Blue Mountain Gallery

06/16/2026

2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition
Western Connecticut State University

June 16 – July 3, 2026
Reception Thursday, June 18, from 5 to 8 p.m.

Loren Birtha, Interdisciplinary Artist
Octavia C. Byrd, Painter
Jacqueline Joyce, Illustrator
Katherine Moran, Interdisciplinary Artist
Riley Weaver, Interdisciplinary Artist

The MFA Thesis Exhibition is the capstone experience of WCSU’s Department of Art’s Graduate Program. MFA degrees are available in Painting, Illustration, and Interdisciplinary Visual Art. The exhibition is supported by the Jason and Ellen Hancock Student Endowment Fund at WCSU. Five graduate students will present their thesis work this year, featuring diverse media and innovative approaches that reflect their unique artistic visions.

Loren Bertha, Drowned in Good Intentions | digital print with acrylic and gold leaf paint | 29.5 x 15.75 in.

Octavia C. Byrd, Untitled | acrylic marker on felt, mounted on wood | 26.5 x 30 in.

Jacqueline joyce, Mall Rats | foam core, laser print, acrylic, inkjet print | game board 10.5 x 10.5 in., game pieces 2.75 x 1 in., player sheets 11 x 8.5 in.

Katherine Moran, Above/Below | gouache on canvas | 18 x 16 in.

Riley Weaver, Moonage Daydream | 3D block print and monoprint on paper | 19 x 15 in.

06/01/2026

Watch the video from Owen Gray
Interior Exterior View of the World!

May 19 – June 13, 2026

Playlist address:Video Link: https://youtu.be/VGcwlSu3WloSubscribe here: https://www.youtube.com/nycgalleryopenings"?sub_confirmation=1Description:Interior E...

05/24/2026

DEADLINE EXTENDED!
SUMMER 2026 JURIED EXHIBITION
RANDY WILLIAMS, Juror

July 28 - August 15, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 30, 6 – 8 pm

APPLICATION DEADLINE: MAY 30, 2026

Blue Mountain Gallery, located in the heart of New York City’s Chelsea art district, invites artists working in two- and three-
dimensional media to submit work for its 18th Juried Exhibition. Selected works will be exhibited in the gallery’s Chelsea
space from July 28–August 15, 2026. The gallery is pleased to have Randy Williams as the juror for the Summer 2026 Juried
Exhibition. Williams is a contemporary artist and Professor of Studio Art and Art Education at Manhattanville University, and
a long-time educational consultant and instructor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
All juried exhibitions are accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog and promoted to collectors, critics, media, artists, and art
lovers through the gallery’s website, social media, press releases, and major art listings. Over its 45-year history, Blue
Mountain Gallery exhibitions have been reviewed in Art in America, The New York Times, The New Republic, and
Hyperallergic and other leading publications.

Complete Prospectus
https://bluemountaingallery.org/2026-summerjuried-show

Apply
https://app.entrythingy.com/calls/public/13864/

JUROR – RANDY WILLIAMS (b. 1947, New York City) is a distinguished visual artist and educator whose dual career
bridges active studio practice and innovative arts education. He is Professor of Studio Art and Art Education at
Manhattanville University and a long-time educational consultant and instructor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He also
serves as Artistic Director of the New York State Summer School of the Visual Arts, where he has mentored emerging artists
for over three decades.
Williams’ artwork, often exploring the intersections of materiality, history, and identity, has been the subject of more than
thirty-five solo exhibitions and included in over 100 group exhibitions nationally and internationally. His work is held in
numerous private collections.
He holds degrees in Art Education from New York University and Sir George Williams University in Montreal. His honors
include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship to the American Academy in Rome, fellowships from the New York
State Council on the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Manhattanville University Excellence Award
(1995, 2007).
More information: https://randywilliams.net/

05/22/2026

We enjoyed a great reception for Owen Gray's latest exhibition,
Interior Exterior View of the World

May 19 – June 13, 2026

Owen Gray - Artist Statement
I was raised in Wayland, Massachusetts. My father went to art school and became a commercial artist in the Boston area. He encouraged me to attend art school as well. As a young man, I studied art at the Portland School of Art in Maine and the Swain School of Design in New Bedford, MA. In 1975, I moved to New York and took classes at the New York Studio School, where I studied with Nicholas Carone and Leland Bell. I currently split my time between ·my home in Tribeca, New York City and my studio in Hoboken, New Jersey.

I have been influenced by the exaggerated lighting, compositional intricacies and Baroque dynamism of the old masters such as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Francisco Goya, Hieronymus Bosch, and Pieter Bruegel.
In 1996 I took a trip to visit Florida which inspired a series of paintings of the Everglades, including the tropical foliage and swampy terrain inhabited by reptiles such as snakes, alligators, and turtles. This trip commenced an ongoing thematic interest in animals, wildlife and the environment.

