(Earlville, NY – Sept. 2013) On Sept. 28 the Galleries of the Earlville Opera House welcomes four artists influenced by time in very different ways.
John Knecht captures moments in time in the drawings that become the foundation blocks of his animated films. Lynn Schwarzer’s work asks, “How does the passage of time change the way that we interpret and verify information, and the sources we look to?” Anne Stillwaggon is able to render to paper a sense of place and time frequently overlooked. Jesse Koroiwa looks to the troubled time period of the Japanese American Internment in hopes of creating a better future.
Knecht and Schwarzer will share the East Gallery with “Drawings and Prints.” Although primarily known as a film and video artist, Knecht’s animated films are based on drawings done by hand with pencil and gouache on paper. This exhibit is the first time all of these works on paper have been shown collectively.
Knecht holds the Russell Colgate Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History and Film and Media Studies Chair at Colgate University in Hamilton where he has been teaching since 1981. His films, videos, and multiple channel installations have been shown all over the world. Schwarzer will show some of her new “Field Notes” prints. Her studio is filled with original publications from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, a collection of periodicals, books and newspapers that comprise a journey through time exploring the domain of knowledge and the implicit subjectivity of information sources, as well as how natural science and history are elucidated both in specialized and layman’s terms.
Schwarzer has long been interested in the history of museums and the politics of display, the evolution of communication technology, and the ever-present quest to transform observed mysteries into immutable facts. She has resided in Madison County for 30 years, working as an artist and teaching printmaking and drawing in the Department of Art and Art History at Colgate University.
Stillwaggon exhibits “In the Distance” in the Arts Café Gallery. She is a self-taught watercolorist inspired to capture the effects of light and water and the serenity of form she sees in landscape. She uses watercolor and gouache and a limited palette to paint her subjects, working with brush, sponge, and steel wool to create the immutable unity of a tree line, a field, a pond, a hillside, and the sea. Her paintings strive to convey the animate harmony of nature. Her inspiration comes from the New Jersey shore, the Meadowlands, the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and the landscapes of Connecticut and Maine, as well the Hamilton area. .
Kuroiwa’s “Resurfacing: Sites of Violence During the Japanese American Internment” explores the present through the past, with his medium as much history as it is photography, combining images with text to illuminate a past unique to the Japanese experience with the landscape that is decidedly American. His art aims to translate the façade of our communal memory of that period, “enduring the unbearable with patience and dignity” into “the tangible shame, pain, and injustice under the surface of the internment camps of World War II.”
He has won numerous awards for his photography. He celebrates his mixed-race heritage, as well as his time as a resident in Hawaii, Ohio, and Colorado that have shaped his sense of memory and place, though often simultaneously finding himself both an insider and an intruder. He currently lives in Lafayette, Colo. and will be traveling to New York for the opening.
An artist reception provides opportunities for further exploration with light refreshments on Saturday, Sept. 28, from noon to 3 p.m. The exhibits will run through Nov. 9.
For more information, call 315-691-3550 or visit www.earlvilleoperahouse.com. The Opera House is located at 18 East Main Street, in Earlville.