WEIRDOS IN THE WOODS

A REAL Upstate Art-Life Adventure

Weirdos in the Woods is a three-day, artist-driven festival happening across the Hudson Valley over Labor Day Weekend, September 4–6, 2026. Organized by The Tavern and Three Phase Center in Stone Ridge, NY, in collaboration with Rosekill Performance Art Farm in Rosendale, NY, Weirdos in the Woods is a roaming celebration of performance, sound, self-directed creative practice, electronic arts, and community imagination.

Over the course of the weekend, artists, musicians, performers, and makers gather across three host venues for exhibitions, performances, installations, demonstrations, lectures, situations, food, and collective experiences.

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• Friday, September 4, 2026 at The Tavern for music and performance

• Saturday, September 5, 2026 at Three Phase Center for large-scale installations, demonstrations, exhibitions, and performance

• Sunday, September 6, 2026 at Rosekill Performance Art Farm for a closing day of performance, food, fire, swimming, and camping

 

Each day of Weirdos in the Woods is $20 to attend.

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Weirdos in the Woods is more than a festival. It’s an experiment. Many of the artists we feature balance deep creative practices with day jobs in trades, tech, care work, education, construction, service work, and other forms of labor. We ask a simple but urgent question: How can artists build real, sustainable lives in the places where they live?

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At a time when institutional and government funding continues to fall short, Weirdos in the Woods is building a community-funded alternative platform grounded in fun, shared responsibility, resourcefulness, and collective joy. We raise money through wild fundraisers like arm wrestling tournaments, mud wrestling showdowns, live performances, and other forms of high-spirited community mischief.

 

Our 2026 fundraisers are:

• Saturday, July 4, 2026 at Three Phase Center: arm wrestling tournament and other high-spirited behavior

• Saturday, July 25, 2026 at Rosekill Performance Art Farm: Mud Wrestling & Medieval Feast

• Sunday, August 23, 2026 at The Tavern: Anatomy Avant Garde

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We will also have hand screen-printed Weirdos in the Woods shirts for sale throughout the festival. Each one is printed by hand on a donated T-shirt, so every shirt is different. Shirts are $20, and the proceeds help us pay participating artists.

Every dollar we raise goes toward paying artists.

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Weirdos in the Woods is a celebration of art as a way of life and a social sculpture made by people acting on the idea that artists and creative-behaving people can participate in building something imaginary like a new economic system. Together, we are building a way for artists to make a living and show why behaving creatively matters.

 

HERE'S WHAT'S COMING FOR 2026:

 

Weirdos Day 1: Friday September 4, 2026 at The Tavern in Stone Ridge, NY

 

The Tavern @thetavernstoneridge

A prominent intimate live venue, arts residency, and community hub dedicated to avant garde jazz and improvised music.

www.tavernstoneridge.org

 

PuppetWarp

PuppetWarp is a collaborative project by Pieter Schoolwerth, Phil Vanderhyden, and Aaron Dilloway that turns the CGI files behind Schoolwerth’s paintings into delirious looping animations with full soundtracks. Moving between painting, digital modeling, animation, and experimental sound, the work warps bodies, identities, and virtual spaces into unstable figures that seem to peel apart, reassemble, and perform themselves.

 

Phil Vanderhyden @phil_vanderhyden 

Phil Vanderhyden is a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, sculpture, animation, performance, writing, and curatorial practice, with recent work centered on large-scale immersive computer animation and theatrical environments. His work pulls together horror films, role-playing games, nineteenth-century theater, fortune telling, product design, disaster movies, and casino aesthetics, using digital tools to build strange visual worlds that hover between spectacle, simulation, and unease.

 

Pieter Schoolwerth @get_a_head

Pieter Schoolwerth is a New York-based artist whose work combines painting, digital modeling, animation, and performance to explore how bodies and identities are reshaped by networked and virtual life.

