2019
Two Presidents, One Photographer
The iconic photographs of Pete Souza are well known from his tenure as Chief Official White House Photographer for President Obama. What most people don’t remember is that Souza, who was trained as a photojournalist, was also an Official White House Photographer for President Reagan. Souza was in his late 20’s, at the beginning of his career, when he joined the Reagan White House in 1983. More than 30 years later, Souza returned to the White House to join the Obama administration.
Rust Belt Biennial
We are thrilled to host the first Rust Belt Biennial, a celebration of photography with work realized throughout the Rust Belt Region in all its manifestations. For our inaugural Biennial we are grateful to have Andrew L. Moore as competition juror.
Lit by Lyn Godley
Artist Lyn Godley explores the relationship between art and technology in her exhibition, Lit. Inspired by the interaction of light with differing materials, Godley combines LEDs and fiber optics with photography to study the therapeutic applications of light, as well as both the emotional and physical impact light plays on viewers and consumers.
Simply Picasso
The pop-up exhibition features a ceramic piece created by Pablo Picasso at the Madoura pottery studio in Vallauris, France. The piece will be on display and open to the public from 12 noon to 4 p.m. during the three-day exhibition.
Member's Only Spotlight Lecture
The Sordoni Art Gallery will host a lecture for gallery members at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 30. This members-only event will feature Garth Johnson, curator of ceramics at Everson Museum. The lecture is preceded by a reception at 6 p.m.
Individuals interested in becoming a member of the gallery may join in advance to attend the lecture. RSVP is required.
Contact Nicole Lewis at nicole.lewis1@wilkes.edu or (570) 408-5815 for membership information and reservations.
Ukiyo-e to Shin Hanga
Japanese Woodcuts from the Syracuse University Art Collection
This exhibition draws from Syracuse University's collection of over 300 examples from this influential art movement. Masters of this medium are represented; this includes the work of Utamaro, Hokusai, Hiroshida, and Yoshida Hiroshi. The prints exemplify the soft painterly style that is synonymous with the Japanese woodcut, and they illustrate the wide range of subjects from courtesans to Kabuki theater and the Japanese landscape.
Peasant War by Käthe Kollwitz
on loan from Dickinson College Trout Gallery
From 1903 to 1908, Käthe Kollwitz worked on the metal plates for Baurenkrieg / Peasant War, a series of etchings that represent the brutal treatment of peasants in sixteenth-century Germany, their rise to revolution and battle, and their subsequent humiliation and death.
Sacred Sisters by Holly Trostle Brigham
Sacred Sisters is a collaboration between visual artist Holly Trostle Brigham and award-winning poet Marilyn Nelson. Brigham is a figurative painter whose work explores feminist narratives through paintings that are enriched by her research into the art, symbolism, and history of her subjects.
2018
Loud Silence: Expressions of Activism
Curated by: Heather Sincavage
October 23 - December 16
Those who have been denied a voice are forced to scream the loudest. Loud Silence: Expressions of Activism calls on the viewer to examine their own blind-spots and understand perspectives they may have never considered, through art. The works featured demonstrate the unique perils of living while a woman, while of color, while indigenous, while LGBTQIA+, and while an immigrant. For centuries, artists have used the image of the body as an exploration of their humanity and that of their subjects. This exhibition explores artists who use the human figure or body as a means for activism.
A Stirring Song Sung Heroic: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom
William Earle Williams
August 21 - October 7, 2018
A Stirring Song Sung Heroic is an exhibition of contemporary photographic works by William Earle Williams presented alongside related historic objects. Together, they depict the often invisible journey from slavery to freedom in the United States. The exhibition focuses on sites and historic events in the New World from 1619 to 1865 where Americans, black and white, determined the meaning of freedom.
Solid Gone
Curated by Ben Woodeson
June 1 - July 1, 2018
"Life and energy; objects, concepts, narratives, things on the cusp of being or not-being... A vase placed too close to an edge, a delicate eco-system, an idea whose time has almost come. Things that burst with a literal or metaphorical energy, light of touch, or maybe things just waiting to die transience... Clinging on by your fingernails." -Ben Woodeson
Selections from the Sordoni Collection of American Illustration and Comic Art
Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker, N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, Frank Schoonover, George Herriman, Milton Caniff, Charles Schulz, and more.
April 7 - May 20, 2018
From Disney to Playboy and billions of Sunday morning papers in between, the art of illustration is tightly ingrained in the American zeitgeist. Narrative illustration is unique in its ability to be harrowing, hilarious, or politically motivating, at times simultaneously. Though often used as advertisement, these works also stand alone as art in their own right.
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Angela Fraleigh
The Bones of Us Hunger for Nothing.
January 16 - March 2, 2018
In this exhibition, Angela Fraleigh reimagines the role of women as they have been depicted in art history, literature, and media. She reaches through the depths of centuries-old and often patriarchal tradition to breathe new agency into her female subjects. The grade scale works feature luxurious depth that makes them sometimes Edenic, sometimes mystical, but always breathtaking.
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2017
Andy Warhol
15 Minutes: From Image To Icon
October 6 - December 20
Pennsylvania artist, Andy Warhol, changed how we view art. Inspired by pop culture, Warhol’s imagery defined the new age of fine art and influenced society, to in turn, be a creator of pop culture. This exhibition examines the artist’s inspiration, process, and wide influence to both fine and commercial art.
