Cleopatra’s Eye in the Sky

MILLERTON — When you travel down a rural road lined with trees and shrubs, admiring the pastoral views of farm fields stretching off for miles in the distance, you don’t expect to find an art happening worthy of (and in fact imported from) New York City at the end of that road.But that’s exactly what was in store for the approximately 150 people who attended the July 30-31 installation of the summer-long Re Institute art happenings on the farm of sculptor/curator Henry Klimowicz and his physician wife, Kristie Schmidt.Many of the participants came from Brooklyn and other parts of New York; quite a few showed up in the early evening for the overnight event. They’d been at a New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) happening in Hudson that day.The weekend on the farm, dubbed Eye in the Sky, Field of Dreams, was curated by Bridget Finn and Bridget Donahue of Brooklyn, who are also known as the Cleopatra’s (yes, there’s an apostrophe in there). The Cleopatra’s gathered artists and musicians (and kitemakers) on the farm for a night of varied activities that included a “photo booth” (paper masks and costumes were optional but encouraged), a concert by the band YOU of “noise” music (which emphasizes, as its name suggests, cacophony and atonality, but is surprisingly pleasant), a play by Phillip Birch and nighttime ghost stories A highlight of the weekend was a colorful yurt, constructed the week before by artists Chris Verene and Jessica Grable. Verene now lives in Brooklyn but much of his work chronicles — in starkly lit color photos — his youth in rural Galesburg, Ill. His work has been featured in New York at the Whitney Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In tent-like settings such as the yurt, he hosts performance art self-esteem salons, in which participants act out their fantasies — and are photographed by Verene as they do so. The salons are intended to be a safe place for people to explore their thoughts and dreams. The Cleopatra’s said they felt the Re Institute’s pastoral setting offered a similar sense of safety for the artists and others who took part (many whom camped out overnight).“Good things happen in art when people relax,” Finn said. In addition to the art events, visitors (who all attended free of charge) were able to swim in the nearby pond and cook out in a large firepit constructed just for Eye in the Sky. The Re Institute hosts about five events a year. The next Re Institute event will be Aug. 20 with the opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. of a show of work by Millerton residents Virginia Lavado and Camilo Rojas. For more information, go online to www.thereinstitute.com.