and studios participating. Photographer Barbara Todd will be displaying her work in the Hallway Gallery and interdisciplinary artist Shirley Parker-Benjamin in Suite 26 at 9 Vassar Street from 1 pm to 5 pm. At 12 Vassar will be Andres San Millan in the Hancock Gallery to the right of the entrance doors to the VBI Theatre building and to the left of the doors in the Reception Room Gallery will be Onaje Benjamin, Suzanne Rees, and Erin Sullivan from 1 pm to 5 pm.
In The Galleries at Cunneen-Hackett
Hallway Gallery @ 9 Vassar Street: Barbara Todd – Barbara is a locally born and raised photographic and digital artist whose work has been described as “painterly”, sometimes “romantic” or “dramatic” and is sometimes noted for its unusual light. Her interest in unusual light is influenced by her growing up in her cherished Hudson Valley and the Hudson Valley school of painters. https://barbaratodd.zenfolio.com/
Suite 26 @ 9 Vassar Street: Shirley Parker-Benjamin – Shirley is an interdisciplinary artist working in mixed media, assemblage, installation, sculpture and writer. Her work has been shown at Kleinart James Art Center and Varga Gallery in Woodstock, New York , Long Island Children’s Museum, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Unframed Gallery in New Paltz, New York and Aurora Healing Arts in Brooklyn, New York as well as in Havana, Cuba. She is the Artistic Director and Founder of Ezili Sacred Arts.
Hancock Gallery @ 12 Vassar Street: Andres San Millan – Andres is a multifaceted artist whose talent encompasses being a figure and portrait painter, sculptor, dancer, choreographer, actor, director, set designer, and teacher. He studied with dancer Alvin Nikolais and co-founded the Cocoon Theatre with his wife, Marguerite. His endeavors include working on several street performances involving community artists and a large visual work of a model for the Wheaton Park Bridge Project. http://www.figureartscape.com/
Reception Room Gallery @12 Vassar Street: Onaje Benjamin – Onaje is a photographer whose work reflects a passion for social justice and activism. His images ranges from street taggers and muralist to portraits of street people and the structural and architectural evolution symbolizing gentrification and the uprooting of disenfranchised communities. They also capture urban settings and the cultural and artistic tensions that evolve in these rapidly changing environments. He is the owner of Ujamaa Studios whose mission is to support the work of historically disenfranchised artists especially those incarcerated in America’s system of mass incarceration.
Reception Room Gallery @ 12 Vassar Street: Suzanne Rees – Suzanne combines combine painting and collage to create interior spaces that can feel inchoate and elemental like weather or music. Using various papers and different ways of mark making, she builds her paintings in a kind of call and response. Just as she purposely truncates the space, not allowing it to become real or rendered, she does the same to the images, stopping them before they become something recognizable, containing them in the suggestive. Suzanne Rees she earned a BFA from Parsons School of Design and a MFA from Maryland Institute School of Art/ Rinehart School of Sculpture. She has exhibited widely in and around the Hudson Valley. https://www.suzannerees.com/
Reception Room Gallery @12 Vassar Street: Erin Sullivan – Erin is a creative artist currently living in Poughkeepsie, NY. She loves playing in different mediums from watercolor and encaustic to acrylic and writing. In her work, she uses an intuitive approach to capture a feeling, mood, aura, or moment. https://erinsullivan.love/