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A dramatic presentation by the Played Out peer education theater group and an artist’s talk at noon today in Williams Center for the Arts room 108 will mark the return of Martins Creek resident Martha Posner’s Offering Place, a collaborative installation, in the Williams Center lobby.
The events and exhibit are presented in observance of World AIDS Day. The exhibition will remain through Friday, Dec. 12.
Visitors are invited to weave red fabric and ribbons into the walls of the hut-like structure. Names, messages, or remembrances can be written on the fabric and ribbon.
Originally created during Posner’s fall 2000 residency at Lafayette, Offering Place, a memorial structure, is a circular, conical-roofed shelter, the interior an embracing and private place for visitors. It began as a bare skeleton of fencing material with three-arched openings. Although students did preliminary work at Posner’s Martins Creek studio, the structure was transformed as students, staff, and faculty, as well as community members, wove cloth strips and ribbons tightly through the framework, forming a red wall and roof.
The original Offering Place was imperfect in shape, and although quite sturdy, had an aura of vulnerability and fragility. Some visitors entered the shelter and sat for long periods of time in it.
Those who would like to donate fabric or ribbons of red hues (reds, orange-reds, purple-reds, etc.) to be used in Offering Place should call x5361 or email artgallery@lafayette.edu. The fabric does not have to be new. Used sheets, blankets, and other cloth that can be cut or ripped into strips can be used.
A photo of the original gallery installation can be found at the Williams Center Gallery web page at http://ww2.lafayette.edu/%7Eartscntr/williams/website/posner/offering-place-5b.jpg.
Posner attended Philadelphia College of Art from 1975-1977. She received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Ragdale Foundation in 1984. Her work is represented in the collections of institutions such as Lafayette, Allentown Art Museum, Lehigh University, the George Gund Foundation, College of Charleston, Kaiser Permanente, and Great Northern Corporate Center.
Posner’s 15 one-person exhibitions have included The Garment Series at the Ben Shahn Gallery of William Patterson University; Selections From The Garment Series at Mabel Smith Douglass Library, Rutgers University; the Cleveland Museum of Art; and Birmingham Museum of Art. She has been part of more than 35 group exhibitions since 1978, including ones at Easton’s State Theatre and local Artsquad Contemporary Art Gallery. Her work has been written about in major newspapers regularly over the past decade, including articles in The New York Times and The Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Williams Center Gallery hours are noon-5 p.m. Monday; 10-5 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday; 2-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; a half-hour before Williams Center performances; and by appointment. For more information, call (610) 330-5361 or email artgallery@lafayette.edu.
The Williams Center gallery is funded in part by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts.
