In conversation
Established in June 2022, Cabin Contemporary culls local, urban, and international artists for solo and group exhibitions, hosting contemporary art concepts and dialogue in a rural context, from April through October. Multidisciplinary artist and educator Lance Rautzhan curates exhibits of installation, new media, painting, and outsider art in an outbuilding on his family farm near the Appalachian Trail, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, and Pennsylvania State Game Lands.
The contrast of Rautzhan’s hyper-focused curation in a low ceiling, wood-clad space with surrounding open fields, hilly orchards, and old-growth forest can shock a visitor; it’s pleasantly disorienting to feel mind and body adjust to intimate scale, clarity, and density of meaning after being engulfed in grass, leaves, and sky. Art objects inside feel cosseted by seasonal cues: a door and three windows frame views of a barn that’s home for protected bats, a spring house that once stored wild game, and the family home. Combining diverse art and artists, Rautzhan customizes the Cabin to suit, and documents its unique pressure cooker effect on the local art community and his own practice. Elizabeth Johnson, a painter, curator, and art writer who currently lives in Easton, Pennsylvania, discusses with Lance Rautzhan the genesis of Cabin Contemporary and how this curatorial project has evolved.
EJ: Why Pottsville?
LR: There were no galleries in Schuylkill County for contemporary works and ideas. In 2020, I completed my master’s degree in art education at Penn State, yet my research on embedding pedagogical potential in artworks by way of the artist’s process continued, generating new engagement with my practice that resulted in a successful 2021 solo at Arts+Leisure in New York. I wanted to teach, but not through didactic representation or lessons on technique. I thought if I understood how to create potential educational moments through my own process, it was probable that they existed for other artists.
EJ: What are the pitfalls and benefits of curating in the country?
LR: The difficulties are logistical: working on a tight budget, transporting work, traveling for studio visits, etc. Unlike city galleries that curate toward a brand, I’m a lone wolf in the hollow, shapeshifting with each new season.
EJ: Have you maintained contacts with artists, galleries, and collectors you knew when you lived in NYC?
LR: I lived in Bushwick from 2006-2012, when the Morgan L stop was home to an intimate and nascent scene of artists and galleries. Those connections transcend distance and time. Respect from New York artists, gallerists, arts writers, and collectors carry over into my absence, allowing me to attract well-known artists from New York, Berlin, Tokyo, Melbourne, and Rotterdam.
EJ: What are your chief business concerns?
LR: Cabin is an artist project, not a capitalist project: sales are never front of mind. However, many contacts with collectors have been made precisely because I focus on the art.
EJ: Have you gotten press coverage in the Lehigh Valley?
LR: In 2023, The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a feature article on Cabin Contemporary in conjunction with my first group project, The Devil Made Me Do It, which included an international lineup. The exposure opened me up to the world, or at least the closest big city. Interested Philadelphians often make the two-hour road trip for an opening to experience a thoughtful art exhibit in an unlikely environment, and spend time in the mountains. The local newspaper comes out for a few photos and questions from time to time. I’m grateful for this kind of media attention, but the writing is human interest and event-focused. There are certainly no outlets for art writing out here. Mostly, I use Instagram and email to spread the word. Most usefully useless are the small, square postcards I print for each project. Some people collect them, and I really do love that. I like to imagine Cabin fridge galleries all over eastern Pennsylvania.
EJ: Has listing in Artforum paid off?
LR: Listings in itsArtGuide are free, but there’s a time-consuming application and selection process. Cabin Contemporary is the sole ArtGuide listing for Pottsville. It’s always amusing to see––and satisfying to know––that I put Pottsville on the “art world map.”
The artists, especially the regional and local artists, do a whole lot to bring folks to Cabin. Berks County, the Poconos, and the Harrisburg area are often represented. Joseph O’Neal, a featured painter who relocated to Easton from Bushwick, introduced me to many people in the Lehigh Valley scene, a vibrant and connected art community, among whom several have inhabited the Cabin. Artists, academics, collectors, art lovers, and arts professionals from Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton continue to be especially important. Max Weintraub, CEO of Allentown Art Museum, came for a visit. He liked my Dead Milkmen T-shirt, which I mark as a successful encounter.
EJ: Is Pottsville aware of your art activity?
