OPENING RECEPTION: 

“GARDEN OF DELIGHTS: BLOOMING”

New transformations, collaborations, and seeds of renewal take form.

Opening Reception: Friday, July 18, 2025 | 5 - 7 PM 

Extended Hours: Sat-Sun, July 19-20, 2025 | 11 - 7 PM 

Additional Artists: Jeff Blumis, Niki Lederer, Zoe Crozner, Justin Cooper, Tara Foley, Susan Jennings, Kai Navarrete, Daria Irincheeva, Minh Doan. 

With the summer’s zenith, Garden of Delights enters its Blooming Stage—a moment of heightened transformation—as the exhibition’s outdoor sculptures, the living garden, and public programs expand into their utmost expression. 

This phase marks the pinnacle of the evolving exhibition, as new artists and rotating works are introduced, echoing the ongoing cycles of growth within the garden itself. This includes the exhibition's expansion into the site’s interior galleries, where new paintings, sculptures, and installations will be on display—contrasting the large-scale outdoor artworks and providing an artful respite from the high sun. 

Featuring a rich cross-pollination of perspectives and mediums, Garden of Delights blurs the boundaries between aesthetic and function. Interactive sculptures sit alongside mobile garden beds, irrigation systems, fountains, and spaces for both private reflection and communal gathering. This vibrant mix of forms highlights the vital role green spaces play in reimagining urban environments—not only as places of beauty but as essential infrastructure for social, ecological, and emotional well-being.

With each shift in season and installation, the garden transforms, offering new narratives and visual languages that speak to sustainability, renewal, and the re-centering of humanity within the natural world. The exhibition becomes a participatory space, an oasis in the city, where art and ecology grow together in real time.

The Blooming Stage (July - Oct 2025) is not a culmination but a continuation—an open invitation to witness change, engage with place, and imagine a future where the lines between culture and cultivation dissolve into something more resilient, more generous, and deeply rooted in care. 

Garden of Delights

Part 1: June - October 2025

Opening: Sunday, June 1, 2025; 12-5PM | Add to calendar

Artists: Ben Quesnel, Britta Riley, Cystal Hedin, Erica Hauser, Jess Stapf, John Stowe, Kate Dodd, Kris Hauser, Lady Labor Roxanne Faber Savage Cystal Hedin, Lilah Friedman, Margaret Roleke, Maria Markham, Natalya Khorover, Rachel Urkowitz, Rosanna Scimeca, Sergey Jivetin, Suzan Shutan, Tatiana Arocha, Ursula Endlicher, and others.  

An Exhibition of Growth, Creativity & Connection

In an age defined by constant movement and digital overload, Garden of Delights offers a creative sanctuary of slowness and playfulness—a space to reconnect with nature, community, and the tactile joys of artistic creations. This outdoor exhibition transforms a field of tarmac in the center of Kingston into an oasis with the "Garden" as a concept for an exhibition of dynamic, living artworks celebrating the intersection of art, horticulture, sustainability, and humanity’s rightful place in the natural world. 

Garden of Delights features a cross-pollination of perspectives and mediums that combine to blur the lines between aesthetic and function. The exhibition equally prioritizes interactive sculptures, as it does mobile garden beds, irrigation systems, fountains, and dedicated spaces for private contemplation and communal gathering. These diverse forms and artworks combine to highlight the social and environmental value of green spaces in blighted urban contexts, offering a model for building sustainable, nature-centric values into our cities for the benefit of all. The result is a responsive, ever-evolving landscape and participatory art space. 

The exhibition will evolve in three stages, Seeding (Spring), Rooting (Summer), and Blooming (early-Fall). Each of these three phases will host distinct public offerings and a rotating exhibition of artworks, aligning with the various phases of life and death in the garden. Public programming will include monthly performances, film screenings, and youth workshops that aim to foster ongoing public dialogue and local participation.

When you step into Garden of Delights you experience the possibilities of beauty and utility in alignment, where art and nature are equally alive, and where the simple act of being at the confluence of these two influences restores the spirit. Through the integration of art and nature, Garden of Delights offers the City of Kingston a new community resource that will continue to grow, offer nourishment freely, display resilience when we need its example, and provide a slow, immersive experience to contrast the face-paced rhythms of modern life, accessible to those who need it most, and for all.

After closing for Winter 2025, the exhibition is planned to return for additional programming in Spring 2026.

