Kathleen Vance in Dark Whimsy? Or Not! at The Re Institute

August 22 – October 11, 2026
Opening Reception: August 22, 4–6 PM
The Re Institute
1395 Boston Corners Road, Millerton, New York

Kathleen Vance will present two large-scale bodies of work in Dark Whimsy? Or Not!, a group exhibition at The Re Institute in Millerton, New York, opening August 22 and on view through October 11, 2026.

This exhibition includes works by Kathleen Vance, Claudia Renfro, Kate Hamilton, Sascha Mallon, Betsey Regan, and Dee Shapiro, whose practices move across sculpture, installation, textiles, painting, ceramics, and mixed media. While their approaches and materials differ, the artists share an interest in the unexpected: the intersection of beauty and unease, humor and vulnerability, nature and the human body. Together, their work creates an exhibition that is playful, provocative, and at times dark, inviting viewers to consider the many ways the familiar can become strange.

Vance's installations bring the landscape of the Hudson Valley into the gallery through two distinct but interconnected approaches: Boundsticks, a monumental installation constructed from collected sticks and branches gathered throughout the Hudson Valley, and a large installation from her ongoing Traveling Landscapes series, incorporating works made in response to the Hudson River and the network of waterways and water corridors that shape the region.

Boundsticks

In Boundsticks, Vance transforms materials gathered from the Hudson Valley landscape into a site responsive sculptural installation. Collected branches, sticks, and other fallen elements are brought together through an intensive process of binding and accumulation with a natural sisal twine, commonly used for bailing hay. The resulting structure is at once familiar and strang, a landscape transformed into an architectural, almost bodily presence.

The work asks viewers to reconsider the ordinary materials encountered underfoot in forests, fields, and along roadsides. Detached from their original locations, the branches become both individual objects and parts of a larger system. Their accumulation suggests growth, shelter, entanglement, erosion, and regeneration, and the strength of union.

For Vance, working directly with materials from a particular place is a way of making the overlooked visible. The Hudson Valley is not simply a backdrop for the work; it is an active element in its making.

Traveling Landscapes

Vance's large-scale installation of Traveling Landscapes extends this relationship to the Hudson River and the waterways that connect the Hudson Valley. The works emerge from exploring the local landscape, traveling along rivers, shorelines, tributaries, and other water corridors and observing how landscape changes from one place to another.

Rather than presenting a fixed or singular image of the Hudson Valley, Traveling Landscapes considers landscape as something continually in motion. Water carries materials, histories, pollutants, memories, and human activity downstream. The river connects places that might otherwise seem separate.

Installed together at The Re Institute, the works create a conversation between land and water, permanence and movement, accumulation and dispersal. Boundsticks gathers the physical remnants of the forest into a dense, monumental form, while Traveling Landscapes follows the movement of water through and across the region.

Both bodies of work are rooted in Vance's longstanding interest in environmental art and in the relationship between human intervention and the natural world. Her installations invite viewers to look closely at places and materials that can easily become invisible through familiarity.

About Kathleen Vance

Kathleen Vance is an environmental artist whose sculptural installations connect people to local aspects of nature that are often overlooked or underappreciated. Her work explores the ways natural materials, landscapes, and human interventions intersect, with particular attention to places where cultivated or controlled environments are reclaimed by the wild.

Vance has exhibited extensively in the United States and internationally, including exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, Orlando Museum of Art, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Weisman Art Museum, Brandywine River Museum of Art, Bruce Museum, Albany International Airport, Center for Contemporary Art Wiesbaden, SPRING/BREAK New York, VOLTA New York, PULSE New York and Miami, art Karlsruhe, EXPO Chicago, and Sotheby's.

She received her B.F.A. from Pratt Institute and M.F.A. from Hunter College in sculpture. Her grants and awards include support from the Puffin Foundation, Aljira, Center for Contemporary Art in conjunction with the Creative Capital Foundation, Brooklyn Arts Council, and Arts Mid-Hudson. She has been an artist in residence in Berlin, Germany, and at the Château de Beaurepaire in the Loire Valley.

Vance lives and works in New York.

Exhibition Information

Dark Whimsy? Or Not!
August 22 – October 11, 2026
Opening reception: August 22, 4–6 PM

The Re Institute
1395 Boston Corners Road
Millerton, NY 12546

Dark Whimsy? Or Not! features the work of Kathleen Vance, Claudia Renfro, Kate Hamilton, Sascha Mallon, Betsey Regan, and Dee Shapiro.

For more information about Kathleen Vance and her work, visit kathleenvance.com.