News Phil Young to Exhibit “Onsite Insight” at Fenimore Art Museum In July 2021

June 30, 2021

Hartwick College Professor Emeritus of Art Phil Young will exhibit artwork, including new and recent pieces, at thePhil Young Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY, from July 2-25. His show, “Onsite Insight,” features multimedia works created on location or in studios in response to what he sees as “ritual spaces in the body of the land.” They are places of disclosure, embodiment, and sacred to him, he said, and believes working on-site yields the deepest insight.

Young taught art at Hartwick College for 35 years, beginning 1978. Despite his upstate New York residence, he said, “the red clay of Oklahoma still runs in my veins.” Born and raised in Oklahoma, with an ongoing love and reverence for the land, Young is of Scots/Irish/Cherokee heritage. His work is “imbued with resistant/resilient/remembered family stories of humor and healing. The imprint of various communities of faith, art, academia (especially colleagues and students), and Multiple Sclerosis support, also bear indelible marks.”

He is a recipient of a Millay Colony Residency, Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in Painting and Sculpture, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture, as well as teaching and research awards from Hartwick College.

Young’s work has been exhibited at the Heard Museum; William Benton Museum; Munson-Williams Proctor Museum of Art; Atlanta History Center; Art-in-General and the Swiss Institute in NYC; University of Arizona Museum of Art; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art; Cornell University; and other local and regional venues. He was also featured in national exhibitions including ARTRAIN, USA’s four-year traveling show, “Native Views, Contemporary American Culture: Contemporary Native American Art.”

His art has been reproduced in On the Beaten Track; The Lure of the Local; Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West; Visit TeePee Town; The New Art Examiner; Akwe:kon Journal; Stone Canoe; and in numerous catalogues and reviews.

Young’s work will be on display in the museum’s Community Gallery, on the second floor, until July 25. For more information on the exhibit, visit the Fenimore Museum’s website.