LR: There are plenty of local artists, but they don’t always show up. Beyond some groups of artists and musicians, there seems to be a lack of curiosity or, maybe, a fear of the unfamiliar. Cabin is not a downtown storefront, so walk-ins are limited to wildlife. I often announce open hours on weekends and sometimes entice the locals with happy hour. Mostly, I work on an appointment model, a foreign concept, perhaps, and one that may portend a sales situation, even though Cabin is an artist project not a capitalist project. I am unfortunately aware of the irony.
EJ: What is your family’s connection to the land? Is it a working farm?
LR: My grandfather bought the 35.78-acre farm from his cousin, when he returned from WW2. My wife, Megan, and I were married here in 2011. After my grandmother passed away, we moved here in 2014. Leased to another farmer, it produces evergreen trees for landscaping and Christmas. I worked summers in the fields from ages 12-20––that was enough for me.
EJ: Are you in contact with other rural gallerists?
LR: Some have reached out, mostly from upstate New York. We are, at best, a mutual admiration society. At least for now, the dynamic is different––Pottsville lacks trains, estates, and getaway homes for the glitterati of NYC.
EJ: How would you describe Appalachian artists and community? Do you feel like you are split 50/50, city and country?
LR: The culture varies but has similarities up and down the mountain range, state to state. I’m a fan of folk horror, and there is a specific Appalachian version that strikes me as a telltale signifier of the sublime, which is initiated by eerie feelings in the woods, mountains, and valleys. Artists intuit this mystical notion, though the community passes days without reflection. I’m often mired in memories of the city but, materially, I’m here in the mountains.
EJ: How did Content Contact evolve? How did you lay out the show?
LR: In the fall and winter of 2024 when I was considering the next season at Cabin, the social conversation was grim. It seemed proper to stitch a collective split but leave an evocative hole where the darkness gets in. I went looking for works haunted by this spirit, researching video and sound artists from outside the US because group projects usually include international artists and importing new media is easier than shipping paintings.
Eventually, I checked in on the work of Melbourne-based animator, filmmaker, and friend Lee Gingold, whom I met in Brooklyn. I found his animated poem, Words of Love (2021),in whichhe subverts language and proposes new words for different kinds of love. Despite all the warmth and welcome in the mix, Lee brings a burned-out warning with his word Chantina. His animation would be projected on the front wall, and it all moved on from there. The space is familiar to me, so, a flow has become easy to establish. I especially like when there is video or sound in the space, permeating the experience.
With Lee as anchor, I went looking for other works that match the mood. I met Marissa Graziano when she was Assistant Director at Freight+Volume; her Girl paintings are the main characters of Content Contact. Maria Stabio, a New York expat that operates an artist’s residency in Tamaqua, which is only twenty miles from Cabin, supplies chaotic, mythological beauty. We were introduced by Jason Nark, the journalist from The Philadelphia Inquirer who penned an article on Cabin and one on Maria’s Bischoff Inn Residency. Jill Odegaard’s paper-and-wire sculptures suggest foundational structure below all that we share. A professor at Cedar Crest College, Jill and I connected in Allentown during my talk at Soft Machine Gallery. Finally, a line from Kierkegaard’s Either/Or provided prop for the existential ethos: “What is love? The dream’s content.”
EJ: Who was the standout visitor of the opening? Will there be events?
LR: A little girl named Eloise, big fan. She’s been coming to the Cabin openings with her mom since 2023. There will be a panel discussion, and the show is extended until May 25, 2025.
EJ: How was the show received?
LR: Marissa’s Girls elicited some strong and polarized conversations. Admittedly, I expected this kind of response and welcomed the debate. Generally, comments were critically favorable.
EJ: Are there practical considerations when you mix artists and genres?
LR: Cabin is small but mighty. The space holds more than you’d expect from the outside. Installation pieces sometimes come just with instructions, so, I’ve had to construct environments with the artist as remote adviser. If I have two sound works, I must choose which will play openly throughout the space and which will be presented with headphones.
With solo projects, I leave the curation and installation to the artist, sidelining myself as guide and helping hand. Artists don’t always make the decisions I would. But so far, I’ve been overwhelmingly satisfied with the results. If a solo artist chooses, I will take the curatorial reigns. I handle all aspects for group projects. I know the space intimately and everything has always come together rather smoothly.
