With light streaming from windows overlooking the busy airfield, Concourse A boasts 130 linear feet of wall space that functions as an auxiliary exhibition area to the third floor Gallery. With the advent of this new space in 2005, the Program broadened its ability to showcase the work of regional artists in biannual one person and thematic group shows as well as exhibits from other regional art centers and galleries.
Current Exhibition
Michael Marston, Worlds Apart July, 2011 - January 2012 The geographic features of Iceland and southern Italy could hardly be more different. Yet through these two distinct series of images, Michael Marston explores the transformative qualities of both landscape and photography as a medium. Photographs can serve as very convncing - but illusory - windows on reality. Marston seeks to present us with compositions in which elements of both nature and manufacture reveal surprising new truths and dimensions to the world that we think we know.
The Icelandic landscape defies conventional standards of beauty. Its magnificent mountain ranges and waterfalls, glaciers layered with volcanic ash, fluorescent green mosses and bizarre rock formations testify to Iceland's centuries-old reputation as the Ultima Thule - a land beyond the borders of the known world. Far from the dramatic vistas of Iceland is the languid, sunny south of Italy, where the collision of past and present is also embedded in the culture and the geography of the region. Works of art and architecture that span millennia overlap with the trappings of modern life. The land here is shaped by Mediterranean sun and sea, soft sand and the fertile bounty of generations-old vineyards, olive groves and farms. Italian culture in all its many incarnations has also marked the domain with monuments to men and gods and tourists. In these photographs, Marston chronicles the intersection of this landscape with its long and complex history of the human habitation. And as in his images of Iceland, they reflect moments of discovery - when the elements of light and form and color around him are framed to catalyze a new way of looking at the world.
Lon 2, Digital C-Print	Lon 1, Digital C-Print
Amalfi Coast, Digital C-Print	Villa Rufolo, Digital C-Print
Past Exhibitions
Channing Lefebvre, Associations January - July 2011 Which comes first, the line or the form? In these deeply dimensional drawings, stark, elemental shapes hover over white ground, each composed with the careful repetition of line. Tightly packed strands of ink describe vessels, openings and organic structures that seem at once familiar and abstract. While these configurations were all developed with an interest in how the steady placement of line fills and builds upon space, some of the shapes were made with antique French and ships' curves, used by the artist's grandfather, who was a boat builder. Others draw upon simple but potent figures that may indeed elicit strong associations with natural and mechanical systems.
These drawings begin and end with only what is essential, yet this elegant economy of marks and forms reverberates with connections to things both born and constructed, intimately known and fantastically imagined.
Benjamin Swett, Route 22 June 2010 - January 2011 Route 22 is a 350-mile highway that connects Manhattan and Montreal along the eastern border of New York State. One day, while driving along it, photographer Benjamin Swett started thinking about the contrast between the landscape he could see through his car window and the more romantic one he remembered from his childhood. Without any particular plan, he set out to discover how the pristine wilderness celebrated by James Fenimore Cooper, Thomas Cole, Frederic Church and Antonin Dvorak has evolved into a place marked by the human dramas of post-industrial urban and rural like frayed by decades of tough economic times.
He met painters, historians, mechanics and students, and became strongly attached to the places and people of this historic road. The result of his exploration was this group of evocative photographs - a deeply personal meditation on a complicated and beautiful landscape.
The Best of SUNY 2009 January  - June 2010 Since 2002, The Best of SUNY Art Student Exhibition has showcased the most compelling works of art made by students attending State University of New York campuses. Each piece was originally selected by the student's art department and then chosen for the Best of SUNY exhibition by a panel of arts professionals throughout the SUNY system. New York State has, for decades, been a leader in both the nation and the world in tis support and appreciation for the visual arts. Its galleries, museums and educational institutions spur the visions of young artists, and attract the patrons, dealers, tourists and curators that make up a thriving, international arts community.
Surface Tension June 2009 - January 2010 What shape is thought? What color is memory? What contours describe delight? The paintings and sculptures featured here were made with attention to the way that layers of marks and forms relate to one another and evoke associations with things and events in our lives. With a balance of intuition and intention, paint is poured, brushed, and drawn onto paper and wood; it rolls around, drips down, meanders and disappears; bubbles up, shifts and flickers with fragments of reality. The two sculptures in this exhibition were created with the same spirit - their glossy, tightly wound, oozing forms are playfully delectable and yet goopily repellant.
The surface of these works is where the action lies - thickly detailed here and sparsely minimal there, with brushstrokes now hasty and then deliberate. The surface itself holds meaning - a richly composed plane of texture, movement and interrelationships. And just below that surface, rising up to meet it, are the perceptions, recollections and decisions of these four artists. Artists: Jeanette Finz, David Miller, Victoria Palermo, Wendy Ide Williams
Joy Taylor: Drawings January - June 2009 As in nature, these drawings begin with a single element and proliferate with lush abandon. The germination of each shape yields a dizzying swarm of new growth, and the resulting layers teem with the energy of life unfolding. Taylor begins these pieces by dipping a finger tip in powdered graphite and applying it to frosted polyester film using stencils hand-cut from the same smooth, translucent material. By repeating a single shape and its slight variations, Taylor superimposes form upon form, and sometimes combines pages of the film itself. Areas of rich complexity recede while others are brought into sharp, impenetrable focus.
Scene/Reseen July 2008 - January 2009 In 2008, as Albany International Airport's Art & Culture Program marked its tenth year of presenting exhibitions, we honor the artists who have made our region a culturally vibrant one. and how better than through the works of painters whose subject is our local landscape? The geography of this area has been celebrated by painters for generations, beginning with the Hudson River School artists, who established the first uniquely American painting tradition in the mid 19th century. Much of what compelled these artists to depict the splendor of the Hudson River Valley, the Adirondacks, Catskills and other features of this region is also what motivates artists to do so today.
Artists: Russell DeYoung, Gail Kort, Robert Moylan, Harry Orlyk, Leigh Palmer

Sharon Bates, Director
Art & Culture Program
Albany International Airport Gallery hours:
7:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m. daily.
For additional information phone: 518.242.2241 or email arts@albanyairport.com