Exhibitions & Events
Upcoming Events
We provide tools and methodologies to help confront the challenges of our time. Join us for free workshops and events that incorporate art, social justice, and community healing practices.
TENDER RECORD: A Poetry Reading
Friday, June 26, 2026, 7:00 pm
Join us for an evening of poetry held in the company of ‘Artist Books of Loss and Healing,’ an exhibition set to open as part of Upstate Art Weekend. Like an artist's book, a poem can be a tender record of loving, grieving, recovering, honoring, and celebrating. Featured poets will share work that carries us through this territory in the generous art-filled space of The Church in Staatsburg. This evening of inspiration and connection is free and open to all.
This event is facilitated by the Poetry Collective of Rhinebeck.
Poets interested in reading should email: tenderpoets2026@gmail.com
A list of presenting poets will be made available in early June.
Please RSVP to attend: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tender-record-a-poetry-reading-tickets-1988578254089?aff=oddtdtcreator
THE NOODLE + THE SATELLITE: An Attention Workshop
Friday, June 26th — 1 to 2:00 pm
An interactive workshop aimed at breaking the “fill-the-moment addiction.” Yolanda Cuomo, a designer with decades of experience crafting tactile, materially rich print publications, will discuss how to resist the compulsion to fill every second with screen time and instead return to stillness and intentional attention. Rather than defaulting to the instant scroll, the social check-in, or the quick glance at work emails, we will consider how to shape meaning with our time.
This session invites participants to slow down and examine their habits. Through conversation and hands-on exercises, participants will experiment with restraint, intentionality, creative agency, and the quiet rigor of sustained looking.
For young and old alike, because we have been hijacked and all need the help.
Please RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-noodle-the-satellite-an-attention-workshop-tickets-1988594596971?aff=oddtdtcreator
BOOKMAKING: A Workshop
Sunday, June 28, 2026, 2:00 to 4:00 pm
By registration. Space is limited.
This is a creative workshop where participants come together to make their own small self-published booklet. zine, or accordion-style book. It's a hands-on experience that celebrates self-expression, storytelling, and DIY culture. Participants will learn about image editing strategies. We will provide collage materials. If you would like to focus on photography, please bring in twenty-five to fifty 3” x 5” photo prints.
Please register at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bookmaking-a-workshop-tickets-1988598529734?aff=oddtdtcreator
SOUND WORKS: Embodied Listening
Saturday, June 27th — 6:30 - 7:30 pm
Some experiences ask us to slow down, turn inward, and listen more deeply — to sound, to the body, and to one another.
On June 26th, we gather for an evening of sound healing and guided meditation, woven together by Classical Chinese Medicine practitioner Abby Rafel and sound artist Ann Burke Daly. Moving through breath, touch, and music, Abby will guide participants into a meditative space rooted in the healing principles of Chinese medicine — one that honors grief, invites release, and returns us to the body.
At the center of the evening is Ann's original sound work, born from her own journey living with autoimmune illness — a testament to how sound can become medicine. Abby will weave Ann's piece into the arc of the experience, from opening to closing meditation, creating something rare: a shared moment of collective rest and renewal.
Please RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sound-works-embodied-listening-tickets-1988596167669?aff=oddtdtcreator
Past Exhibitions
& Events
Unearthing the Light
exhibition and public programming Summer 2025
Opening: Upstate Art Weekend: July 17 to 21, 12 to 6 pm
Weekends: August to September 14, 12: to 6 pm
Opening & Closing Receptions: Sat, July 19, 5 to 9 pm & Sun, Sept. 14, 1 to 4 pm
The Church in Staatsburg presents 'Unearthing the Light', an exhibition and related programming that reveals and reclaims hidden histories and erasures. The exhibition brings together artworks that address the neglect and erasure of bodies because of gender, race, and poverty. It also considers the body of the earth as a site of harm as well as growth.
It encompasses photographs, works on paper, paintings, sculpture, video, embroidery, and plant works.
The exhibition was inspired by a little-known cemetery located on prison grounds in the Hudson Valley, where girls and infants who died at the institution were buried and largely forgotten until the transmedia art project 'Incorrigibles' commemorated them in the summer of 2024.
Join us for transformative free events that connect art to action: craft seed balls to heal the earth, create photograms that capture light and shadow, and surrender to the restorative power of sound.