 

Aaron Dilloway @medicinestunts

Aaron Dilloway is an experimental musician and sound artist known for visceral tape manipulation, electronics, loops, and noise that turn repetition, distortion, and decay into intensely physical listening experiences.

 

Shakoor Hakeem @shakoorhakeem

Shakoor Hakeem is a percussionist and improviser whose work draws on Afro-diasporic rhythmic traditions, experimental practice, and deep listening, using percussion to shape texture, space, and collective sound. Rooted in Philadelphia’s creative music scene, his playing balances restraint, risk, and spiritual intention within contemporary jazz and improvisation.Shakoor Hakeem is a percussionist and improviser whose work expands the role of rhythm in contemporary jazz and creative music. Rooted in Afro-diasporic traditions yet shaped by experimental practice, Hakeem approaches percussion as a tool for texture, space, and collective ritual rather than strict timekeeping. His playing emphasizes tone, restraint, and deep listening, often transforming the ensemble into a living, breathing sound environment.

Emerging from the fertile Philadelphia creative music scene, Hakeem has performed and collaborated with respected jazz and avant-garde artists, engaging directly with lineages shaped by legendary improvisers and elders of the music. Through these collaborations, he has absorbed the philosophies of musicians who view jazz as a living tradition—one that values cultural memory, risk, and spiritual intention as much as technique.

Rather than imitate the past, Hakeem abstracts its lessons, blending ancestral rhythmic knowledge with contemporary improvisation. His work reflects a commitment to innovation through listening, community, and integrity, positioning him as a vital voice in the ongoing evolution of creative jazz and experimental percussion.

 

Peyton Pleninger @p.e.y.t.0.n

Peyton Pleninger is a saxophonist, improviser, bandleader, astrologer and guerilla contractor, forging a personal path that challenges the boundaries of what it means to be a musician. Pleninger worked as a mentee of Milford Graves from 2019 until his passing in 2021, which sparked his interest in many disciplines, such as construction and Cardiology. 

Pleninger has performed and recorded with Henry Threadgill (The Other One, Pi Recordings 2023), Phil Haynes (Terra, Rezonance, Willosophy, Anatomy Avant Garde, Mysteries, Earth Song), Tani Tabbal and John Benitez.

Pleninger has released three solo records, TUNDRA (Tavern Records 2026), Wind Music (self-release 2022), and Post Human Folk Dances (Polyfold Records 2022) In early 2022, Pleninger purchased The Tavern, a defunct roadhouse in upstate New York, which he is rebuilding into an arts research center. The Tavern presents a variety of concerts, music theory/improvisation workshops, plus astrology forecasts, sound baths, and artist residents’ work. The Tavern is the original test space for Anatomy Avant Garde, a performance Pleninger developed which involves improvising in response to a participants heartbeat along with a live painting element

 

Adam Siegel

Adam Siegel is an alto saxophonist who regularly performs and records throughout the Hudson Valley and New York. With years of performance experience, Siegel has shared the stage with such greats as Joe Magnarelli, Tani Tabbal, Michael Bisio, and more. Tony Dudley-Evans of London Jazz News writes of a recent album release by Tani Tabbal: "Adam Siegel is a real discovery; he has a strong tone on the alto and the ability to interact very effectively with his colleagues." Jan Granlie – editor-in-chief of the publication Salt Peanuts and formerly of Jazznytt – writes: "Adam Siegel … is an excellent technician… there are many younger alto saxophonists who can learn a lot from the way he plays.” 

 

Joe Doubleday @joedoubleday

Born in Oklahoma and trained at Berklee and Juilliard, vibraphonist Joe Doubleday draws from Lionel Hampton and the Great American Songbook while pushing the instrument with his own sharp, expressive style. His playing can move from soft, ringing resonance to fast, hard-struck torrents of notes, giving familiar jazz language a lively, restless edge.

 

Pete Swanson @peterswansonmusic 

Pete Swanson is a bass player living in NYC.

 

Aaron Yanda 

Aaron Yanda is an active drummer performing in NYC and the Hudson Valley.

