Alan Adin
it takes a village?

Fern Apfel
This painting is an inquiry into our relationship to home, which anchors us in inexplicable ways. Far from home, we write to our loved ones.

Writing from an undisclosed location in World War ll, a soldier writes to his Mother in Somewhere in Italy (#1). The structure in this painting is based on the geometry of illuminated manuscripts.

This intimate letter calls us back home.

Onaje Benjamin
The three images are representations of spaces I associate with home. They are structural, cultural and environmental markers which ground me to community which holds the physical site where I feel safe and connected-my home. My photography is an extension of my relationship with people, places and things. Home to me is a universal concept. As a historically marginalized person, my perception of home is multidimensional and extends beyond the confines of the physical location in which I reside.

Lauren Bergman
In these two works I am thinking about home on a macro level. When traveling outside of the U.S., people will ask “where is your home?”, by which they mean “what country are you from?”. These days being an American is fraught with contradictions. I grew up with an activist feminist mother who would be devastated to learn that all the work she and her friends dedicated themselves to has been undone. Female autonomy is under siege, and the ideals of freedom and justice for all is deeply threatened. In these paintings I am exploring both the mythology of our American home and its dark underbelly.

Stacy Bogdonoff
All of my work is an exploration of “Home, Safety, and Shelter”. ‘Home’ is where I live; ‘Safety’ is what I seek, for myself, my family, and my community; and maintaining ‘Shelter’ is top of mind at the beginning and end of each day.

I cannot begin to affect change in the wider world. I have more years behind me than ahead; I’m a homebody not a traveler; where the light falls in a room matters to me; and I surround myself with colors, shapes, objects, and sounds that speak to me and keep me grounded. I am amazed at people who say, “I could live anywhere!” I couldn’t.

I make art because it’s a direct line from my heart to my time and my home and studio support that.

Emily Carvajal
I grew up in Manhattan on the upper west side. Both of my parents were in theater and so were all of their friends. Everyone was from somewhere else, and our little apartment became home and family to many people. No matter where I go in life, home has always been created by the love and support of friends and family. Home has always been where the heart is. This painting is of family past and present who’s images elicit a feeling of home to me.

Collin Douma
I got so excited by this open call that I went on another deepdive. Arm deep the trinket drawer,
waist deep in the basement boxes, head deep into some old memories.

Themes began to emerge: living at home, homes away from home, the path to and from home, courage to own a home, memories of lost relatives at home, not knowing where home truly is.

As did souvenirs from home. I combined the elements and have created something unique.

Das Elkin
Reading in Bed

Cuddled in the sheets, a warm light peeking over my shoulder, utterly lost in a story; Reading in bed makes me feel at home. Unlike reading on the subway or at the beach, I am undisturbed. The quiet surrounds me. I am free to explore other worlds while my home tends the fire. Spending hours inside on a rainy day, only getting up to revive a hot drink. Faithfully returning to my favorite characters each night. Even as my eyelids grow heavy, they encourage me to keep turning pages. Precious moments with my toddler reading bedtime stories. As we nestle amongst the stuffed animals, I anticipate my own bedtime. And one book is never enough….

Mary Elwin
My home has always been the Hudson Valley. I have lived most of my life in the shadow of Overlook Mountain, so when I am close to Overlook, I know that I am at home. The Millstream in Woodstock where I spent time as a young child is another special place that I consider home. Looking into the woods from my kitchen window is a welcome sight each morning, also telling me that I am home.

This painting has a central sketch of Overlook, the Millstream and the woods. These are my favorite homes. I have chosen my assortment of belongings to complete the “picture”. These include antiques passed down from my great- grandparents, grandparents and parents as well as gifts from special friends and items that I have collected from my travels and for my desires. Each piece has a story and a memory of a person or a time. All of these things comprise my home and make my space my own.

Maya Englehardt
“Nena”

This painting is based on a photo of my grandmother Nena whilst pregnant with my Uncle. After a decade or so of absence, I visited Cambridge (my birthplace) and was shown this photo by Nena. My earlier childhood was spent with this Chilean side of the family before moving away for the later part of my youth. This separation was a granular break, the pieces floated away quietly without me realizing they were gone. Soon after this pregnancy (her first of two, the next being my mother) she became increasingly depressed, and eventually swept under by drug habits. I never knew the young woman from this image lying still and calm, but probably so overwhelmed by life. It’s two things at once; in reality this moment is before the train derailed completely, and slows a moment of uncertainty and life growing within/from her – but also appears to be her near future, already dead. The dog looks to be a ghost, an accidental element that fits somehow – an echo of what was, or is waiting for her. Heartbreaking or reassuringly, this is an important part of my being and an essential part of my reality now. A part of me that was lost but never gone, this is home.

