Equinox reception at Maison Bergogne

DVAA artist Steve Deihl and Maison Bergogne will host a reception for the launch of his 6-month project, Equinox, on Saturday, March 21st, from 4:30-6:00 in Narrowsburg. Equinox will be installed and painted on-site in the backyard behind Maison Bergogne on the Vernal Equinox and will remain there until September 19th, open to the public. On that day, the painting will be taken to the Alliance Gallery to be shown with his other landscape paintings from The Narrowsburg Series. This one-person exhibition at DVAA will be on view through October 25th.
Equinox, like the rest of Deihl’s landscapes, is a document of place and time – a more complete vision of what “landscape” means. He creates this immersive experience by placing a steel panel outside, and then applies a special mixture of slow-drying white oil paint to the surface. This allows the artwork to develop like a long-exposure photograph capturing the effects of Nature and weather, later seen in the remnant tracery of snow, ice, and rain, wind-blown pollen, debris, leaves,and animal tracks. The panel cannot be changed or touched by anyone once it is placed outside and the paint is applied. Important to the meaning of this work is that its final outcome is unknown. This allows the landscape to be a true record of natural change – we can only observe the slow evolution in its textured surface.
Filmmaker Joshua Cozzo (Last Farm in Reykjavik) will record the entire Equinox process, along with interviews, and show this film in the Alliance Gallery. The fulllength edited version will be premiered during the artist’s talk in October at DVAA.
Steve Deihl has exhibited his artwork internationally and is the author of the recent book, Sea Change: Reason, Revolution, and Creativity – an exploration of the arts and sciences in the 19th century (available at One Grand Books). He is a New York City mathematics educator and lives in Narrowsburg.