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Mirandah Akeley & Corbett Fogue
This Too Shall Pass: Emerging Artist Biennial
MARCH 23 – MAY 21
This Too Shall Pass focuses on artists whose body is an intrinsic part of their studio process. Mirandah Akeley and Corbett Fogue consider the emotional significance of body function- a breath, a swallow, a spit. As each artist performs their emotional self, the subtext explores absence, grief, and loss.
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Lyndon Barrois Jr.
Of Color
MARCH 23 – MAY 21
A SIGNAL FOR PLAY (Francine J. Harris)
Afterward, you may remember the figures in Lyndon Barrois, Jr.’s “Of Color” emanating
more color than they actually do. In their cutout, halftone resonance, the figures
positioned in teams atop a gallery-installed asphalt basketball court, pulse a sunniness,
a rosiness, a billowing blue. Partial adornments outfit those figures built of toner
boxes in neat, asymmetric columns, and the ensembles vibrate diaphanously as modern
totems, while the pale, white gallery walls recede into a wash of light.
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Lydia Panas
After Sargent
JANUARY 20 – MARCH 3
Award-winning photographer Lydia Panas explores vulnerability, tension and emotion within the classic but non-traditional portrait. Panas captures a revealing and compelling honesty through body language, facial expression and the model's relationship with space.
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2016
Ying Li
Geographies
October 25 – December 18
Geographies, an exhibition of paintings by Chinese-born Ying Li is more than images of landscapes and city scenes. This exhibition depicts the physical and metaphysical act of painting resulting in a thick and tactile surface vibrating with expression.
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Persistence: The Continuing Influence of Classical Myths
Classical Mythology
August 30 – October 12
Artists have found inspiration in Classical Mythology for hundreds of years. In Persistence: The Continuing Influence of Classical Myth, artists have tackled the universal tales- some using traditional imagery and others with a modern twist- but all find inspiration in the Classical narratives. Curator Stanley I Grand includes contemporary works that are easily timeless.
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Upstream & Down: The Susquehanna
Susquehanna River
JUNE 13 – AUGUST 13
A group exhibition of contemporary artists who have painted the Susquehanna River in all its many moods and seasons. The exhibition celebrates the river and reminds us of its fragility and the need to be wise stewards of this great resource. Artists include: Michael Allen, Ruth Bernard, Tom Dougherty, Rob Evans, Brian Keeler, William Kocher, Earl Lehman, Raoul Middleman, Peter Paone, Thomas Paquette, E. M. Saniga, George Sorrels, Robert Stark, Joseph Sweeney, John David Wissler, Mark Workman, and Scott Wright. Several of the artists have created works specifically for this exhibition.
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Jack Troy, Archie Johnson & Ruth Cohen
Feats of Six Hands
MARCH 29 –MAY 15
Jack Troy is a potter, teacher, and writer, from Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, where he taught at Juniata College for 39 years. His work has been exhibited widely and is included in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution’s Renwick Gallery, Auckland (NZ) Museum of Art, Kalamazoo (Michigan) Institute of Art, and Alfred University. He received the 2012 National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Excellence in Teaching Award. He is the author of Salt Glazed Ceramics and Woodfired Stoneware and Porcelain and over 90 articles in ceramics publications. In addition he has published a book of poems, Calling the Planet Home.
Archie Johnson is a retired architect who operates Mud and Fire Potters with his wife Ruth Cohen. He describes his work as “architecturally influenced with an emphasis of pure form, and the creative fusion of traditional and contemporary forms...” Combining wheel-thrown with pure sculptural forms, he creates objects evidencing a dynamic tension between the functional and the formal. He is the recipient of two “best in show” awards at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
An educator and ceramicist, Ruth Cohen is now based in Little Meadows, PA, where she and her husband Archie Johnson run Mud and Fire Potters, a studio and gallery. Her work reflects her philosophy that “art should surround us and be enmeshed in every day routines. Casual rituals, as sipping tea from a handcrafted bowl or mug, should promote self-reflection and feelings of peace and tranquility.” Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries in Northeastern Pennsylvania and New York.
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Baron Wolman
Backstage Pass: Baron Wolman and the Early Years of Rolling Stone
January 28 – March 16
Immortalized by writers, filmmakers, and musicians from Stephen King to Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, the cover of Rolling Stone magazine has embodied generations of popular culture. For artists, the cover is a coveted career achievement, and for many readers, it represents a fantasy realm of the rock-n-roll lifestyle. The exhibition Backstage Pass: Baron Wolman and the Early Years of Rolling Stoneexplores how the lens of one artist’s camera captured and helped define one of the most important eras in rock-n-roll history.
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2015
David Mazure
New Mythologists: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse & The Little Mermaid
October 27 – December 12
New Mythologists: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a site-specific installation and performance that moves beyond memory, beyond recollection, to strive for new possibilities. What happens to this end-of-the-world myth when it fails to deliver what it has promised? Can we rearrange and repurpose it to suit the needs of the new millennium?
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Blair Seitz
Aerial Perspectives
September 10 - November 11
Blair Seitz is the photographer of 22 books. His publications are numerous including "National Geographic Traveler," "Nation's Business," "New York Times Magazine" and "Endless Vacations." Book titles include Tapestry, PA from the Air, Philadelphia and its Countryside, Pittsburgh, Amish Ways, Gardens of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Yesterday and Today. He has also written a memoir of his years in Africa and Asia as a photojournalist.
