Deadline to Submit: April 22, 2024

The Trolley Barn Gallery is pleased to open the call for Earth’s Reflection, an international juried exhibition that recontextualizes the Trolley Barn Gallery’s 3,000-square-foot space into a progressive and thought-provoking landscape. This exhibition will focus on artistic interpretations of pollution prevention including themes of environmental activism and urban revitalization. Artists exploring themes inspired by the Earth, ecology, geology and biology, regreening, native lands, and community stewardship are encouraged to apply. 

Earth’s Reflection is open to all visual media: interdisciplinary, multimedia, installation, contemporary, crafts, video art, soundscapes/sound art, performance art, and design in 2D and 3D. Artists working with trash, sound, video, and/or performance are encouraged to submit. For this exhibition, the Trolley Barn Gallery will bring together a compassionate roster of artists who specialize in work that brings attention to pollution prevention in a way that offers solutions for one of humanity’s most pressing global crises. 

Youth employed in The Art Effect’s curatorial training and community engagement programs are venturing into youth-led climate change activism and placekeeping. To support the continuous exchange of ideas and resources, youth will collaborate with community organizations and Hudson-Valley-based artists who utilize unconventional and up-cycled materials in their work. Youth Arts Empowerment Zone Liaisons and the Trolley Barn Curatorial Team will host a number of community clean-ups throughout the exhibition. Poughkeepsie youth will promote, educate, and create community discourse around the ideas of pollution prevention through a public art exhibition and related environmental educational programming. With the support of local artists and community leaders, the youth curators will equip themselves with the skills to become environmental leaders who can think outside the box and inspire collective action and upkeeping in our local community.

This exhibition will be open during the Hudson Valley’s Upstate Art Weekend – June 18 through 21 – for educational, family-friendly exhibition events and activities. Upstate Art Weekend is a connective annual event for locals and tourists to celebrate the cultural vibrancy of upstate New York. With 145 participants and thousands of visitors in 2022, the Trolley Barn Gallery is excited to, once again, be one of many fascinating organizations, galleries, and creative projects to join Upstate Art Weekend.