Trio Tumbao

JAMESTOWN – A month long celebration of Hispanic heritage begins tonight at Jamestown Community College with live music and the kickoff to the Jamestown Reads program.

The Cultural Bridges Action Team (CBAT) of the City’s Strategic Planning and Partnerships Commission is hosting a special event as part of National Hispanic Month in October.

The action team has announced that its “Jamestown Reads”  program for this year will kick off tonight from 6 to 8 p.m. in the JCC Hamilton Collegiate Center’s Student Union with a free event featuring the Buffalo-based Latino jazz group, Trio Tumbao, along with light Latin refreshments.

Trio Tumbao will play music of the Latin American tradition, specifically Latin jazz, from its origins up to today. The musicians will speak briefly between each piece about key characteristics of the Latin jazz, explaining how these qualities are part of Latin American tradition. Listeners will be treated to the rhythmic sounds of clave, cascara, tumbao and salsa.Trio Tumbao has played many venues in the Western New York area. Each member is an educator working in a college or high school in the area.

 James Prendergast Library employees will also be on hand to check out copies of this year’s Jamestown Reads book entitled “When I Was a Puerto Rican.”

The Cultural Bridges Action Team (CBAT)  sponsors “Jamestown Reads” in an effort to bring understanding between the cultures of the Greater Jamestown Community.

Area residents and members of book clubs are encouraged to borrow the library books and video to read, view and discuss.  Additional public discussions about the book and its topics will be announced.

The evening is provided by the Weeks Gallery and the Sarita Hopkins Weeks JCC Concert Fund.  Patricia Briggs, Director of the Weeks Gallery, organized the program.

Food and refreshments will be served. There is no cost to attend.

Originally airing Friday Sept. 16, 2016

Marvin Bjurlin and Patricia Briggs

WRFA Public Affairs Director Jason Sample talks with Marvin Bjurlin and Patricia Briggs about the “All Fired Up: Contemporary Wood-Fired Ceramics” exhibit currently on display at Jamestown Community College’s Weeks Gallery. An opening reception is slated for Friday, Sept. 16, and the exhibit will remain on display through Oct. 14.

All Fired Up is an exhibition featuring pottery and ceramic sculpture fired in wood-fueled kilns. In addition to the exhibit currently being underway since Sept. 12, an opening reception for is scheduled for Friday, September 16 from 6 to 8 p.m. Bjurlin will also lead a curator’s tour of the exhibition beginning at 10:30 a.m. on September 20.

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT

Works by Bjurlin, who taught ceramics at SUNY Fredonia for 40 years, are featured with other professional ceramists, Stephanie Brash, Tony Clennell, Julie Crosby, Fred Herbst, Cary Joseph, Marc Keane, Ron Meyers, Ron Nasca, Ted Neal, Sherri Raffaelle, and Momoko Takeshita.

Sarita and Stanley Weeks Endowment funds supported a 9×16’ ceramic and sand Japanese garden-inspired installation titled Thrust! by ceramicist Marc P. Keane of Ithaca for the exhibition. Keane will present an artist’s talk during the opening reception.

Wood was the earliest fuel used to fire clay and this technique dates back to ancient time. Wood-fueled kilns continue to be used throughout the world and require firing cycles last from 15 to 85 hours. They offer surface effects that differ from those created by electric or gas-fueled kilns.

Earth tones are typical of wood-fired ceramics, and viewers will see the subtle modulations of hue and value playing across their surfaces, according to Weeks Gallery director Patricia Briggs. In many cases, no glaze has been applied. Rather, the heat of the flame interacts with the silica in the clay and the wood ash circulating during the firing leave marks in the clay.

These kilns act like wind tunnels that move ash and currents of heat around the clay as it fires, leaving markings on the clay that occur in large part by chance.

Crosby uses a knife to cut away geometric segments of clay to form handles or basket-like openings in her large architectonic pots. Momoko Takeshita’s forms resemble exotic flowers or clam shells and are not meant to be functional. One of Takeshita’s works shows thick glassy areas that Bjurlin calls “`kiln kisses,’ random drips of glaze falling from the shelving in the kiln.”

Neal and Marv Bjurlin use reduction cooling to encourage a metallic looking surface, a process that involves filling the kiln with as much wood as possible at the very end and then sealing every opening as tight as possible to prevent oxygen from getting in to burn the wood.

Because the fuel is desperate to find oxygen, it attacks the iron oxide in the clay and this affects the colors of the clay surfaces, notes Dr. Briggs. Neal makes metal handles for his teapots to complement the effect.

“There is social aspect of firing in wood-fueled kilns that draws many potters to the technique. It takes more than flipping a switch to turn the power on with a wood-fired kiln,” says Dr. Briggs. “Keeping the fire stoked requires continuous labor, sometimes days.”

Accordingly, artists must plan for months to come together to fill a kiln with hundreds of pieces and then work together to tend the fire that fuels it. Some sleep while others push wood into the kiln’s stoking port. Planning and preparing food and refreshments throughout the day is a big part of the process as well.

“The title of this show – All Fired Up – conveys the idea that excitement for the process and the community bonds it builds are very important to artists using wood-fired kilns,” says Dr. Briggs.

