Tristate of Mind

Tristate of Mind was the inaugural exhibition for In Our Backyard, a year of themed and integrated programming at the Clay Art Center (CAC) in Port Chester, New York. Up between January 30 and March 19, 2016, Tristate showcased seventeen emerging artists working within seventy-five miles of the steadily growing art center, located thirty miles north of downtown Manhattan. Muted in color, modest in size, the show was remarkable for its spectacular successes, failures, and promise.

Fulfilling its central mission, one of Tristate’s great accomplishments was its culling together of fresh, budding, and, at the time, local talent. Exemplarily, Adam Knoche, Max Seinfeld, and Lauren Skelly-Bailey impressed and were among the youngest in the gallery. Knoche, who with layer upon layer of powdered clay builds powerfully, which opened July 23, 2016 as part of In Our Backyard. Collectively, all three makers are recent graduates and young artists pushing process, aesthetics, and content in their sculptural work at the very outset of their very promising careers. Self-proclaimed OCD artist Kaitlyn Meeks might also be placed in this group, but her artistic promise, which is great, rests in a pathology not yet fully mastered at the time of Tristate.