Summer show in Hudson

Hudson never fails to grab my attention this time of year. Time for a road trip!

At the John Davis Gallery in Hudson, a group of artists will open with a medley of exhibitions for the Main Galleries, Sculpture Garden and Carriage House at the John Davis Gallery on Thursday, June 24.

Five solo exhibitions (a sculptor, three painters, and a photographer are in the mix. The work will be on display through July 18 with a reception for the artists 6-8 p.m. Saturday, June 26.

Roberto Juarez’s oils are in the main gallery.

“Over the years, my paintings have focused on a dialogue of mark making between different layers of paint, paper, and collage. The current group of oil paintings continues this dialogue of layering and contrast with a generous amount of color after a winter of black and white,” says Juarez in his artist’s statement. “The strict geometry of the work is loosening up to a more emotionally based under-painting on a smaller sized canvas which allows for a quicker pace and evolution from painting to painting. Also included will be oil studies on gessoed cardboard.”

The sculpture garden was given over to Ben Butler, who says he likes to “employ rigid systems that dictate the accumulation of many small pieces of wood. The resulting form may be surprising and novel, but the system that generated it is startlingly clear and simple. The focus is on an unseen force at work, on the ambiguous source”

In the Carriage House is Laurel Sucsy, who, the gallery website says, paints clusters of forms that attempt to describe light.

“As these fractured moments collect in proximity to each other, a certain kind of visual chaos is unleashed. For Sucsy the process of reining in this infinite dance of relationships is a complex operation, an intuitive process of addition and subtraction. Marks oscillate, describing light and then subvert that description to announce themselves as unassuming paint. In this way, Sucsy’s paintings share an affinity with those of Morandi. They embody a quiet relentless pursuit of a perfect tension.”

Pamela Cardwell, also in the Carriage House, is a painter.

“Ethnography and the study of the ancient arts of Turkey and the Caucasus countries form the vocabulary from which I work. The repetitive, rhythmic elements in these art forms: carpets, vessels, cave architecture and calligraphy can originate in the shape and structure of organic life.

“Color in these arts comes from the minerals and ores of the earth. Similarly, I begin by painting the shapes and markings on organic forms. I work the whole painting all over, rhythmically building up and scraping off layers over a long period of time.”

On the fourth floor of the Carriage House are works by self-taught photographer Paul Hamann, who has been making black and white images since 1968. Working with various camera formats and printing techniques Hamann explores the aspects of the natural landscape.

The gallery website says that, working first with a 35mm camera, Hamann began taking pictures with an eye to the details and abstractions that captured the essence of what he saw, but soon began to explore the greater range and depth of large format negatives-first working with a 5×7 camera and later experimenting with 4×5 and even larger formats, which were well suited to the detail and precision of Hamann’s creative vision.