Maureen Gates
In my youngest years, home was a transient place. My father was in the Air Force and we moved around many times. It was always my desire to find a place and live there for a long time. When I first purchased the property that became my home for decades, there were many very young and small pine trees in one section. Living there so long, the trees have grown into a forest of 35 foot pine trees. I often hike and bike through the trails that I have created there. “Pine Tree Forest” gives me the feeling of home among the trees in the pine scented woods.

As an early riser, I enjoy many sunrises and occasional full moons in the early predawn hours. This is a favorite time for me to stroll around my property. During an early morning walk, I planned to photograph the full moon over the fields. With perfect timing, a car drove by illuminating the road in the beautiful scene that unfolded before my eyes and captured through my lens. “Moonlight” was the result of planning and being there at the right moment when the car drove into my view.

Working with light, shadow and form, I prefer to use the tonality of black and white to capture the beauty of the piece of the world that I live in. I feel at “Home” in the forest and fields that are my neighborhood. Being a photographer for decades, I feel at home with a camera in my hand composing and creating images.

A lifelong love of black and white photography is a medium that I frequently work in with different media, papers, films and fabrics.

Dan Goldman
Home, or as it is called on my VRBO page, The Hudson Valley Artist Sanctuary. “Home” is my sanctuary, where I lay my head down to rest and put the day behind me. It is a time of great peace, as is the morning when I wake up.

My faithful companion and best friend Gus feels the same way as I do, and it is common for us to fall asleep and wake up together. When this happens, and the sunlight is just right, we make photographs together. These are just a few of the many I continually make of Gus and I since moving into my HOME 12 years ago.

Josepha Gutelius
Where do I feel most at home? In water. Swimming. I’m obsessed with swimming. Show me any body of water and I’ll swim in it. It can be rough and deep or shallow and stagnant. It can be slick with algae and rotting leaves. It can be cold. It doesn’t matter. It’s my little bit of heaven.

Len Jenkin
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL is a triptych that includes Navajo code talkers, steam trains, the strange and marvelous, the flag etc.

Once more, a dark and bright vision of America. These images are a kind of American home, in all its complexity, sea to shining sea….

Roxie Johnson
As a young child, my surroundings were known to change in a heartbeat.

I was barely two when my Mom was exposed to TB, torn from her family and hospitalized for over 9 months. And further illness pulled her away repetitively throughout my early childhood. Older brothers went elsewhere for school enrollment. Dad took metro north into NYC daily. Yet somehow he was the glue that held our family together over the formative years. There isn’t much I understood back then, other than this huge absence. And a shuffling between strangers, who I learned to love later in life as my distant relatives, and a local neighbor or two. Looking back, I remember trying so hard to fit in to each new experience…but rarely felt I truly belonged.

“Welcome Home” has an especially personal meaning for me. It’s about life in pieces. It’s about searching for a source of reflection and solitude. About learning to trust one’s curiosity as a safe harbor, despite how others see you. And, of course, finding a voice.

Chapter two. Incredibly grateful to eventually have Mom back home and family reunited, I set out to transform the hardwood floor of my tiny bedroom in our Sears box house into my first ‘studio’. Hours of deconstructing and rebuilding became my favorite childhood pastime. The work shared here takes me back to that space in time, where life’s challenges were first reshaped into something remarkably fresh and filled with possibility.

Finding home…

Chong Kang
Home

I started painting the Jesa Series (Jesa, a Korean memorial to the ancestors) which represents home to me. The project began over ten years ago; it is a continuum. The inspiration was from the things my mother brought with her when she immigrated to the U.S. It explains where my beginning started and who I’ve become.

The painting “My Mother’s Hanbok“ (Hanbok, a traditional Korean gown, often worn for ceremonies in the contemporary times) defines my sacred home. The flowing pink silk top with sleeves like angel wings guiding me portrays my mother, and the shoes are a reminder of keeping me grounded. I’ve realized this more after she passed. I’m finally home, mom.

Sarah Katz
My work, in general, deals with intimacy. I like to work with models, which, in itself, is an intimate relationship. Intimacy has a strong relationship to the concept of “Home”. Home is a private place. It’s the door I can close on the world and the place I invite my dear ones to share with me.

“East Hampton Kitchen, 1957” has a nostalgic feeling. Nostalgia for home is often more a longing for a feeling of our childhoods as we would have liked them to be. Sometimes, at moments, they even were like that.

Suki (Shey) Kimok
Home to me always meant my mother. When she left, all I was left with was the things of hers to remind me of home. I lost my mother, my house, and my sense of belonging but found in a new place a community of people who welcomed me and made me feel at home.

David Klein
The true home is the center of our being. We experience that center through the associations we attach to it. That may be people . That may be a place. The relationships we use to define ourselves. The history of our lives, our labor, our daily tasks, our interactions with others, all will be identified with and attached to locale.

Sometimes the locale itself presents life challenges and our perseverance forms our identity. All new places represent a frontier. These works explore how places and people define each other.