ARTISTS Nancy Burson, Celine Cannon, Alison Cornyn, Yolanda Cuomo, Elena del Rivero, Heather Greer, Sandra Harper, Jazmine Hayes, Ofelia Mangen, Tanya Marcuse, Jillian McDonald, Rita Peress, Negin Sharifzadeh, Maggie Simonelli, Nina Sobell, Diana Weymar, and Marina Zurkow.
See more information about the artists here.
MEMORIAM - Seedball Workshop
Drop-in workshop — Saturday, July 19, 1:00 - 5:00 pm
From the floodplains of the Nile in ancient Egypt to Antebellum plantations in the American South, Japanese natural farms to Lower East Side Guerrilla Gardens and beyond, seedballs have long been used to restore degraded ecosystems, safeguard seeds from environmental hazards, preserve soil health, and reclaim neglected spaces.
Memoriam transforms the recipe for this age-old planting technique into a ritual of acknowledgment and memory that lives on in native perennial wildflowers. Participants are invited to create seed balls from clay, compost, and native wildflower seeds, to contemplate the earth as a site of acknowledgment, and to experience planting flowers as an act of memory.
Find a place in need of some beauty
Bask in the glow of remembrance
Sow these seeds
To bloom and grow
— Ofelia Mangen
Genealogy & Memorializing
Monday, July 21st — 12:00 to 3:00 pm
By registration. Space is limited.
This intergenerational genealogy and memorial planning workshop is an introduction to genealogy and a conversation about how and why physical memorials can be created. We will gain an overview of the field, including the various processes and key places to explore. We will pursue research into the histories of some of the girls and infants buried in the cemetery at the Hudson Correctional Facility.
Participants include women who were at the New York State Training School in their teens, family members, and young women from Perfect Ten in Hudson. Please contact us if you are interested in joining us. Space is limited. Attendance for the full three hours is mandatory.
PHOTO-GRAM Workshop
the trace of presence
Drop-in workshop — Friday, July 18, 1:00 - 5:00 pm
A photogram is a photographic image created without a camera by placing objects directly onto light-sensitive paper and exposing it to light. The resulting image often resembles a silhouette or shadow of the objects placed on the paper. Examples include Man Ray’s Rayograms and Anna Atkins cyanotypes. Through this imprinting, we will capture the trace of presence and the interplay of light and shadow.
Image credit: Anna Atkins Cyanotype, “Ferns”
Reading by Author
Ona Gritz
Friday, July 18, 7:00 pm
Join author Ona Gritz for a reading and discussion of her Young Adult Verse Novel, Take a Sad Song, about a teenage girl who finds herself locked up in The New York Training School in Hudson, NY, in the summer of 1970. Gritz, whose sister had been sent to the reformatory at that time, will be joined in conversation by Alison Cornyn, interdisciplinary artist and creator of the Incorrigibles Project, and former residents of the Training School.
Kirkus Reviews described Take a Sad Song as “A thoughtful must-read that explores grueling attempts to destroy girls’ spirits” in a starred review and included it in their list of Best Young Adult Historical Novels of 2024. Gritz is also the author of the memoir, Everywhere I Look, a Storytrade Nonfiction Book of the Year, Pencraft Best Nonfiction Book, Readers Choice Gold Award Winner, and Kirkus Reviews Indie Worth Discovering.
Incorrigibles:
Bearing Witness to the Incarcerated Girls of New York
exhibition and public programming Summer 2024
July to November 2024
Incorrigibles is a transmedia art project that focuses on youth justice and social services for girls, using the past to shed light on the present and a better future through art, storytelling, and healing modalities.
This work voices the untold stories of those sent to the New York Training School for Girls (NYSTSG) throughout the 20th century. Located nearby in Hudson, New York, the institution was established in 1904 as the only state-run re-educational facility to provide training for “delinquent” or “incorrigible” girls between the ages of 12 and 18, including jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald; it closed in 1975.
Artists include Alison Cornyn, Heather Greer, Amanda Krische, Rita Peress, Beth Thielen, and Diana Weymar.
This special exhibition features large-scale archival photographic portraits, artist books, embroidery, videos, several interactive elements, and participant contributions.
