Upstate Art Weekend, June 25-29 (11am-6pm)


Octagon House • 21 Walnut Street, Catskill NY 12414

LOUCHE COMPANY 

Queens, clowns, demons, and dolls, fashionably attired and chicly undressed, Louche Company presents the work of Sita Gómez, Baker Overstreet, and Claudia Renfro. Working in different materials, Gómez in paint and assemblage, Overstreet in three dimensionally stuffed canvas, and Renfro in embroidery and bronze, these three artists reshape figurative contours to envision alternative gender narratives. Gómez’s assemblages depict women from historic scenarios with hand crafted butts and breasts exalting in sensuality and open defiance. Overstreet’s canvas figurines revel in an androgynous and at times creaturelike gender in their delicate bauhausian and cabaret costumes. Renfro’s embroideries are diabolical doodles reminiscent of George Gross, where hybrid animals, devils, and women balance on unicycles and tightropes. Renfro’s bronzes are like jagged drawings brought to life with rough hewn surfaces and the imprint of handmaking and casting. 

Each of these artists is an eccentric yet seen together they are like triplets born of folk art, expressionism, rebellion, and tinkering. Finding their way to the Octagon, a 19th century architectural novelty owned by artist and occult scholar Jesse Bransford, the silken acrobats, canvas goblins and curvaceous wild women are at home, gossiping and cavorting across rooms of a domestic and magical atmosphere. The exhibition is curated by Hannah Barrett, painter of dandy monsters and celebrant of gender nonconformity. 

Click to download the Louche Gallery Checklist (PDF) 

BIOS 


Sita Gómez, Brigham Young and His Wives, 1966, assemblage and acrylic on wood, 26" x 22"

 

Sita Gomez

Sita Gómez de Kenelba is a Cuban-American artist whose work explores, challenges, and celebrates the universal themes of gender, sexuality, history, and religion. Shaped by her multicultural upbringing, concurrent childhood experiences of fleeing Nazi occupied Paris and then Castro’s revolution, Gómez stands among a select few women of the era in her methods and depictions of uniquely stylized dramatic imagery. After fleeing Cuba in 1958, Gómez attended the High School for Music and Art in NYC and is a graduate of Parsons School of Design (1955).

  

  

  

  

  

  


Baker Overstreet, The Witch, 2026, acrylic on canvas and mixed media, 26" x 24"

 

Baker Overstreet originally from Georgia, received a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from Yale University. Since moving to New York, Overstreet has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including solos at Foyer Gallery, Athens, Georgia and Soloway Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. In 2019 Overstreet’s work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Morris Museum in Augusta. 

  

  

  

  

  

  


Claudia Renfro, Circus Tent, 2024, embroidery on linen, 20" x 31"

  

Claudia Renfro grew up in New Jersey and New York City and attended Cooper Union and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Renfro has exhibited widely in New York and the Hudson Valley, most recently at Hudson Hall, Eric Firestone Gallery, New York, NY, Art Cake, Brooklyn, NY, The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY as well as September Gallery in Kinderhook, NY. In addition, Renfro has twice participated in the Outsider Art Fair.