ArtPort Kingston has invited artists, designers, makers, and thinkers to submit flag designs for our new Flagpole Project. Launched in Spring 2025, the Project has been raising one original artist-made flag per month above ArtYard Kingston at 80 Smith Ave throughout 2025. Each new flag, raised in a communal ceremony, offers an opportunity to rethink the meaning and role of flags in contemporary society.

A flag is a powerful symbol–a human invention that serves both as a form of communication and a symbol of beauty, devotion, and reverence. As symbols of both unity and division, oneness and diversity, flags can evoke strong emotions, rally communities, and communicate ideas across vast distances. Historically, flags have represented nations, ideologies, and movements, but what do they mean to us now? How has their significance evolved? How might it continue to evolve over time? 

Run as an open-call, the program seeks designs and flag-like artworks that explore the potential of the flag as a means of communication at this present moment. Applicants were asked to respond to a number of prompts, including: How can the format be reinvented as a tool for connection rather than division? How can a flag transcend traditional symbols of territory, ownership, and conflict? Can a flag be used to unify diverse ideas, communities, and cultures? 

Stay tuned for the next opening of the Flagpole Project with an original flag design by invisiblehand press (@invisible_hand), and will be followed by the hoisting of a new flag per month throughout the year. Invisiblehand Press makes prints, books, and objects for ritual and ceremony. This spell, the second in an infinite series, was printed on paper with a vandercook 219 and wood type, by Lilah Friedland and Polina Malikin in 2024. 

Follow @artportkingston on IG for more updates, and look out for future open-call opportunities to submit your flag design.

March 1, 2025, 2-5pm – ArtYard Kingston

80 Smith Ave, Kingston

Flag Pole Project

Flying Artist Flags Over the City of Kingston

ArtPort Kingston has invited artists, designers, makers, and thinkers to submit flag designs for our new Flag Pole Project. Launching in Spring 2025, the Project will raise one original artist-made flag per month above ArtYard Kingston at 80 Smith Ave throughout 2025. Each new flag, raised in a communal ceremony, offers an opportunity to rethink the meaning and role of flags in contemporary society.

A flag is a powerful symbol–a human invention that serves both as a form of communication and a symbol of beauty, devotion, and reverence. As symbols of both unity and division, oneness and diversity, flags can evoke strong emotions, rally communities, and communicate ideas across vast distances. Historically, flags have represented nations, ideologies, and movements, but what do they mean to us now? How has their significance evolved? How might it continue to evolve over time?

Run as an open-call, the program seeks designs and flag-like artworks that explore the potential of the flag as a means of communication at this present moment. Applicants were asked to respond to a number of prompts, including: How can the format be reinvented as a tool for connection rather than division? How can a flag transcend traditional symbols of territory, ownership, and conflict? Can a flag be used to unify diverse ideas, communities, and cultures?

Follow @artportkingston on IG for more updates, and look out for future open-call opportunities to submit your flag design.

24/7 Gallery

80 Smith Ave, Kingston, NY

info@artportkingston.org

In times of chaos and uncertainty, Art needs to be present and available all the time for us to find comfort, confidence, distraction, beauty and sanity. We created a way to offer Art for you to see/ experience on your own time schedule, anytime. 24/7 every day there will be Art to see and we like you to become a part of a discussion and leave your feedback at our new project we are proudly calling 24/7 Gallery. The space, transformed from a small, three-walled glass storefront into a continuous platform for artistic expression, is on view to the public 365 days a year, except installation days. Although locked for safety, it offers a window into a world of contemporary art, where local, national, and international artists can experiment with the gallery’s unconventional format. We hope to foster a space that encourages curiosity, dialogue, and connection, where people can engage with art in a way that feels spontaneous and accessible. We aim to bring a bit of color and surprise to midtown Kingston, making this neighborhood feel more vibrant, engaging, and groovy. The beauty of this format is that art is no longer confined to a traditional space with specific hours—here, it’s always present, always accessible, and always engaging.

The gallery will host a rotating selection of installations, exhibitions and events—always free and open for anyone to experience from the street. Whether it’s a single artwork, a full installation, or a collaboration between multiple artists, 24/7 Gallery is intended to be a constantly evolving experience.

Stay tuned for more updates as we prepare to open the gallery, and get ready to see Kingston’s streets through a fresh, colorful lens. We can’t wait to welcome you to 24/7 Gallery, where art never sleeps!