2022 Mohawk-Hudson Regional Invitational

From May 6 to June 4, 2022, Albany Center Gallery (ACG) presents the 2022 Mohawk-Hudson Regional Invitational exhibition (MHRI), featuring the work of 7 regional artists Donnabelle Casis, Ann Ledy, Laura Moriarty, Huê Thi Hoffmaster, Catalina Viejo Lopez de Roda, Hanna Washburn, and Wendy Williams. An Artists' Reception will be held on Friday, May 6, 2022, from 5 - 8 p.m. The 2022 MHRI is free and open to the public Tuesday – Saturday, Noon – 5 p.m. Mask-wearing is optional. Please visit albanycentergallery.org for full details on COVID19 safety restrictions. 

Annually, ACG selects artists from the previous year’s Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region exhibit, a rotating, juried exhibition. The Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region show highlights the work of some of the best visual artists in the region and is always one of the area’s most prestigious and popular shows. For the first time in the exhibition’s history, the 2021 Mohawk-Hudson Regional was hosted at three separate locations, each of which had a different juror selecting work. 97 artists were selected to have their work on display this past fall at Albany Center Gallery, Opalka Gallery, and/or the Albany International Airport Gallery from a submission pool of over 500 regional artists. The gallery is honored to provide these seven accomplished and distinguished artists with an opportunity to showcase their work in greater depth. 

Donnabelle Casis is a Filipina-American artist presently based in Western Massachusetts. Her current body of paintings reflect Casis’s interest in modes of visual perception and understanding visual identity through images. This exploration draws from both ancient and modern cultures: various Filipino tribal tattoos and textiles, facial recognition software, cosmology, and metaphysics. These and other sources tie together the symbolism of storytelling, accomplishment, and responsibilities with what is physically tangible.

Ann Ledy’s visual vocabulary centered on the fundamental geometries of the circle and square serve as tools for reimagining the physical spaces we occupy. On paper and in reliefs composed of wood, metal, or glass, Ledy constructs maps from a variety of forms of mark making, as well as reliefs reinterpreting modernist architecture and urban planning. Utilizing photo documentation and visual memories from her experiences living in New York City and traveling across Asia, Ledy’s compositional matrices reflect a construction of the present based on “afterimages”which “mark time.”

Based on the geological processes that shape and reshape the earth, Laura Moriarty’s use of pigmented beeswax forms layers of colors, textures and patterns. These pieces resemble scientific models and artifacts that reveal histories similar to the earth’s layers telling the stories of climate shifts, planetary events, and natural disruptions. Moriarty utilizes successive layers varying in hue and thickness to capture momentary stories, crystallizing and demarking eras within them.

Hudson-based artist Huê Thi Hoffmaster paints with intuition and, above all, freedom, in order to transform the ordinary into the beautiful. A painter his whole life, he harnesses the energy of a child inventing a new story, using tools and colors as means to expose the internal activity of his painting surface from its initial nothingness. For Hoffmaster, painting is an individualistic practice communicating personal nuance. Hoffmaster has accepted a level of pointlessness of artmaking in a capitalist world, yet the artist still sees the potential of creation as one of unending invention, discovery, and reinvention.

In response to the ongoing pandemic, multimedia artist Catalina Viejo Lopez de Roda has shifted the focus of her work to Self Care. Newer works feature interactive three-dimensional elements with painting, creating illusions in depth and sensation. The disorienting quality of these pieces highlight some of the conceptual tensions underlying the visual effects: reality vs. illusion; pain vs. pleasure; power vs. vulnerability; life vs. death. In imagining women in symbiosis with their surrounding natural landscapes, Viejo Lopez de Roda consistently returns to ideas of female intimacy.

Using recycled textiles and other household materials sourced from her home and those close to her, Hanna Washburn sews together organic complexes that present themselves almost like human figures. Sewing by hand, Washburn works intuitively and is informed through this process by the knowledge of the past lives, uses, and memories of her materials. The patchwork juxtapositions of her soft sculptures, typically combining a multitude of colors, patterns, and textures, suggest that the work continues to change and expand into the spaces they inhabit.

Wendy Williams paints on paper and canvas in layers of surface movement and gestures that always incorporate patterns. In nonlinear fashion, Williams’s drawings and paintings bring together both visible and invisible forces of energy and often find their own places in surprising ways. Skeptical of the entire idea of permanence, Williams has embraced the infinite possibilities of visual solutions within each work. Larger forces and ideas pervasive in nature, theology, and literature intersect with the artist’s interest in the ‘iconography of memory’ at a point where the physical form meets the flux of the unknown. 

The 2022 Mohawk-Hudson Regional Invitational, on display at Albany Center Gallery from Friday, May 6 to Saturday, June 4, features the work of seven regional artists: Donnabelle Casis, Ann Ledy, Laura Moriarty, Huê Thi Hoffmaster, Catalina Viejo Lopez de Roda, Hanna Washburn, and Wendy Williams. The 2022 Mohawk-Hudson Regional Invitational is curated by ACG Curatorial Associate Jennie Tang. The exhibition is made possible by ACG Premier Sponsors Howard Hanna & David Phaff; and Kevin Dubner, Partner & Wealth Manager at Steward Partners Global Advisory, LLC. Additional support is provided by Rita & Daniel Papandrea and the New York Council on the Arts with the Support of the Office of the Governor and New York State Legislature.

Learn more about the 2021 Mohawk-Hudson Regional hosted at Albany Center Gallery, Opalka Gallery, and the Albany International Airport Gallery.

Convenient parking for ACG events is available at the nearby Riverfront Garage or on-street. For additional parking information, please visit: www.parkalbany.com/find-parking

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