Carol Ann Simon Cillo in the Community Gallery

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Artist’s Statement for:
“A DEGREE OF RE-CONSTRUCTION” - AN EXHIBIT OF CERAMICS AND MIXED MEDIA

The exhibit continues an examination begun in the previous “Contemplating Broken” collection, which found similarities between the broken human condition and the fragile nature of clay during the creation of ceramic pieces.

The thought process continues to delve into how we relate to one another. It continues the clay dialogue on how we came to be “formed” into the individual we have become, how others effect that formation and how we strive to constantly rebuild ourselves. It expresses how we perceive the self and the various kinds of real and imagined damages we struggle with. Ultimately, it seeks the solution for healing and a kind of reconstruction of self by the formation of clay through artistic expression.

Mini-Bio: Carol Ann (Simon) Cillo grew up in the Pittsburgh, PA area, studied at Carnegie Mellon University as a teen and graduated from Edinboro University of PA with her B.S. in Art Education.

A Williamsport resident for many years, she began "on the boards" as a graphic designer ,then became Art Director at C.A. Reed Inc. of Williamsport, a national party goods company.She and her partner,Steve Getz,then founded and are partner/owners of If-the Idea Factory,a design studio in Lock Haven,PA which has worked with companies around the country designing everything from product surface design,catalogs & brochures to museum and trade­ show exhibits.

She has served as Adjunct Faculty at Penn College of Technology teaching Color Theory,and was elected to a three­ year term on the Board of Directors for the Color Marketing Group (CMG - an international organization for color trends) as well as directing workshops at their international conferences as Co-Chairman for Colors Current Dire­ ctions, Design and Color Expressions for presentations with up to 750 attendees per conference.

She currently serves on the Board of the Station Gallery in Lock Haven,PA.,where she serves as Vice President and helps to secure artists'works to organize shows at the gallery.Carol is a juried Pennsylvania Artisan for the PA Wilds.

Her work is available at galleries in Williamsport, Jersey Shore, Lock Haven, Eagle's Mere and Emporium, PA. Her work also hangs permanently at the Susquehanna Regional Medical Center and Lock Haven University. She has won numerous awards for her artwork in various shows in Pennsylvania, including acceptance into the juried 2013 Art of the State exhibit at the State Museum of PA in Harrisburg,PA.

Community Gallery - 2nd Floor

Fridays, Saturdays & Sundays 12:00 to 4:30 p.m. Or By Appointment

Word and Image: the Poetry of Robert Lima

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Opening: Sunday, April 2nd, 12:00-4:30 p.m. Dr. Robert Lima will be reading from CELESTIALS at 3:00 p.m. As always, Free & open to the public.

The exhibition will include 20 - 25 poems and a variety of images, some painting and some photography, that will illuminate the subject of the poem. The poetry is by Robert Lima and the accompanying art works are by many different artists and by Lima using several mediums.

Dr. Robert Lima is a poetry professor at the Penn State University, State College, Pennsylvania. Lima composes poetry and illustrates his words with his photographs and sometimes the work of other artists. Lima has published nine books of poetry, he had been published in many journals and on-line periodicals and has been awarded numerous prizes. At the museum, Dr. Lima will share his created works in words as well as images. Some of his poetry will be accompanied by photography by other artists and colleagues.

Lima began writing poetry as an undergraduate at Villanova University and spent some time in Greenwich Village as a poet. He is a Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Comparative Literature and Fellow Emeritus, Institute for the Arts and Humanities Studies, Penn State University. Lima has been recognized for his contributions to language and poetry and was named Knight Commander in the Order of Queen Isabel of Spain by his Majesty Juan Carlos. He is Academician of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language and a corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy.

Windows on the World Gallery - 1st Floor

Fridays, Saturdays & Sundays 12:00 to 4:30 p.m. Or By Appointment

Courtney Desiree Morris in the Photography Gallery

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Artist Statement: My work examines the complexities of place, ecology, memory, and the constant search for “home.” Specifically I am interested in understanding the ways that we inhabit place – through migration, ancestry, and shared social memory -- and how place inhabit us. This interplay between landscapes and human subjectivity is evident in the ways that I use my own body as a staging ground for re-membering my families’ experiences of loss, dispossession and the persistent struggle to make a place for oneself in the world. I am particularly interested in examining these questions through the experiences of female ancestors and elders whose stories are often disappeared in both family histories and official historical narratives.

My first collection, Soil, reconceptualizes my paternal family’s relationship to the agroindustrial landscapes of south Florida, specifically the sugarcane fields surrounding Belle Glade, which attracted thousands of labor migrants from the Anglophone Caribbean from the mid-1950s through the 1980s. This work serves as a meditation on the fraught connections between blackness, labor, migration and the multiple afterlives of slavery throughout the African Diaspora. In one sense, the work is an effort to excavate the stories of Caribbean labor migrants whose labor in the cane fields has gone largely unrecognized in the region’s history. Beyond that, however, the project attempts to recognize the kinds of sacred memory that links historical continuities between contemporary labor migration and colonial systems of enslaved labor in the process of industrialized sugar production. As one of the first truly global commodities, sugar has played a central role in the making of the modern world. Soil attempts to re-narrate that drama by focusing on the stories of everyday workers, past and present.

I am essentially a conceptual artist and I work primarily in the fields of photography, experimental video installation, and performance art. I am drawn to these mediums because of the ways that they allow me to engage and play with my family’s history by performatively inhabiting the stories of my childhood and imaginatively filling in the gaps where “facts” are either unknown or in dispute. Photography and video are critical tools for providing viewers with a deep sense of place and historicity that defines all of my work. Alternatively, performance functions as a kind of time-traveling technology where I can revisit and restage sites of ancestral memory, interrogate the present, and imagine new kinds of social and environmental futures.

Photography Gallery - 2nd Floor

Fridays, Saturdays & Sundays 12:00 to 4:30 p.m. Or By Appointment