ABOUT/

Brush & Reed was founded in New York’s Hudson Valley in 2019. We began as a teaching gallery on Kingston’s waterfront, dedicated to global calligraphic traditions, cultures, & sensibilities— to a world where many voices live. Brush & Reed hosted five teaching artists in traditional calligraphic styles as well as exploratory workshops. Our gallery featured international works of calligraphy alongside contemporary regional artists. Community outreach programs, “after-hour savorings”, & interdisciplinary retreats explored an expanded sense of the nature of communication.

We closed our doors due to Covid. Brush & Reed is now nomadic & collaborative—giving our ethos a wider reach. We currently offer introductory workshops & interdisciplinary programing across the Hudson Valley, in partnership with multiple organizations, & with a focus on how our curriculum aids in modifying projects of cross-cultural communication, self-actualization & community development.

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ARCHIVES/

2019—OUR FAVORITE CURATION:

Silence is a gate through which all communication must pass. Experiences of grief, horror, & isolation can render one speechless; but so can profound experiences of beauty, love, & connection. That which is speechless longs to be shared & to speak to some quiet place within each of us. To be speechless, is sometimes simply to pause & to listen.

Works here each have a deep listening within them, an impossible kind of speech. They ask that we re-think not just the nature of language, but the tools & vessels of communication themselves. Personal, intuitive fiber artist Kat Howard reminds us that we can take legacies like sinew & wool in our hands & remake them. In the hands of book artist, Carole P. Kunstadt, psalms & histories are woven revelations that even something as ossified as a text or a tradition can point to its own transcendence. In her hands, books are windows & doors looking in two directions at once.

“Speechless” is a celebration of the freedom of transformation & of the silent labors of getting it born. It is a reminder to the pull the light from the dark, as sound healing artist, Nini de la Torre’s iridescent canvasses ask us to do, transforming not just the landscape, but the sensory ways we perceive it & ourselves. Works by calligraphic artists Barbara Bash, Elinor Aishah Holland, & Jena Argenta remind us that language has always been a sacred, often martial art. It wraps its arms around an unsayable kind of stillness where mark & motion are one.

2020— OUR LAST (CANCELED) CURATION:  

MEDIA