LIVINGSTON MANOR — Catskill Art Space (CAS) is pleased to announce the opening of three new exhibitions by Richard Barlow, Lisa Craft and Ellen Driscoll. The exhibitions open on Saturday, January 17, 2026, with an artist talk from 3–4 p.m. and a reception from 4–5 p.m. They will remain on view through February 28, 2026. This exhibition brings together three artists whose practices engage the natural world through materially distinct yet conceptually aligned approaches, foregrounding environmental fragility, memory, and responsibility in a moment of ecological precarity.

Richard Barlow will present a large-scale, temporary, site-specific drawing made with chalk on blackboard-painted gallery walls. Rooted in careful observation of the natural world, Barlow’s drawings evoke landscapes that are at once intimate and monumental. The works are deliberately ephemeral: erased at the close of the exhibition, they exist only briefly, vulnerable to time and even to the physical presence of viewers, whose touch or movement may alter or destroy the image. This fragility underscores the work’s environmental and existential concerns, mapping loss, impermanence, and memory onto acts of looking and inhabiting space.

Lisa Craft’s Drive-In Movie for Leaf Litter is an immersive animated installation that draws viewers into the fecund, mysterious world of the forest floor. Combining rear-projected silhouette animation with a revolving sculptural form, the work unfolds as a miniature theater infused with a richly layered soundscape. Positioned at ground level, audiences encounter cycling leaf litter whose shadows cast a hypnotic spell, punctuated by disruptions, disappearances, and shifting winds. Craft’s process begins with observational walks through urban and rural green spaces, filming birds, insects, plants, and fungi encountered along the way. These beings are digitally extracted, manipulated through drawing, painting, sculpture, and animation, and set within time-lapse gardens and animated environments. The soundscape deepens immersion, animating both seen and unseen elements of the leaf-litter world. Craft’s use of silhouettes traces back to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, when prolonged darkness transformed everyday objects into animated shadows within flashlight beams.

Ellen Driscoll’s work encompasses drawing, sculpture, and public art, united by a sustained engagement with environmental and social justice. Her drawings, made with walnut ink—a material known for its capacity to remediate environmental toxins—depict plants as both subject and agent, embedding ecological process within representation itself. Her sculptures, fabricated from waste HDPE plastic, transform discarded material into forms that evoke the floods, droughts, and systemic imbalances driven by climate change. Through research-driven practice and close attention to visual detail, Driscoll’s work asks viewers to recognize their own responsibility within these unfolding environmental narratives.

About Catskill Art Space 

Catskill Art Space (CAS) explores contemporary art practices of emerging and established artists. Through exhibitions, performances, classes, lectures, and screenings, CAS fosters creative community in the Catskills.

Established as Catskill Art Society in 1971, CAS reopened in October 2022 as Catskill Art Space following a major renovation and expansion of its multi-arts center, located in the picturesque hamlet of Livingston Manor in the Western Catskills. CAS presents a rotating slate of exhibitions, performances and other events featuring national and regional talents, alongside long-term installations of works by James Turrell, Sol LeWitt, Francis Cape, and Ellen Brooks. Learn more at catskillartspace.org.