2010

March 11 – April 23, 2010
Presentation by the Artists Wednesday March 10, 6-7:30 in
Klein Lecture Hall, Center for the Arts.
Opening Reception Thursday March 11, 5-7

Artists will conduct informal gallery talks Wednesday and Thursday March 10 and 11.

For information about programs for children and school groups please contact
Beth Krumholz (610) 921-7776, bkrumholz@albright.edu

This exhibition is funded in part by the Silverweed Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council on the arts.

  

FUTURE PERFECT

Our sculpture and installations embody the essence of opulence while being constructed of materials that typically end up in the trash.  We mine popular culture searching for discarded materials that people use trying to reach their goals.  Whether it is a romance novel someone reads to transport them into a dream reality, a religious tract promising the glory of eternal life, or a lottery ticket that gives the possibility of a future full of rich decadence; we use these remnants to re-create people’s dreams.

Presently we are making work based on the common desires and ramifications of fast, easy money.  Our projects revolve around the lottery system, which happens to be the world’s largest get rich quick scheme. As people scratch, choose numbers and place bets, we think about what they would do with “all that cash.” These pieces are built with the spent dreams of losing lotto tickets.  The “scratchers” are collected from gas stations, grocery stores, bars, and streets around the world.  The scratch tickets represent real dreams that usually disappear just as quickly as they came.

Lauren Was and Adam Eckstrom, 2010

Ghost of a Dream (Lauren Was and Adam Eckstrom) wrap up installation at the Freedman Gallery.

The artists talk about the work during opening festivities.

Installation at the Freedman Gallery

Students at the opening festivities

Studio in Basel, Switzerland, June 2009

Dream Home, 2009, 106″x148″x20″ $70,000 worth of discarded lottery tickets, wood, foam, and cardboard.

Dream Home, rug detail

Dream Vacation, 2008-2009 $25,000 worth of discarded lottery tickets, steel, wood, foam, fabric, paper, speakers, and 4 12” pneumatic wheels.  112” x 120” x 120”

Money Mania, 2008-09 16″x6″x14″
Discarded lottery tickets and remote control boat.

Dream Home detail

will it happen, it will, 2009 ethafoam and discarded lottery tickets

Dream Vacation detail

Goodbye, 2009 ethafoam and discarded lottery tickets

The Freedman Gallery at Albright College
The Freyberger Gallery at Penn State Berks
The Goggleworks Center for the Arts
And The Reading Public Museum present

Wonderful Life
works by Steven Siegel

Curated by Hank Foreman, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Cultural Affairs and Director and Chief Curator for the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, Appalachian State University

Works will be exhibited at the Freedman Gallery, Freyberger Gallery, and Goggleworks, with a presentation by the artist at the Reading Public Museum.

January 18 – February 26

All events are FREE and open to the public.

This exhibition was made possible with the generous support of the Silverweed Foundation.

http://www.stevensiegel.net/

Steven Siegel currently lives and works in upstate New York.  He received his MFA from Pratt Institute, and an MA and BA from Hampshire College in Amherst. He has received numerous grants and awards and has completed site sculptures and installations within the United States and abroad.  Siegel was the Martin and Doris Rosen Award winner in 1998 when he created the site-specific work Squeeze 2 for Appalachian’s 12th Rosen Outdoor Sculpture program. Siegel says of this new body of work, “This series was completed in 2008, 6 years after its accidental inception.  The title is shared with the 1989 publication by Stephen Jay Gould.  Gould described the matrix of life forms found in the fossil record of the Burgess Shale in British Columbia, a variety that he believed has never been surpassed in the history of our planet.  Evolutionary biology has rich parallels to the creative process and the development of craft.  This series of 52 wall pieces is about the simple, cumulative changes that generate form, from generation to generation.  There being no wolves, competition for mates, or climate change to force natural selection in the studio, that determinate has been the artist’s eye; what we used to call sensibility.”

John Perreault, noted author and critic says of Siegel’s work, “…Siegel is not illustrating geological sedimentation or the Cambrian Explosion, he is appropriating principles of operation.  John Cage, the great American composer and thinker, recommended that artists of all kinds not imitate nature’s results, but nature’s methodology… This is, I feel, what Siegel is doing and is what unites what might otherwise seem to be a caesura in his body of work.  He is utilizing nature’s methodology.  However, he has not fastened upon the aleatory but upon the incremental.” Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, Appalachian State University

Opening receptions will be Thursday, January 21, 5-7 at the Freedman Gallery, and 6-8 at the Freyberger Gallery.  On Friday, the Goggleworks will host a reception from 4-5 pm, followed by a presentation by the artist at the Reading Public Museum at 6 pm.

For further information please contact the
Freedman Gallery (610) 921-7541
Freyberger Gallery (610) 396-6140
Goggleworks Center for the Arts (610) 374-4600
Reading Public Museum (610) 371-5850

Don’t forget to visit the Penn State Berks campus to view the recently completed monumental outdoor sculpture by Steven Siegel, “Two of ‘em.”

Courtesy of Turchin Center for the Visual Arts

Courtesy of Turchin Center for the Visual Arts

Courtesy of Turchin Center for the Visual Arts

Courtesy of Turchin Center for the Visual Arts

Artist Steven Siegel with Freyberger Director Marilyn Fox, and volunteers Stan Furdyna (top) and Sophomore Biology student Matuor Alier putting the final touches on Siegel’s Two of ‘em at the Penn State Berks campus, October 2009.

Two of ‘em in progress