 

Biotonic

Biotonic performs Peyton Pleninger’s original music in a style he refers to as “animal maximalism.” This is fiery, exuberant, high-energy, way too-much-of-everything music that pushes melody, rhythm, and improvisation totally off the edge. With Adam Siegel now joining the band on saxophone, the quartet brings a sense of joyful excess. The music is energetic, made to be immediate, and fully alive.

 

Will McEvoy

Will was born in the midst of a hurricane in South Carolina. His first gig was a weekly with One Eyed Johnny in a dingy country bar. He plays the upright Bass

 

Bram Kinckeloe @bramkincheloe

Bram Kincheloe is a professional  musician and writer. Originally from the Bay area, he moved to NYC when he was 16 to pursue a career in Jazz drumming. He has performed with Lee Konitz, Branford Marsalis, Ambrose Akinmusire and Ben Street. He runs Sempervirens Studio in High Falls, NY.

 

Luke Stewart @takealukearound

Luke Stewart is a bassist, improviser-composer, organizer, and writer whose work moves through free jazz, punk, experimental music, and the larger histories of Black creative music. A founding member of Irreversible Entanglements and co-leader of Blacks’ Myths, Stewart treats the bass as both a rhythmic engine and a resonant physical object, working between wood, electricity, improvisation, and deep listening.

 

Trae Crudup @traedrummer_

Warren “Trae” Crudup III is a New York-based drummer whose playing is rooted in gospel and stretches through jazz, funk, go-go, free improvisation, and experimental music. As one half of BLACKS’ MYTHS with bassist Luke Stewart, Crudup brings explosive rhythmic force together with sensitivity and ceremonial depth, using percussion to move between groove, noise, memory, and physical sound.

 

Blacks’ Myths @blacks_myths

Blacks' Myths is a duo from Washington, DC, composed of Luke Stewart on bass and Warren G. "Trae" Crudup III on drums.

Two of DC's most active and versatile musicians, Stewart and Crudup build symbiotic rhythmic pieces by locking into something both hypnotic and free. Their collaboration is redefining the rhythm section by dismantling its tropes and injecting unpredictability as well as a sense of vibrancy and freedom. The group's debut, Blacks' Myths (Atlantic Rhythms, 2018), established a space for ambience and eruption, building hypnotic rhythmic structures and exploratory soundscapes.

 

Weirdos Day #2 at Three Phase Center in Stone Ridge, NY:

 

Three Phase Center @threephasecenter

A dynamic hub for experimental culture, performance, and contemporary art. Founded in 2017, it serves as an intersection for diverse creative practice, supporting local and visiting artists across multiple disciplines.

www.threephasecenter.com

 

Heather Duke @hethersukkha

Heather Duke is an artist, writer, clown, gardener, and dream collector whose work grows out of collage, performance, strange sanctuaries, everyday ritual, and the fertile edges between vulnerability, imagination, and lived experience.

 

Mark Greene

 

Ernest Maw @howwerose

 

Karen Dazzler @karendazzler

 

Joseph Latka @jorylortka

Joseph Latka is a transdisciplinary sound artist, composer, performer, and educator whose work moves through experimental music, improvisation, multimedia, and Deep Listening, treating sound as a way of exploring attention, space, embodiment, and collective experience.

 

Sergey Jivetin @sjivetin

Sergey Jivetin is a Hudson Valley artist, metalsmith, and miniaturist whose work transforms seeds, jewelry, scientific apparatus, and ordinary materials into meticulously crafted sculptures and installations exploring scale, ecology, memory, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

 

Mike Ponte

Mike Ponte is a Hudson Valley ceramic artist, electrician, and maker whose raku-fired work brings together heat, smoke, chance, and skilled handwork, reflecting a practice grounded equally in material experimentation and the practical knowledge of the trades.

 

Nina Isabelle @nisabel

Nina Isabelle is a multidisciplinary artist and performer whose work moves through embodiment, risk, improvisation, sound, sculpture, and collaborative situations, drawing on a lifetime of movement training and experimental art-making to explore how bodies think, perceive, adapt, and make meaning.