Over the years, I have continued this visual research of creatures and animals with regular visits to the Bronx Zoo and the American Museum of Natural History, as well as return trips to Florida. I look around me and find visual inspiration from what I see, transforming the elements into a fantasy world where floating parrots, flying mandolins, and cactus-headed figures evolve into one another. I am attracted to the dramatic light of open skies which my imagination inhabits with spiraling falling objects, animals, and creatures. I am fascinated by aquatic swampy realms teeming with life, which offer the possibility of sensational compositions. I have been interested in climate change with the destruction of the Amazon Forest. Recently I've been producing paintings of smoldering landscapes of cypress trees as far as the eye can see.
Thanks to Kim Do for the photos.
https://www.owengray.net

05/19/2026

Owen Gray
Interior Exterior View of the World

May 19 – June 13, 2026
Reception: Thursday, May 21, 5-8 pm

Owen Gray's 13th solo show at Blue Mountain Gallery includes new paintings that continue to show what critic Jed Perl calls ”intimations of darker emotional register.”

Owen Gray - Artist Statement
I was raised in Wayland, Massachusetts. My father went to art school and became a commercial artist in the Boston area. He encouraged me to attend art school as well. As a young man, I studied art at the Portland School of Art in Maine and the Swain School of Design in New Bedford, MA. In 1975, I moved to New York and took classes at the New York Studio School, where I studied with Nicholas Carone and Leland Bell. I currently split my time between ·my home in Tribeca, New York City and my studio in Hoboken, New Jersey.

I have been influenced by the exaggerated lighting, compositional intricacies and Baroque dynamism of the old masters such as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Francisco Goya, Hieronymus Bosch, and Pieter Bruegel.
In 1996 I took a trip to visit Florida which inspired a series of paintings of the Everglades, including the tropical foliage and swampy terrain inhabited by reptiles such as snakes, alligators, and turtles. This trip commenced an ongoing thematic interest in animals, wildlife and the environment.

Over the years, I have continued this visual research of creatures and animals with regular visits to the Bronx Zoo and the American Museum of Natural History, as well as return trips to Florida. I look around me and find visual inspiration from what I see, transforming the elements into a fantasy world where floating parrots, flying mandolins, and cactus-headed figures evolve into one another. I am attracted to the dramatic light of open skies which my imagination inhabits with spiraling falling objects, animals, and creatures. I am fascinated by aquatic swampy realms teeming with life, which offer the possibility of sensational compositions. I have been interested in climate change with the destruction of the Amazon Forest. Recently I've been producing paintings of smoldering landscapes of cypress trees as far as the eye can see.

https://www.owengray.net

05/14/2026

Last days! Gina Sawin: Bird Migration

April 21 – May 16, 2026
Blue Mountain Gallery presents a solo exhibition of new paintings by Gina Sawin

Gina Sawin’s recent work reflects her ongoing interest in depicting bird groups in a moment of flight. She is drawn to patterns of avian forms and the pictorial challenge of locating them in a real and distant sky. The limited palette and pebbly surface suggest that birds and sky are inextricable, almost dissolving into one another, while the geometry of shifting lights and darks gives a sense of movement.

The art writer Carl Little refers to Sawin as a contemporary “animalier.” Whether it is the reflection in water of a solitary bird, or a flock moving through the sky, birds have long been her muse. Along with the formal concerns, the subject of birds allows her to explore themes of fragility and resilience: a prehistoric origin, the miracle of migration, and changing ecological sensitivities. There is, in her work, reverence for the natural order and an air of nostalgia about its deterioration.

In Sawin’s words, “Migrating birds seem to me a poignant reminder of the earth’s life cycles, and, in a metaphorical sense, the strength of the whole as a sum of parts. When I am working my studio, looking at each individual bird in the context of a community, I see them as pursuing the right to survive. I feel the paintings asking: Will we get where we need to go?”

Tern Configuration 30 x 48 oil

04/27/2026

Scenes from the reception for Gina Sawin: Bird Migration

April 21 – May 16, 2026

Blue Mountain Gallery presents a solo exhibition of new paintings by Gina Sawin

Gina Sawin’s recent work reflects her ongoing interest in depicting bird groups in a moment of flight. She is drawn to patterns of avian forms and the pictorial challenge of locating them in a real and distant sky. The limited palette and pebbly surface suggest that birds and sky are inextricable, almost dissolving into one another, while the geometry of shifting lights and darks gives a sense of movement.

The art writer Carl Little refers to Sawin as a contemporary “animalier.” Whether it is the reflection in water of a solitary bird, or a flock moving through the sky, birds have long been her muse. Along with the formal concerns, the subject of birds allows her to explore themes of fragility and resilience: a prehistoric origin, the miracle of migration, and changing ecological sensitivities. There is, in her work, reverence for the natural order and an air of nostalgia about its deterioration.

In Sawin’s words, “Migrating birds seem to me a poignant reminder of the earth’s life cycles, and, in a metaphorical sense, the strength of the whole as a sum of parts. When I am working my studio, looking at each individual bird in the context of a community, I see them as pursuing the right to survive. I feel the paintings asking: Will we get where we need to go?”

02/03/2026

Watch the video from Douglas Anderson: Industrial Dreams at Blue Mountain until February 21, 2026

Playlist address:Video Link: https://youtu.be/yXRU4CMqY8MSubscribe here: https://www.youtube.com/nycgalleryopenings"?sub_confirmation=1Description: Douglas A...

01/31/2026

Great reception yesterday day for Douglas Anderson: Industrial Dreams at Blue Mountain.
January 27 -February 21, 2026