After a well-attended opening party on July 19th, which brought together connoisseurs and artists, and featured live music by Alice BrightSky, Star House Gallery & Studio in the Shirt Factory in Kingston is prepping for the final party of its first show of the season.

In closing Parallel Places Owen Harvey and Michael Hunt will each present Artists Talks starting at 5:30 PM on Saturday August 9th. Harvey will present “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: A theory of painting,” inspired by Wallace Stevens, and Hunt will present “The Affordability of Meaningful Beauty,” a partially redacted conversation by The Cosmic American. The consecutive artist talks will offer viewers an access point for engaging more deeply with the ideas and inspiration of the artists and their work.

“Among twenty snowy mountains
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird”
-Wallace Stevens

Star House Gallery & Studio features abstract, self-taught, and outsider artists and artwork, and is the studio of artist and gallery coordinator, Nina Isabelle. The gallery presents shows designed to spark dialogue between the instinctive and the cerebral, with the intent to hold space for non-verbal concepts expressed through abstract art such as the language of intuition, authentic mark-making, and community building, and Parallel Places generates a conversation about the nature of inspiration, repetition and variance.

Owen Harvey is an engaging speaker and a former adjunct instructor in SUNY New Paltz’s Foundations and Painting Departments, where he earned his master of fine arts. He received his bachelor of arts in painting from Bennington College. Harvey’s work has been exhibited in several group shows, including at the Barrett Art Center Galleries in Poughkeepsie, Spike Gallery in Chelsea, and NURTUREart in Williamsburg. His drawings were chosen for the Now-Legacy Viewing Program at The Drawing Center in Manhattan.

Michael Hunt is a self-taught artist who earned his chops at his family’s sign-making business in Pennsylvania. His primary painting medium is sandblasted redwood, purchased from a mom & pop lumberyard that bids on naturally felled redwood trees. His Cosmic American Art – an outsider hybrid, which explores the limits and myths of the American Dream – has been exhibited in over sixty group shows in North America including CBGB’s 313 Gallery in New York City and the Wynwood Arts District Tour at Art Basel Miami 2004.

“13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: A theory of painting” and “The Affordability of Meaningful Beauty” will be presented on Saturday, August 9th, from 5-8p. The talks are free, open to the public, and offer attendees a final chance to view Parallel Places, the two-man show of contemporary abstraction. Star House Gallery & Studio is located at 77 Cornell Street in Kingston, NY, on the third floor of the Shirt Factory, a repurposed building developed as artists’ live/work spaces. Open by appointment, the gallery will also be open for Kingston’s First Saturday event on August 2nd from 5-8p.

Parallel Places: Owen Harvey and Michael Hunt – Now through August 9th, 2014

First Saturday: August 2nd, 5-8p

Artist Talks: “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: A theory of painting” and “The Affordability of Meaningful Beauty” August 9th, 5-8p

Star House Gallery & Studio in The Shirt Factory

77 Cornell Street, Suite #316, Kingston, NY

Open Saturdays, 5-8p, and by appointment

www.starhousegallery.com