2017

Ink Travels is an assemblage of prints, developed with a myriad of printmaking traditional and cutting-edge processes, that were created to celebrate the contributions and teaching career of Sydney Cross, a professor of art at Clemson University whose influence spanned more than three decades of artists. The resulting collection is a dynamic visual documentation of knowledge and memories that celebrate an incredible teacher.

Curated by CFA director, David Tanner, and gallery curator, Erin Riley-Lopez along with students from ARA 390 – Project Management, the exhibition will use the Gallery’s permanent collection and vast collection of related print material to tell the 40-year story of the Freedman Gallery’s history, highlighting the artwork, major exhibitions, events and people who have contributed to 40 years of showcasing the best contemporary American art along with archival material. Artists featured in the exhibition include James Rosenquist, Cynthia Maurice, Hans Bellmer, Salvador Dali, Clinton Fein, David Politzer, Brett Weston, Betty Woodman, Harry Korsarous, and many others.

Invitational exhibition of regional artists and artisans whose work focuses on food and dining with work arranged in an immersive environment that references a “period room” found in many of the world’s foremost museums, only here the period is contemporary. Artists and artwork featured in the exhibition include: Cocol Bernal (mixed-media chandelier constructed from found objects), Marilyn Fox (oil painting) Kristen Woodward (encaustic painting), Amy Stevens (digital photography), Jim Brunner (metal), Will Dexter of Taylor Backes (glass), Daniel Schlenker (ceramics and mixed-media table), Henry VanDuren (walnut and ceramic table), Eric Claypoole (oil on board), Denise Wilz (redware ceramics), Sue Biebuyck (acrylic painting), Birdie Zoltan (ceramics), Abby Ryder (printmaking), Cynthia Thomasset (collage), Sharon McGinley (printmaking), Suzanne Fellows (acrylic painting), Scott Krenitsky (glass), Jacob Pfeifer (glass), Adry Eberhard (pastel), Robesonia Redware (ceramics) and more.

Ho works with narrative, language, and identity, crafting pieces based on personal experience. She believes the construction of cultural identity is an ongoing process, which cannot be merely picked and chosen. As an artist, her cultural identity—being Chinese-American, multilingual, female, from the Bay Area—is wholly integrated within and cannot be separated from her artistic practice. Therefore, her work is confessional, using her own life details to examine broader themes of Asian-American identity and the flexing boundaries of public vs. private. Her work also examines the negotiations, experiences, and expectations of different, sometimes contradicting, cultural values and directions.

Freedman Gallery (MG & PS)

Faces of Reading + 10, created by Dr. John Pankratz, a Professor of History at Albright, with the collaboration of Angela Cremer ‘17, is at once a portrait, an analysis, and a celebration of a diverse, evolving city. The latest installment in an ongoing effort at civic portraiture, this collection of nearly 900 faces represents Reading residents of every background and all walks of life. Nearly 200 are persons John photographed for the original Faces of Reading in 2005, so then/now comparisons will be abundant. A vast wall of faces will teach visitors to see each of us as an individual and to see all of us as a community.

The artist notes, “In my experience, things are not necessarily what they look like they are. The exhibition is an invitation to look at these nine objects and try to get some sense of what they are or might be. The pieces seem to be investigating their environment and maybe even themselves. I like to think they also may be inviting an observer to investigate the pieces themselves, not only with eyes but with their own fingers too. In touching and handling the pieces, the observer’s understanding of the object may change and shift at the same time that the piece itself moves and changes.”

 

The exhibition contrasts the lives of two women painters, one working in New York and the other across the Atlantic in Paris, who lived and were active for the same period of time, existing in the parallel art worlds of abstract expressionism and modernist Paris. Louppe lived from 1902-1988 and Fine from 1905-1988. The exhibition will place emphasis on the artists’ work; their style, use of material and aesthetic inspirations, accompanied by a consideration of the art scenes they emerged from and contributed to so vibrantly. Both artists will be represented by a wide variety of paintings and works on paper that will allow viewers to familiarize themselves with one of the stalwarts of the abstract expressionist movement—Fine, and introduce a painter hitherto unknown in the United States, who experimented in the cubist and purist styles—Louppe. Both Louppe and Fine had partners who were active artists as well, and the lively artistic social lives of each couple will be illustrated with letters, photographs and ephemera. Louppe and her husband, the painter Maurice Brianchon, were at the center of a French circle of creatives that included the composer Francis Poulenc, sculptor Ossip Zadkine and the writer Paul Morand, while Fine and her husband, the photographer Maurice Berezov, were part of the abstract expressionist and downtown New York art world. Also highlighted will be both women’s struggles to have their work given the same credence as their fellow male artists and the obstacles they faced and transcended, due to sexism.

Clinton Fein’s digital manipulations of global icons and images have sparked controversy for years, both for their highly charged social and political commentary but also among the artistic elite as to the fine line between subversive art and the obscene or offensive. Under the direction of CFA director, David Tanner, students in the arts administration project management class will research and install an exhibition of Fein’s work from the Annoy.com portfolio, a highly controversial collection of digital manipulated images from the 1980s and early ‘90s. The exhibition will explore the historical subtext of these images and examine their relevance to contemporary issues and conflicts.