(Artists L to R) Laura Sue King, Ted Sheridan, Beth Caspar, Patrice Lorenz

A self guided walking art tour in the Village of Stamford

November 7, 2020 – November 28, 2020
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 7 from 2:00 – 4:00pm
at the Veteran’s Memorial Park in Stamford

Please visit us in the park to start your exhibit-walk for a treat bag prepared by T.P.’s.

We ask that you provide us with your contact details should we need to reach you for any COVID related reasons.

The Roxbury Arts Group is proud to present a walking art tour in partnership local Stamford businesses. ‘Outside Looking In’ is curated by ADHOC, an artist collective that live and work in and around the Catskills. ‘Outside Looking In’ opens with a reception beginning in Veteran’s Memorial Park on Saturday, November 7 from 2:00 – 4:00p where guests will be provided with a map of the six businesses taking part in the walking tour and bags of individual tasty treats provided for the walk. This event is free and open to all.

Guests are invited to stroll the village of Stamford and enjoy the works of Beth Caspar, Laura Sue King, Hedi Kyle, Patrice Lorenz, Miguel Martinez-Riddle, Amy Masters, Elaine Mayes, Alan Powell, Ted Sheridan, Nat Thomas and Ellen Wong. Artwork will be showcased in the windows of Solinsky’s, The Mountain Eagle, TP’s Café, Railroad Ave Supply (ACE), Wade’s Town & County Florist and It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere. For information on this exhibit and COVID-19 guidelines, visit roxburyartsgroup.org or call 607.326.7908

“This is a many birds, one stone exhibition” says Samantha Nick Grants and Community Coordinator of the Roxbury Arts Group. “This exhibition will help support local business, local artists and make the arts accessible to the community. As COVID has retrained some of our programs, we have been excited to collaborate and innovate with artists and community members in new ways”.

“We live in a time where dialogue, opinions and identity are tending to box us in instead of fostering new connections and providing new ways to see the world,” say the members of the ADHOC artist collective. “This year has been an unusually heavy dose of being inside, looking out and reflecting on turbulent times for all of us. Flipping the narrative, we are on the outside, looking in.”

‘Outside Looking In’ will be on view in the Village of Stamford through November 28, and exhibit maps will be available at local businesses after the opening reception on Saturday, November 7.

Bearing Witness Piece by Ellen Wong

The Roxbury Arts Group has been proud to work with the ADHOC Artist Collective and members of the Stamford Business Community to present ‘Outside Looking In,’ a walking art exhibit through November 28. One piece from this exhibit, created by artist Ellen Wong, was deemed to be controversial and was unable to find a physical exhibit location in the village.

The Roxbury Arts Group is committed to exhibiting the works of the ADHOC Artists, and we are excited to share with you Ellen Wong’s work, Bearing Witness. We respect the decision of participating businesses to not exhibit this work in their storefronts. Allow us to share Ellen’s artist statement:

Bearing Witness refers to sharing our experiences with others, most notably in communicating traumatic experiences. Bearing witness helps us to process experience and to gain empathy and support, to lighten our emotional burden with the witnesses. Artistic expression can be a powerful way to share these experiences. I found myself paralyzed by the cataclysmic time, and ‘Outside Looking In’ found me questioning the signs and flags, glowing lights of tvs as I walked and drove through the local towns, raising questions as to what people were feeling and thinking inside and how in spite of all the signage, not really knowing. I wanted the piece to raise awareness of this time and to raise questions.

This mixed media piece is layered with newspaper, thus mediated messages revealed and obscured, oil paint, acrylic, gouache paint, graphite, charcoal and gesso, collaged or directly painted on the surface. There was a physicality in the process that was helpful in spilling the message onto the piece. These are messy times. Since quarantining we have been barraged with a “cascading series of events that just don’t seem to stop.” This year has been marked not by one crisis, but a killer virus, political chaos, environmental catastrophe, threats to democracy, racial strife and an incredible divisive culture.

Please know that the Roxbury Arts Group strictly follows NYS COVID-19 guidelines for your safety, the health of the community and so that we may continue to offer arts programming to the Central Catskills region.
NYS COVID-19 Policies for all outdoor events are as follows:

• Please be conscious of spacing while walking and wear a mask when nearing other walkers
•  Your event-going group should stay 6′ from other attendees
• Temperature must be taken at entrance & “tracing” contact info supplied