Modern Myths, More Than Ever

Upstate Art Weekend, beginning Friday, July 21, through Monday, July 24, returns for its fourth year of connecting over 130 participating galleries, museums, and art centers across New York State, from the Hudson Valley and beyond. Artistic cultural centers charted on the weekend’s map include The Wassaic Project in the hamlet of Wassaic, N.Y., which will feature open studio visits with its artists-in-residence and artist talks at Maxon Mills and the Luther Barn. At Geary, the gallery in Millerton, N.Y., the group show, “Who’s To Say I Am Awake; Are You?” will continue through Upstate Art Weekend, including the acrylic-painted terracotta vase on display by New York City-artist Paul Anagnostopoulos titled, “Follow You Until The Sun.”

Paul Anagnostopoulos’s striking paintings blend the homoerotic heroism of Mary Renault’s novels of Ancient Greece with the Abercrombie & Fitch-era photography of Bruce Weber and the colors of a Day-Glo disco sunset on a Donna Summer vinyl.

“My dad’s side is Greek and my mom’s side is Italian, and I grew up with my grandmother’s babysitting me, who were both history teachers,” Anagnostopoulos, a former artist-in-residence at The Wassaic Project, said over the phone. “Around both of their houses they had kitschy objects — Greek vases, or on the Italian side, a miniature souvenir of Michelangelo’s David. Kitsch became a symbol of adoration for me.”

Mythology was storytelling both oral and aural, the common tongue before the Common Era, so it’s only natural that Anagnostopoulos would link ancient lore to our contemporary epic ballads of triumphs and love lost — pop music.

“The ancient tradition of masculinity with the tragic hero, the comedic hero, these are all emotional extremes.”

The same extremes found in his favorite music videos — like Bonnie Tyler’s vintage 1983 video for “Total Eclipse of The Heart” directed by Russell Mulcahy of “Highlander” fame (talk about masculine fantasy) — serve as modern myth inspiration and studio soundtrack as he paints.

“Pop music is inherently hyperbolic, ‘this is the moment, this is the last night,” he said. “Pop is always high-stakes drama.”

‘Time Held Me Green and Dying’ by Paul Anagnostopoulos Photo by Martin Parsekian

‘Time Held Me Green and Dying’ by Paul Anagnostopoulos Photo by Martin Parsekian

‘Time Held Me Green and Dying’ by Paul Anagnostopoulos Photo by Martin Parsekian

Latest News

Angela Derrico Carabine

SHARON — Angela Derrick Carabine, 74, died May 16, 2025, at Vassar Hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York. She was the wife of Michael Carabine and mother of Caitlin Carabine McLean.

A funeral Mass will be celebrated on June 6 at 11:00 a.m. at Saint Katri (St Bernards Church) Church. Burial will follow at St. Bernards Cemetery. A complete obituary can be found on the website of the Kenny Funeral home kennyfuneralhomes.com.

Revisiting ‘The Killing Fields’ with Sam Waterston

Sam Waterston

Jennifer Almquist

On June 7 at 3 p.m., the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington will host a benefit screening of “The Killing Fields,” Roland Joffé’s 1984 drama about the Khmer Rouge and the two journalists, Cambodian Dith Pran and New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, whose story carried the weight of a nation’s tragedy.

The film, which earned three Academy Awards and seven nominations — including one for Best Actor for Sam Waterston — will be followed by a rare conversation between Waterston and his longtime collaborator and acclaimed television and theater director Matthew Penn.

Keep ReadingShow less
The art of place: maps by Scott Reinhard

Scott Reinhard, graphic designer, cartographer, former Graphics Editor at the New York Times, took time out from setting up his show “Here, Here, Here, Here- Maps as Art” to explain his process of working.Here he explains one of the “Heres”, the Hunt Library’s location on earth (the orange dot below his hand).

obin Roraback

Map lovers know that as well as providing the vital functions of location and guidance, maps can also be works of art.With an exhibition titled “Here, Here, Here, Here — Maps as Art,” Scott Reinhard, graphic designer and cartographer, shows this to be true. The exhibition opens on June 7 at the David M. Hunt Library at 63 Main St., Falls Village, and will be the first solo exhibition for Reinhard.

Reinhard explained how he came to be a mapmaker. “Mapping as a part of my career was somewhat unexpected.I took an introduction to geographic information systems (GIS), the technological side of mapmaking, when I was in graduate school for graphic design at North Carolina State.GIS opened up a whole new world, new tools, and data as a medium to play with.”

Keep ReadingShow less