Current Exhibits

HUB-Robeson Center Galleries and Display Areas

Robeson Gallery

Manual Labor
by Jo Margolis & Kate McGraw

June 5 – August 24, 2018
Reception: June 14, 6–8pm

Kindred methodologies in mark-making techniques and appreciation for agricultural spaces bring artists Jo Margolis and Kate McGraw into the fold of artistic collaboration and formal discussion. Exacting and rigorous, each artist employs their astute sense of agency by using simple tools to mark the surface of their chosen material - paper, stone, wood or wall – while consciously allowing for the drawn forms to grow organically. Over the course of many rigorous drawing sessions, these hallowed surfaces become enveloped with careful inscriptions, serving as documents of time – evocative of sacred texts, or illuminated manuscripts.

“I am fascinated by the essence of calligraphic shapes and sacred texts.  Some of my latest work focuses on forms that emerge, the softness of clarity until we know what it is becoming. There is something in unknowing that is both humbling and hopeful.”

 – Jo Margolis

Margolis and McGraw find comradery and appreciation for agricultural life and their local landscapes of Southcentral Pennsylvania that inform their sense of place and home. As a farmer tends to the land, each artist toils over surfaces with pen, graphite, crayon or pencil in earnest cultivation. The direct action of drawing tools meeting surface is the performance and vehicle for manifestation. Experiencing the artistic process as meditative labor is an essential component to the artists’ work. Intentions transmute into textural surface planes, meandering departures and connections, and floating tapestries that consider the void in space, as well as the occupied. 

“My most recent work honors the infusion of light and spectrum as the vehicle for expansion and ascension. My studio, as it stands today, is a makeshift time machine and incubator space for off-site projects, installations and performances, paintings and drawings, sites and shiny objects.” 

– Kate McGraw 

Margolis and McGraw combine austere, monastic minimalism with the whimsical and enchanted to create atmospheres for contemplation and reflection, as well as metamorphosis and expansion. Both artists were born and raised in Southcentral Pennsylvania. Jo Margolis lives and works in Wellsville in York County and Kate McGraw lives and works in Boiling Springs, Cumberland County. Margolis earned her BFA and MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. McGraw earned her BFA from Penn State and her MFA from Brooklyn College. 

 

Make Your Mark

Make Your Mark is a community-collaborative project inspired by the works of Kate McGraw and Jo Margolis, and invites everyone, regardless of experience, to take part. The whole process takes less than 10 minutes and is a unique opportunity to create and enjoy.

Participants are welcomed to spend a few moments exploring the supplied materials and determining a small mark they feel comfortable repeating – it can be a circle, a squiggle, a stamp, or even just simple lines. After choosing your mark, the timer is set for 3 minutes, during which you will repeat your mark in any pattern you like. There’s no pressure to worry about completion or blank space, because when time is up you’re then invited to cut, fold, tear, or otherwise physically manipulate your drawing then add your name to the list of contributing artists.

As participants contribute over time, the drawings will be added to a growing collage that will be displayed alongside the work of Kate McGraw and Jo Margolis in the Manual Labor exhibition in Robeson Gallery. Think of it as a community garden – everybody gets their own plot and can plant whatever seeds they like all for the common goal of growing something beautiful together.

Make Your Mark maker’s stations will be set up during the following public events: 

• Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts 
  • outside Robeson Gallery, July 11–13, Noon–4pm
• Art on the Acre
  • Penn State Student Farm, July 15, 4–6pm
• Turtle Way Skill Share Festival
  • Deb’s Flower Farm (Julian, PA), July 21, 1–3pm
• Ag Progress Days
  • Penn State Research Farms, August 15, times TBD

If you are interested in hosting a maker's station at your event or for a club/group, please contact the HUB-Robeson Galleries at (814) 865-2563 or galleries@psu.edu.

 

HUB Gallery

A→CHROMATIC: Drawings and Paintings, 2013–2018
by J. Harlan Ritchey

May 29 – July 28, 2018
Reception: June 7, 6–8pm

A→CHROMATIC represents a comprehensive overview of painter J. Harlan Ritchey’s artistic development and coincides with the 5-year anniversary of his introduction to the gallery world. 

The subject matter of A→CHROMATIC can be divided into four broad genres: landscape, still life, floral, and abstract. Within each of these genres, Ritchey works to explore specific themes and emphasize the elements that he considers to be most conducive to those themes. In the landscape genre, those themes are a connection to perspective and place while the floral genre explores a connection to rhythm and color; the still life genre emphasizes a connection to composition and form, and the abstract genre’s theme focuses on a connection to pattern and theory. Each image carries a range of art-historical, cultural, and biographical influences but invites the viewer to arrive at their own aesthetic or critical judgments.

J. Harlan Ritchey received his BA in Filmmaking from Penn State in 1999, with Honors in Visual Arts. He is a self-taught artist and has for the past several years done fine art and illustration commissions for a range of local and national clients. Ritchey’s first public exhibition was in 2013, and in 2015 he began teaching art classes. He currently lives and works in State College, PA.

