Moving Possibilities Artists
The Imagination is an Abundant Wilderness Carved and Painted on the Earth's Face
Gigi Alvare
Artist Statement: "In a small city in a small gallery I created this piece with infinite possibilities. Six groups of guests to the Rockwell Museum in Corning, NY, were invited to share a thought, memory, feeling or idea inspired by the artwork in the 'Wilderness' gallery. Their words served as the inspiration for these pastel paintings and poems, each created in 15 minutes! I see 'freedom' and 'limit' as the two essential elements of creation: The freedom of Spirit-the limits of matter, time and space."
Bio: I am a visual artist, performer and writer. I have worked extensively as a teaching artist in New York State schools since 1984, and as an exhibiting artist and performer in New York City, Poughkeepsie, Kingston, Tivoli, Elmira, and Corning, NY. I have created large visual elements for outdoor festivals and parades and very tiny little figures made out of paper, glue, sticks and string. I am currently director of education at The Rockwell Museum of Western Art, Corning, NY.
Starting Block
Mavin Staub Ambrose
Artist Statement: "My artwork combines figurative imagery with symbols and mythology-reflecting dreams, archetypes and everyday experiences. Living in the hills of Elmira, NY, I often incorporate images of nature with the human form, intrigued by the inevitable relationship between women and the elements. In this fused glass piece with fabric-'Starting Block'-a woman is anticipating and waiting to get started-to move on with her work, with her creativity, with her life."
Bio: I live and work as a professional artist in Elmira, NY. I have exhibited work in North Carolina, New York City, Ithaca, Binghamton, and Buffalo and recently completed a one-woman exhibition at 171 Cedar Arts Center in Corning, NY. I am the mother of a wonderful daughter, Chelsea; I am an Arnot Art Museum board member; and I facilitate workshops exploring art and identity, believing that making art is an essential tool for self-knowledge and personal growth.
Moving Possibilities
Brigitte L. C. Baldwin
Artist Statement: "This mixed media painting gets its title from Rhonda Morton's poem, 'Moving Possibilities.' The metal piece in the center of the painting was found in the road, obviously fallen from a moving vehicle. To me, I saw a face, I saw the possibilities. The bobby/hairpins symbolize a person in movement. I bought the hairpins at a rummage sale for a quarter this summer not exactly knowing why until I started playing around with them for this painting. The metal piece, the hairpins, and my imagination, pulled me to the poem's title which appropriately fits this piece."
Sweating, Delighted
Brigitte L. C. Baldwin
Artist Statement: "This mixed media painting gets its title from two words in Rhonda Morton's poem 'Moving Possibilities.' The paint is symbolic of the sweat that dripped and ran off Rhonda during her live summer performance at the Corning Arts Festival on Market Street this year. The metal pieces are symbolic of a person moving."
Bio: I'm a mixed media artist who loves to decorate! All of my art has gem stones, glitter and something round on it. I use items such as flattened car parts that I find on the streets, sidewalks and alleys of Corning, NY, where I live. I also use glass, jewelry, acrylic paint and chain. Recycling found objects into art gives me satisfaction as I know it is good for the environment, my imagination and my wallet. Typically I seal the canvas with varnish. My mission is "to bring life to the ordinary." One of my goals is to work as a fulltime artist.
Pushing Through
Bonnie Close
Artist Statement: "'Pushing Through' was my first response to the poem 'Moving Possibilities.' Admittedly, it was perhaps more about me and the place I was in when asked to make some art. I wondered if I could push my way out of this box to connect with possibilities of meaning. Why the mirrors? Why the tiger? I believe my creative self was looking itself in the eye. This was a connecting, after all. I was 'traversing a small space,' as the poem states."
