An Opening Reception will be held on Thursday April 10, 2008 from 5:00 to 7:00 pm in the Borg Warner Community Room.

With grant support from the Community Arts Partnership

Streetscapes features a collection of work that draws on creativity and inspiration from our urban surroundings. Using a mixture of diverse mediums, artists will explore the influence of the urban environment through color, energy, movement and personal experience culminating in sincere, straight-from-the-gut expression.

Streetscapes is an inherent appreciation of urban culture, in all its dangerous, poetic, authentic and sometimes rebellious glory.

Participating artists include (click on name to read artist's statement):

Kevin Dossinger
Tara Finlay
Jim Garmhausen
Rebecca Hannon
Joe Lamarre
Hilda Moleski
Jay Potter
Durand Van Doren

KEVIN DOSSINGER
When I was a kid growing up in Buffalo, New York, my fifth grade art class went to the Albright Knox Art Gallery. Since it was a school trip we had a tour guide showing us selected paintings. I don't really remember much about it, except for the Jackson Pollack they had there.  The guide pointed out that Pollack made the paintings by them laying on the floor and that there was a match he had dropped on the canvas. I looked for that match for the rest of the tour.  While looking for the match I began to notice the thickness of the paint, the color and the emotion in the painting. It really made an impression on me and I have been making paintings and putting matches in them ever since.

TARA FINLAY
Tara Finlay is a mixed media artist residing in Candor, New York.

While her first love is creating jewelry out of polymer clay, precious metal, clay, or found objects, she also enjoys collage, and drawing characters on paper grocery bags. Tara loves the special synergy that happens when discarded items or papers destined for the recycle bin are transformed into art.

Tara's work has been published in national magazines such as Belle Armoire Jewelry, and will appear in 1001 Art Journal Pages by Dawn Sokol and 1000 Jewelry Details by Sandra Salamony (Quarry Books).

She has studied mixed media art and jewelry making at Artfest, a mixed media art retreat in Port Townsend, Washington, annually for five years. Coming together to create with 0ther artists is one of her greatest passions. She has taught mixed media art workshops in Ithaca, and will soon open an art studio in her barn in Candor where she hopes to share her artistic vision with artists and "non-artists" alike.

“Everyone is an artist, even if they don't know it yet.”

Contact Tara at tara@bytara.com
www.bytara.com

JIM GARMHAUSEN
I've worked as a cartoonist for the last ten years. I've had work featured in daily and weekly newspapers, magazines, comics compilations and self-publications. Also, I've taught cartooning at the Community School for Music and Art, in Ithaca, and at Cornell
University.

Recently, my work has been influenced by street artists, most notably Barry McGee, David Choe, Morning Breath, Eduardo Recife, and Alex Pardee. Although I can't claim to be part of the street art community, I feel a strong connection between comic art and street, and I've noted the comic influence on many street and graffiti artists. Part of it, I think, comes from growing up in a sort of golden age of cheap, inventive television cartoons, in the seventies and eighties; and part of it is the high accessibility of the form, and its easy ability to carry subliminal messages. This is best noted in the use of cartoon characters to sell products. Characters such as Sugar Bear, Toucan Sam, the Lucky Charms leprechaun, and the Trix rabbit are indelibly printed on the consciousness of millions of Saturday morning cartoon-inhaling children.

My own take on cartooning is that the viewer is immediately drawn into the desire to experience an innocent, Disneyesque world, and their defenses drop. They are then vulnerable to the deeper, unexpected messages within the work. Characters such as mine are imbued with a darker aspect; they are the Saturday morning kids grown up, and smacked around by life. I'm also a fan of creating children's book-type characters that have fallen on hard times. Note the many bears and other animals in my cartoons smoking cigarettes while staring blankly.

I once had an editor tell me that she loved my characters but hated what they were saying. Exactly.

My motivation is to move my art from the acceptable, bleached world of daily newspaper cartoons and New Yorker gag panels toward something that reflects the diversity and complexity of the individual within a difficult world.

Contact Jim at jimdg.artist@gmail.com
www.myspace.com/dreamlandcomics

REBECCA HANNON
Rebecca Hannon graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and then worked as a goldsmith for five years in New York City before attending the Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste in Munich, Germany on a Fulbright scholarship. Five years later she returned to the States and currently teaches, lectures and has her own workshop in Ithaca, New York.

In her work, she strives to create evocative objects that double as fine souvenirs. A fleeting memory, a lost bauble, or an everyday object are refashioned to create a small celebratory ornament.

The photo jewelry pieces chosen for Streetscapes were created while living in Munich.

“A gingerbread house. A Baroque Church. The cool outline of an ultra modern edifice. I have an interest in history and historical forms, and there was much to investigate in my environment: Germany. Photos of the structures that surrounded me were taken, cut apart, and reconstructed. Much like history itself.”

Once the “jewel” is created from a photo collage protected by Plexiglas, a setting is then formed responding to the outline of the new structure. Silver and gold decorative elements were soldered together to create the supporting strength of the setting, but they hide behind the surface of the brooch. A complex secret that only the wearer is aware of.

