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Starting today, a series of small-scale collages by Easton artist Rhonda Wall and her digitally altered reproductions of them will be displayed through Oct. 11 in the Richard A. and Rissa W. Grossman Gallery of the Williams Visual Arts Building.
Wall will attend a reception in her honor at the Grossman Gallery 4-6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 6, and give a lecture 4:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 12, in room 108 of the Williams Center for the Arts. She also will be featured in a “Meet the Artist” event 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 16, in the Grossman Gallery. The events and viewing of the exhibition are free and open to the public.
Wall created the digitally altered reproductions at the Williams Visual Arts Building, working closely with Lew Minter, director of the media laboratory, and art graduate Janice Truszkowski ’03 (Phillipsburg, N.J.). With their assistance, she scanned the original collages and manipulated the images to create large-scale prints. The originals will hang on the gallery’s outside wall and the prints will be displayed inside. The exhibit will mark the first time that art produced almost exclusively at the Williams Visual Arts Building has been displayed in the Grossman Gallery.
“Rhonda’s work always reflects current political and social issues while also investigating how they resonate in our pop culture,” says sculptor Jim Toia, director of the Grossman Gallery and the art department’s Community-Based Teaching Program. “She illustrates how images become part of the everyday visual experience in pop culture and therefore lose their original impact and importance.”
Wall’s work often begins with elements such as found images or objects and ideas about their relationship to a particular place or historical event. Pieces develop as a synthesis of collage, painting, drawing, installation, and performance.
“In Rhonda Wall’s world, contemporary international events, her own personal fantasies and futuristic visions, horrific imagery, and an eclectic set of characters all find a home,” notes Arts magazine.
An associate professor of art at Kutztown University, where she teaches studio art classes, Wall has been creating mixed media constructions, installations, and performance art pieces since 1978. Her paintings have been displayed nationally and internationally, including a number of solo exhibitions at venues from New York City to Mississippi State University. Wall’s artwork is in the collection of The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, City College of New York, Best Products, McGraw Hill, and the Keith Haring Foundation. Locally, her work has been exhibited at Allentown Art Museum, the State Theatre in Easton, and Lehigh University.
She also designs and produces her own line of silk-screened avant-garde children’s hats.
A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, Wall earned a master’s of fine arts at Vermont College.
Directed by renowned artist Ed Kerns, Eugene H. Clapp II ’36 Professor of Art, the 23,500-square-foot Williams Visual Arts Building is one of the leading high-tech facilities for art education and exhibitions in the nation. It includes sculpture and painting studios, a community-based teaching studio, the Grossman Gallery, a flexible studio area with movable walls for honors and independent study students, a seminar room, a conference room, and faculty studios and offices.
The building is home to the studio art program. The classrooms are adjacent to professors’ personal studios, which encourages the free exchange of ideas between students and faculty. Honors students, faculty, and visiting professional artists work together with area high school and adult art students through the Community-Based Teaching Program.