Hello everyone! This is my first blog post, so I thought it would be great to start with a post about this past First Friday in Scranton Pa. I visited two art galleries, and it was a great experience.
I first visited the AFA Gallery and saw the AFA Gallery’s Members Exhibition. The gallery had many different varieties of art on display. I enjoyed seeing the paintings of the areas talented artists. Local artist and Marywood University professor Christine Medley had her work up at the AFA Gallery. The works she had on display were “Buns” and “Sandhill Crane.” I was able to experience her process while making these pieces of art while in her Basic Printmaking class this past spring semester. “Buns” is a screen print; it was created by pressing ink through a stenciled mesh screen to create a printed design.
The print “Sandhill Crane” is a reduction print and a linocut. A reduction print is created by starting with the base of the design and making prints of the background. Then the next step would be to continue cutting way to make more detailed design and then by adding different layers of color to create one print. It was a pleasure to see Professor Medley’s artwork on display.
The next place I went to was a 1st Friday art show featuring Geori Vazquez at the Black Box Café in the Ritz Theater and Performing Arts Center. Geori had some of her work on display from her senior art show and several pieces she did in her free time. I was able to talk to Geori and ask her about her artwork “Ode to Ophelia,” her inspiration came from her inktober drawings this past October. She decided to use blues and oranges as her color palette, the colors work beautifully together to bring a real harmony to the piece. Geori creates her own style while drawing, and her influences are from Japan, Disney, and American comics. Geori states that “anything that I’ve enjoyed, I try to put it in my art because I feel like the things that I enjoy are a part of me and it should be shown through my artwork.” She is currently working on her own comic book with the help of Mark Schultz, he teaches some of the sequential art classes and some classes for the graduate program.
