The month of July brings Upstate Art Weekend (UAW), an annual summer cornucopia of art in the region. Launched in 2020 with 23 organizations, UAW has expanded to include more than 155 participants located across the map, from Nyack in the south and Kinderhook in the north to Roscoe in the west and Wassaic to the east. Celebrating a diversity of art Upstate, the packed program ran from July 17 to 21 with a robust roster of participants, including arts organizations, galleries, museums, residencies, and individual artists, as well as an abundant schedule of programming to complement the weekend. As a cheery resident of Upstate New York, I designed an ambitious roadmap to hit up 10 UAW spots daily and speak with artists, gallerists, and visitors in the community, and found additional artsy surprises along the way. With so many participants and places to visit, the chance encounters and connective energies that unfold are what make the yearly UAW event a magical-mystery-tour art experience. The adventure started on Friday in the village of Kinderhook with a visit to September gallery to see The Motherlode, a solo show of Nicole Cherubini’s sumptuous sculptural ceramics and 20 years’ worth of documentary-style photographs of her performances. Nicole Cherubini’s sculptural ceramic works in The Motherlode at September gallery“Before UAW, when I opened September nine years ago, there was no map, there was no communication about what was happening,” gallerist Kristin Dodge told me. “UAW has really helped connect the different institutions, galleries, and artists in the area and create a map that people can follow this weekend or later.” Dodge and Cherubini were excitedly preparing for the artist’s performance the next day at The Campus in Hudson. Cherubini commented that she intends for the piece to “encompass all that is going on up here, become a part of it, and to honor the life that I live up here.”My next stop was Ann Bridget Murphy’s open studio in Catskill, one of the most charming towns around. Murphy warmly welcomed me into her home, and we chatted in her living room-turned-studio, where surrealist-style portraits and eccentric drawings of figures and lone faces holding swords occupied every wall.She spoke enthusiastically about the Upstate art community, saying, “UAW has gotten so big, it’s spread everywhere, into every corner, and everyone is doing something. You can feel the energy in Catskill today. People are out on the street, it’s good for the businesses, it’s good for the community, and it’s really good for the artists because we all come together and we all get excited about it.” Ann Bridget Murphy in her studio in CatskillThe Upstate backroads are a visual feast, and the drive from Catskill to Germantown landed me in a large field to encounter Muskeg, a sprawling installation with over 60 participating artists and works installed throughout the grounds, curated by Jacob Rhodes and Jessica Hargreaves. A highlight was seeing Z Behl and Kim Moloney (a collaborative artist-duo known as Baloney) and their site-specific installation WITHDRAWN: Thatcher and Snatcher and Imperial Slop (2025). Working with scrap metal and locally sourced materials, the artists created a monumental sculpture of a boat with accompanying fabric sculptures of pigs in sailor outfits and a misty spray of water, administered from above and softly cascading down in a refreshing gust to make visitors feel as if we were at sea. Rooted in the conceptual framework of The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman (1984), a banned children’s book by British author Raymond Briggs, their allegorical sculpture comments on historical violence and policing, cast-off narratives, and gendered nationalism.Moloney and Behl in front of WITHDRAWN: Thatcher and Snatcher and Imperial SlopBehl said that UAW naturally highlights complex questions about the region’s art scene and economy.“Obviously it’s a complicated dynamic when you have an invitation to bring so many tourists together to see work in a place that then can feel very overrun with money that isn’t always here or always moving through the economy, it’s sort of like a false economy,” she explained. “I think that’s a very complicated part of being an artist and working and living as an artist, period, no matter where you are!”During that same visit to Germantown, I saw Collateral Magic, artist-activist Johannah Herr’s solo show organized by Elijah Wheat Showroom at the experimental gallery Mother-in-Law’s, and spoke with seasoned curator Carolina Wheat-Nielsen. Carolina Wheat-Nielsen, curator and managing director of Elijah Wheat Showroom, in front of Johannah Herr’s works in Collateral Magic“I use UAW to put some of my best, most social-political community-oriented presentations,” said Wheat-Nielsen, who co-founded Elijah Wheat Showroom with her wife Liz Nielsen, naming the space after their late son. She added that Herr’s socially oriented, retro lenticular photographic prints, which include nefarious political figures and other dubious historical moments of so-called “performative magic,” speak directly to the current political environment. “We need to talk about brainwashing, we need to talk about propaganda, we need to talk about the deception of our US government and what is happening.”With a glorious summer sunset infusing the scene, I finished out Friday at Cut Teeth in Kingston to see the seven-artist exhibition EARTHLY / Otherworldy, which the gallery’s description explains is aimed at “exploring the intersection of the natural and the supernatural.” I chatted with Caroline Burdett, local artist and curator of the show, as a buoyant crowd milled about.EARTHLY / Otherworldly at Cut Teeth in Kingston“As someone creating art Upstate in Woodstock, not being in the big city, it can be hard to find opportunities … I know what I want to see out there in the world, and I put it together,” Burdett said. With visible pride, she added, “These artists are putting themselves out there in really brave ways and I wanted to