NARROWSBURG, N.Y. — Bright colors, moving sculptures, and inventive wooden figures come together this spring at the Ruffed Grouse Gallery, where two local artists from different generations explore imagination, motion, and playful forms.
The exhibit, “Out of Hand and Foot,” features 28-year-old Tanner Simon and 80-year-old Charles Farless. The opening reception is April 11 from 5 to 8 p.m.
Gallery director Ryan Ward described the exhibit as a “multi-generational exhibition” that brings the two artists together under cross connections.
“They’re playing off of each other in great ways and as far as the title goes, they’re both making work that deals with other appendages and that’s represented in painting and wood carving and some kinetic sculpture actually. So we could resist having a little playful title there.”
A Look at the Artists
Ward said Simon grew up in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and is a fifth-generation Honesdalean.
“He grew up at the Wayne County Fair running some of the concession stands and the games and that had a big influence on him which you can see in the art making with the color and the lights and the movement. And he also grew up in junkyards around Honesdale and Northeastern Pennsylvania, and he grew up as a tinkerer and inventor and he would come up with all sorts of wild mechanical devices and that’s had a huge influence on his art making.”
Ward described Simon’s studio as a laboratory.
“It’s a bit of a laboratory. He’s a bit of a mad scientist in there. And it’s really, really wild work and ranging from traditional… he employs traditional painting techniques and still has a love for, let’s say, oil paint application on canvas, but with the way that his mind works, he’s also always experimenting with mechanical devices and wall-hanging kinetic sculpture. I mean, there are even lasers happening in his studio.”
Farless grew up on Staten Island and worked as a ferry operator in New York City.
“Charles, for many years, was a ferry operator, ferry boat driver in New York City and he grew up in Staten Island. He served in the army and he almost reminds me of kind of like a reluctant artist because he would draw and paint and make sculpture on the side, but he’s really built a… he’s primarily self-taught and he’s really built quite the body of work in many different series: wood-carving that he calls Walking Heads, through these arm creatures that you’ll see in the exhibition, and paint and the painted version of that. And he has multiple different series: Fantastic Flowers. The descriptors really are inventive and imaginative with Charles as well. And he was in the 80s and 90s involved in the New York City art scene and now he lives and works right over in Callicoon up from the gallery.”
Image: Charles Farless | New Hair Style | 2026 |oil on carved wood | 7.75×3×4″ (Ruffed Grouse Gallery)