KINGSTON- There are many familiar places where one can find tiny things: dollhouses, dioramas, model trains, cars, and airplanes. There are also endless manifestations of smaller-than-life worlds in toys, books, and cartoons. Kate Esme Ünver, author of The Book of Mini: Inside the Big World of Tiny Things, coined the term “minaissance” to highlight the recent resurgence of all things miniature. She explains, “When we talk about minis, we mean something smaller than its life-sized counterpart. A chair the size of a fig. A fig the size of a Skittle. A Skittle the size of a grain of sand.”
This summer, guests can experience the “minaissance” for themselves in the gallery at Women’s Studio Workshop, an artist residency program that has been a staple of the Hudson Valley arts scene since 1974. In the Palm of Your Hand is a dynamic exhibition featuring six artists who push the boundaries of what can be done with imagination and exquisite attention to detail, resulting in irresistible itty-bitty pieces of work. Artists Rebecca Bingham, Andrea Fabrega, Lydia Ricci, Pat Sweet, Donna Thomas, and Imin Yeh all play with scale within their work. Some utilize the 1:12 scale found most commonly in dollhouses, and others have no specific measurements in mind, only the playfulness of “small”.
The works in this exhibition take advantage of common materials and methods used at Women’s Studio Workshop. For example, Bingham, Sweet, and Thomas demonstrate highly refined bookmaking techniques, and Fabrega accomplishes stunning detail with her wheel thrown pots–all on a micro level. Ricci and Yeh create fantastical examples of sculptures utilizing paper and scrap materials. Ricci’s patched-together micro-replicas conjure memories, often animated in her short video works, which offer up their larger stories. Inside “Dreamcabin”, Yeh has built an elaborate world rooted in time management, motherhood, and collaboration.
There will be an opening reception on July 22nd from 11am to 6pm as a part of Upstate Art Weekend. This event will feature food by Common Table–a queer & flexible food space in Uptown Kingston run by Chef Emmet Moeller, the premiere of a mural by Kah Yangni–a Philadelphia-based artist making heartfelt art about justice, queerness, and joy, and Babes in the Woods–an open studio popup featuring work by Tatana Kellner (co-founder of Women’s Studio Workshop), Judy Hoyt, and Tona Wilson.