celebrate that.”The next day, I drove two hours south to Cold Spring for a visit to Magazzino Italian Art, an incredible museum in a magnificent locale. Their current show, Maria Lai. A Journey To America, includes paintings, sculptures, and installations by the late powerhouse artist from Sardinia. I had an energizing and authentic conversation with Adam Sheffer, director of Magazzino, who described UAW as “all-inclusive, and really that’s what art is all about.” Maria Lai. A Journey to America at MagazzinoAdam Sheffer, director of Magazzino“This is the best moment for everybody to let loose, have a sense of freedom, connect with nature, connect with art, and get back to reality,” Sheffer said. “Here you get to be in this idyllic landscape with so much variety of art that you can totally immerse yourself, and you can create your own universe for the weekend.” I then drove through Cold Spring to see the group show Destination Earth at Ligenza Moore Gallery, with works by Katherine Bradford, Judy Pfaff, and Jeff Shapiro, among others. The flourishing grounds are a quintessential vision of art Upstate, and it was a pleasure to speak with gallery owner and artist Tony Moore, a first-time participant with UAW. “I have been thinking about hosting an exhibition [here] for 27 years … if not this year, when?” said Moore. We chatted about his involvement with the community and local support for artists, and he described the accessible beauty of the Ligenza environment as “soul-cleansing.”Destination Earth at Ligenza Moore GalleryTony Moore, artist and owner of Ligenza Moore GalleryAmong the most wonderfully outrageous things I encountered all weekend was the site-specific installation “Daniel Giordano: I Knew Your Father When He Had Cojones” (2025) at the Green Lodge in Chatham, where I attended the Saturday evening opening amid a fun-loving crowd. Located in the back of a rural home, this small experimental space is run by curator Owen Barensfeld. For this show, Giordano took over the gallery room and infused it with red lighting and haphazardly burned lines across the ceiling and down the walls, with additional drawings on plastic sheeting and puffy sculptural fabric on the floor, inviting viewers to take off their shoes and get into the piece. “Owen is running an alternative project space, and it allowed me to do something I wouldn’t be able to replicate anywhere else,” Giordano told me. “I was able to get really fucking freaky and weird and do something special, burning the walls, making this immersive installation.” The artist described UAW as “a beautiful platform to build ever more community, which is vital.” Barensfeld echoed his point, adding, “I wish they didn’t do a pay-scale, but they did.” This year, the basic cost for UAW participation was $495 (up from $400 last year), including an Instagram stories feature, with the top-tier participation cost at $1,050 for a dedicated e-newsletter and website highlight.Daniel Giordano in his installation, “I Knew Your Father When He Had Cojones,” at the Green Lodge in ChathamOn Sunday morning, after a pleasant stay in Chatham, I visited Art Omi in Ghent. Located on 120 acres with a sculpture and architecture park, Art Omi hosts year-round artist residency programs and arts education opportunities. It’s among the most important cultural organizations in the region and often hosts artists who rely on visas to participate in its programs — many of whom are facing challenges this year amid the Trump administration’s crackdowns. Flanked by the exhibition Harold Stevenson: Less Than My Routine Fantasy, featuring the late American artist’s large sensual paintings and drawings, I spoke with Senior Curator Sara O’Keeffe about the value of uplifting local artists. “The Hudson Valley is filled with so many incredible creatives, and UAW is one of those weekends where so many people come together to look at one another are making,” she said. “We love being part of the event. We also love so many of the local artists who are here all year-round.” She added that Art Omi’s mission is to support artists who haven’t been given their full due: “We want artists to get the flowers in their lifetime.” Curator Sara O’Keeffe at Harold Stevenson: Less Than My Routine Fantasy at Art OmiWith the weekend closing out but the spirit of creativity still thriving, I blew through Hudson to check out various gallery exhibitions, including The Summer Show at Carrie Haddad Gallery. The seasonally themed works were a perfect backdrop for my upbeat conversation with Jaime Ransome, independent curator and arts professional at the gallery, who said that open studios are one of the major strengths of UAW. “Beyond just seeing art in a sterile gallery space, we are also getting to connect with artists on their own turf, in their own spaces,” Ransome said. When I asked her about her current projects, she explained, “I am really focusing right now on connecting feminist artists with spaces and Black artists with spaces. Most places are inclusive enough to recognize that new things need to be brought in.”Curator Jaime Ransom at Carrie Haddad Gallery in HudsonHaving logged hundreds of miles over my three-day UAW bonanza, my final stop at Shadow Walls in Purling was an utter delight. The exhibition REPAIR, curated by Anne-Laure Lemaitre, displayed dynamic artworks around the eclectic old house in a bucolic setting, including elegant porcelain pieces by Anna Cone, artist and founder of the Shadow Walls project. “I think that an unconventional setting makes the art more accessible, and also the fact that it’s in a home, it feels warm and welcoming,” said Cone of the nature of UAW. Lemaitre summed up the ethos of UAW as ripe for serendipity and discovery. “It’s been incredibly interesting to see the mix of local people who are interested in art but don’t know much about it, and people who come because they want to discover the architecture of the house, but end up discovering challenging art,” she said. “We had more people than I would have ever expected.”