Remembrance of things past

Artifacts become art at the studio of B.S. Allees

WHEN: Saturday, June 9 and Sunday, June 10 from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.

WHERE: The Villa on Moscoe Road, 76 Moscoe Rd, White Lake, NY.

COST: Free.

CONTACT: 845/583-8262.

WHITE LAKE, NY — Gallery season has started heating up along with the weather, and inveterate gallery crawlers can find some hidden treasures off the beaten track. One such exhibit occurs this weekend, when Sullivan County native B.S. Allees will open her studio at the Villa on Moscoe Road for a public exhibit.

At this event, sponsored by Jeffersonville’s The Blue Victorian, both Allees’ paintings and her “memory boxes” will be on display. The latter are wooden crate sculptures filled with ephemera, memorabilia and cool junk collected throughout Allees’ life. The boxes range from poignant to comical and incorporate buttons, lace, photos, piano keys and other “antique debris” to create worlds of theatrical intrigue.

After winning a full trunk at an antique auction, the artist realized these strange bits and pieces could represent a person’s entire life. Memory boxes construct tiny wonderlands with layers to draw one in. They are playful, interactive festivals of texture. “Mommy Dearest” refers to sibling rivalry and complications of traveling through life. “Family Game” shows pictures of various persons from sisters to grandmothers portrayed inside cardboard tubes of various heights. Golf balls roll around the bottom of the chamber giving points for landing on certain faces, to create a childhood game. In “Lox,” “Bird on a Wire” and “Punch,” the artist alludes to darker realities in miniature dramas that unfold before your eyes.

B.S. Allees comes from a family of artists, and from an early age was keenly interested in the scenery of her home in the Catskills. After attending the University of Oregon, where she was exposed to the art of the West Coast, she returned to her roots in upstate New York to work and teach, though she remains an inveterate traveler. Her paintings, which will be on display at the open studio as well as her memory boxes, display scenes from Maui, Puerto Rico, St. Moritz and Monet’s garden in Giverny, as well as local sights of Gabriel Road, Minawaska, Mongaup Pond and Crystal Lake. She employs heavy impasto technique, intensely pure colors and an economy of strokes that evoke rather than define her subject matter.

Whether you enjoy viewing the artist’s view of nature or interacting with artifacts of the past that disclose the human condition, it’s worth a trip off the main road.