A Post-Incarceration Humanities Partnership grant from Humanities New York and The Mellon Foundation supports this exhibition and affiliated public events. Incorrigibles is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Author Ona Gritz's reading, book-signing, and discussion
Saturday July 20, 2024, 7:30-9:00 PM
In 1982, Angie Boggs, pregnant with her second child, was brutally murdered in her San Francisco home, along with her husband and infant son. Ten years earlier, she'd been a teen runaway, dubbed incorrigible and locked away at The New York State Training School for Girls, the notorious reformatory in Hudson, NY..
With courage and a detective's compulsion, Angie's younger sister Ona set out to learn all she could about her sister's turbulent life and unthinkable death. The result is Everywhere I Look, a beautifully rendered memoir of sisterhood, longing, true crime, and family secrets. A profoundly moving reckoning and love letter.
Join author Ona Gritz for a reading, book signing, and discussion with interdisciplinary artist Alison Cornyn, creator of the Incorrigibles Project.
Flower Essence Consultations
Friday & Saturday, July 19 & 20, 12:00 to 5:00 PM
Sunday, July 21, 12:00 to 4:00 PM, 2024
Flower essences are low dose preparations used to sympathetically treat and bring awareness to emotional, spiritual, and energetic wellness. They are homeopathically prepared and are ritually crafted from cold water infusions of fresh plants. Flower essence therapy was developed by Dr Edward Bach in the early 1900s to restore emotional balance, increase vitality, and encourage ease in the body. Flower essence therapy teaches us how to be our own healer, how to gain deeper awareness of our emotional patterns and, in doing so, sets us free from the blocks that prevent our most vital states of being.
In a flower essence therapy session, we enter meditation, a short somatic practice, and a discussion about your current sense of your life: How do you feel in your body? What do you long for? Are there any particular situations that are causing a block in your ability to be present? What are the primary emotions that you experience? Is there anything specific that you are looking to bring healing to? You are welcome to share as deeply as you would like. From there, I will craft a personalized flower essence blend that addresses what we speak of, and walk you through how to work with these flowers over the course of the next month. This short and sweet protocol is designed to help you anchor into the intelligence of your emotional body, build self-intimacy, increase self-regulation, and encourage healing that helps you walk a path of joy and authenticity.
Wand Making Workshop
Friday & Saturday, July 19 & 20, 12:00 to 5:00 PM
Sunday, July 21, 12:00 to 4:00 PM, 2024
Wand-making: the craft of power reclamation, is an invitation to join an art-making space, a self-organized community project hearkening back to the sewing bee. It values interconnected creativity and promotes individual and collective responses to feminist political and social struggles of today. Historically, wands have been seen as extensions of the self, whether to channel/transform one's energy into something new, or as a way of establishing a connection to a spiritual realm.
For our wand-making practice, we fashion a physical extension of the self, which requires reflection and introspection. Many of the women with whom we work are survivors in some capacity, often of childhood trauma. Repeatedly, we've heard how they felt like they didn’t have a childhood because of the hardships they had to endure and the responsibilities they were burdened with from an early age. We use wand-making as a creative and playful way to reclaim girlhood later in life.
Wand-making can simultaneously be a more serious and contemplative practice that allows wandmakers to channel themselves– their pasts, their presents, their emotions, their failures, and successes– into an object to share with the world. Wands have functioned as vehicles for telling life stories and reclaiming agency. Wands have also been made in honor of women who are no longer with us.
Sound Bath - Follow The Sound
Sunday, July 21, 2024 — 12:00 to 4:00 PM
Led by Tyler Beatrice and May Lin Le Gof, “Follow The Sound” is a 90-minute sound meditation that combines light breathwork, visualization, vocal tuning, and a sonic experience with overtone-emitting instruments such as kalimbas, chimes, and singing bowls. These modalities affect our brainwave cycles, neurochemistry, autonomic nervous system, heart-rate variability, and subtle energy in the body—all designed to invite the body and mind into a state of rest and contemplation.
During this sound meditation, the invitation is to engage in active listening. Through this practice, one can learn to focus the mind by tuning into the distance between sounds, the intervals between musical notes, and silence. These create an explorative space for one’s inner world.
Advance registration required. Please bring a yoga mat.
Exhibitions and related public events are supported in part by Post-Incarceration Humanities Partnership grants from Humanities New York, The Mellon Foundation, in association with Upstate Art Weekend and the Church in Staatsburg. Incorrigibles is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts.
