If you didn’t know it was there, you’d walk right past it. What was once a tattoo parlor at 354 Broadway in Kingston is now a grungy, semi-subterranean pop-up art gallery.

Of Needle and Nerve, curated by Aleksandra Scepanovic, is the opposite of a white-walled art show. To enter, you walk down the building’s attached garage, sloped downward to make you feel like you are entering an exclusive underground club. An early 1970s Porsche 914 in bumblebee yellow sits in the center of the garage. Its hood is angled towards a neon crescent moon in a matching yellow hanging from the ceiling. A sculpture by Amelia C. Williams, it gives the room an abandoned drive-in movie theater atmosphere.

Scepanovic is a sculptor herself, but only discovered her dormant talent within the last few years. She grew up in Serbia and was an archaeologist, then a journalist, covering the Bosnian War in the early and mid 1990s.

She moved to New York City in 1999. “The war had just taken out every ounce of everything that was inside of me,” Scepanovic said. She started a real estate company with her partner, and traveled to the Hudson Valley almost every weekend, and when Covid broke out they decided to stay.

“When you come down the hallway, you have that kind of uncomfortable feeling: where am I going? It's dirty, it's grimy, it's grungy, Is there a guy with a cleaver at the end?” said Scepanovic, who convinced the owners of the building (who are family friends) to give their blessing to the pop-up.

In the garage, amidst jumper cables, rusty wrenches, gas canisters and cinder blocks (all found and left there intentionally) are works from painters, sculptors and photographers, mostly from the Hudson Valley. To get to the second half of the gallery, you have to walk through the bathroom, further driving the point home that this is no high-society affair.

“In my head I went back to the times of the CBGB in the city, and I thought, that means we need to have a dirty, crummy, cruddy bathroom as well.”

The second room of the pop-up is where the tattoo parlor once operated, and the booths where Kingstonites used to get inked up are now enclaves for painting and sculpture. The storefront, with its windows still embossed with the tattoo parlor’s branding, will be the home for 34 pieces, created by artists ages 13 to 82, until Aug. 24. The building has not had a tenant since the tattoo parlor, so the plans for the space after the show is over remain undecided.

“The plan is to activate all these empty, unused spaces,” said Scepanovic.

In one of the former tattoo booths is Kiera Stuart’s Untitled Creature, a sculpture of a crouched, torso-less figure, poised on the balls of its sinewy feet, almost crawling toward the viewer. In the neighboring booth six suspended sheets of polysilk and voile create a kaleidoscopic, fragmented photography work by Karen Ghostlaw called Multiplicity in Motion. Each piece in the pop-up is drastically different, but many, aided by the environment of the space, are boisterous and punkish in attitude.

The name of the pop-up nods its head to the building’s tattoo parlor days, but also hints at art-making as a more metaphorical permanent etching on the world and on the artist. “This is a former tattoo parlor and I really wanted that to come through,” said Scepanovic. “It is also about the nerve that people have in order to put [art] together, to have themselves branded for the rest of their lives.”

One of the many bold works is Suprina Troche’s Bang Bang Photo Op, a giant handgun made of stuffed animals, mostly scavenged from thrift stores, creating a playful but tragic piece that mixes a childlike innocence with the scourge of American gun violence. “All of my work is political, social, or environmental,” said Troche. “My work always has a dark humor in it because I don't think you can digest some of the stuff that I'm talking about, which is so gruesome, so horrendous, without adding some of that humor to it.” Bang Bang Photo Op is also interactive, and can swivel on its stand, allowing viewers to wield and point the handgun. “The gun doesn't actually work, but you can ‘shoot’ anybody you disagree with, because that's what we do in America,” said Troche.

Nearby, Janet Rutkowski has a small metal sculpture perched on one of the booth walls. Unlike the plushness of Bang Bang Photo Op, Enter Through The Fracture is hard-edged and industrial, as if belonging to an alternate steampunk world. “I'm very into portals and rifts, trying to get through to that other alternative universe,” said Rutkowski. Viewers can look through its twisted circular shape, made entirely from found scrap metal, and see Untitled Creature through its crosshairs, one of the many curatorial easter eggs that Aleksandra has thoughtfully planned throughout the space.

“[Enter Through the Fracture] is like something had ripped the veil between one universe and the other,” said Rutkowski. “Most of the shows I do are in nice spaces or outdoors, so I think [Scepanovic] set a new precedent that shows like this are very attractive to people, they feel comfortable.”

Of Needle and Nerve is a case study on how to bring an unused space to life while retaining its original character. “[Scepanovic] problem-solved around a very specific physical space that many people would have found to be a challenge. She took it as an asset,” said Troche. “Like the rooms that used to be tattoo rooms, I would guarantee you many people would have torn that out and just created the same old big box.”

Over 500 people filtered through the exhibition’s opening on Friday, Aug. 1, with no doubt many more to visit over the rest of the month to witness this abundance of Hudson Valley talent gathered in one space.

“We've had so many people walk in and say, ‘Oh my god, finally something is happening to this space! It's not empty,’” said Scepanovic.

Of Needle and Nerve is located at 354 Broadway, Kingston, and is on display until Aug. 24. It’s open on Fridays from 4-7 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays from 12-5 p.m.