The Healing Power of Plants
Please join us for an intimate conversation with multimedia artist, writer, and performer Alyson Pou as we discusses her newest work, The Coleus Project: A Constellation of Coleus Creatures. Alyson will be discussing The Healing Power of Plants with with fellow artist and gardener Linda Stillman, medicinal gardener and clinical herbalist Emma Patsy, and moderator Jeremy K. Bullis.
The conversation will explore the individuals’ relationships and work with plants, the visual and energetic properties of shape, color, and fragrance found in plants, as well as the phytochemical effects released when plants are made into medicine for human bodies.
About Alyson Pou
Alyson Pou is a multi-disciplinary artist and has exhibited at numerous museums, galleries, art centers and colleges around the country. Her installations and performances, deeply rooted in story telling and women’s history, make use of movement, text and objects to create an immersive visual and theatrical experience.
Her work has been presented in New York City by The New Museum, Artists Space, The Bronx Museum, Creative Time, Performance Space 122, Danspace Project at St. Marks, Franklin Furnace, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Central Booking Gallery, ALJIRA Center for Contemporary Art, Newark; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans.
Awards include: the New York Dance and Performance Award (aka The Bessie Award) in the category of Choreographer/Creator, the Henderson Award for Poetry, American Antiquarian Society research Fellowship, Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellowships. Grants include: the National Endowment for the Arts, Art Matters, Inc., NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, with commissions from Deutche Bank and the Atlanta Arts Festival. Pou has taught performance art history and production at NYU, Cooper Union, The NewSchool, Williams College and Smith College.
About Linda Stillman
Linda Stillman is an artist whose main focus is on investigating concepts of time, memory and nature. She works in various media: painting, drawing, collage, photography, sculpture and installation. Her work is eclectic, but consistently concept based and influenced by a minimalist sensibility.
The country and her gardens provide her with inspiration and raw materials for her art. Found objects and the detritus of everyday life also fuel her work.
She has been awarded fellowships and residencies at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts (VA & France), the New York Foundation for the Arts Mark program, the Wave Hill Winter Workspace and The Studios at Mass MoCA. Her work has been featured in many solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums around the country including the Brooklyn Museum, the Dorsky Museum, Hunter College Art Galleries, the Arts Club of Chicago, and the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey. Stillman’s art work has been reviewed in numerous publications including the New York Times and Hyperallergic. Her art is included in many private and public collections such as the Dorsky Museum and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Stillman is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (BA), the School of Visual Arts and Vermont College of Fine Arts (MFA).
About Emma Patsey
Emma Patsey is a lifelong Hudson Valley resident, originally from Tivoli, NY which sits hillside along the Hudson River. Currently, she works at Churchtown Dairy, a biodynamic raw milk dairy farm located in Hudson, NY. Churchtown hosts a large medicinal garden that provides raw material and extracts to domestic and international homeopathic pharmacies such as Weelda, Uriel and Aveena Botanicals. She is a mentee of Jean-David Derreumaux, a biodynamic gardener with over 25 years of experience growing medicinal plants and creating healing gardens. Apart from Churchtown, Emma is a clinical herbalist with an emerging private practice and she is currently finishing her studies at Arbor Vitae School of Traditional Herbalism.
The Coleus Project: A Constellation of Coleus Creatures is on view in the windows 24/7 with indoor viewings on select weekends through December 1, 2024
