Aerial view of campus with Williamsport, the Susquehanna River and Bald Eagle Mountain as a backdrop

Art Gallery 2019-20

Exhibitions

Laura Brennan: Of These Unknown

May 31 – June 29, 2019
Artist Reception May 31, 5-7:30 p.m.
Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.
Gallery remains open til 9 p.m.

"Of These Unknown is an alternative photographic exploration creating visual answers to abstract questions. It challenges our perceptions of reality and addresses the transient state of human memory through inaccessibility and a complete loss of content over time. Materials and experimentation play a large part in the process of creating these photographs. The unprocessed photograms fade to a solid uniform color the longer they are exposed to light, losing any evidence of the image. The Polaroid emulsion layers over itself, obscuring the photo’s content, and the manipulation of the silver nitrate solution of a tintype creates alternate realities. The abstract photos present the viewer with an intricate representation of the state of our memories unlike any unaltered photograph."

A native of Ashland, PA, Laura Brennan, received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2018. She has been blurring the lines between art and science since her senior year at Lycoming College. Having received her Bachelor of Arts in 2015 with a dual major in art and biology, Laura is forever intertwining her passion for traditional and alternative process photography with scientific themes such as memory loss and recall. She currently lives in Las Vegas and teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

More Info: www.laurabrennanphotography.com

John McKaig: Singular Fable

July 5 – August 30, 2019
Artist Reception August 30, 5-7:30 p.m.
Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.
Gallery remains open til 9 p.m.

"I create pictures that help me explore the idea of escape, ideas of mortality and passage after life, and about how to deal with trauma and healing from that trauma. My use of the figure explores my identity as a queer man that is still expected to justify my experiences and basic human identity. I use nautical imagery, water and the human figure in order to communicate essential ideas of how we relate to each other, how we affect each other, and how to move to space that is empowering and encouraging. I often depict the figure (or figurative elements or components) in situations or stances that allude to ideas of fighting back, play and wonderment, as well as stoicism and quiet resolve. I also work with the idea of "passage" and "journey" not only to communicate ideas of healing and working through trauma, but also to communicate the idea of growing beyond limitations and definitions of being."

John McKaig has exhibited work throughout the United States and internationally, in group and juried exhibitions as well as in several solo exhibitions, including a recent exhibition at the HUB Robeson Gallery at Pennsylvania State University. He received a BFA in printmaking from Miami University in OH, and a MFA in printmaking from Syracuse University in NY. McKaig is a visiting professor of drawing and figure drawing at Bloomsburg University, Bloomsburg, PA. He has taught printmaking, painting, figure drawing, illustration, sculpture, analog photography and anatomy at the following institutions: Syracuse University, Cazenovia College, Pennsylvania College of Technology, and the Interlochen Arts Academy.

MotherFather Queer Insomnia Autograph A Better Man Than Me

More Info: www.johnmurraymckaig.com

Anthony Cervino: Haunt & Gather

September 6 - October 11, 2019
Artist Reception September 6, 5-7:30 p.m.
Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.
Gallery remains open til 9 p.m.

Featuring new sculptures by Anthony Cervino, the works in Haunt & Gather pay homage to the emotional valences and real histories found in familiar and strange things. Cervino’s carefully composed sculptures set in beautifully crafted, glass-fronted, brightly colored wooden boxes resonate with a kind of sympathetic magic (the idea that through ritual, an object can influence action). In other words, the objects are valued not simply because they’ve been gathered and displayed; rather, they also radiate an uncanny sense of larger sentimental and cultural significance. Found and sculpted materials in each case are not banal detritus, but instead appear as archaeological relics of childhood narratives. Although the exhibition might at first seem to imitate the display of artifacts found in institutional, linen-lined museum cases, Cervino invites personal associations and the passionate psyche of childhood — adventurous play, maternal comforts, imagined heroism, lurking bogymen, and prayerful longings. Taken as a whole, Cervino’s work offers a wistful celebration of everyday possessions and poetic musings on an enigmatic past.

Cervino is an associate professor of art at Dickinson College. His works have been featured in both solo and group exhibitions at museums around the country, and he has extensive experience lecturing. Cervino also completed a residency at Kunstnarhuset Messen, Alvik, Norway. He received a bachelor's degree in fine art from the University of North Carolina, and a master’s of fine art from Towson University.

Karine Falleni: Trace

October 18 - November 14, 2019
Artist Reception November 1, 5-7:30 p.m.
Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.
Gallery remains open til 9 p.m.

"Trace," features the works of French-born artist Karine Falleni, and involves one of her primary focuses in art: the relation between one's movement and how the space surrounding them controls that movement. "My practice is an inquiry into recording a visual trace of my physical movement in space," says Falleni. "I am interested in engaging with architectural spaces through intuitive mark-making. My marks become drawings in response to surrounding structures I encounter on a regular basis (walls, corners, floors...). I am fascinated with functioning within the confinements of these types of structures daily. I seek to map my immediate reactionary movement in these areas."

Falleni dedicates an incredible amount of time, thought, and effort into her work, which will be reflected by the quality of her new exhibit. "I often question how much of our everyday movements are actually guided by the structures we encounter," said Falleni. "The scale of a room dictates the gesture of my physical body, which leads to the mark making. My works emerge from the relationship between human body and architectural body. The finality is a capture of time."

Falleni received her undergraduate degree at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and her master's degree at Stony Brook University. She has displayed her work in New York, Washington D.C., Arizona, Toronto, Italy, and Egypt, including places such as the Islip Art Museum, Tucson Museum of Art and MOCA Tucson. She currently lives in New York with her husband and their 12-year-old son.