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Ruby Zuckerman @rubyzuck @rubyzuckerman

Ruby Zuckerman is a writer and artist working across fiction, visual art, criticism, and communal literary events, with a practice attentive to memory, everyday experience, and the strange ways people gather and make meaning together.

 

Kobe Weston

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Adam Zaretsky @andi_wallwhore

Adam Zaretsky is a bioartist, performer, and educator whose work collides biotechnology, living systems, transgression, humor, and bodily experimentation to question how culture, science, and ethics shape what we consider natural, artificial, acceptable, or alive.

 

Weirdos Day #3 Sunday September 6, 2026 at Rosekill Performance Art Farm in Kingston, NY:

 

Rosekill @rosekill.art.farm

Rosekill Performance Art Farm is a 60-acre outdoor venue run in connection with Grace Exhibition Space featuring international and local performance art, experimental theatre, site-specific installations, and community-driven ecological practices.

 

Kara Blossom @clamhammock

Kara Blossom is an artist and maker whose work moves through collaborative, community-built projects, hands-on experimentation, and unconventional creative situations where art, labor, resourcefulness, and lived experience overlap.

 

Pete Crotty @pedro_ncm111

Pete Crotty is an artist and maker whose work brings together hands-on fabrication, material experimentation, and a practical, inventive approach to building strange objects, situations, and experiences.

 

Clara Diamond

Clara Diamond is a Hudson Valley artist and performer working with durational performance art, improvisation, collaborative performance, and embodied experimentation, using movement to explore attention, responsiveness, and the shifting relationships between bodies and space.

 

Matt Igoe @mattbigoe

Matt Igoe is a local community member with a hands-on approach to making and sharing stuff and food with others.

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Halle Kananack 

 

David Linton @bicamrl

David Linton is a sound and media artist, composer, percussionist, and filmmaker whose work moves through experimental music, live audiovisual performance, improvisation, and electronic image-making, often building dense, responsive environments where sound and light become inseparable.

 

Jaguar Mary X @jaguarmaryx

Jaguar Mary X is a performance and movement artist whose work engages embodiment, ritual, improvisation, identity, and transformation; they also host Midnight Medicine on Kingston Radio and are part of the Art Life Institute community in Kingston, NY.

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Paul McMahon @macpaulmc

Paul McMahon is a Woodstock-based artist, singer-songwriter, writer, and longtime cultural instigator whose work crosses visual art, music, humor, and community organizing, with roots in New York’s Pictures Generation and a practice that treats everyday life as material for art.

 

Philophilia

Philophilia lives somewhere between a fever dream and a confession. Blending Marta Weber's soulful vocals with hypnotic psychedelic guitar and atmospheric synth. This 'closet rock band' fuses indie rock, dream pop, and psych into something both beautiful and emotional. The lineup includes Maxx Berkowitz, Neville Daly, Auggie McGillicuddy, and Liam Dember. 

 

Neville Daly @nettlenervine

 

Maxx Berkowitz @maxxcreatives

 

Auggie McGillicuddy @auggie_mcgillicuddy

 

Liam Dember @elevateminds

 

OPEN STUDIOS:

Darich Peres Reyes  @la_fermentora_ny

 

Jenna Marie Diliberto Roses in the 12th house @rosesinthe12thhouse

 

John Ackerman @pahnjoul

 

Amelia Biewald @amelia_biewald

Amelia Biewald is a Hudson Valley artist and curator whose work moves through sculpture, drawing, installation, and collaborative projects, often weaving together myth, history, science, and theatrical visual language.

 

Army of Frogs @armyoffrogsstudio

Army of Frogs is an artist-run gallery and sculpture garden in High Falls, NY, directed by artist and curator Amelia Biewald whose own work uses drawing, sculpture, installation, myth, history, science, and scandal to build richly layered visual worlds.