09/02/2026
Oresta Szeparowycz spent decades collecting shale from the fields and riverbeds of Dutchess County and assembling it into sculptures she almost never showed anyone. She called it her private language. The stones, she said, spoke to her with the voice of the ancestors.
She died at home in Dover Plains on August 26. She was 87. This Saturday and Sunday, "Dreamt in Stone" opens at the Millerton studio of her friend and fellow artist David Crum, free and open to the public from noon to 4pm, now as celebration and tribute.
The life behind the work is extraordinary. Born in Ukraine in 1938, she fled the N**i regime as a child and spent years in displaced persons camps before the family reached New York in 1952. She represented American art in the Soviet Union alongside Norman Rockwell, designed window murals for Bergdorf Goodman, painted for Thai royalty, and was commissioned by designers working for King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. Then, somewhere in the 1980s, she walked away from all of it, spent three years without electricity or running water in Crete, found the stones, and never looked back.
The work sat largely unseen for twenty years. David and Katie Crum organized the show after it became clear there wasn't time left to wait. Szeparowycz spent her last week on Earth sitting outside with them, going through the pieces, making the checklist. "I think it was kind of a nice way to spend your last week on Earth," Katie said.
27 Old Post Road #2, Millerton, NY. Saturday September 6 and Sunday September 7, noon to 4pm. Free.
The Ukrainian-born artist, who spent decades crafting collected shale into work she rarely showed anyone, died August 26—a week before her first major sculpture show opens at a friend's studio in Millerton.
