Film Days companion exhibition at the Smithy

Companion art exhibits enrich the Film Days experience.

  • Future Memory Art Exhibition at the Smithy. Featuring multi-media artists Megan Adams Irving, Ava Fedorov, and Ashley Norwood Cooper. (2023)

  • Luminosity/Luminous Streets Art Exhibition at the Smithy and extending to storefronts along Main and Pioneer Streets in Cooperstown (2022)

  • watercolor by Enid Baxter Ryce

    RISING WATER(COLORS) ART EXHIBITION - ENID BAXTER RYCE, WAR AND THE WEATHER (2021)

  • Christina Hunt Wood, Detail, Charlotte Creek Road

    ADAPTATIONS: CHRISTINA HUNT WOOD WITH SELECTION OF EXPERIMENTAL FILMS (2019)

  • illuminated luggage by Ted Lott

    JOURNEYS/EN ROUTE - YEON JIN KIM AND TED LOTT (2018)

  • image from Pooh Kaye film, woman in a garden with lettuce for a head

    ON ARRIVAL - POOH KAYE AND CARA WOOD-GINDER (2017)

  • artwork from Earth Shattering exhibition

    EARTH SHATTERING - LAURA MORIARTY, CHRISTY RUPP, AND MOLLY WELCH (2016)

  • self portrait by Katharine Kreisher

    PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES, AMELIA BAUER, KATHARINE KREISHER, ALEX O'NEAL, AND WIJNANDA DEROO (2015)

  • 2014, EDWARD BURTYNSKY

    EDWARD BURTYNSKY (2014)

FUTURE MEMORY ART EXHIBITION

(2023)

FUTURE MEMORY (2023)

Megan Adams Irving, Ava Fedorov, and Ashley Norwood Cooper frequently use their art practices to digest and react to current events—including the crises humans inflict upon the natural world. Within the exhibit Future Memory, these three mixed- and multi-media artists present paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and video art that offer another perspective on the 2023 Glimmerglass Film Days theme, Messengers.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Megan Adams Irving is a mixed-media painter and ceramic artist. Gardening and living generally close to the land in Central New York are critical to her lifelong study of the landscape and its connection to humanity. Irving was recently awarded an Individual Artist Grant through the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts, to pursue a body of ceramic art inspired by wallpaper patterns reprinted from 1800s remnants found in New York States homes. She notes, “Clay is a painterly and unnerving medium well suited to work about the temporary and fragile qualities of life balanced with the persistence of nature and geological time.”

Ava Fedorov is a transdisciplinary artist, writer, activist, and educator. Using art as an intersectional social practice of bearing witness, creating a record, and standing vigil, she pulls from all realms of her creative knowledge to portray disappearing places and the implicit nexus that connects internal and external landscapes. She creates large, abstract paintings; interactive installations; experimental books; and global performance pieces. Ava is an assistant professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and currently has a solo exhibition, Let Me Hold You as You Disappear, at Boston's Laconia Gallery, open through January 14, 2024.

Ashley Norwood Cooper’s intensely colored, painterly figurative work explores the creative lives of women, the awkwardness of family relationships, and the role of the artist-mother-wife teacher. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibits throughout the US including First Street Gallery (NYC) and ZINC contemporary (Seattle). Her work has been featured in New American Paintings and on the I Like Your Work Podcast. Her recent debut at VOLTA NYC 2020 garnered write ups in the New York Times and Arcade Projects Zine (Columbia University).

 All three artists, who have lived in far-flung places, have strong local roots: Irving and Fedorov spent their childhoods in Otsego County and both studied art at Bard College, and Cooper, though raised in the South, has lived in the area for decades. Drawing upon early relationships with rural landscapes—whether of Upstate New York or embedded in Greek classics—their work looks forward into the future history currently in creation. In addition to their compelling and highly original artistic practices, each of the three also teaches, sharing vision and expertise with another generation.

