Art Where the Cows Come Home

by Beth E. Wilson, September 25, 2007

When you install art outdoors, there are always a number of things to keep in mind. Are the materials sufficiently weatherproof? Are there sharp projections, moving parts, or other features that might endanger members of the public? Will it be able to withstand a herd of 40 Black Angus steers?

Wait! There’s something about that last question that seems a bit unusual….

The Outdoor Sculpture Installations exhibition, organized by Collaborative Concepts at Saunders Farm in Garrison, is one of the more decidedly unique environments in which I’ve ever encountered art. This is the second year that Collaborative has organized an exhibition here, and now I regret having missed last year’s edition.

The landscape is amazing—broad grassy fields (some steeply pitched), tucked away a stone’s throw away from Route 9G in Garrison, one of the last largely undisturbed stretches of agricultural land left in Putnam County. On a crisp fall day there can be nothing quite as spectacular as hiking up through these fields (farmer Sandy Saunders only asks that you close the gates behind you), with the views framed by a clear blue sky and nothing but the wind rustling through the trees on the soundtrack. Oh, and the occasional bunch of cows passing through.

Collaborative Concepts has gone through a number of different manifestations since its founding in 1999. At its core is a group of serious professional artists, whose goal is to organize exhibitions (over 40 so far) designed to provide “exceptional cultural experiences.” When I first encountered the group, its digs were in a large storefront space on Main Street in Beacon, showing consistently engaging work by the likes of Grace Knowlton, Michael Pilon, Lyndon Preston, and others. When the landlord raised the rent beyond the modest means of the group, they moved briefly to Bulldog Studios in Beacon, and now since Bulldog has closed, they’ve reinvented their exhibition space to take in over 100 acres of Sandy Saunder’s cow pasture.

For a sculpture show, there are a few points at which painting (or pictorial concepts) play a surprisingly significant role. Richard Bruce’s small, abstract paintings riff on the convention of the trail marker, tacked up on tree trunks along a haphazard cow trail through some woods on the edge of the fields. But instead of being painted a standard, single utilitarian color, each marker is an aesthetic cosmos in and of itself—soft pastel washes of white, sea green, and blues, like abstracted versions of Symbolist paintings by Odilon Redon. Strictly speaking, they represent nothing, yet functionally they manage to pull the feeling of open sky and atmosphere into the wooded path that they mark, a strikingly beautiful use of the location.

This sort of painterly strategy is reversed in Robert Brush’s witty Four Landscape Paintings, located on the westernmost edge of one of the fields. Just off the pasture, alongside a preexisting hiking trail through the property, Brush has erected a section of wall, painted deep red (a favorite of Victorian decorators). He has cut four holes through the wall, each framed by an ornate bit of gold molding. The site is located near the top of a hill that provides a sweeping view of Storm King Mountain and the Hudson, so when you stand nearly anywhere in front of the piece, you’re presented with four real-time Hudson River School landscape “paintings”—an interesting reminder of the conventions of picture-making that were so successful in the 19th century.