Events

NATIVE STONE: THE ART OF TOMAS PENNING

This exhibition will reveal the life, artistry, and achievement of High Woods bluestone sculptor Tomas Penning.

Tomas Penning (1905–1982) was one of the leading sculptors of the historic Woodstock art colony. A Midwesterner by birth, Penning settled on the fringe of Woodstock in the hamlet of High Woods in Saugerties  in the early 1930s. Over the course of the next five decades he achieved recognition in the Hudson Valley as “the bluestone sculptor” because of his devotion to this native stone of Ulster County. He embraced bluestone as the medium for his carvings and was an outspoken advocate for its  architectural merits…

This exhibition introduces the span and depth of Penning’s engagements and interrogations. His High Woods neighbor, fellow worker in bluestone, and creator of Opus 40, Harvey Fite, referred to his friend as “a poet,  philosopher and sculptor,” and further remarked that his “thinking is of  the logical and reasonable sort which reminds one of [Thomas] Aquinas… the subtlety of his carvings brings [the fifteenth-century sculptor]  Agostino [di Duccio] to mind. Tomas Penning is himself, though in his work he is as simple and direct as the masters of another era….His work, like stone itself, is timeless.

– exerpted from Native Stone: The Art of Tomas Penning, an essay by Bruce Weber.

Please join us for the opening reception of Native Stone on Saturday, October 9th from 3:00-5:00 PM