IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 26, 2026

LISA KARRER 
FOREST FOR THE TREES

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 14, 2026 from 5-7pm

GARNERVILLE, NY – 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.

An audio soundtrack presents a sequence of personal narratives, a chronicle of real stories about trees contributed by participants from Rockland Community and around the world. These intimate narratives are underpinned by composer/instrumentalist David Simons’ wood percussion score “Songs of the Trees”, Karrer’s vocal renderings from the Great American Songbook, and selected field recordings. 

A large wall monitor displays green screen video scenarios shot and edited by Karrer, featuring the ceramic trees in real environments that also explore magical realism and timeless myths. Human figures appear in each scene, playing, picnicking, dancing, drawing, cycling, climbing trees, and perched in branches. 

FOREST FOR THE TREES explores humankind’s intimate relationship with trees, and the critical roles they play in sustaining our planet. Trees provide and maintain habitats for essential species, manufacture soil by partnering with bacteria, enable critical transmission of groundwater via rock beds and local aquifers, and subsume toxins and metals from the environment. Factors such as clear-cutting and unchecked development, climate disruption, infestation, and infectious disease continue to threaten this crucial eco-balance. 

Karrer’s installation illustrates this critical relationship through the artist’s lens, presenting viewers with multiple aesthetic perspectives and real stories of neighbors from our Rockland community and beyond. 

FOREST FOR THE TREES also seeks to foster proactive environmental awareness and practices on a local scale. This multi-arts installation will include an artist talk, a scheduled gallery panel discussion with local tree conservators and environmentalists, and a contemporary music concert featuring Lisa Karrer and David Simons. Dates TBA. 

The artist wishes to thank Rockland Center for the Arts/RoCA for ceramic scholarship support,Garner Arts Center/Dye Works for hosting the green screen project residency, ACOR’s Art4Allaward, all project participants, and the many generous people who contributed to FOREST’s…GoFundMe development campaign.

Artist Biography 

Lisa Karrer is an interdisciplinary artist, composer, vocalist, filmmaker, and ceramicist with an international background in museum installation, performance, contemporary opera, and music-theatre works. Her projects are inspired and motivated by studies including cultural migration, the environment, evolutionary science, dissociative behavior, and global myths. She frequently collaborates with visual and performing artists on her own works, as well as theirs, and often partners with non-profit organizations on large-scale community-based projects. Karrer’s long-term interests lie in what she calls “warm technology”, exploring physically dynamic approaches to digital software, aiming to enhance and emphasize, rather than obscure, the human condition in the digital age. Karrer is also a visiting artist, educator, and adjunct professor, lecturing on topics ranging from Cultural Anthropology, conceptual theories such as Hauntology and the Emancipated Spectator, and hands-on approaches to installation and multi-arts practice. https://lisakarrer.wordpress.com/ 

Lisa Karrer and Bill Hochhausen have collaborated on each other’s projects for nearly twenty years, and are thrilled to present solo exhibits in tandem at Garner Arts (Bill’s show in Gallery 35 is titled “Not Out of the Woods Yet”). Karrer and Hochhausen share a deep and lively admiration for their respective practices as dedicated artists, residents, and advocates of Rockland County and its vibrant community. 

High-resolution images and interviews are available upon request.

You’re invited! 

School and community groups are invited to schedule a special tour of the exhibition with the artist or curator. Please call (845) 947-7108 for more information or email info@garnerartscenter.org 

Exhibition Run: March 14 through April 26, 2026 
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 14, 5-7pm 
Gallery Hours: Thursdays 4-8pm, Fridays 2-5pm, Saturdays and Sundays 1-5pm 

WHERE: Building 35 Gallery, GARNER Arts Center 

ADDRESS: GARNER Historic District, 55 West Railroad Avenue, Garnerville, NY 10923 CONTACT: Joe Fusaro, Interim Gallery Operations Director joe@garnerartscenter.org 

FOR APPOINTMENTS: (845) 947-7108 / info@garnerartscenter.org 

For further information, please contact: 
Joe Fusaro, Gallery Operations Director joe@garnerartscenter.org

FOR PRESS: 

Support for GARNER Arts Center is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts withthe support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, Rockland CountyTourism, The Village of West Haverstraw, The Town of Haverstraw, and the GARNER Historic District.