I left Kingston for good in March 2025, but visiting the Hudson Valley in the summer always inspires a bit of wistfulness. The grass glows green and the sky bleeds blue. All of nature’s colors are turned up past the point of reason, which is the point.

This spring, I signed up for a four-session screenprinting class at Gowanus Print Lab in Industry City, Brooklyn. For years, I’d been wanting to explore this technique. Now was the time. The tactile delights were many. The ink-spattered workshop floor; fine mesh screens whose stainless steel frames bore traces of all the projects that came before; the factory-sized, octopus-armed T-shirt press; stacks of plastic takeout containers filled with pigment; and a spacious worktable under bright lights. Just being there felt like a thing.

I don’t subscribe to any religion, but if I did, it would be jazz. A group of musicians unite to play a song. To play it their way. Each one takes a turn at interpreting it themselves while the bandmates give them space to do so. The audience eagerly joins them on this exploration into the unknown and the improvised. The only doctrine for the musicians is that they must keep hold of the melody in some way. Beyond that, they are free to be themselves and be part of the group. The ideal existence. 

Like Hammer herself, the camerawork hungrily searches for meaningful connection. Framing is often tight and loose, cutting off a forehead or losing focus as it zooms in while a person speaks. The camera sees the way we might—or, rather, how Hammer does—noticing everything, getting ultra close so as not to miss any detail or quirk. The effect is neither graphic nor stylized. It’s just curious. Genuinely and omnivorously curious.

The film, partially scripted and part improvisation, follows three caretakers at a hut, or lodge, in the French Alps: a 20-something, 40-something, and 60-something. All women. They tend the hut alone, and we watch each season as they get dropped off at the hut, acquaint themselves with their temporary home, chop wood, make meals, gaze out the window, greet the hikers who’ll be bunking there, perform their toilette, and climb into their bed at night. Who are these women? 

Accumulation, shifts in scale, and the content of the work itself orchestrate the energy of the exhibition experience. Wild bursts of movement both demonstrated and implied: David Black’s galloping horses, John Divola’s “Dogs Chasing My Cars in the Desert,” the eruptive potential of Takashi Homma’s Mount Fuji, and the tangling tongues and splayed legs of Thomas Ruff’s “Nudes.”

I took my Leica to the edge of the lake. The grass had grown out and was soft as a dog’s fur. The water was clear enough to see a turtle the size of a dinner plate languidly swimming below the surface. Ducks, geese, turtles, and the occasional swan. Bathing, swimming, dining, honking, parenting. Everyone going about their Friday-night business.

Push through heavy black velvet curtains, corporeal in their heft. Encounter silent dark rooms. You’ve swathed your phone in a wetsuit-like sheaf, per the rules, no photos allowed. You’ve picked up a blue clickable LED light that must be squeezed to illuminate. The device is the size of a nickel. To orient yourself, you press this device tightly between forefinger and thumb, and a blue light shines, casting a jubilant circle.

A hike whose last couple of miles wound through the woods, over large sections of dangerously smooth ice, gnarled roots, and frighteningly frictionless rock formations. My pace was quick, but with a long way to go and the clock rounding 5 pm, yikes. And though I was warmly dressed, it was 19 degrees and dropping…

Last night, the Goddess Party filled the Old Dutch Church with modern-day visions of the feminine. Sexy because it feels good, not angling for male approval. Tattoos, eyeliner, lipstick, soft curves, hot licks. Covers of PJ Harvey, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Go-Go's, Le Tigre, Panda Bear, and a Bulgarian field song. It felt like anything goes, and we can all go there together. All on a dark, quiet street one night in the town of Kingston.

What best describes the day is the drive back to the hotel. A sky creamy blue and dark round the edges. Brake lights, headlights, and yellow stripes. Soft curves of mountains like cut felt. A nearly full moon keeping watch.