Many of the artists featured in All Fired Up have fired together at a large wood kiln at Corning Community College. Bjurlin and the Chautauqua Area Potters built the only wood-fueled pottery kiln in Chautauqua County earlier this summer. Scott Creek Fire Place, the newly established kiln site in Dunkirk, features three wood-fueled kilns, one of which fires pizza.

The exhibition will be displayed until October 14. Gallery hours are 11 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday through Friday, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday, and by appointment. The gallery is located on the second floor of the Arts & Sciences Center.

For more information, call (716) 338 – 1301.

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A reception, open to the public, will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. on February 12 in the gallery. The event features a presentation by Rachele Riley, one of the designers whose work is featured in the exhibition. Riley, assistant professor of design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will discuss her installation, “The Evolution of Silence,” a web-based research project about Yucca Flat, the Nevada nuclear test site.

“Graphic design was synonymous with commercial art for much of the 20th century,” notes Patricia Briggs, Weeks Gallery director. “Graphic designers made their names in advertising, magazine layout, and corporate identity development.

“In the age of the desktop computer, the role of a graphic designer has expanded to include subjective, exploratory practices that go beyond business and commercial applications and seem more akin to fine art,” she adds.

Guest curated by Jason Dilworth, assistant professor of visual arts and new media at the State University of New York at Fredonia, Artifact and Process features the work of approximately 15 graphic designers who present an historical framework as well as works that challenge customary descriptions of graphic design.

David Colley, Fools Play, theatre poster, 1974

On view will be a number of World War I posters produced between 1914-1918 to bolster military recruitment and mobilize popular support for the war effort. On loan from the Patterson Library in Westfield, these large colorful posters were produced by the federal Division of Pictorial Publicity to illustrate patriotic ideas such as “Teamwork Builds Ships” and “Be Patriotic –Sign Your Country’s Pledge to Save the Food”.

Representing an era when color printing on a mass scale was relatively new, WWI posters depict brilliant hand-drawn figurative illustrations, the most popular graphic communication style of the early 20th century.

A new graphic design style emerged during the 1920s that was inspired by European avant garde art movements such as Cubism, Surrealism, and the Bauhaus style. Displacing drawn illustrations, this modern style used abstraction of simplified forms. The 1967 Polish file poster, “Krew na sniegu” (Blood on the Snow), presents a large abstract head dotted with blood. The original lithograph features hand-lettered typography and a photo collage reminiscent of surrealist film and art.

From the 1920s through the 1970s, geometric abstraction and a fascination with typography were the most characteristic features of professional graphic design as the field expanded with the growth of magazine publishing and corporate advertising. Posters by Lance Wyman, David Colley, and John Malinoski that represent the trend are included in the exhibition.

Four safety posters designed by Wyman, one of the primary designers for the summer Olympics, feature playful iconic figures. The posters were originally designed for the Chrysler Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York.

“With the advent of desktop computers, inkjet printers, and the Internet in 1980s and 90s, digital tools and publishing became widely accessible and graphic design began to break its close ties to business,” notes Dr. Briggs. “Experimentation and expression, rather than the client’s demands, become a trend that is represented in the exhibition with a sampling of Ray Gun Magazine and Emigre, both known for experimental typography and complex, sometimes chaotic, postmodernist design layout.”

Riley’s “The Evolution of Silence” weaves, through graphic and web design, archival historical data with personal reflections on a highly irradiated nuclear weapons site.

Dilworth and SUNY Fredonia colleague Megan Urban will host a discussion of works in the exhibition at noon on February 17. The event is open to the public.

The exhibition will be displayed until March 22. Gallery hours are 11 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday through Friday, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday, and by appointment. The gallery is located on the second floor of the Arts & Sciences Center.

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For more information, call 716.338.1301 or visit weeksgallery.sunyjcc.edu.

A portrait of Marylin Monroe by Andy Warhol. One of several pieces that will be on display at JCC during the Warhol Effect Exhibit.

JAMESTOWN – A major art exhibit featuring several works by Andy Warhol is now on display at Jamestown Community College’s Weeks Gallery – with a reception and dedication ceremony scheduled to take place later today.

The Warhol Effect – which features several pieces by famed artist Andy Warhol along with the works of several national artists influenced by Warhol – opened to the public earlier this week.

Tonight, a public reception will be held from 6-8 p.m. in the Weeks Gallery. Prior to the reception, a Louise Nevelson print, given to the Weeks Gallery by Diana MacKown in memory of JCC English professor Robert Hagstrom, will be unveiled during a special ceremony at 5:30 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.

“Warhol Effect,” curated by Weeks Gallery director Patricia Briggs, is anchored by the gallery’s collection of Warhol works. Briggs was recently a guest on WRFA’s Arts on Fire show, and that interview can be found here.

Additional information on the exhibition and Weeks Gallery programs can be obtained at www.weeksgallery.sunyjcc.edu or by calling the Weeks Gallery, 716.338.1301.

The Weeks Gallery is located on the second floor of the Arts and Sciences Center. Gallery hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Thursday, and 11 a.m.-3 p.m., Friday.