Williams Center Gallery Will Be ‘On Ice’ Jan. 3-Feb. 11

Art, literature, and science melt together in the “On Ice” exhibit, on display in the Williams Center for the Arts gallery Jan. 3-Feb. 11, 2007.

Gallery hours are noon-5 p.m. Monday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday; 2 p.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; and noon-5 p.m. the first Sunday of each month for First Sunday Easton.

“On Ice” will feature a variety of works that range from literal to conceptual and from serious to humorous. Works that use ice as the primary medium include Mineko Grimmer’s Symposium; Tara O’Brien’s ice book Natural Element; Stacy Levy’s Ice Clock; and Doug Beube’s Unexpurgated.The show is curated by Kathy Bruce.

Photos and video clips document several artists’ use of ice, including Joan Jeanrenaud’s performances of Ice Cello at the Williams Center and Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center and Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese’s political commentary The State of Things, a time lapse video in which the word “democracy” is sculpted of ice and then melts, cracks, diminishes, and ultimately disappears.

The exhibit also will include photographs of ice or snow by Bill Bonner, Paula Chamlee, Mark Cohen, Abigail Doan, Mary Leck, El Nuevo, Scott Peterman, Michael Smith, and Robert Walch.

Other notable works include an etching by Herbert S. Simon that addresses global warming and Patricia Delluva’s story of dashed expectations called “Dissolution.” Buzz Spector’s diptych Freeze Freud and Krzysztof Zarebski’s mixed media untitled feature embedded objects in ice. Patricia Goodrich uses salt to stand in for ice, while Daisuke Shintani’s glass flows from a chair seat. Composer Gregory Kuhn’s recording of Ice Cello uses the sounds of ice melting, and Pat Badt and Scott Sherk incorporate the sound of smashing and crashing glass in Ice: Sound + Color = Texture.An ice machine, provided by Easton’s Follett Corporation, will be included into a mixed media artwork.

Poetry curator Marilyn Hazelton selected works by Liz Abrams-Morley, Barbara Crooker, Patricia Goodrich, and Kelley Jean White for the exhibition’s brochure and web version of the exhibition. She also worked with Phillipsburg book artist and educator Maryann Riker to produce the artists’ book Ice Flow, a collaboration among Riker and regional artists and poets.

Two Lafayette professors are lending their scientific expertise to the display. Cliff Reiter, professor of mathematics, contributed animation of snowflake growth and David Sunderlin, assistant professor of geology and environmental geoscience, along with Catherine Riihimaki, glaciologist and professor at Bryn Mawr College, added field research photographs.

Other scientific contributors include Robert S. Anderson, professor of geological science at the University of Colorado, who recorded a time-lapse video from below Grinnell Glacier in Montana, and Edward Lozowksi, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, who made a video of ice spike formation from his laboratory.

Workshops, lectures, and readings by some of the contributing poets will celebrate ice as an artistic medium and inspiration. A tentative schedule of events follows:

• Now-Jan. 21: Antarctica exhibit, featuring the photographs of Pat and Rosemarie Keough; Lass Gallery of Skillman Library; Gallery hours are 8:30 a.m.-1 a.m. Monday-Thursday, 8:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday, and noon-1 a.m. Sunday.
• Jan. 7: “Way Cool!,” Readings by regional writers who contributed to Ice Flow, 1:30 p.m. Reception will follow.
• Jan. 14: Writing Workshop for Students, Participants will respond to visual art and poetry by writing phrases that can be used for poems, letters, diary entries, 3 p.m.
• Jan. 21: Reading by “On Ice” poets Liz Abrams-Morley, Barbara Crooker, Patricia Goodrich, Marilyn Hazelton, and Kelley Jean White, 3 p.m. Reception will follow.
• Jan. 28: “Entering the Conversation” with Marilyn Hazleton, Participants will explore the personal and political aspects of the coldest, hardest phase of water by responding to visual art and poetry by writing phrases that can be used for poems, letters, and diary entries; 3 p.m. Free but registration required. All ages welcome.
• Jan. 29: “Watching the Arctic Melt Away: Three Decades of Change from a Warming Globe” by George Divoky, research associate at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and director of Friends of Cooper Island, 8 p.m. in Williams Center room 108. Reception will follow.
• Feb. 1: Lafayette Environmental Awareness and Protection (LEAP) will show An Inconvenient Truth, 7 p.m. in the Limburg Theater, Farinon College Center.
• Feb. 8: LEAP will continue its exploration of global warming with a screening of Baked Alaska, noon in Keefe Hall.
• Feb. 8: Students will demonstrate an ice theremin, a melodic electronic musical instrument that uses a conductive bracelet and ice to complete an electrical circuit to produce audible tones, 12:15 p.m. Williams Center lobby.
• Feb. 9: “Glacier Flow Demonstration and illustrated talk,”Using flowing plaster of Paris, Sunderlin and students will model alpine glaciers flow and morphology, 5 p.m. Williams Center lobby.

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, a federal agency.

For more information, call the gallery at (610) 330-5361 or visit the website which will be updated as more details become available.