Not Bound/ Original Self/ Freedom
Bonnie Close
Artist Statement: "I read the poem again and remembered some photos I'd taken in Hawaii. I started a series of three collages of photos on silk. They seemed appropriate to the subject of confinement versus freedom. Isn't a Buddha in a box an oxymoron? How can one's spiritual or creative self ever be contained or constricted? When we remember what gifts we have, our souls can dance out of whatever space has been built around us. This box can be a political confinement or can be built by our own minds. It is glorious to remember our own power to traverse any space, even death. Open up to freedom and dance with it, to laugh with the gods. During the Buddha series, a haiku came to me at 3:00 a.m.:
remember your original self
has the wings of a butterfly"
High Wire
Bonnie Close
Artist Statement: "Oh yes, this character is way out of the box, into the great wide open, some celestial realm. There are many ways of looking at this high wire. Is this character in control of the path of the rope as it comes up to the hand? Or, is there no need for control, but rather the rope is coming down from a higher place with extra rope for future moves?"
"Bio: I live in Corning, NY, and enjoy mixing media, watercolor, batik, beading, and calligraphy into translucent collage. In high school, I got my quiet self reprimanded for rushing to the windows and telling people what I saw. "Dances to the beat of a different drummer" was written on my report card, as though that was a bad thing. Now drumming with friends is one of my favorite ways to rev up for making art. I do dance to the beat of a different drummer, and I am a different drummer.
Rockin' Rhonda (and other lightbulb people)
Steve Coffman
Artist Statement: "How is it that we should ever feel limited to what's new and places we've never been when the necessary elements for transformation are so often under our feet, in our own trash bins? It renews me to make art from the discarded, unused, unwanted, abused: Burnt out lightbulbs returned to life. For hair: yarn, palette scrapings, weeds, sheddings of animals and my own (Yeww!). Paint rescued from basement cans or oils abandoned by artists gone acrylic. For pedestals: recycled jars, old bedsprings, yard sale leftovers. Like the moon's, my borrowed light only a virtual dance on our old Earth's face."
Bio: I live just up from Six Corners in Yates County, NY. My family could only appreciate art, not make it. I proved this with my slew of C-minuses in art, sloppy left-handedness, slight dyslexia, ineptitude with color and line. At age 30, I decided to make "art" anyway. Mostly limiting myself to found and recycled objects, my rationale: "No one wants this stuff anyway, so at least I'm not adding to the world's clutter." Trash, like art, exists in the eye of the beholder. At odd moments, they share the same blink.
Days of My Life
Jennifer Green Fais
Artist Statement: "I felt the need around the time of my birthday, July 12, last year to turn my experience of every day into an evolving piece of art. I plotted the condition of the weather, friends, health, spirit, art, family, Nol and work. One hope was that the finished piece would be a quilt of colors and symbols, pleasing to the eye, revealing a pattern of meaningful relationships between my categories. I discovered, however, that the most important result was the permission I gave myself to spend time appreciating my life."
Bio: I have been drawing and painting as long as I can remember. I tend to be representational and enjoy painting architectural detail. This fascination has led to a series of house portraits of homes in and around Corning, NY, where I have lived for almost 30 years. But I have not begun to explore the nuances of the landscape here, nor have I pushed the limits of watercolor. Those are lifetime goals.
The Suspense of Hesitation
Amelia Fais Harnas
Artist Statement: "Back and forth and back and-hesitation, frustration, conflict, or the process of failing, failing better, not failing, then finding something you love? As I drew and painted, I struggled, almost trashing what I'd started. But, again returned the image of moving back and forth, holding to the course, and conquering self-imposed limitations through persistence. (Oh, and East-Coast-West-Coast, I-love-him-I-love-him-not, and dumb-job-with-money-versus-creative-time-being-broke also factored in…)"
Bio: I was born with a blue sticker on my forehead proclaiming: Future Artist. When I was 16, I spent much of the day in one room with my watercolors and mix tape after mix tape. When I was 20, I grappled with the college question and the saga of art vs. making a living began. When I was 24, I found safety in my extended family in Corning, NY, and then decidedly left for Portland, OR. Now, I am 25 with a new commitment to art and exploring opening doors.
Music in the Barn
David Higgins
Artist Statement: "These images are all songs. I'm an amateur musician and I have hundreds of hours' worth of tunes, most of them original compositions. All densely multilayered and melodic in style, they are small discrete moments-some of the tiny miracles and bizarre coincidences that make up everyday life. They drift in sonic space (silenced, for you) and dimensional space, like dust motes in Brownian motion."