National Juried Exhibition: Blurred Expectations

November 22, 2019 - January 24, 2020
Artist Reception November 22, 5-9:00 p.m.
Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.

This national juried exhibition is the culminating project for students in the College's Introduction to Curatorial Methods class and will include work chosen from a group of submissions from around the country. With the help of their instructor, Seth Goodman, associate professor of art, students work collaboratively to conceptualize, research, promote, organize, install, and write about this thematic exhibition of artwork.

"Blurred Expectations," brings together works that both challenge negative stereotypes about and pay tribute to positive and uplifting representations of black people and culture. The show aims to showcase high quality artwork that fits within the described theme while stimulating students with understanding and experience related to exhibition curation and design, installation, and art handling.

The students design a "call for entry" that is published in three major online resources that are frequented by working artists. Each artist may submit up to five works for consideration, including video work. Students narrow down the submitted work based on the size of the gallery, the quality of the individual work and how well that work fits within the designed theme. Lycoming College's last national juried exhibition received more than 100 submissions from more than 20 states across the country.

Student curators include:

  • Tamara Collington '20 (Upper Marlboro, Md.) – criminology major, philosophy minor
  • Lily Frey '20 (York, Pa.) – history major, art history minor
  • Victoria Grundhoeffer '20 (San Antonio, Texas) – film major, photography minor
  • Madison Ney '20 (Marietta, Pa.) – archaeology major, anthropology minor
  • Jessalyn Smith '20 (East Windsor, Conn.) – photography major, entrepreneurship minor
  • Kiannah Titus '21 (Syracuse, N.Y.) – archaeology major
  • Taylor Huth '21 (Mount Pleasant, Pa.) – anthropology major, archaeology minor
  • Vito Montgomery '21 (Newark, Del.) – film major, commercial design minor
  • Inga Brostek '21 (Williamsport, Pas.) – philosophy major
  • Medhavi Bhunjun '22 (Rose Hill, Mauritius) – art major

Van Tran Nguyen: Paris, Orange County: Diasporic Imaginations of Vietnam

January 31 - February 28, 2020
Artist Reception January 31, 5-7:30 p.m.
Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.
Gallery remains open til 9 p.m.

"The multimedia installations in this exhibition are concerned with the experience of a person who in Vietnamese is called a Việt Kiều, which is someone who leaves Vietnam, and returns (or does not return) as an ‘overseas Vietnamese,'" said Van Tran Nguyen. "I view this identity (and ultimately, my own) as a lens to explore the meaning of nostalgia in Vietnamese-American media. The media used are a collection of Vietnamese variety television, music videos from Vietnamese musicians and composers who are in exile from Vietnam and home videos from my childhood."

Nguyen was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and holds a bachelor's degree in fine arts and biology, as well as a master's of fine arts from the University at Buffalo. She is currently a doctoral candidate of the philosophy in electronic arts program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. Her research centers on nostalgia and nation-building from a Vietnamese diasporic perspective.

She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions including "Ill at Ease: Dis-ease in Art," "Shape of a Pocket," and "Strange Agency." In 2016, Tran Nguyen and co-curator Natalie Fleming curated the exhibition "The Measure of All Things: Rethinking Humanism through Art" at the University at Buffalo Department of Art Gallery. In 2017, Tran Nguyen and Fleming opened their group exhibition "Forging American: Art in the Workings of an Asian American Rust Belt" at Big Orbit Project Space, CEPA Gallery, in Buffalo New York. In 2019 she opened "Art Stands Still" in Troy, N.Y., at Collar Works Gallery. Tran Nguyen’s short film "I love Vietnam but Vietnam likes me okay," was an official selection for the 2019 Saigon Experimental Film Festival.

Anne Arden McDonald: Everything Changes Everything

This gallery exhibition has closed early. 

March 4 - April 9, 2020
Artist Reception March 4, 5-7:30 p.m.
Gallery Talk: 5:30 p.m.
Gallery remains open til 9 p.m.

A Brooklyn-based artist born in Atlanta, Ga., Anne Arden McDonald made self-portraits from the age of 15 to 30 by building installations in abandoned interiors and performing privately for her camera in these spaces. Recently, she has been using light and chemistry — the way a painter or sculptor would — to build images on photographic paper.

"While most photography employs a lens, and either film or a digital sensor, this series explores ways of generating images on photographic paper without using a camera or negative," said McDonald. "The source of inspiration for inventing processes that inform the resulting photograph is the dialogue that occurs between painters or sculptors, and their chosen medium. Another is the scientific method, where you observe phenomena, formulate a hypothesis, test it with experiments, use careful measurements, note variables, observe results, and use this information to build an image."

In the past 30 years, McDonald has presented 44 solo exhibitions in 10 countries. She has been published in Aperture, European Photography, and Eyemazing magazines. Her work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Worchester Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Art, and Paris’s Bibliothèque nationale. She was a Lapine Fellow at the Millay Colony and received a grant of studio space from the Sharpe Foundation. She was also in residence at the Byrdcliffe colony from 2015-2017 and taught for six years at Parsons School of Design in New York. Her lectures included topics such as staged photography, self-portraiture, Czech and Slovak photography, alternative photography, and her own work.

"Photography is a very young and exciting medium, and there is so much undiscovered terrain," added McDonald. "In some ways, it stands at a precipice: digital photography is eroding the availability of some analog materials, and the study and use of silver gelatin papers. I am working to develop these processes, and to pose interesting questions about what photography is, and what it can be."

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