 

Art Alley

Of Man and Nature
by David Moyer

May 14 – September 18, 2018
Reception: June 7, 6–8pm

David Moyer’s work begins with his interest in books and the written word, which drives him to look for ways to combine his creative imagery with text. His prints explore visual and literary ideas through drawings and black and white print media. Moyer typically employs the method of wood engraving, which is deeply rooted in the history of the book arts, though he does occasionally incorporate intaglio processes lithography. 

Moyer’s technique stems from his interest in the quality of line, where his ideas are conceived as black lines on a white ground thereby focusing on the graphic quality of wood engraving rather than on the tonal quality. His preference for black-line engraving is driven by his fondness for the German print tradition and the works of Albrecht Durer, Michael Wolgemut, Lucas Cranach, Hans Holbein, and Hans Baldung Grein.

In 1988 Moyer and his wife Gretchen founded Red Howler Press in order to print handmade, limited-edition fine press and artist books. All of the books from Red Howler Press carry a message — sometimes serious, sometimes playful — but it is primarily the visual imagery that is the primary communicator in these pressed works. Moyer’s Red Howler Press books are housed in numerous libraries across the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Currently, David Moyer is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Penn College of Technology. He earned his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and his BFA from the University of Delaware. Moyer has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and internationally, and is a member of The Society of Wood Engravers, The Wood Engravers Network, and The Fine Press Book Association. 

 

Display Cases

Center for Arts & Crafts
Annual Artists and Instructors Exhibition

March 30 – September 9, 2018

This exhibit features two- and three-dimensional artwork in media and disciplines representing the range of art classes available at the Center for Arts & Crafts (CFAC).

For more than 40 years the CFAC has provided quality programs and services for the ever-changing social, educational and recreational needs of the Centre County Community.  Their main office and classrooms are located in Ritenour Building at the corner of Pollock and Shortlidge Roads, and the Ceramics Studio is located in the HUB-Robeson Center. 

The Center for Arts and Crafts offers a variety of non-credit adult art classes during Fall and Spring semesters, and children’s art camps in the summer.  All classes are taught by Penn State University Art majors, Art Education majors, graduate students and professional artists.

 

Art on the Move

Old Main

Paintings by Lindsey Kircher

May 4 – September 21, 2018

Through abstraction of figure and space, Lindsey Kircher investigates the absurdity inherent to the social experiences of young adulthood and how she finds her place within them. In her paintings she questions her implication as both participant and observer, as someone who is both included and excluded. Using simplified form as a tool, Kircher makes reductive deceptions to add information to each painting, allowing her to revisit memories and capture their generalized essence. Though these paintings are about her own life experiences as an American abroad in another culture and being a woman immersed in the ritualistic ceremonies of life at a university, they access a greater exploration of human community and the individual’s role within it. 

Lindsey Kircher is a senior Penn State Schreyer Honors scholar pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and minors in Spanish and Arts Entrepreneurship. After graduation, she hopes to earn her Masters of Fine Arts degree and pursue a career as an artist. Aside from spending time in the studio, Kircher enjoys reading, traveling, and spending time outdoors. 

Global Citizenship
Photography by Andrew Lala

June 18 – July 19, 2018

Andrew Lala traveled across Europe and Northern Africa engaging in a discourse on globalization through what he calls “ethnographic photography.” Ethnography is a term used to describe a genre of technical writing wherein anthropologists use their observations and experience in the field to make hypotheses on human societal structures. Lala presents a photographic interpretation of this practice. 

Andrew Lala graduated from Penn State in 2008 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Bachelor of Arts in International Studies. 

Paintings by Virginia Belser

July 22 – October 21, 2018

In her paintings, Virginia Belser tries to capture the essence of the atmosphere and tell the story of the prevailing mood of the place she’s painting. Depending upon the conditions such as weather, time of year, and time of day, the same location can be painted many times with very different results. 

Oftentimes Belser is confronted by two challenges while painting. The first is to figuratively step out of the say and let the painting emerge, rather than consciously approaching the painting with a pre-conceived notion of what the final product should look like. The second challenge is that of trying to describe a vast amount of space and depth in the confines of a relatively small two-dimensional space. To her, a successful landscape painting effectively merges the description of space while simultaneously conveying the emotions and atmosphere of the location. 

Virginia Belser is a State College resident and is a signature member of the Pastel Society of North Carolina, the Pastel Society of Western New York, the Wilmington Art Association, and is currently President of the Central Pennsylvania Pastel Society. She has exhibited extensively throughout Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

 

Student Health Center

Remembered
Paintings by Allison Sheppard

May 14 – September 14, 2018

In this series of paintings, Allison Sheppard focused on capturing familiar spaces; overlaying the real spaces of her childhood home with her memories of the space, focusing on what she remembers most.

In order to strengthen her personal connections to each painting, Sheppard built each frame and stretched each canvas herself. She then applies watered-down acrylic paint in layers and allows it to drip and behave how it naturally wants to. In this process of building, stretching, and painting Sheppard lets go of her need to be pristine and perfect because memories themselves are often imperfect and rough. 

Allison Sheppard is currently a senior at Penn State majoring in Painting and Drawing.

 

North Halls Cultural Lounge

**Closed for Summer**

 

West Halls Cultural Lounge

**Closed for Summer**