The AFA Gallery will be exhibiting during the month of August drawings from its two drawing workshops, Sunday Night Drawing Social and the Tuesday Night Figure Drawing sessions. The exhibit is curated by Judi Keats, Assistant Professor on the art faculty at Keystone College.

The opening reception will take place on Friday, August 1st , from 6 to 8 PM as a part of the downtown Scranton’s First Friday event. The exhibit will run from August 1st until August 30th.

The AFA Gallery hosts two drawing workshops, the Sunday Night Drawing Social under the direction of Ted Michelowski, and the weekly Tuesday Night Figure Drawing sessions administered by Phil Marchese. The show promises to display a wide range of figure studies from croques to one-hour studies. A wide variety of styles are represented by the numerous artists in the two groups.

The genre of drawing is time-honored for its capture of mood, gesture and anatomy that living subjects and quick sketches impart. The show also features interesting variations that introduce elements of composition, color and a move toward surrealism.

For further information, contact the AFA Gallery at 570-969-1040 or visit its blogsite at http://afa.jgrabowski.com.

‘Love of Color’, an exhibit of paintings by Lois Kearney and Alice Laputka, will take place at The AFA Gallery from July 3 until July 26. There will be an opening reception on Friday, July 4, from 6 to 8 PM. The opening reception will be part of downtown Scranton’s First Friday event, celebrating openings at a wide variety of art venues.
The exhibit will focus on the artists’ love of color in their works. Lois Kearney, a life-long Scranton resident, works primarily in oil and watercolor. In creating a painting, she paints on site several monochromatic sketches to establish light direction and composition. She then decides on a color palette and takes notes, photographs and videos as well. In the quiet of her studio she will then recreate the scene in her mind and on paper or canvas.
Lois received her BFA from Marywood College with further studies at Pa. Academy of Fine Arts and Studio Incamminati. She takes pleasure in painting local woodlands with particular interest in waterfalls. Her paintings are influenced by her travel, often conveying breathtaking landscapes. She has been commissioned for work in private collections in the U.S., Europe and China. She is a former Gallery Coordinator at The AFA Gallery.
Alice Laputka’s highly-composed, vividly-colored paintings uniquely express her response to the world around her. She plays with the colors and shapes that she observes in the landscape. She looks at her subject matter in terms of its abstract design - seeing shapes, line and color - even though the final result is still representational. Occasionally abstract paintings help to reinforce her abilities with composition and color and enables her to explore in directions that she might not otherwise have tried in her representational work.
Alice Laputka resides in Conyingham in Luzerne County. A native Pennsylvanian, Laputka earned a BFA in Graphic Design from the Philadelphia College of Art. She is a full member of the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, New York City; a signature member of Knickerbocker Artists; the Pastel Society of America; the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society; and the Philadelphia Water Color Society. Alice has had several solo shows in Pennsylvania and New York. Her work has been included in several books and magazines. She has written articles for the Pastelagram, an in-house publication of the Pastel Society of American and edited their 2006 and 2007 summer issues. She is also a member of the Maryland Pastel Society, the Mid-Atlantic Plein Air Painters Association (MAPAPA), and Philadelphia Tri State Artists Equity.

The AFA Gallery will present an exhibit of the work of Nathan Tersteeg from June 5 through June 29, 2008. There will be an Artist’s Reception on First Friday, June 6, from 6 to 8 PM.
Nathan is a native of northeastern Pennsylania, having grown up in Factoryville and graduated from Keystone College. He now resides in Richmond, Virginia. He also graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art with a BFA and the University of Cincinnati with a MFA.
The title of the exhibit, ‘As Flotsam’, refers to floating debris in an ocean, according to the artist, sort of like Ishmael at the end of Moby Dick. The show features painted works (gouache on paper) that deal with a lone spectator in a drifting glass container observing or being directly involved in a variety of episodes that turn his everyday items and substances (wood shavings, wheel, water, waterbottle, food, food dish, and glass) into characters in his narrative. At turns charmingly comic and emotionally profound, the works attempt to address complex issues of consciousness, destiny and eternity.
Along with these works is a 32-foot long hamster cage with attached library-style ladder that allows viewers to more closely examine the work and view a hamster firsthand. The show also includes some charcoal drawings and some short-form linear narratives involving hamsters. Almost all the work has been generated in the last several months.

The AFA Gallery is located at 514 Lackawanna Ave, Scranton, PA. Hours are Thursday-Saturday, 12-5 PM. For further information, call 570-969-1040 or view the website at www.artistsforart.com.

