Picnic Party In The Park

Bring your own Fabulous Fantasy Picnic blanket, basket, and elegant dinner to celebrate your creative flair! We’re also holding a Creative Hat Contest—let art go to your head by creating a one of a kind hat for the event!

Hats will be judged by hosts, Karen Suen-Cooper and Martin Cooper, who will present awards in the following categories: “Inspired by Nature,” “Inspired by Architecture,” “Inspired by Film or Literature,” “Inspired by Music,” “Inspired by Art Omi,” and “Crowd Favorite.” Winners will be featured on Art Omi’s Instagram seen by 30K followers, and will receive a professional portrait wearing your winning hat.

Composer Phil Kline will round off the evening with the world premiere of his time-based installation, last words before disappearing from the face of the earth. Written explicitly to be presented in a quiet meadow in 2001, Kline has not publicly performed the piece until now, hoping to find a venue that suited his vision. He at last found the perfect location while walking through the fields at Art Omi.

Support Art Omi by buying tickets for only $100 per person! You’ll receive:

• Specialty Cocktail by Angus Van Beusichem, Proprietor & Liquids Curator of The People’s Pub in Chatham, NY
• Entry in the Creative Hat Contest and a chance to be featured on Art Omi’s Instagram
• Entry in a raffle for a $100 gift certificate the Punctilious Mr. P’s Place Card Company
• Your song added to our Spotify Picnic Playlist, specially curated by Jeffrey Lependorf, Director of Art Omi: Music
• World Premiere of last words before disappearing from the face of the earth by Phil Kline
• 10% off tickets to the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Caleb Teicher & Company performance at PS21 in Chatham just after the Picnic Party wraps up!
• A fabulous time!!

Children 15 years old and under may attend free of charge.

For those of you who want to spend your creative energy working on your hat rather than your picnic: we’ve teamed up with Bartlett House, who will offer a special picnic for two to attendees! Pick up your picnic when you arrive, where it will be waiting with your name on it. Picnics are $50, and include: a baguette, two (vegan) sandwiches, trail mix, Kinderhook Creek Cheese, Bartlett House jam, mixed olives, and lemon-verbena lemonade. To place your order, call 518 392 7787.

Unable to join us in person? Support us from the comfort of your own home, by being a Community Sponsor and providing free tickets to members of our community! You can still participate by sending us a photo or video of your extravagant picnic hat before the event to enter the hat contest to enter. You’ll be entered into the raffle, and you can add music to our Picnic Playlist! Share your hat with us by posting a photo with #PicnicPartyArtOmi on Instagram.

Karen Suen-Cooper and Martin Cooper are fashion designers who are co-founders of The Punctilious Mr. P’s Place Card Company, a luxury home accessories brand that celebrates the goodness of gathering. The bigger idea behind their little illustrated place cards is simple: “find joy in the company you keep and cherish these relationships, because life is uncertain and making joy is the one thing we can action when the world stops making sense.” This is the heart of The Joy Economy™, a life compass they created that points to the purpose and pleasure of commerce. The brand is based in the hamlet of Old Chatham, in New York’s bucolic Hudson River Valley.

Raised in Akron, Ohio, Phil Kline came to New York City to study poetry with Kenneth Koch and David Shapiro at Columbia. He then moved into the downtown arts world, founding the band the Del-Byzanteens with Jim Jarmusch, Luc Sante and James Nares, collaborating with Nan Goldin on the soundtrack to The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and playing guitar in the notorious Glenn Branca Ensemble. Inspired by the tape music of Steve Reich and Brian Eno, he created an orchestra of boomboxes for the Christmas classic Unsilent Night, now presented annually in towns around the world, including at Art Omi.