Terry Ariano,
Photographer
"Terry Ariano received her BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island, and later studied photography there. While traveling on bicycle in France, she photographed the countryside of Brittany and Normandy. She photographed street life and architecture in New York City, documenting the underside of her East Village neighborhood, before its trendy gallery era. Residing now in the Hudson Valley, she has turned from streetscapes to landscapes, capturing the light and beauty of the area, in places like the Great Swamp and along the Hudson River. Her love of history and historical things surfaces in her photographs: crumbling buildings, odd personal collections, and places with significant heritage, like Rye Playland in the off-season, areas of Ellis Island closed to the public, the backstreet architecture of Hudson, the barns of Patterson; and curious local activities including the Pawling Triathalon and the New Paltz Phools Parade.
Ms. Ariano has curated numerous photography, print and history shows at venues including Museum of the City of New York, the Somers Historical Society, and in independent galleries, most recently at the Front Street Gallery in Patterson, NY, and the R Dixon Gallery in Seneca Falls, NY. She served a stint as Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines, and has worked as a theatrical set designer, technical director, carpenter, contractor, museum curator and exhibit installation preparator. In recent years she has worked as archivist, collections coordinator and director for history, arts, and community service organizations in the Hudson Valley. Her work has been exhibited in New York City and Hudson Valley venues, most recently in New York at the Mid Hudson Heritage Center, Poughkeepsie, the Front Street Gallery, Patterson, the Akin Library, Pawling, and at the Merwinsville Hotel in Gaylordsville, CT."
Visit the library to see Ms. Ariano's work throughout the month of February.
Stephen Rose
The Veil, 2013, oil on canvas
"This painting began as a plein air work on the Bennington College campus during a summer workshop. It was then completed in the studio. That process, from purely visual engagement to a more reflective one, allows me to recall the landscape as a mental/emotional/spiritual experience rather than simply a locale. This begs many questions about what is real and what is illusion. I’ve come to recognize that all of experience is grounded beyond (or beneath) the sensory world and actually resides in consciousness.
Landscapes, with their profusion of forms, textures, and atmospheres, evoke infinity for me. Most of us seek out landscape experiences to, in some way, immerse ourselves in something larger than finite being. I have tried to represent that yearning and, hopefully, some of the baptismal process of being remade through contact with something bigger than ourselves. I have come to see that paintings themselves are like landscapes, ponds, skies, inviting immersion, travel, refreshment, … rebirth?
Why The Veil? The line of trees block our way like fears and attachments rising up and keeping us from the big view."
Stephen Rose