Bio: I was born in a small town-Nanty Glo, PA, near Pittsburgh-and my family moved a lot. In New York, I lived in: Deposit, Walton, Hale Eddy, Sidney, New Berlin (pronounced New BER-lin), Whitney Point, Elmira Heights, Malone, Labobe, Hancock, and Chisholm. In Pennsylvania: Sherman (so small it is left off many maps), Clarks Summit, Ephrata, and Lebanon. Not surprisingly, I'm quite happy to be living in Corning and to be a professor at Corning Community College. If I ever move again, it will be to Gibson.
She Never Moves the Same Way Twice
Jan Kather
Artist Statement: "'She never moves the same way twice,' a line from Rhonda Morton's poem 'Moving Possibilities,' inspired me to focus my camera on rocks at the beach and record the motion of the waves, knowing this would capture the repetitive, yet continually changing appearance of sea water engulfing the shoreline. Later, I narrowed the experience down to one image, as a visual answer to Rhonda's question, 'How many different ways can I traverse a small room?' With subtlety and nuance, I am confident that the answer lies somewhere in the neighborhood of the infinite."
Bio: I teach photography and video art at Elmira College. I have received several grants, including the Billboards ~ Just Down the Road project of The ARTS of the Southern Finger Lakes (2002); a NYSCA Artists Crossroads grant used to create an artists' book, Honoring Your Love, Honoring Your Grief; and a Crossroads grant to produce a community art installation, Aleatoric Video (2007). I am a member of the experimental artist space, Rural Research Laboratories (Elmira), and the artist cooperative State of the Art Gallery (Ithaca).
Church and Allstate -- Pittson, PA
Brian Keeler
Artist Statement: "While walking down streets of most small towns-getting to where we are going, focused on the destination, but being here in the body fully at this very moment too-there are so many allurements: endless associations to entreat, meanings to mull through or take joy in, memories to attach to, significance to let go, histories to transcend, luscious pleasures to imagine. In this image of Broad Street in Pittson, PA, the issue of church/state separation seemed to somehow be brought into focus/reflection through the large glass windows."
Bio: I live in my hometown of Wyalusing, PA, and primarily devote my time to painting landscapes, still lifes, figures, and portraits in oil, pastel and watercolor. I have been a rostered artist with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and conduct residencies at high schools under their aegis. Involved locally in many arts projects, I founded the Blue Heron Gallery in Wyalusing in 2003, and originated the North Branch Art Trail and Festival in 1993-both continuing today.
Change of Priorities
Sharla Lefkowitz-Brown
Artist Statement: "Sometimes, you just have to reevaluate your plan. And then...the possibilities are endless."
Bio: I grew up in a smallish town and hated it. Now I live in the same smallish town, and think it's okay.
Untitled
Ginnie Lupi
Artist Statement: "I navigate the boundary between secrecy and disclosure in a small town. What to show, what to hide, what to reveal at a later date."
Bio: I enjoy navigating the boundary between secrecy and disclosure in Corning, NY.
Pibliktoq/ The Unfinished Business of Being
Maria McMahon
Artist Statement: "Both 'Pibliktoq' and 'The Unfinished Business of Being' can be read several ways. In both, the theme is transformation precipitated by psychic violence. The hills in both paintings confine even as they offer 'narrow escapes.' 'Pibliktoq' is an Inuit word referring to a specific type of nervous breakdown experienced by women in the Arctic Circle. Seemingly impervious to freezing temperatures, these women typically remove all their clothing and walk into the tundra, sometimes in total silence and other times screaming wildly."
Bio: I live and work in my studio at the "Vanishing Point" in Lockwood, NY. Situated next to the railroad tracks, the name is geographically and existentially correct.
Doorway
Martin Poole
Artist Statement:
"I LOOK FOOLISH?
I'M NOT SURE
HUNDREDS OF STARTS
BACK AND FORTH
MOVES
FINDS
KEEPS MOVING
UNLEASHED
WHAT IT I DON'T CARE
IF I RISK SOMETHING
THIS IS LIKE
THIS IS LIKE
THIS IS LIKE LIVING."
Bio: I am a local who has painted forever. I've been paying attention, more or less, but of course I've missed some things. Seems to be working okay.