Luminosity/Luminous Streets (2022)

Glimmerglass Film Days Art Exhibition at the Smithy and extending to storefronts along Main and Pioneer Streets in Cooperstown

Since 2014, Film Days has included a companion art exhibition in its programming in the intimate gallery, The Smithy. Relating to annual festival themes and featuring artists important on the local, regional, and national scene, the exhibitions have been curated primarily by former Film Days steering committee member and artist Megan Irving, with Sydney Waller as co-curator.

Luminosity/Luminous Streets is the brainchild of Sydney Waller, curatorial consultant, project organizer, and founding member of the Film Days Steering Committee. All of the works in Luminosity/Luminous Streets address the Glimmerglass Film Days theme of Connection in diverse ways.

Along with a four-person show at the Smithy, this year’s exhibition extends to storefronts along Main and Pioneer Streets in Cooperstown, on display November 5-19.

at the Smithy

Luminosity

Four-person show at the Smithy, curated by Sydney Waller, features light sculptures by Daniel Buckingham and contemporary video art by Ariana Gerstein, Yeon Jin Kim, and Tomonari Nishikawa. The video artists are each on the art faculty at SUNY Binghamton, and Buckingham is a professor at PrattMWP College of Art and Design in Utica. Luminosity at the Smithy, 55 Pioneer Street in Cooperstown, will be open daily November 6 -19, 12 pm to 4 pm. Admission is free.
Artists Talk, Exhibit Opening, and Reception November 5, 5-7 pm.

In Multiple Storefronts, Main and Pioneer Streets, Cooperstown

Luminous Streets

This ambitious project, featuring 13 storefronts, includes light sculptures from the Quest for Light Collective, curated by Daniel Buckingham, and video works curated by Yeon Jin Kim. Both guest curators worked with Sydney Waller, overall curatorial organizer.

 “The Collective seeks to invigorate the cultural landscape,” said Buckingham. “Our world is a stage filled with curious vessels in the form of coffee pots, violins, fauna, toys, and Victrolas, all a visual delight.”  Collective members showing their works in Cooperstown include Ferrell Crawley, Venus Fitzgerald, Abdullah Gramish, Aldo Macedo, Shannon Nisiewicz, Maribel Perez, Flynn Scorzelli, Christy Wucen and Peter Liangpu Yu. The sculptures in Luminous Streets consist of highly crafted welded steel objects, LED lights, and chiffon.

Luminous Streets also features monitors large and small tucked among merchandise in store windows. The screens will offer an array of cutting-edge film, animation, and video art by artists Matthew Garrison, Case Jernigan, DeCarlo Logan, Jessica Mensch, Jason Mitcham, Simona Prives, Sarada Rauch and Gregory Wall. Along with the well-established artists, three works by emerging artist Julien Miller, from Fly Creek and now Brooklyn, are included.

Luminous Streets will be on view daily 4:30 pm to 11:00 pm from November 5-19 in the windows of Cooperstown Classics, Cooperstown Distillery Beverage Exchange, F.R. Woods House of Pro Sports, Grand Slam Guitars, Heroes Of Baseball Wax Museum, J. Gorman Fine Jewelry, Kate’s Upstate, The Local Bird, Mickey’s Place, Riverwood, Rudy’s Wine & Liquor, Tin Bin Alley, and the former T.J.’s Place at 124 Main Street.

Luminosity/Luminous Streets is made possible with a grant from the C.J. Heilig Foundation with additional support from Transitions Counseling.

Glimmerglass Film Days is a program of Otsego 2000, an environmental and preservation advocacy nonprofit organization based in Cooperstown, NY.


Secret Invitation by Daniel Buckingham

Secret Invitation by Daniel Buckingham

““The art will be intriguing, mysterious, and quirky—an unexpected visual surprise.”
— Sydney Waller, Curatorial Organizer, Luminosity/Luminous Streets”

Light sculptures from the Quest for Light Collective will be on display in Cooperstown storefronts November 5-19 as part of Luminosity/Luminous Streets.

Video art displayed in Cooperstown storefronts as part of Luminosity/Luminous Streets.