Summer Spell

Ever Baldwin

Erika deVries

Clarity Haynes

Portia Munson

Summer Spell celebrates the creative dialogue developed by four artists over years of studio visits and shared conversations. Through mutual support and the exchange of ideas, their work has grown in ways shaped as much by mystery and chance as by intention. The meanings that emerge—sometimes inexplicable—are part conscious, part subconscious. To cast a spell is to bring about transformation. In times of political crisis, what power does art hold to effect change?

Summer Spell features installation, neon, found objects, altars, painting, drawing, and sculpture. The works explore themes including the power of the voice, LGBTQIA+ rights, ecofeminism, and embodiment. This exhibition follows The River That Flows Both Ways, a recent presentation of the artists’ work at RUTHANN Gallery in Catskill, NY.

Ever Baldwin creates abstracted paintings with sculpted, wooden frames that extend the composition from canvas to frame. For the sculpture in this exhibition, Baldwin used the offcuts of the framed paintings to compose a new 3D form. Baldwin lives and works in Catskill, NY. They hold a BFA in painting from The Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from The School of The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Recent solo exhibitions include Marinaro, New York; The Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME; LeFebvre et Fils, Paris; Emma Gray HQ, Los Angeles, CA; and JAG Projects, Hudson, NY. Their work has been included in groups shows at Vielmetter, Los Angeles, CA; Modern Art, London; and Art Omi, Ghent, NY among others.

Erika deVries aspires to create connection & thoughtful relationship across her art/life practices. Highlights include the births of her three children, a visiting artist residency at Kassel University, participation in and witness to an extraordinary lineage of teachers & makers, current co-creator of an arts & social practice hub with her family, 14 years as full time faculty at New York University, and the recent installation of a long term, large scale public artwork in Kingston, NY. Erika’s work explores the flowing between the immaterial and the material and includes themes of grief, love, vulnerability, awkwardness, embodiment and inter-being.

Clarity Haynes is a queer feminist painter who explores the torso as a site for portraiture, DIY altars as a site for still life, and the processes of crowning and birth. LGBTQIA+ culture, history, activism and craft practices are often honored in her work; bright colors, lively compositions, and multiple narratives conjoin in her depictions of both bodies and altars. Recent solo exhibitions include Portals at New Discretions, New York (2024), Aldrich Projects: Collective Transmission at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut (2021), and Altar-ed Bodies at Denny Dimin Gallery, New York, co-presented with New Discretions (2020). Her first monograph, Portals (New Discretions, 2024), is available from Distributed Art Publishers.

Portia Munson creates maximal installations, sculptures, paintings, and digital prints using a vast accumulation of ready-made products to decipher the latent cultural codes embedded in mass-produced items. The resulting works emphasize the role of consumerism on the formation of identity and the resulting connection between the ongoing struggle for gender equality, reproductive rights, and the dire ecological crisis. Munson lives and works in Catskill, NY. She holds a BFA from Cooper Union, an MFA from Rutgers University, and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been the subject of over twenty solo exhibitions at the Museum of Sex, New York, NY; P·P·O·W, New York, NY; White Columns, New York, NY; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY; Art Omi, Ghent, NY; and Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, NY, among others. Her public works include Pink Projects with the Art Production Fund, Rockefeller Center, New York, NY; Art in the Terminal, the Albany International Airport, Albany, NY; MTA Arts for Transit, Bryant Park MTA Station, New York, NY; and a permanent Metropolitan Transit Authority installation in Brooklyn, NY.