3rd ROCHESTER BIENNIAL OPENS JULY 13 AT
MEMORIAL ART GALLERY

Invitational Showcases Six Area Artists

 

ROCHESTER, NY -- Summers at the Memorial Art Gallery are dedicated to the art of upstate New York. Like the Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition, with which it alternates, the Rochester Biennial showcases artists who live and work in our region. Unlike the juried Finger Lakes, however, the Biennial is an invitational.

The 3rd Rochester Biennial opens July 13, 2008 and remains on view through September 14. This year, the Gallery's director, director of exhibitions and curator of education invited six exceptional artists to participate: RONALD GONZALEZ of Johnson City (mixed media sculpture), SUSAN LAKIN of Rochester (photographs),
SUE HUGGINS LEOPARD of Rochester (artist¹s books), TODD MCGRAIN of Ovid (bronze sculpture and drawings), JUAN PERDIGUERO of Oswego (drawings) and MELISSA SARAT of Preble (oil paintings).
As in 2006, one artist (Lakin) was selected on the strength of her work in last year¹s Rochester-Finger
Lakes Exhibition.

³We aimed for variety, but insisted on quality, says director of exhibitions Marie Via. The thread that connects all six is commitment to excellence.

For more information on the artists, scroll to the end of this release.
The 3rd Rochester Biennial is underwritten by the Elaine P. and Richard U.
Wilson Foundation and by gifts in memory of Diane Holahan Grosso.

OPENING PARTY
Saturday, July 12, from 8 to 11 pm, celebrate the exhibition with live music on the lawn and throughout the gallery. Don't miss performances by: Blue Avengers (R&B and classic Motown), Monroe County Bluegrass Ramblers, Airplay Comedy Juggling Show, and On Call (a cappella group) .

Tickets are $17, available at the door or in advance at Wegmans (service charge applies); MAG members can get free or discounted tickets. For recorded information call 276-8901.

This party is sponsored by the Democrat and Chronicle and Time Warner Cable.

ART AT 11 ARTIST LECTURES / Free with Gallery admission Thursdays, dates below:
11 am July 17: Todd McGrain
July 24: Susan Lakin
September 4: Juan Perdiguero
September 11: Melissa Sarat

GUIDED EXHIBITION TOURS / Free with Gallery admission Sunday, July 13 (opening day), 1 pm Friday, September 12, 2 pm Sunday, September 14, 1 pm

 

HOURS AND ADMISSION
Open Wednesday­Sunday 11 am­5 pm and until 9 pm Thursday. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays. General admission $10; college students with ID and senior citizens, $6; children 6­18, $4. Always free to members, UR students, and children 5 and under. Reduced general admission, $6, Thursdays from 5­9, made possible by ExxonMobil Chemical Company, Thomson West and Monroe County.

MEMORIAL ART GALLERY WEBSITE
http://mag.rochester.edu

ARTIST PROFILES
Ronald Gonzales
Johnson City
As a young boy, Ronald Gonzalez transformed dead insects, bottlecaps, sticks and wire into toys and miniature worlds. Today, he transforms found objects into surreal figures that inhabit a universe at once playful and grotesque. Eroded and patinated by the passage of time, these recent works remind us of our own mutability
and mortality. Gonzalez is professor of sculpture at Binghamton University, his alma mater.

Susan Lakin
Rochester
Artist lecture Thursday, July 24, 11 am
Susan Lakin's "Television Series" continues a tradition of social documentation that began with the invention of the daguerrotype in the 19th century and drew such 20th-century photographers as Bill Owens to make portraits of ordinary Americans. She is interested in how technology lets us blur the line between the real and the simulated, the public sphere and the private. Lakin is associate professor of photography and digital imaging at RIT.

Sue Huggins Leopard
Rochester
Sue Leopard experiments with different formats, media and binding processes to create artist's books that are narrative yet mysterious. Distinguished by an extraordinary sense of color, her works have their source in dreams, found objects, old family photographs, lines of verse by Emily Dickinson "anything writes the artist, that moves through my consciousness and decides to stay awhile and take shape."

Todd McGrain
Ovid
Artist lecture Thursday, July 17, 11 am
Passionately committed to habitat preservation, sculptor Todd McGrain has created the Lost Bird Project to immortalize five North American birds driven to extinction in modern times. The massive bronze forms are ³melancholy, yet affirming; the smooth surface, like a stone polished from touch, conjures the effect of memory and time. An associate professor at Cornell University, McGrain's awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Juan Perdiguero
Oswego
Artist lecture Thursday, September 4, 11 am Juan Perdiguero creates meticulous chiaroscuro portraits of magnificent animals bred for competition but kept in relative confinement, prompting metaphorical comparisons to the human race. He blurs the boundaries between painting, drawing and photography by selectively exposing sheets of photo paper and manipulating ink, asphaltum and linseed oil into freehand renderings. A native of Spain, Perdiguero teaches at SUNY-Oswego.

Melissa Sarat
Preble
Artist lecture Thursday, September 11, 11 am Raised on the grounds of a Louisiana mental hospital, Melissa Sarat had contact not only with patients but also the rich flora and fauna of the South. Today, her highly detailed paintings, infused with what she calls the jambalaya of symbolic imagery,explore universal themes of excess, circumstance, life choices, spirit guides, environmental disasters, maternity, family and death. Sarat obsesses over her paintings, spending months or even years on one canvas.