Published: July 10, 2008 09:48 am            

ART: Niagara Frontier exhibit returns to Kenan

In the Niagara Frontier Art Exhibit, Lockport’s Kenan Center brings together the recent work of the area’s artists, photographers and sculptors in a juried show that remains one of Western New York’s most significant productions.

This year’s exhibit, the 39th (and final as an annual event; it goes biennial beginning in 2010) opens Sunday with a free public reception and runs through Aug. 24.

The show that was once restricted to artists from Niagara and Erie counties this year welcomed applicants from across Western New York, according to Elaine Harrigan, the Kenan’s director of marketing.

“We extended the boundaries of what counted as the Niagara region,” she said, noting that a third of the 54 artists had not previously applied for the show. For this year’s show, 125 works were considered and 39 made the cut, 10 from Niagara County artists.

Since 1969, the Niagara Frontier Art Exhibit has provided a forum for significant new works by local artists. Oils, watercolors, acrylics, photography, ink and pencil drawings, and mixed media works will be presented, and cash awards will be presented on opening day.

“People look forward to this exhibit. For the artists, it’s a great opportunity to show their work,” said show juror Nancy Weekly, head of collections for Buffalo’s Burchfield-Penney Art Center. “We’ve got a wide range of works — photorealism, non-objective works, ceramic and bronze sculpture, beautiful landscapes, challenging conceptual pieces. This is going to be an exciting show, a strong show.”

An example of one of the more compelling presentations is that of artist Allison Wilton of North Tonawanda, a recent graduate of Alfred University’s School of Art and Design. Her art is the construction of books out of paper and other elements that include shag carpeting for the covers, what she calls “a hybrid of art and design.” Four of the 16 works she presented at her college art show will be on display at the Kenan Center.

Wilton is, among other things, a sophisticated user of the Internet. The hand-built books are commentaries on “Web culture, conceptual spam and fakeness, and the social expression of things not often talked about,” she said.

Emoticons, for example, those e-mail doodlings made from typographical punctuation marks — happy faces, snarling asides and the like — are available on any computer keyboard. Her emoticon book turns them into art, and into a compelling consideration of what initially seems like a trivial part of pop culture.

According to Wilton, “A lot of it is repetition, examples of what’s online. It’s digital information expressed as a book and a book expressed as digital information.”

Harrigan refers to it as “breakthrough work in design.”

Weekly, the judge who narrowed the field from 125 submissions to 54, said Wilton’s works are “beautifully crafted, one-of-a-kind books and statements about society.”

Each work was chosen with the skill of the artist in mind and the mastery of the medium they’ve chosen.

Other Niagara County artists in the show are Thomas Paul Asklar of Lewiston, Margaret Carney of North Tonawanda, Sally Johnson of Gasport, William Hutchinson and Christine Heur Schnepf of Niagara Falls, and Kristine Gazzo, Alec Maslowski, Joan Shaw and Joseph Whalen of Lockport.

Six cash awards will be presented to the winning artists, including Best of Show, the Juror’s Choice Purchase award, the Sheila Whalen Memorial Realism in Drawing Award and three Awards of Excellence, one of which is reserved for a three-dimensional work.

Ed Adamczyk is a freelance writer from Kenmore.



IF YOU GO

* WHAT: The 39th Niagara Frontier Art Exhibit

* WHEN: Sunday through Aug. 24; the gallery is open from noon to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday

* WHERE: Kenan Center, 433 Locust St., Lockport

* MORE INFORMATION: Call 433-2617 or visit kenancenter.org

        

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