This Exhibit is past. Visit our Exhibitions page for information on the current programming.

Nature Contained

Artwork by Jessica Dalrymple, K. Haskell, & Suzy Kopf

May 15, 2021 – June 25, 2021

Opening Reception May 15, 2021,  3 pm – 5 pm.

Gallery hours Friday-Sunday, Noon – 3 pm.

In their new site-specific collaborative and individual works, artists Jessica Dalrymple, K. Haskell and Suzy Kopf respond to growth and death in the Old Stone House gardens. 

In conjunction with We’re Still Here…Creative Outdoor Bazaar and outdoor portrait show, organized in partnership with Arts Gowanus.

Enjoy this virtual tour slide show of the exhibition, photographed by Etienne Frossard.

Public Program- Sunday, June 13, 11 am-12:30 pm: Meditative Garden Journaling with Jessica Dalrymple in the OSH garden

Watch the recording of Craft Your Artist Statement with Suzy Kopf online at any time.

In their new site-specific collaborative and individual works, artists Jessica Dalrymple, K. Haskell and Suzy Kopf respond to growth and death in the Old Stone House (OSH) garden. Inspired by visits the artists made pre-COVID-19 to the garden in summer and fall of 2019, three large collaborative pieces represent Haskell, Kopf and Dalrymple’s first time merging their signature styles together to make a new body of work. Combining watercolor collage, ink on mylar, and oil on paper, these works engage with the life cycle of urban nature, contained. They encourage a deeper understanding of specific plant life and celebrate the beauty of the cyclical quality of nature, to help catalyze individual and collective rejuvenation after a year of global pandemic. In contrast to its surrounding neighborhood, OSH and its grounds harken back to an older Brooklyn where people subsisted, at least in part, on food they could grow and forage themselves. The works in Nature Contained also evoke the importance of acknowledging Brooklyn’s indigenous past, native plants, and sustainable practices.

Additional works by the individual artists include Jessica Dalrymple’s Three Siblings mixed media piece that honors the Native American farming tradition of companion planting and serves as a visual metaphor for the community spirit fostered by the OSH gardens. K. Haskell’s graphic studies in the Flourished and Decomposed series amplify sometimes-overlooked elements of nature in various parts of the life cycle. Their source material includes OSH’s garden and local yards, parks, tree pit gardens, and bodegas. Suzy Kopf’s collage depicts the gardens in high summer using recycled scraps of paper as part of her no-waste studio practice. Visitors can take and plant her coloring pages printed on seed paper, to grow wildflowers native to New York and found in the OSH garden.

About the Artists:

Suzy Kopf was raised in Silicon Valley, on a cul-de-sac that used to be a plum orchard that used to be an army encampment on occupied Ramaytush land. Suzy currently lives and works in Baltimore, in a house on occupied Piscataway land that was once the right field of the second Oriole Stadium. She completed her MFA in Studio Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and holds a BFA in Fine Arts from Parsons and a BA in Art History from Eugene Lang College. She has attended numerous residency fellowships including Kala, The Studios at Mass MoCA, Playa and VCCA. She received a Design History Society Travel Grant as well as several research grants to support her art practice. She regularly leads workshops and lectures on professional development for artists. She teaches watercolor painting and museum studies at Johns Hopkins University and MICA.   Kopf has previously made paintings, artist books and wallpaper that address the division people make between the desirability of perennial plants and weeds. In 2017, Kopf collaborated with the Gowanus Canal Conservancy to create “Gowanus Natives” a brochure detailing ten plants indigenous to Brooklyn and how to cultivate them.  

K. Haskell is an interdisciplinary visual artist, draftsperson, and illustrator. Originally from the Boston area, they moved to New York in 2001 to pursue a BA from Marymount Manhattan College in Graphic Design. Since graduating in 2005, Haskell has shown in a variety of venues throughout New York, including The Gershwin Hotel, Midoma Gallery, The Governors Island Art Fair, The Old Stone House and Trestle Gallery. Haskell recently completed their MFA at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in the Boston Low Residency MFA Program, Summer 2020. Haskell’s Decomposed series seeks to reveal the beauty in decay, while their accompanying Flourished series focuses on the botanical and desirable elements of nature in various parts of the life cycle. Their delicately rendered pen and ink drawings on paper and translucent Mylar aim to reveal the aesthetic within sometimes disturbing subjects. Haskell’s Pronouns are They, Them, Theirs. 

Jessica Dalrymple studied Fine Art at Hamilton College and trained as a painter at The Art Student’s League of New York. She has exhibited with many national and regional juried shows and has received numerous awards including the Fenimore Award which granted her a solo exhibit at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY. She is also earning her certificate in horticulture from Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, is a licensed city tree pruner through Trees New York. She instructs oil painting and contemporary botanical drawing for Trestle Workshops, Hamilton College, and The Old Stone House Brooklyn. She has also collaborated with local organizations to create art events that raise awareness about the local landscape and environmental justice issues such as; co-creating ArtLab Gowanus, a pop-up structure hosting landscape related art workshops taught by local artists, made possible by the Gowanus Public Art Grant, applied for in collaboration with The Gowanus Canal Conservancy (2015). In 2014 she created a Plein Air On The Canal event hosting organizations such as local chapters of The Urban Sketchers and Oil Painters of America on the banks of the canal to collectively capture the evolving landscape. Other events include a Spring Botanical Draw for the Gowanus Dredgers focusing on local vegetation, multiple Botanical Drawing events for The Old Stone House Brooklyn featuring their historic gardens, and a Botanical Drink N Drawing event to raise funds for The Human Impact Institute. Most recently she leads monthly Nature Journaling Hikes through Prospect Park, sketching the park’s flora and fauna.

About the Curator: Katherine Gressel, the Old Stone House & Washington Park’s Contemporary Art Curator, is a New York‐based curator, artist, and writer focused on site‐specific art. She earned her BA in art from Yale and MA in arts administration from Columbia. Katherine’s previous exhibits dealing with such topics as income inequality, urban agriculture, and parks have been recognized by the New York Times, Time Out New York, Hyperallergic, News 12 Brooklyn, and DNAInfo. In addition to organizing eleven major exhibitions to date at the Old Stone House, Katherine has curated for FIGMENT, No Longer Empty, St. Francis College, and Brooklyn Historical Society, and was the 2016 NARS Foundation emerging curator.  She was selected for the 2015 Independent Curators International (ICI) Curatorial Intensive in New Orleans. Katherine has written and presented on public and community art issues for Createquity, Americans for the Arts, and Public Art Dialogue, among others. Katherine also served as Programs Manager at Smack Mellon Gallery from 2010-2014, and has worked and consulted for diverse nonprofits.

Nature Contained is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.