Featuring work by Kathline Carr, Martha Chason-Sokol, Sally Dion, Sara Fine-Wilson, Jim Fenzel, Vicki McKenna, Jeffrey Nowlin, Jade Olson, Anne Sargent Walker

This year’s annual exhibition by Kingston Associates Picnic with Ghosts explores a theme that has motivated each artist to respond to ideas about loss, community, personal change and spiritual experiences—all interpreted in a variety of ways.

Affected by the empty streets of New York during the pandemic, Jim Fenzel’s paintings leave the viewer feeling off, uneasy or lacking. Jeffrey Nowlin reflects on the life of his father with reference to the work of Celian Pym, using fiber arts in mending and restructuring a sweater, as well as including paintings that reinterpret family. Jade Olson’s pieces are a meditation on loss, creating something tangible to fill an empty space. Sally Dion watches crows gather outside her studio and translates this sense of community and connection into the work she is bringing to the gallery. Artist Vicki McKenna depicts flowers in monochromatic tones, invoking feelings of change and loss, while Anne Sargent Walker continues her dialogue with an environment that is experiencing extreme climate events, war and habitat loss. Also looking at environmental concerns and transformation, Sara Fine-Wilson will bring reduction fired pieces which stand as a visual and process metaphor for observations made during a mindfulness retreat. In another personal series, Kathline Carr will be showing prints from her forthcoming book, Mother I call Home, centered on the death of her mother from early onset dementia. Chason-Sokol cobbles together discarded feminine, domestic, and industrial artifacts into archival beings. Using thread and tape, she weaves the past into new possibilities, creating hybrid beings that stretch upward to the sky and teeter awkwardly into an uncertain future. 

While the original impetus for the show concept was based on one artist’s deep grief in losing a beloved family member, others have chosen to reflect on the general passage of time, health challenges, things, ideas and people they’ve had to let go of, and the poetics of belonging versus not belonging.

The artists in this collective use diverse media, including drawing, painting, photography, collage, mixed media fiber arts, sculptural constructions, printmaking, ceramics and burned drawings on wood. Yet, this year as every year, they have come together to show works that were either created specifically for the show or  to exhibit previously completed works that touch on the theme.

Kingston Associates invite you to reflect on what might constitute your own “Ghost Picnic”, who you might invite to such an event, and what you might discuss if given the opportunity to dialogue with the past and perhaps reclaim the present with a new perspective.