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Area Artists 2013

February 4, 2013 - May 31, 2013

 

A biennial exhibition series presenting the work of leading artists and art educators of the Eastern Pennsylvania region.

KRISTA STEINKE Purgatory Road is an actual path that runs through a quaint forest and the subject for a new photographic series that portrays this landscape as a metaphorical state of ?in-between?; a place where nature gets reinterpreted, documentary fades into poetry, and the process of distorting the camera?s seemingly objective gaze yields more questions than answers. Photographed either on location or composed of specimens collected from walks through the woods, my images collectively describe a sense of place, while capturing tenuous moments between fragility and regeneration. Here light and shadow, transparent layering, and the element of chance help to invoke a sense of the nonphysical and create a window where the external and internal have the potential to meet.

Bio: Krista Steinke, an artist working in photography, video, and mixed media, has exhibited widely in the US, as well as internationally. She has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a MFA from The Maryland Institute, College of Art. She is the recipient of the Pennsylvania Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Photography, a 2008 Artist Residency at Light Work, and recently, a 2012 Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Her works are represented in numerous collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Woodmere Museum, Johnson & Johnson Corporation, and Fidelity Investments. Krista is an Associate Professor of Art at Moravian College.

 

ADRIANO FARINELLA  I approach painting landscapes as a spiritual practice; a meditation focused on making the work resonate with more than just the physical effects of light on land and sky, in essence, more metaphysics than physics.

If the sky is a metaphor for consciousness, the clouds then represent the infinite ideas, inspirations, emotions, and choices available at any moment. They are full of purpose and presence but are in constant motion, perpetually changing and evolving into some other form, and yet, ultimately remaining themselves. They are at once the beginning of things and the end of things. This impermanence serves as the path to the unnameable essence that is realized when one is truly present and simply aware of the vastness and the purpose of everything.

The filter of memory helps transcend the obstacles of time and space. By cultivating the art of memory, the feeling of a time and place becomes more prominent than the actual place itself and the temporal gives way to the eternal. So the paintings become less landscape and more atmospheres. The clouds become figures who have been painted at a time in their lives and who, like human figures, are born, live for a time, change frequently, and then leave.

I am most inspired by paying attention to the present moment, and to the evolution of memory and imagination. I strive to make the paintings passionate and peaceful bridges to and from memory.

Bio:  Adriano Farinella earned his BFA in painting and drawing from Kutztown University in Pennsylvania in 1998. He has since studied plein air painting in Italy and most recently in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Adriano is currently an Instructor of  Drawing, Figure Drawing, and Painting at the Baum School of Art in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He is also currently studying Classical Drawing and Painting at the esteemed Cambridge Street Atelier in Philadelphia. His work has been shown in numerous galleries throughout the United States and will be featured in the February 2013 issue of Blue Canvas Magazine. 

 

LES FLETCHER  For the past several years I have been working on two separate, yet interrelated, series of works: the Wash Drawings and the Untitled Drawings. Both series are concerned with the formal organization of pictorial space: the interrelationships of line, shape, color, value, texture, and space, developed in a manner that gives the drawings both an analytical and expressive reading. Both sets of drawings make strong use of dualities: rational and intuitive, simple and complex, hot and cold, urban and rural, fast and slow, geometric and organic, hard and soft, quiet and loud. As I develop the drawings I think about the sensation of an activity being observed from a variety of viewpoints (analytical, emotional, near, far) and being perceived differently (six people watch the same incident on a street corner from different viewpoints and with different points of view and each understands it in a different way). Life seems very complex. It seems filled with ambiguity, mystery, frustration, hope. I try to bring some sense of this, to varying degrees, to each drawing I make, activating, affirming, denying, and ultimately uniting formal and expressive qualities in each piece.

Bio:  Les Fletcher was born in Cleveland, Ohio, graduated with a BFA, Cum Laude, from Lake Erie College, Painesville, Ohio, and attended the Blossom Art Program, graduate level, at Kent State University. Les has had solo exhibitions at the Allentown Art Museum, Philadelphia Art Alliance, Lehigh University, Sande Webster Gallery, Cedar Crest College, and West Chester State College. He has shown in many group exhibitions throughout the country including “American Drawings IV,” which was sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Service and toured museums and art centers around the country for two years. His work has also been featured in New American Paintings. Recently, 2012, his work has been included in a faculty exhibition at Muhlenberg College, “Faculty at Work,” and a four-person exhibition of abstract work, “Search the Surface,” at Cedar Crest College. He has taught drawing, painting, and two-dimensional design, as an adjunct lecturer, at Lehigh University, Allentown College, Moravian College, and Northampton Community College. He is currently teaching at Muhlenberg College. 

 

DANIEL PAASHAUS  Ten years ago, when I switched to primarily self-portrait photography, I first emptied my bedroom completely.  I moved my bed, dresser, posters, bookshelves, and lighting out into the dining room and began with white walls and monotone gray carpet.  Then I shaved my head to the skin, framed and focussed the shot, took off my clothing, wound the twelve second timer, walked into the frame, and looked blankly at the camera till the shutter snapped.  For the first time, I wanted to feel like a painter or a sculptor and be able to claim ownership of my image and of my creation rather than just capturing someone else’s truth or “the moment.”  I wanted calculated manipulation.  From that naked blank look shot in front of a white wall, I began gradually adding my own elements back in.  The images document the reconstruction of a world I can call my own, using common elements:  recycled bottle caps, aluminum foil, steel wire, bent nails, discarded books, thrift store electronics, and anything I can collect from nature.  The films are one more step toward that fantasy of control, adding the illusion of motion to static images.  With a background in literature, film, and philosophy, my photos, and in turn my films, are visual essays, working through the complexities and arguments of their themes while ultimately portraying my personal answer, even if interpretations may vary.

Bio:  Daniel Paashaus is a self-portrait photographer and filmmaker living in Emmaus, PA and working as a farmer at Liberty Gardens in Coopersburg, PA.  He graduated with a BA in English from Temple University, where he spent a year in Rome, discovering his love for photography, stop-motion animation, and classical literature and receiving the Gianni Caproni Art Prize.  After college, he worked at the Santa Fe Photography Workshops, completed an artist residency at Millersville University, and exhibited his work in Lancaster, Philadelphia, and Bethlehem before beginning his farming career in earnest.  His first short film, Katabasis, premiered at the Blind Willow Bookshop in April 2011 and his second, Songs, is still in production.  

 

 

 

Details

Start:
February 4, 2013
End:
May 31, 2013
Event Tags:

Venue

SIEGEL GALLERY, Iacocca Hall
Mountaintop campus
Bethlehem, PA 18015 United States
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Phone
610-758-3615

Organizer

LUAG
Phone
610-758-3615