EJ: Is being surprised by results and communicating value to an audience the biggest payoff?
LR: The surprise and communication are akin to making and exhibiting my own work. Response from the audience is vital; but so much is hardly seen or heard, so, I’m mindful that the process is payoff.
Writing press releases is arguably my favorite part of organizing shows: it’s creative and key to communicating my vision to Cabin-goers. I try to avoid typical art PR jargon. Books I’m reading and thinkers I’m engaging with are often catalysts. I don’t mind taking the videos and pics. I do my best, but there is nothing like firsthand experience.
EJ: How does programming evolve?
LR: At the end of a season, I realize that all the projects are somehow connected theoretically or practically. I never come into a season with a concept: mood establishes itself through process, like the pedagogical possibilities embedded by the artist’s process.
EJ: Do you have time for your own practice?
LR: The products of my practice are anamorphous. My hope: an anamorphic process allows experience to become awry producing a gap between parallax views, that reveals the true representation of the object and its educational potential. My approach to painting, sound, and performance/video is a messy system of ritual, repetition, and replication. Repetition in sound shifts perceptions away from time and into the gap.
Performance as ritual serves the social through the individual. Painting as replication serves as a critique of capitalist consumption. It seems that any of these are interchangeable. Certainly, painting as repetitive act shifts perceptions away from time toward potentiality. Likewise, sound as ritual serves the social through the individual. So, no matter the medium, the message must be lost and found in the gap.
I have always surrounded myself with musicians. I spent many years DJing and working service industry jobs. I guest lecture at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, on gallery management, and I’m looking for more academic opportunities.
EJ: What will affect your future curating?
LR: Scheduling. The space is small, and openings are mostly outdoors. Early April weather in east central Pennsylvania is notoriously unpredictable and chilly.
EJ: Do you foresee Pennsylvania supporting more rural galleries along the lines of art in upstate New York?
LR: 2026 will mark the 5th anniversary of the establishment of Cabin Contemporary. I’m planning a special group project to open the season. Also, I’d like to host an international artist for a solo project. Ultimately, the world is too chaotic to trust in goals, so, I’ll keep making my work and seeking opportunities to exhibit and teach, and I’ll appreciate anything that comes my way. I’d welcome any new local gallery initiatives. And my advice if you open an art gallery in a rural place is: Be Nice.
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Lance Rautzhan (born 1974, Pottsville, Pennsylvania) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator. His works include painting, video, performance, installation, and sound. He holds a Master of Professional Studies in Art Education (New Media) from Penn State and received the Professional Master’s Excellence Award from the Graduate School at Penn State for his research on the Beuysian pedagogical potential of process in sound art. Rautzhan has exhibited work at Freight+Volume and Arts+Leisure (NYC); Present Company (BKLYN); DNA Gallery (Provincetown); Index Art Center/The Newark Museum of Art (NJ); and The Hodson Gallery at Hood College (MD), among others. Rautzhan has published in ITCH (Creative Expression Journal, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) and Pickled Matter: New Faces of Contemporary Art (Nippon Publishing, Tokyo), among others. In 2022, he established Cabin Contemporary, a project space in Pottsville, PA, focused on installation, new media, painting, and outsider art.
@cabin_contemporary @lance_rautzhan
About the writer: Elizabeth Johnson is a painter, curator and art writer. She contributes to Two Coats of Paint and The Brooklyn Rail. This is her first interview for Art Spiel. Raised on a farm in Pennsylvania, Johnson graduated from Bard College, lived in San Francisco, and currently lives in Easton, Pennsylvania. She paints multidimensional space based on digitally manipulated, curved and warped images. She has had solo shows at Caffe Museo, SFMOMA (CA); Cañada College (CA); Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture SFMOMA Artists Gallery (CA); Cedar Crest College (PA); and Gross McCleaf Gallery (PA). She curated The Big Painting Show at Workspace Limited (San Francisco) and has organized shows in the Lehigh Valley mixing local and visiting artists at Lafayette College, Cedar Crest College, Brick + Mortar Gallery, and Soft Machine Gallery. She cocurated Pathological Landscape for Marquee Projects (Bellport, NY) and Residential Tourist for Gross McCleaf Gallery (Philadelphia, PA). @elizjohnson2018