1x1x1: Jackie Skrzynski – Nocturnal Movements
1x1x1: Jackie Skrzynski – Nocturnal Movements
June 11 – July 8, 2022
Opening
June 11, 5 p.m.
Silent Walk
June 13, 7:30 – 10 p.m.
Black Rock Forest
65 Reservoir Road
Cornwall, NY 12518
Registration required via eventbrite
June 11, 5 p.m.
Silent Walk
June 13, 7:30 – 10 p.m.
Black Rock Forest
65 Reservoir Road
Cornwall, NY 12518
Registration required via eventbrite
“The light was already fading as people arrived. We started in near total darkness, and witnessed a shy moon finally rise above the clouds. Walking tonight was moving through an impressionist’s nocturne. Every edge was blurred, every color a soft glow. Pungent smells of decay, the constant rasp of katydids, and too many airplanes revealed the industry around us. We contain multitudes.”
The Silent Walks started as a year long project creating an unfiltered experience of landscape as art. In the light of the full moon, Jackie Skrynski leads participants to move through the environment of Black Rock Forest, considering their sensory experience in a consciously aesthetic way.
For this summer’s 1x1x1: Nocturnal Movements, Jackie pulls elements of these Silent Walks into the urban environment—a large scale figure of a nocturnal coyote quietly hangs in the gallery’s window overlooking Ann Street, where small pairs of light reflectors reflect passing car lights in the mimetic flash of a wild animals gaze in the pitch black of night. Paired with a Silent Walk at Black Rock Forest in conjunction with the Strawberry Moon on June 13th, Jackie invites us to take time to notice, to quiet ourselves, and reflect on our being in the world.
As theoretical physicist, Marcelo Gleiser notes, “we evolved to have a profound sound acuity. This was a must if our species was to survive…by protecting ourselves from predators and enemies and finding food and safe shelter. Being attuned to the natural world meant not only seeing things but hearing them. At night, seeing with our ears, building a spatial perception of our surroundings unaided by images, was a matter of life or death. Our ancestors could reconstruct a whole environment — the kinds of animals, the direction of the wind, if water was near or far, the weather patterns — by quietly listening.”
In the wake of the longest and most coherent global seismic noise reduction in recorded history brought by the forced quiet of the COVID pandemic in 2020, we have slowly remerged back to the deafening activity of our human daily pursuit of progress. As our cities are back alive—with all of our machines, jack-jammers, amplifiers, cars, and arguments and conversation—constantly humming, blasting, and drowning out the potential for profound quiet, we offer this 1x1x1: Jackie Skrynski – Nocturnal Movements as a rare chance to listen, to see with our ears, and and discover the world anew.
Jackie Skrzynski, Coyote Blurred, 2014, Charcoal on Paper, 32.75 × 44.5 inches
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Jackie Skrzynski (skrin-ski) makes work that dissolves the boundaries between humans and nature. She has exhibited in numerous national and international venues from New York City to a repurposed slaughterhouse in rural France. Locally, she has exhibited at the Samuel Dorsky Museum, The Seligmann Center, Theo Gantz Studio, and Mount Saint Mary’s CMA Gallery. Skrzynski has received numerous awards, including from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, New York Foundations for the Arts (SOS), and she is a four-time recipient of the Orange County Individual Artist Award. She contributed a chapter to the anthology Reconciling Art and Motherhood and has had her own artwork appear in several publications. Last spring, she was artist-in-residence at Black Rock Forest. Beyond her studio practice, Skrzynski is interested in bringing art to the community in creative ways, such as her pop-up exhibition vehicle, PUG PROJECTS, and the immersive landscape experience, the SILENT WALKS.
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1x1x1 is Ann Street Gallery’s series featuring one artist, one work, for one month in the Gallery window. 1x1x1 aims to be a nimble platform giving artists experimental space for solo exhibitions.