The prints shown are the flip side of the quiet restraint needed to create a piece of jewelry. The monotype process used provides bold swaths of color, spontaneity and surprises. Here mysteries hidden underneath the press blanket never fail to amaze. In this realm, volume and order are explored in two dimensions.

Contact Rebecca at rjhjewel@gmail.com
www.rebeccahannonjewelry.com

JOE LAMARRE
Joseph Lamarre obtained his BFA in Communication Design from Metropolitan State College of Denver. His letterpress work has been published several times since he was first introduced to the craft back in the late 90s by Tom Parson (Now It’s Up To You Publications) and Rick Griffith (MATTER, a Denver design studio).

Presently, Joe divides his design time between being a partner of ART & ANTHROPOLOGY INC. and his letterpress studio located at 210 Center Street, Ithaca, New York. Every other year he also teaches letterpress workshops at  The Ink Shop, here in Ithaca.

This series of letterpress pieces was inspired by Edward Estlin Cummings’ disregard of punctuation and typographic conventions.
In this instance, the poetry has been created by a local poet, Hilda Moleski. Each of her poems has been interpreted with the same sensitivity that the poems were originally conceived. Careful attention to typeface selection, color, texture and composition have coalesced to convey the emotional explorations that these poems embody.
The single objective in this collaboration has been to make these pieces emote.

Contact Joe at joe@artandanthropology.com
www.artandanthropology.com

HILDA MOLESKI
I started writing publicly when I was four and pre-alphabetic, most notably a book made from lined notebook paper torn into smaller pieces and stapled together, with wavy lines where words would have been, and stick figure illustrations. As I recall it was about lawnmowers and the art of cutting grass. Distribution was minimal for this work, so for the next 36 years I kept my writing private, focusing on essays and poetry.

My writing exists within itself, it comes through me with an integrity of its own; but the fact that there is someone listening on the other side has become a wonderful experience for me. I am so appreciative of the audience, and of the process.

Contact Hilda at hildamoleski@yahoo.com

JAY POTTER
Jay Potter has been “writing” graffiti for nearly twenty years. While living in Paris in the mid 80s he was exposed to miles upon miles of some of the world’s finest talent of its time along the suburban Metro trackside walls, as well as the trains themselves. The scale, color, energy and complexity of these designs fueled his passion for the medium and continues to inspire his obsessive-like study of hand drawn letterforms and typography.

Born and raised in the UK, Jay graduated from Norwich School of Art and Design after studying graphic design in an intensive five-year program. While living in Denver, he taught  Typography at Metropolitan State College of Denver. 

He has been commissioned by numerous corporate and private clients both in the UK and U.S. including: Lynx (anti-fur campaign), Comcast, Cornell University and Delta Translation International.

Jay regularly paints in Ithaca, New York; Queens, New York; and whenever possible back “home” in the UK. His work has shown in London, Edinburgh and Denver. In August, 2007, his artwork was featured on the world-renowned graffiti website www.artcrimes.org.

“The letters are the art. How they interact with each other, the way they lean, twist or sit. Ultimately letter style represents the skill level of the artist.”

“It was by studying graffiti that I became interested in graphic design and illustration. It continues to give me a fresh perspective, and allows me to be versatile with my skills. On one hand I’m producing something in minute detail on the computer and the next working on a really large scale with a very loose medium.”

Contact Jay at mealism@yahoo.com

DURAND VAN DOREN
As one who has wielded a blacksmith’s hammer for more than 30 years—directly out of high school—Durand has pursued the creation of fine ironwork with a rare singlemindedness. After a start in a small production shop, Durand took early formal training with Master Smith Frank Turley in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He went on to develop a network of private and commercial clients.

His work has been widely exhibited, in such prestigious venues as:
The American Craft Council fairs, including Rhinebeck & Baltimore
Paradise City shows, Northampton (MA)
The Morristown (NJ) fall craft fair
The WBAI (NYC) spring and fall craft events

And sold at such stores and galleries as:
Portico/Portico Bed & Bath in Manhattan, Connecticut, & New Jersey
Macy’s
America House Gallery

He has been spotlighted in such publications as:
The New York Times
The Philadelphia Inquirer (Inquirer Magazine)
New York Magazine (“Best Bets”)

He has fabricated both large and small parts of the world-famous audio-kinetic sculptures designed by artist George Rhoads for Ithaca’s Rock Stream Studios.

He was awarded for “Most Innovative Use of Materials” at the 1998 Philadelphia Furniture Show. In the fall of 2005, he was invited to present a solo show at the Trumansburg Conservatory of Fine Arts. He has a sculpture in place on the new Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre gates in London, England, and has made pieces for the National Park Service; for historic Great Camp Sagamore in the Adirondacks; for Willard Straight Hall and the Law School, Cornell University; and for executives at Corning Glass. In some cases collaborating with historical preservationists, he has fabricated public work for numerous Ithaca buildings, including:
Clinton Hall
The Ithaca Times building
Alternatives Federal Credit Union (AFCU)

Contact Durand at skl@lightlink.com
www.lightlink.com/durand