Virginia Mallon
These pieces are part of a series about family called “who we used to be”. It is about how where we are, where we’ve been and the place we call home, affects who we are.

Karen Maloof
Through the use of strong light and shadow contrasts, I capture the interplay between light and form in my paintings. I create paintings based on specific locations to create a backdrop for a story of an intimate portrait of home.

Elin Menzies
I grew up in a small village surrounded by woods with intriguing vines, fields with golden grasses and swamps with fascinating creatures. The west hills stood in the distance. It was a time when children had a lot of freedom and I spent many days of my childhood years wandering through those places with my beloved friend, a dog of mixed origins named Terry. I lived in a house but the place where I really felt at home was in the woods with Terry.

A major theme of my artwork is interspecies connections. A particular focus is on wolves and children who live happily together with Wolf acting as a guardian. It’s always been clear to me that there is a strong connection between these paintings and my childhood days with Terry.

Ann Morris
I often think back on the many places that I have lived and all the stages that my life has gone through to arrive at the present. I left home at the age of 17 but even then it was important to me to create a beautiful space where I could feel safe and grow. The Memory Maps are a way for me to reach back in time to a physical place and render the emotional states that I was experiencing – sad, scared, overwhelmed and joyful. And finally, to express how it feels to be here at home in the beautiful Hudson Valley.

Susan J Murphy
My work has always been so diverse that I had no recognizable style, but recently I started my first series, Saugerties My Home Town. I take a photo of a special place in Saugerties, have it printed small, and glue it to a piece of drawing paper or a canvas, then I paint around it with acrylics, extending the lines and color fields to abstraction. The effect, to me, is to render the photograph a kind of gem in an abstract setting. So far I have completed 8 of these, and sold 2.

Eileen Power
Spirit Dance is part of a series of works Eileen Power created after her partner Steve Derrickson passed away in June 2023. When they first met, she said to him that a really good relationship is her definition of “home”.

Steve was a lifelong artist and had collected a number of used drop cloths. As a way of working through her grief, Eileen began making art from Steve’s drop cloths and other personal items, upcycling them into art.

The piece is aptly named for the Pas de Deux, the spiritual dance Eileen and Steve continue to do in the studio they once physically shared.

Welcome home.

Betsey Regan
I am never alone at home.

Steven Rushefsky
One of my very favorite things is a room filled with light and air. These drawings focus on windows bringing light and life into a room.

“Helen’s Windows” depicts huge, geometric, beautiful windows with light streaming into a warm room.

“Rose Window” is cozy – looking out a window, where a rosebush and tree branch planted by my husband are just outside the window and more important than the view beyond them.

Lisa Samalin
My son Matt and his partner Bella brought us to Saugerties seven years ago. He parked on Main Street and I got out of the car. I looked around and like the last piece of the puzzle, I slipped into place. It took another four years to find it, married to Zillow all through covid, clicking on “Blue Mountain”. And just when the odds seemed to be stacked way too high against us, this house, this sanctuary, embraced by these mountains, fell into our lap. Home.

John Scribner
Marfa Melt:
Loving to make burgers at home, I stacked plastic replicas to form a wall sculpture merging Pop with Minimalism: a wry homage to Donald Judd.

Kurt Steger
In my outdoor sculpture series DWELL, I construct shelters for spirits to inhabit. The architecture is designed to provide easy access and egress, so the spirits feel enclosed but not imprisoned in their dwelling. It is a place of safety and community, where human spirits may abide with other spirits within the context of the natural world. My dwellings provide a safe haven for disembodied beings, as well as the occasional squirrel, to commune with each other.

In my series Urban Stupas and Urban Structures, I use discarded concrete from Brooklyn construction sites and combine it with poured concrete, creating urban dwelling places for unhoused spirits. On a trip to Tibet in 2015, I saw countless demolished Buddhist temples and homes, which inspired me to create dwelling places for the displaced people. This series addresses the spiritual disembodiment caused by homelessness.

David Tumblety
My pieces are different mediums:”in Brooklyn chinatown”is an etching depicting a man I would often see hanging out on the block. “the comforter” is a small sculpture where I wanted to capture the feeling of deep sleep right before dawn.

Joanne Pagano Weber
The idea of “Home”, for me, means “state of mind”. These three works express different aspects of emotional and psychological relationships visually through compositional elements and narrative action. They depict “situations” that convey the subject, “Home”, but the invisible, subconscious content of the work is my personal connection to this theme.

Anna West
Every time I am painting, I am home.

Lynn Woods
Home is where inspiration starts–the views out my windows, through doorways, and rooms, the random arrangement of objects on my tables, throughout the day and seasons suggest an infinite array of paintings, of compositions of colored shapes, delicate tones, geometries, and counters, when framed in a rectangle. What we see everyday offers the richest possibilities.