GARRISON, NY.- Garrison Art Center presents Phytophilia: The Love of Plants, a group exhibition by artists Lawre Stone, Janis Stemmermann, and Katharine Dufault. This exhibition brings together three artists working with the vegetal world as subject, refuge, and inspiration, exploring distinct ways of thinking and relating to both human and non-human beings. Employing landscape imagery, plant life, trees, and a feeling for spiritual phenomena, the artists of Phytophilia present a vision of a sentient, animate vegetal world, flourishing, communicating, nourishing and thriving in a post-human existence. Ultimately, their work reveals the deep vulnerability brought to the surface through human interactions with nature.

Lawre Stone makes paintings and works on paper that bring together imagery from nature and the language of abstraction in otherworldly landscapes focused on environmental issues. Stone holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Ronald Feldman Gallery, White Columns, and Russell Janis Projects (NY/NYC); Bernay Fine Art (MA); The Ely Center for Contemporary Art and Furnace Art On Paper (CT); and LABSpace, Tanja Grunert Gallery, and Hudson Valley Community College (NY). Stone received a 2024 NYSCA Individual Artist Regrant for Invasive Beauty: Painting the Displaced Species of Columbia County, NY and a 2026 Martha Boschen Porter Fund grant for Panacea: Painting the Medicinal Plants of Columbia County, NY. In 2025 Lawre Stone was an Artist in Residence at Two Coats of Paint (LIC, NY). She lives and works in Ghent, NY.





Janis Stemmermann is a visual artist and designer whose interdisciplinary practice spans sculpture installation, ceramics, textiles, and printmaking. Her work draws on the decorative language of domestic objects and the landscape, exploring the blurred lines between art and function through process-driven, craft-based methods. Stemmermann received her BFA in Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her studio practice has been supported by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. She has exhibited widely, including a recent two-person exhibition at The Arts Center at Duck Creek (East Hampton, NY), Tanja Grunert Gallery (Hudson, NY), and The Re Institute (Millerton, NY), as well as solo shows at CT State Northwestern (Winsted CT), Furnace Art on Paper Archive (Falls Village, CT) and Planthouse Gallery (New York, NY). Janis divides her time between Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Sharon, CT where she currently has a studio.

Katharine Dufault is a British-born artist and curator working in painting and works on paper. Her work draws on landscape, experience and memory, informed by the landscapes of England and the Berkshires, and is shaped by a personal gestural language. She studied visual arts, photography, and graphic design at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, and earned her degree in painting and literature from Columbia University, graduating with honors. Dufault has been reviewed by The New York Times. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe, with solo exhibitions at Susan Eley Fine Art, The Painting Center, Stark Gallery at Kent State University, Bernay Fine Art, and The Rye Art Gallery, and group exhibitions including the Grand Palais, Paris, and SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York. Her work is held in private and corporate collections. She has participated in residencies at Millay Arts, MASS MoCA A4A Painting Residency, and Vermont Studio Center. She has curated more than a dozen exhibitions, including JANUS at Susan Eley Fine Art, two of which have been reviewed by The New York Times. She serves on the board of Millay Arts. She lives and works in southern Berkshire County, Massachusetts.