Curated by Bibiana Huang Matheis, founder of Inspiration Art Group International.  This is Bibiana's second HVMOCA curated exhibition of artists addressing ecological issues, sustainability, climate change, endangered species, clean water, deforestation and more.  Through an open call, artists are drawn from the international as well as the local community.

We were delighted that so many of you joined us on January 21st for the opening of our juried exhibition, ‘Eye of the Needle.’  We, at HVMOCA, are very excited about the way the show came together and the high quality of the applicants works.

Which has put us in a bit of a quandary

There are three awards being offered to recognize outstanding quality. We are in the enviable position of having to choose from many high-quality applications- a difficult decision, and one that we now look to our audience to help.

Let us know your top 3 choices.

• The only requirement is that you have seen the exhibition in person

• You may use online images to refresh your memory (

• E-mail your three choices, in order of preference: 1st, 2nd or 3rd place, to info@hudsonvalleymoca.org Thank you in advance for your participation

Closing Reception for ‘Eye of the Needle’ and Awards Presentations:

Saturday, April 22, 3-5 PM

Artist Talks: An opportunity for exhibiting artists to speak about their works, their processes, and their creative inspirations.  If you are an artist in the exhibition let us know in advance if you would like to speak and wish to submit 3 images to be projected so that the audience has a greater sense of your practice.  Deadline for image submissions: April 17th, 2023, midnight. 

Performance: From Studio Theater in Exile – on stage for the awards – a performance/talk by Marcy Friedman and one of the Writing the Walls poets 

Presentation of Artist Awards,

Wine and hors d’oeuvres reception

Writing the Walls 2023 will consist of plays, poems, monologues, and stories inspired  by visual art works from the Through the Eye of the Needle exhibit and selected pieces from How We Live II. Pieces will be performed  on the Studio Theater in Exile’s stage housed at Hudson Valley MOCA in March, possibly extended into April. Images and  submission instructions are on the websites and linked eblasts in January.

A bit of history: Writing the Walls began in 2005 when Artistic Director MaraMills (STIE) and  Livia Straus,co-founder Hudson Valley MOCAcreated WTW and invited poets and playwrights to contribute original works reflective of their interaction with the art.  Until Quarantine 2020 there were yearly on-site performances at HVMOCA where the audience moved from artwork to artwork and the poets read in front of them. To keep tradition during the COVID Quarantine STIE and HVMOCA produced Climbing the Walls and Writing (Off) the Walls online.  In 2022, STIE became formally housed in the HVMOCA’s black box, complete with stage, sound, lights, projection,and seating.

For the 2023 Writing the Walls performances will be in the theater to take advantage of having a theater space that allows us, in the spirit of Through The Eye of the Needle Exhibit, to weave performance genres.  

Submissions are based on inspiration from HVMOCA’s upstairs gallery juried exhibition, Through the Eye of the Needle, and certain pieces from the How We Live II exhibit in the Main Gallery. Please select 1 image. Attached are PDF images of the artwork in the exhibitions chosen for inclusion and the submissions directions.

Through the Eye of the Needle opens on January 21 and closes March 18,2023. If you want to see the works, let the front desk you are there as a Writing the Walls writer for one free admission.

"A full life in 25 years". A celebration of forgotten icon Olive Thomas.
Coal miner's daughter, Ziegfeld girl, actress, Hollywood star, married to Jack Pickford, dead at 25.
An original play staged and filmed by Studio Theater in Exile, available for online streaming.

Written by John Arco
Starring Dakota Martin as Olive Thomas
Director: Mara Mills • Producer: Jeremy Gratt
Crew: Morgan Schroff, Marcus Chavez

Staged and Filmed by Studio Theater in Exile at Hudson Valley MOCA, Peekskill NY

NOT GOD evokes the delicate bond between a doctor struggling with limitations and a patient in search of clarity and dignity.The play, in poetry, was written by renowned poet and writer, Marc J. Straus, recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Award in the Humanities from Yale, a Yaddo Residency, Annual Writing Award from NYU Bellevue, and more.

‍Bettina Altman (Patient) is thrilled to make her Studio Theater in Exile debut. A native New Yorker, Bettina began her acting career as a company member with the Hedgerow Theatre in Moylan, Pennsylvania, where she appeared in numerous productions including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Caroline) and John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves (the Little Nun).

Marc J. Straus is a poet, writer, doctor, and art collector who lives with his wife, Livia, in Chappaqua, New York. He is the author of numerous scientific papers and articles on contemporary art, and has published four poetry collections, three by TriQuarterly Books – Northwestern University Press, including Not God, staged Off Broadway in an earlier iteration. His poems and stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, and many other literary journals. One-Legged Mongoose, a recently published memoir of the years he was ages 10 – 12 memoir and narrated by the boy he was then, has been #1 Best Seller on Amazon.