Community Calendar

In The Patient Looks Back: Portraits of My Therapist, Catskill-based painter Joyce Polance reverses therapy’s usual direction of attention by turning the patient’s gaze toward the therapist. Painted in oil entirely with her fingers, the three-year series moves between likeness and disruption, testing what close looking can—and cannot—reveal.

The opening reception is September 24, 5–7 p.m., and the artist talk is October 3, 4–5 p.m.

The show runs Sept. 17 - Oct. 10. Gallery hours M-F 9am - 6pm, Sat & Sun 10am - 6pm.

Dahila Festival - Day 2
DAHLIA FESTIVAL / DAHLIA CONTEST, WORKSHOPS AND COCKTAIL BENEFIT
The Fourth Annual Dewey Hall Dahlia Festival is Back! 🌸
Wednesday, September 16 – Sunday, September 20, 2026

Mark your calendars — dahlia season is here, and we can't wait to celebrate with you!

Saturday, Sept 19 | The Big Day | Noon-4:30 pm
This is what we've been waiting for! Wander through a jaw-dropping display of dahlias entered in our homegrown contest. Grab a bouquet at the Bouquet Bar, make yourself a dahlia flower crown, and treat yourself to some good music, food and drinks. Join our flower arranging workshop and learn how to turn fresh-cut dahlias into a gorgeous arrangement. Say hi to local vendors, have the Master Gardeners test your soil for free, and don't forget to enter the raffle — there are some seriously great horticultural prizes up for grabs. Winners will be announced between 3pm and 4:30pm!

Dahlia "After Hours" Cocktail Reception | 4:30–6:30 pm
Once the contest winners are announced, keep the celebration going! Head out back to the tent for an evening of dahlia-themed cocktails and delicious small bites, at a backyard benefit in support of Dewey Hall's upcoming garden renovations. It's the perfect way to toast the day's blooms while helping grow what's next for the garden. Tickets support a great cause — come raise a glass with us!

Come for the flowers, stay for the fun. See you there!

Kinderhook Memorial Library celebrates area artists with a tour of their studios on September 19 and 20, 2026, “Behind the Scenes: An Intimate View into the Studios of Local Artists”.

This tour will provide a glimpse of artists, their works, and what has informed and influenced their particular artistic expression. This diverse studio tour includes painting, children’s illustrations, and sculpture. The event will be self-guided and a map to the studios will be provided.

Artists from Kinderhook, Stuyvesant, and Valatie are represented.

Proceeds from this event will directly support our community programs and events, such as our one-on-one tutoring program and our senior fitness classes.

Visit the tour website, www.kmlarttour.com, for information about the artists, ticket sales, and our VIP cocktail party on Saturday evening.

Art & Sole is the ultimate live creative battle and the marquee annual fundraiser for Young Futures, bringing together artists and art lovers throughout the Capital Region. 20 Artists will compete with 3 hours on the clock to turn a blank pair of Vans into an exclusive masterpiece of wearable art. As the clock ticks, attendees get a front-row seat to the creative process while enjoying live poetry, music, incredible food, and community fellowship.

Elizabeth Keithline, solo exhibitor and juror of the companion exhibit KEEP IT TOGETHER, will participate in a conversation with exhibiting artists about their respective artistic practices and assemblage-based artwork on view that conveys a material and conceptual sense of solving and/or coping.

Exhibiting artists include Julia Barbour, Jeannine Bardo, Jenne Currie, Melanie Delgado, Tasha Depp, Karen E. Gersch, Lucy Handley, Jen Hicks, Chong Kang, Jeff & Wilson Keithline, Tracy Leavitt, Jignasha Leonardo, Jennifer McGregor, Eva Melas, Ann Morris, Jane Nelson, Suzanne Parker, Eileen Power, Amanda Russo Rubman, Anthony Scarzafava, Melissa Stern, Linda Stillman, Kimberly Truitt, Christina Varga, Ward Yoshimoto, Mimi Young, Leslie Zelamsky. (Presenters TBC.)

Please join the artists at Wallkill River Center for the Arts on Saturday, September 19th, starting at 2 PM for this lively conversation and walk through the galleries. This event is free and open to the public.

All my work begins with observation from nature. I want to know what lies behind the forms and textures –the marks of time and experience written into everything from fossils and rock formations to plants and trees.

My drawings and sculptures are partners in crime and dancing partners. Drawing involves investigative mark-making and sculpture is a form of physical thinking. The combination is a material proposition that invites you to look at the world in a completely different way, to escape words and communicate in a physical way.

Rather than working realistically, I'd rather look beneath the surface to observe raw energy and a struggle. The forces of growth and decay, pressure, time, and adverse human influences work their way into the tension between 2D and 3D. I don’t want to imitate nature, I would rather interrogate it. - Iain Machell 2026

Artist Talk: Sat, Sept 26, 1-2pm

Savage Wonder Art Center presents THE TRIAL by Franz Kafka, adapted from the German and directed by Christopher Paul Meyer, four Saturdays in September. Five actors play twenty-five parts. Doors at 6 p.m. for dinner, cocktails and live music; performance at 7 p.m. Fifty dollars, all-inclusive. September 5, 12, 19 and 26 at 141 Main Street, Beacon

Shakespeare & Company Presents: The Norwegians by C. Denby Swanson, Directed by James Warwick.

September 4-October 4th at 2 pm and 7 pm at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre

Set in a Minnesota bar where heartbreak is served alongside beer, The Norwegians is a sharp, surprising dark comedy about love gone wrong—and the lengths we go to set things right. Betty and Olive, two women reeling from romantic betrayal, hatch an unlikely plan: hiring a pair of Norwegian hitmen to deal with the men who wronged them.

Enter Tor and Gus, professional killers who turn out to be unfailingly polite, disarmingly gentle, and almost aggressively nice. As the women’s simmering rage collides with the hitmen’s courteous manners, the play finds humor in the contrast between Midwestern civility and the brutal business at hand.

With witty dialogue and a clever premise, The Norwegians explores the culture of America’s “flyover country,” where kindness runs deep—even in the most unexpected professions. At once dark, funny, and oddly tender, the play examines love, revenge, and cultural identity, reminding us that people are rarely what we expect and that even the politest among us may be capable of surprising extremes.

Tickets are $30-$88 and on sale now at shakespeare.org, or by calling the Box Office at 413.637.3353

The West Stockbridge Jazz Series Presents the Hot Club of New England (HCNE) is a musical collective featuring the top swing, and hot jazz musicians in the New England area. Founded when jazz power couple vocalist Atla DeChamplain and pianist Matt DeChamplain teamed up with violinist Jason Anick and bassist Greg Loughman of the internationally renowned gypsy jazz group The Rhythm Future Quartet, HCNE is on a mission to bring the elegant and classic style of the swing era and the roaring 20's to a modern audience. Their music contains echoes of Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and other legends of the Great American Songbook.

$35 Members/$40 Non-members. Card to Culture tickets available - can be reserved at weststockbridgehistory.org.

The West Stockbridge Jazz Series Presents the Hot Club of New England (HCNE) is a musical collective featuring the top swing, and hot jazz musicians in the New England area. Founded when jazz power couple vocalist Atla DeChamplain and pianist Matt DeChamplain teamed up with violinist Jason Anick and bassist Greg Loughman of the internationally renowned gypsy jazz group The Rhythm Future Quartet, HCNE is on a mission to bring the elegant and classic style of the swing era and the roaring 20's to a modern audience. Their music contains echoes of Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and other legends of the Great American Songbook.

$35 Members/$40 Non-members. Card to Culture tickets available - can be reserved at weststockbridgehistory.org.