Peter Brandt may have had one of the coolest specialty photo shoots of recent years. Throughout 2004 and 2005, he was assigned officially to document the restoration of the legendary Eero Saarinen-designed Trans World Airlines Terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York for the National Park Service and the Library of Congress. Eventually, the works were shown as part of a retrospective of the famed architect’s work at the Museum of the City of New York, and then archived by the New-York Historical Society. Locally, Brandt showed some of his work at his local Bank of America branch in Woodstock.

This month, he’s got a new set of images taken inside the newly restored terminal that is set to reopen to the public this coming June. Titled “Catch It If You Can” in honor of the Spielberg film (and Broadway hit) that used the famed place as a key early-Sixties hip mood setting, the exhibit includes Brandt’s new images from just last month, some of the original Japanese-made wall tiles from the original terminal and a narrative by Brandt that explains his photographs, as well as Saarinen’s achievement. It will all be up during regular banking hours at the Bank of America at 80 Mill Hill Road in Woodstock through May 31. For more on Brandt, visit www.PeterBrandt.com.

Postcards from Arcadia

Brooklyn Art Garage spotlights artists from Ulster County in show opening this Saturday

We go on and on up here about how many artists there are in the Hudson Valley in general and in Ulster County specifically. We see the creative cornucopia of which we speak regularly, with regular gallery opening nights now occurring every weekend of the month, and often in between. But do all those art aficionados down in the so-called Art Capital of the World in New York get it yet?

They will, if they can make it to the up-and-coming nonprofit Brooklyn Art Garage (BAG) in the coming weeks, starting with an opening reception for “12 Artists from Ulster County” this coming Saturday, May 14. Curated by BAG founder Chris Wallace – who has made a habit of showing artists from near his new home in the Catskills – and Chichester-based painter Christie Scheele, the exhibit pulls predominantly from the northern half of the county, with an eye to diverse media, styles of expression and overall sensibility. All is accomplished with a high level of professionalism and orientation toward process over the City scene’s penchant for edgy content and high-concept hijinks.

Chris Hawkins’ singular paintings of figures with third-dimensionality get offset by Kate McGloughlin’s mood-heightened landscape monoprints. Mark Kanter’s muscular abstractions somehow still speak to Polly Law’s bricolaged figures, modernistically Gothic. The washy black-and-white of Bernard Gerson’s expressionistic photography plays well against Anique Taylor’s quiltlike wall sculptures of women’s journeys. Yale Epstein’s classic sense of measured non-representational perfection shares a careful aesthetic with Meredith Rosier’s dark monochromatic drawings of dreamlike mysteries. Lenny Kislin’s large-scale assemblage puns and jokes end up as deeply effective as masterful painter Leslie Bender’s new print series exploring childhood memories, just as Kim Alderman’s mythical ceramics more than match Rosalind Robertson’s evocative works on paper created in the ocean.

It all kicks off on Saturday, May 14 with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Gowanus/Park Slope gallery, located at 168 Seventh Street in Brooklyn. The show then stays up through May 28, open 12 noon to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and by appointment.

Wish our home team well! And Peter and Christie, our great thanks for spreading the word. For further information, call (718) 858-9069 or visit www.brooklynartistsgym.com.