NEW YORK, NY – All Street Gallery is pleased to announce The Mill, an exhibition by Miguel de Laveaga, Naava Guaraca, Laura Lee Ross, and Taylor Stout, on view at 119 Hester Street from April 17 - 27, 2025. The exhibition will be accompanied by an opening reception on Thursday, April 17, from 6 - 9 pm, and an artist-led zine workshop on Saturday, April 26, from 1 - 3 pm. Both events are free and open to the public, and RSVP is not required. 

In September 2024, de Laveaga, Guaraca, and Stout spent a weekend making artwork together at a defunct grist mill in the Hudson Valley, immersing themselves in the Mill’s current mode of production—that of a functioning art studio, belonging to artist Laura Lee Ross. The resulting output consists of oil paintings, film photographs, cyanotypes, and print publications. The Mill marks the first public showing of these artworks and the artists’ first collaboration with All Street Gallery. 

The Mill sits on Muitzeskill Road just after its intersection with Route 9J, which runs along the Hudson River. This placement reflects an era when waterways were channels of colonization, industry, and commerce. The structure was built during the 1640s and functioned as a grist mill until the mid-1900s. Twenty years ago, Ross purchased the property and turned it into her art studio, introducing a new kind of “making” to the storied space. In 2024, it was purchased from Ross by the owner of the surrounding acres under the agreement that she could continue to occupy it for the next twenty years.   

Due to their fascination with lineage, time, ecology, and Americana, the three artists felt drawn to the potential energy of the Mill. While mills were once ubiquitous across America, this site felt anything but mundane—with 19th-century historian Nathaniel Bartlett Sylvester describing the Hudson Valley as having “its present outlines in some tremendous convulsion of nature.” Engaging with such complex history and landscape led the artists to ask increasingly difficult questions: How do we create in a way that respects what came before us? What and who are we working in service of? 

Blending the artists’ research and their embodied experiences, The Mill tethers past and present: power lines slice through forested landscapes, and signs of wear lend human-made structures the patina of history, suggesting at once an idyllic myth and a fraught reality. While the 19th-century landscape painters of the region’s Hudson River School once portrayed a glorified interrelation between colonial settlement and nature, the artists at the Mill instead seek to explore the deep tensions arising from this relationship. Their plein air approaches—seen in de Laveaga’s oil paintings completed during single outdoor sittings, Guaraca’s cyanotypes made with found materials and sunlight, and Stout’s short story incorporating the sights and sounds that existed around her as she wrote—pick up this artistic precedent while allowing for a degree of immersion that attunes them to the site’s complexity. The Mill’s fading and forgotten histories begin to make themselves quietly manifest in the atmosphere itself.  

By devoting attention to the living environment through their creative practices, the artists work towards a future honoring all the land can hold. As Ross has said, “It is all about bringing attention to wounds and giving tribute to survival.” 

A process documentation zine made by the artists, entitled Millwork, will be released in conjunction with the opening, available to read and purchase at the gallery. 

About the Artists:
Miguel de Laveaga is an artist based in New York City, born and raised in Berkeley. He earned his BFA in Film & TV from New York University, specializing in documentary filmmaking. His painting practice reflects the urge to record the decaying spaces and untold stories around and in front of him. His writing is published in COPY, and he works out of his studio in Queens. 

Naava Guaraca is an artist and writer from New York City, where she still lives. She received her BFA in Studio Art from New York University and has exhibited at 80WSE Gallery and EV Gallery. She curates an online micro-site of new visual artwork for COPY. Her paintings and prints explore the relationship between nostalgia and place, archiving the mundane for perpetual reflection. 

Taylor Stout is a writer, artist, and editor living in Brooklyn. She grew up in a beach town on the edge of Los Angeles. Her work explores hand-me-down myths and the confluence of cultural and personal memory. She serves as the Head of Editorial at COPY, an independent arts publication and community, and her writing has also been published by Public Seminar, Currant Jam, and Crybaby Zine, among others. She earned her BS in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University.

Laura Lee Ross is an artist, environmentalist, and feng shui practitioner. Her work involves creating functional, inspiring spaces as well as the art that gives them even greater dimension. She attended Bard College in the 1970s and lives in the Hudson Valley on the banks of the Hudson River. She’s worked out of the Mill since 2007.  

About All Street NYC:
Founded in 2018, All Street Gallery presents works by emerging and underrepresented artists whose works demonstrate social engagement and community empowerment. First established as an artist collective and grassroots protest organization by born and raised New Yorkers, All Street Gallery is a space that is both created by and for artists. Having deep roots in New York City, the gallery and collective share a background in public art and activations as a means of creative protest and resistance. Such socially engaged work has carried into their gallery space as they opened their doors on 77 East Third Street, and as they now open their second location at 119 Hester Street.