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Art Gallery 2017-18
Exhibitions:
Heather Ramsdale: Slide Out of View
July 28 - Sept. 9, 2017
Artist Reception: Friday, Sept. 8, 5-9 p.m.
Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.
"The sculptures I make are often minimal in presentation and carefully edited during construction until I feel they become curious but plausible. At times, I feel confronted by the forms once they are complete, poignant and deliberate in their presence. Collectively, for me, the objects bring into question a new environment suggestive of transit and time. Similar to dreaming, my response to the objects I make feels both familiar and new as I continue to explore the balance in dichotomies. The sculptures are pensive and mysterious, but always balanced with a slice of dark humor."
Heather Ramsdale earned an M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Ramsdale was the recipient of two Pollock-Krasner Foundation fellowships for residencies in upstate New York. Recent shows include a group exhibition at Savery Gallery in Philadelphia and a solo exhibition at The Gallery at Delaware County Community College. She recently completed a residency at Joya: arte + ecología, an arts-led field research center, in Andalucía, Spain. Heather Ramsdale is a full-time faculty member at Kutztown University in PA, where she teaches sculpture.
John Willis: With Justice and Freedom For all, Wiconi Win Wakan (All Life Is Sacred)
Sept. 15 – Oct. 14, 2017
Artist Reception: Friday, Sept. 15, 4-8 pm.
Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.
"For over twenty-five years now, I have been welcomed into the community of the Oglala Lakota Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I've felt continually humbled by the traditions of the Oglala Lakota people. In 2016, I spent eight weeks at the Oceti Sakowin Camp (Camp of the Seven Council Fires) in North Dakota just above the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. I contributed my time witnessing and assisting the camp media group, participating in the Indigenous led prayerful movement against the Dakota Access Pipe Line. The on-going work I've made over the years looks at the inequality the indigenous people face within their own homeland, metaphorically questioning our society's skewed values, while also recognizing how much of value we all can learn from indigenous traditions."
John Willis received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design; he is Professor of Photography at Marlboro College and co -founder of The In-Sight Photography Project, offering courses to Vermont youth regardless of ability to pay. He also co-founded the Exposures Cross Cultural Youth Photography Program, bringing youth from VT, the Navajo Nation, Chicago, New York and the Oglala Lakota Tribe together to share photography lessons and life stories. John is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship as well as fellowships from the Vermont Council on the Arts and Vermont Arts Endowment. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The George Eastman House Museum, The National Museum of Native Americans, The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, and The Bibliotheque Nationale de France. John Willis' book, Views From The Reservation, was published by the Center for American Places.
More Info: www.jwillis.net
Greg McLemore: All Patched Up
Oct. 20 – Nov. 18, 2017
Artist Reception: Friday, Oct. 20, 4-8 p.m.
Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.
"We humans are a damaged, broken, and divided lot. We are a collection of injuries, injustices, minor slights and major traumas, never quite forgotten. These all build to age us, to scar us, and in some cases, to absolutely mutilate us. Of course we work hard to remedy our problems- we bandage our cuts and plaster the holes in our walls. We re-configure, recalibrate our machines, so that they may continue to perform. This collection of paintings revolves around the idea that we are in a constant state of damage incursion, striving to maintain a precipitous state of repair. Some of the repairs are successful while others are embarrassing failures. The paintings are about how life chips away at our bodies, at our structures, at our goals, and how we try, at varying levels, to negotiate, to fight back."
Greg McLemore uses Realism as a starting point to explore the tragic, mysterious, and often comical aspects of life. His work ranges from elaborately detailed urban landscapes to fantastical, surreal narratives. Greg earned his MFA at The University of Arizona. He was a semifinalist for the 2016 Sondheim Prize and was awarded an Individual Artist Grant by the Maryland State Arts Council in 2016. He exhibits his work nationally.
More Info: Greg McLemore website
Andreas Rentsch: Entangled with Justice
Dec. 1, 2017 – Jan. 27, 2018
Artist Reception: Friday, Dec. 1, 4-9 p.m.
Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.
"My work possesses a close aesthetic relationship to performance art, drawing and painting. Experimentation and chance have become important tools in my research. A large part of my methodology has been to abandon a considerable amount of control and allow the material to take over in some unexpected and unpredictable ways. In Entangled with Justice series, I circumvent the manufacturer’s specification of separating the negative from the positive of the Polaroid Type 55 film and instead of fixing and washing it immediately, I allow it to develop and decay over a period of weeks to years before I tone it for permanence. Mark-making is created through application of photographic chemicals by hand onto the film’s surfaces. By allowing the chemical phenomena to randomly and arbitrarily impact the the image, the resulting shapes and forms become metaphors for our own unpredictable existence. The work reveals a sense of empathy for the human condition that has been a guiding force in my life as well as my art."
Andreas Rentsch studied at Les Ecoles d'Arts Appliqués in Vevey, Switzerland and received his MFA in Studio Art from Stony Brook University. Having grown up on a prison compound where his father was the warden, Andreas' work is an ongoing exploration of the connection of fate, geography, and politics in the direction of justice. His work is in many museum collections and has been exhibited worldwide. Two of his Polaroid negatives are included in the Polaroid Project, a two-year traveling exhibition with stops at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, MIT Museum in Cambridge, MA and three photography museums in Europe. He is a recipient of two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships and had a portfolio published by Aperture. He exhibits his work internationally and teaches photography at Lycoming College.
More Info: www.andreasrentsch.com
Berta Golahny: The Human Abstract
Feb. 2 – March 24, 2018
Artist Reception: Friday, Feb. 2, 4-9 p.m.
Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.
The art of Berta Golahny (1925-2005) spans the 1940s through the early twenty-first century, in themes from the gritty city, war, space, the cosmos in its poetic evocation, and nature. These explorations are summed up in her extensive series The Landscape of Humanity, in prints and paintings, from the 1950s through 2000. Widely exhibited in the United States and abroad during the artist's lifetime, her work is in major museum collections. Golahny studied at the Art Students League in New York City, The Art Institute of Chicago (BFA), and the University of Iowa (MFA). She received many awards, including the prestigious Tiffany Fellowship.
More Info: www.golahny.org
2018 Senior Show
April 6 – May 12, 2018
Featuring: Erin Briggs, Caitlin Chaffee, Lindsay Darrow, Nam Do, Travis Fernandez, Jazzle France, Holly Fuller, Cayla Gray, Kaitlin Hallabuk, Marissa Loner, Donnell Reid-Ellis, Monica Serafini, Brittni Smith, Camisha Taylor, and Mackenzie Thomson.
Juror: Doreen Bolger
Artist Reception: Friday, April 6, 4-8 p.m.
Gallery Talk: 6:00 p.m.
SEE ME
June 1 – June 23, 2018
Artist Reception: Friday, June 1, 2018, 5-7:30 p.m.
Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.
SEE ME is a collaborative installation designed by future art educator Holley Fuller, '18, and coordinated by Andrea McDonough Varner, '03. Andrea is the Art Department Coordinator for the Williamsport Area School District.
In light of recent concern for student safety in schools, this project creates an outlet for public school students to express their thoughts and emotions about these issues, using their preferred medium. The self-portraits in this powerful exhibit encourage viewers to think about the importance of each and every school student by looking directly into their eyes.
"This project affords students the opportunity to engage in critical contemporary conversation," said McDonough Varner. "The visual representations of their opinions and emotions can speak just as loud and eloquently as words. Young people should be empowered to initiate change, and we hope this display will continue the conversation."
SEE ME. You matter. We matter.
Gallery Schedule Archive