“Standpoint 5,” on view at Azart Gallery in Woodstock through April 26, brings together six Hudson Valley artists in a group exhibition built around a shared exercise: responding to the same two prompts.
The show, now in its fifth season, asked each artist to create work based on a still life and a woman posed with a letter, then placed those interpretations side by side. The exhibition features Leah Lopez, Naoko Oshima, Pam Timmins, Archil Pichkhadze, Mark Hopkins, and JW Cornbroom.
For Azart, the exhibition marks a local turn. The gallery is better known for showing international work.
“This is totally different from all of my other shows,” said Latifa Metheny, Azart’s curator and owner, who moved the gallery from New York City to Woodstock in 2014. “I don’t usually feature local artists and I’m enjoying this opportunity to connect more locally. I particularly love the idea of showcasing local women artists.”
Metheny said the show grew out of a series of local encounters. She met Timmins, a landscape painter, photographer, and filmmaker, at a community event, then visited her work at Kingston’s Lace Mill gallery, where she met Cornbroom. From there, the collaboration took shape and eventually returned “Standpoint” to Woodstock. Its third season was held at the Woodstock Playhouse.
Founded in 2024 by Cornbroom and Pichkhadze, “Standpoint” is based on a simple premise: give artists the same assignment and let their differences emerge in the work.
Cornbroom, a multimedia artist, discussed one piece built around stair and escalator forms that he said began as doodles. Also known for writing and directing horror films including “Flesh Eating Mothers” and “Teenage Zombie,” he said he adopted the name JW Cornbroom to distinguish himself from the many other artists named James Martin.
Cornbroom and Timmins met through the Art Society of Kingston and bonded over their ties to the Art Students League of New York.
“Commonality brings people together,” Timmins said.
Lopez, a New Mexico native with a studio in Rifton, also has ties to the Art Students League. A chiaroscuro oil painting instructor at the Woodstock School of Art, she has work on both floors of the exhibition.
The exhibition will also include on-site work by featured artists, with Pamela Timmins at the gallery on Friday afternoons, Leah Lopez offering painting demonstrations on Saturdays, and Naoko Oshima working on Sundays during the run of the show.
“I’ll bring an easel for people to see the process of focusing on light and shadows, using techniques like Rembrandt would have,” she said.
Oshima, who is participating in “Standpoint” for the third time, combined the still life and letter assignments into a single work and added a cat, she said, for extra drama. A native of Japan and former Bearsville resident, Oshima said showing in Woodstock felt like coming home. Also on display is a work featuring a bear that she created 18 years ago and had never shown publicly.
The gallery also includes a portrait of Metheny by Hopkins, who said he often paints gallery owners. Hopkins said he thinks of his work as “visual koans,” leaving room for viewers to arrive at their own interpretations.
“It shows how my mind works — taking things apart and reassembling them,” he said. “Yes, things look out of place and strange.”
For Cornbroom, the show also has a practical purpose.
“One of our main goals is to sell the pieces,” he said. “Every artist wants to show their work. When we come together as a group, we can really turn heads and I hope people will purchase and support.”
Among those attending the opening was Terry Britton, senior adviser and chief strategist for the Woodstock Museum in West Saugerties, who said the show felt especially timely as artificial intelligence increasingly enters creative fields.
“We’re in a land where AI is encroaching art and we need to support the real people — and the talent and skills they’ve been building for years,” he said. “It is this kind of creative work that connects us with an element of humanity, not just pixels.”
Chana Widawski is a contributing reporter. Send correspondence to reporting@theoverlooknews.com.
