* indicates lecture, event, or workshop in conjunction with the exhibition
September 2006 - Nancey Seghetti ? The Accidental Artist*
Owner and operator of the Mosaic Studio in West Reading, Seghetti has traveled extensively to learn her craft, experiencing both ancient and contemporary forms of mosaic and tiling. These explorations have brought her to England, Spain, Italy and India. Her favorite and most profound investigation was in India, at the Rock Garden of native Nek Chand, an inspiring man who created a palace from recycled bits and pieces of toss-off items like old sinks or tubs. Seghetti is inspired by visionary and outsider artists, along with the masters of mosaic from the middle ages.
October 2006 - Janice Trusky ? Rosebud Reservation*
Several years ago, artist Janice Trusky of Ambler, PA decided to take some time off from her busy schedule to explore a different world. She spent the summer of 1994 at the Rosebud Reservation, South Dakota, working with at-risk children. Her months working with Native Americans left an impact on her that has never left. While there, she earned the trust ? tenuous at first, from skeptical Native American families who had seen too many white social workers come and go in their lives. She respected their lives, and shared their concern and reverence for the earth and environment. Invited to Pow Wows and other important ceremonies, the artist was asked to photograph their events, and shares these photographs with the community.
November 2006 - Field of Vision: Outdoor Sculpture Exhibiton II*
This biennial outdoor exhibit features work from sculptors of southeast Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Included are: Kevin Forest, Dana Stewart, Christopher Smith, Jeff Kahn, Milan Kralik, Jr. and Mark Pettagrow. These sculptures in cement, concrete, steel, aluminum, and bronze explore a variety of visions from figurative to kinetic. Co-curator Kevin Forest selected works and helped to site the sculptures throughout campus for their best visual impact.
November 2006 - Junction Dance Theater ? residency and performance*
Junction Dance Theater is an energetic and dynamic ensemble that combines dance, theater, and the visual arts in their performances. The ensemble joined the campus community for workshops and master classes, Renegade Performances and culminated with a student performance.
March 2006 - Barbara Thun and Georgette Veeder ? Recent Works*
Investigating the connection between memory, words, and images, Barbara Thun explains, ?In poetry I have found that words, even single words, can have the impact of a whole image. Then too, images will often stimulate the expression of words. While the beginning of each work was inspired by either an image or a written phrase, in several of ?the image came concurrently with the words and one wonders at the intricacies of the mind.? Thun?s work explores these ideas with painting, poetry and found object installation.
Georgette Veeder
Georgette Veeder works with fiber and hand-cast paper that echoes her focus on environmental interests. The materials themselves ? natural and visually accessible are biodegradable and renewable materials; her sculptures resemble organic objects like stone, bone, and skin. The chasm between craft and art is blurred, as Veeder?s large castings of paper in heroic scale belie their substance in a scale usually reserved for works in bronze or marble.
April 2007 - Judith Johnson ? Journey of a Woman Artist
With large scale self-portraits paintings, found object sculptures, and video, Judith Johnson shares an excursion. Through her work as a creative artist, with paint and canvas as media and meditation as palette, Johnson explores the journey to the creative self. To create the image of self is the journey. Made from the stuff of dreams, glued together with the frustrations encountered, the joys experienced, and the unpredictability of the ego and id, Johnson makes the intangible, tangible. As the artist loses her ego in the painting process, a transformation takes place. These paintings and sculptures mirror the self that lives in all of us defined as the ego; that which knows, remembers, desires, suffers.