Looking Forward to the Weekend

It's October, and in Hudson, that means ArtsWalk. Works of art are already installed in shop windows along Warren Street and beyond, the Members' Show is in readiness at the Pocketbook Factory, and the weekend is filled with events celebrating the arts. There's a lot happening, and you're likely to wish you could be in two places at once, but here are Gossips' picks. You can do them all with careful planning and a fast car.

On Friday and Saturday, the Second Ward Foundation, the not-for-profit created by Walter Sudol and Steven Johnson to exhibit and lend contemporary art, is presenting an inaugural concert event in the rehabilitated auditorium of what was once the Charles Williams School. The performances feature John Exposito and the ensemble A Book of Five Rings, with video artist Laura Steele. Each night the concert begins at 8 p.m., preceded by a reception at 7 p.m.

  
Friday night also is the beginning of the Literary Arts Festival. The opening event, "Spotty Lit," which takes place at 7 p.m. on Friday at Spotty Dog Books & Ale, is an evening of emerging and established writers--Melissa Holbrook Pierson, Sarah Kilborne, Karen Crumley Keats, Sara Kendall, Kenji Suzuki--hosted by Karen Schoemer.

The Literary Arts Festival continues on Saturday and Sunday with readings at the Hudson Opera House by award-winning New York poets and prose writers. The participating authors are all pictured above, from left to right (top row) James Lasdun, Rebecca Wolff, Adam Falkner, Cara Benson; (middle row) Tracie Morris, Lydia Davis, Djelloul Marbrook, Mahogany Browne; (bottom row) Paul La Farge, Greg Hrbek, Joydeep-Roy Bhattacherya, Illya Szilak. The readings are from noon to 5 p.m. each day. Click here for the complete schedule.

Starting tomorrow, Thursday, October 3, and through Saturday, October 5, thirty celebrated plein air artists will be at the Olana State Historic Site, creating "Landscapes Within the Landscape." You can walk the grounds, speak with the artists, and watch them as they paint the awesome Olana views. This very Hudson River School event, sponsored by The Olana Partnership and the Columbia County Council on the Arts, culminates on Saturday afternoon with a cocktail reception at 4 p.m. and a live auction of the paintings at 5 p.m. The event takes place at the Wagon House Education Center at Olana.