The Avocet Portfolio will be exhibited June 17-July 30, 2023 at the Kentler International Drawing Space in Redhook, Brooklyn.

During the summers of 1985-1991, 31 artists created the 48 editions of screen prints of the Avocet Portfolio at Art Awareness in Lexington, New York in the Catskills. Andrea Callard and Jolie Stahl, both members of Collaborative Projects, Inc. (aka COLAB), initiated the project. Over seven summers, artists worked to initiate a more social and more collaborative production model than the traditional Master Printer/Artist relationship. We tested new, non-toxic, pure pigments and water-based products being developed by Vince Kennedy of Createx, Ltd. So, the prints have both vivid and subtle color interactions.

Every summer for twenty five years, Art Awareness hosted visual, theatrical, and musical artists as residents and presenters. Decades before the current population bloom of the Hudson Valley, a mix of regional year-round and summer residents gathered as an arts audience. In previous eras, Art Awareness had been a resort hotel through the Depression and a camp for creative children in the 1950's, all run by different generations of the same family.

Pam and Judd Weisberg directed Art Awareness, one of only two non-profit arts organizations supported by the NEA and NYSCA that were not located geographically in a city. The place occupied many acres in a beautiful valley on the Schoharie Creek in the Catskill Mountains of New York. The town dammed up the river each summer to make an excellent swimming area. The weather changed often and we could see it blowing towards us up the valley.

Andrea Callard
2023