ON VIEW

March 14 - April 26, 2026

Main Gallery @ Building 35

BILL HOCHHAUSEN
NOT OUT OF THE WOODS YET

Gallery Hours:
Thursdays 4 - 8pm
Fridays 2 - 5pm
Saturdays & Sundays 1 - 5pm

GARNER Art Center is excited to announce a major solo exhibition of the works of Bill Hochausen in the Main Gallery of Building 35. Paintings and sculptures from Hochhausen’s impressive career will be on exhibit in a collaborative tour de force with installations by Lisa Karrer in the Ned Harris Gallery.

Galen Johnson wrote in his 2010 essay, The Retrieval of the Beautiful, “Nothing can be more satisfying than the materials and the tools, to experience that physicality as the materials open up to become images. For Bill, it’s always been trees and to be among trees, to repeat a forest, and now giving the first lives of trees a second life as art.”

Artist Statement

The dramatic Hudson River landscape moved and inspired me when I became a resident here, fifty years ago. Historically, since the early 1930's the region has seen vibrant participation in culture, and it has sustained a mixed community that encouraged musicians and visual artists. I was fortunate enough, in 1989, to win a NYSCA grant, it supported a permanent installation of views of 'Haverstraw Bay' I painted for a year. Out of thirteen, a selection of six panels, joined as one composition called "The Six Seasons", was installed at the Haverstraw Post Office. My daughter Laila cut the ribbon.

Many opportunities to teach and lecture, sustained summer tours, and painting, all over the country, have informed my work. But trees and the hills, the river, the topography we call landscape, were always there. Light changes shape even as it illuminates; it accumulates as a topography of light, seen as color on the canvas. Passing clouds shade colors to a lower register, instantly, the Cadmium red is thrown off balance (you wonder, what is “realist” painting?) A wind gust spills the turpentine.

More beautiful, straightforward aspects of nature are also 'subjects' of my interest. You might call it the outside game, the 'what'. The “why” is the inside game that celebrates ideas, artifice, visual deception (illusion?) What fun! 

The work selected for this exhibit represents the basis of my endeavor, a response to both nature and my evolution (mutation?) as a thinking artist. Dylan Thomas said, "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower, drives my green age...". Alas, our age finds the bucolic fenced, degraded in the accumulating pollution of our mutual environment. In the light of burning forests, all species of beings are endangered.

Lisa Karrer originally conceived of this exhibit. Her immersive installation, called FOREST FOR THE TREES, is in the Ned Harris Gallery. My exhibit, titled NOT OUT OF THE WOODS YET, is in the main gallery of Building 35. Our two exhibits meet in the middle corridor with a series of my plein-air landscapes to make the transition between exhibits. Our affinity to trees connects the natural to the metaphor, and, as vision itself, metaphor connects to the social.

March 14 - April 26, 2026

Harris Gallery @ Building 35

LISA KARRER
FOREST FOR THE TREES

Gallery Hours:
Thursdays 4 - 8pm
Fridays 2 - 5pm
Saturdays & Sundays 1 - 5pm

FOREST FOR THE TREES is a community-based installation created by interdisciplinary artist Lisa Karrer. This immersive exhibit was developed specifically for Garner Arts Center’s Ned Harris Gallery. Karrer’s installation features a moving forest of ceramic trees, dreamlike wall projections, compelling audio narratives, and green screen video scenarios featuring over 45 Rockland County residents and participants from around the globe. Artist Bill Hochhausen’s plein air paintings of iconic Rockland landscapes will be installed in the Harris gallery passageway, leading viewers into the exhibit.

Entering the space, viewers see a miniature “forest” of Karrer’s hand-painted ceramic trees revolving in slow motion on a motorized platen, fabricated by kinetic artist Gregory Barsamian. The moving tree forms also appear as large-scale projections on the gallery walls in meditative, ever-changing perspectives.

JOHN MORTON

Minisceongo Overlay

GARNER Arts Center unveils John Morton’s sonic tribute to a storied waterway.

GARNER Arts Center proudly announces the official opening of Minisceongo Overlay, a semi-permanent outdoor sound installation by acclaimed composer and sound artist, John Morton. Situated on a pedestrian walkway and commercial bridge overlooking the Minisceongo Creek within the GARNER Historic District complex, this immersive work invites visitors to experience the creek as both a musical instrument and conduit to the voice of nature.

This project was is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.