Christa Felice, Rob Hay, Maggie Innes, Cathy Jane Noto, Brie Taylor-Cha and Jessica Zekus will be represented in an exhibition of emerging artists entitled ‘Locus Focus’ at AFA. This year, guest curator Mark Webber found six artists in Marywood University’s MFA and BFA programs he felt worthy of attention.

“These artists know each other and have shared ideas to varying degrees,” says Webber, “and it seemed intriguing that they’ve all developed so forcefully. Most went to Rome together recently. There is, in some cases, quite a closeness and some rich overlap in communication. I felt there was merit in examining a group that has been in some ways influencing each other.”

The exhibit will open on May 1, and there will be an opening reception on the First Friday of May, May 2. The exhibit will be on display through the month of May.

‘Hard Ground: The Face of Homelessness’, an exhibition of photographs by Ward Roe will be at the AFA Gallery from April 4 to April 19, 2008. There is an Opening Reception on First Friday, April 4 from 6 - 8 PM, with an Artist’s Talk at 5:30 PM.

The exhibition is done in conjunction with the Community Intervention Center of Scranton, which provides social services for area homeless, among others. The photographs are of clients of the Community Intervention Center, and are for sale. Proceeds benefit the Community Intervention Center, which is celebrating 35 years of service to Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Hours of the AFA Gallery are Thursday-Saturday, 12-5 PM. For further information, contact 570-969-1040 or www:ArtistsForArt.com

The AFA Gallery presents its March exhibit - ‘Rachel Dare • Debra Koval • Karen Poels’ .

The show will be on exhibit from March 6 until March 29 There will be an opening reception on Friday, March 7th, from 6 PM until 8 PM.

The exhibit features the works of three women whose works are thematically and stylistically related. Rachel Dare, a native resident of the Scranton area and graduate of Marywood, produces three-dimensional works in mixed media, often incorporating wood. Karen Poels, from the Wilkes-Barre area, is a painter who paints both abstract and figurative works, using a mixed media approach, but often incorporates objects which can become a part of the work itself. She is well-known for glazing the paintings, giving the feeling of great depth. She graduated from Kutztown with a degree in fine arts.

Debra Koval (a former resident of the region who now lives in California) produces both colorful abstract paintings and totemic clay wall pieces, incorporating materials such as clay and horse hair.
(Below: Koval)

The AFA Gallery is located at 514 Lackawanna Avenue, Scranton. The Gallery is open on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from noon until 5 PM. Further information is available by calling the Gallery at 969-1040.

The Afa Gallery’s opening exhibition for the year 2008 features the work of two artists in an exhibit entitled ‘Adagio’. There will be an opening reception on First Friday, January 4, 6-8 PM. There will be a gallery talk with the artists prior to the opening on Friday, January 4, at 5:30pm. The exhibit will run from January 4-26.

The title of the show, ‘Adagio’ was chosen because, in addition to it being a musical term, adagio describes a balancing act between two performers, usually acrobats, but in this case, artists Bill Landau and Al Pierce. The artists bring two highly different mediums together, hopefully in a state of balance. Bill Landau’s paintings incorporate “. . . some poetry, some prose, some mischief, and some nonsense�?. He works with acrylic, oil, and block-printing techniques. Al Pierce, a long-time photographer, has created a series incorporating circus imagery for this exhibition.

Both Landau and Pierce are former residents of the local area who moved away approximately twenty years ago. However, both have retained ties to the area, and are now returning for their inaugural exhibit together.

Creativity flows through the use of iron oxide found in local riverbeds.

Artists for Art and the Afa Gallery, in partnership with the Eastern Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation, has made creative use of the iron oxide pigment collected from local riverbeds. Supported by a grant through the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts-Scranton Area Foundation, seven area high school students worked with book artist Ivana Pavelka for five sessions at Keystone College and AFA Gallery and created accordion books using the pigment in their artwork. Robert Hughes, AML Program Manager of ECAMR, introduced the students to the reclamation and transformation process of the abandoned mine drainage and showed them how it becomes a pigment that is friendly and useful to artists. For the following art-making sessions, Ivana and the students explored the artistic uses of the pigment as well as the cultural and historical implications of the material itself.
Mixed media artist Elizabeth Parry-Faist worked with the students on including photographic images in their books, and poet Jennifer Hill-Kaucher helped them add meaningful text. The finished accordion books show the use of the pigment in mixed media, paint and ink and will be on display at the AFA Gallery on December 7th at 6 p.m. as part of Scranton’s First Friday Art Walk.

The Northeast Photography Club will hold its annual member exhibit at the Afa Gallery from November 15th through November 26. There will be an opening reception on Friday, November 16th, from 6 to 8 PM.

SEPTEMBER 7th FRIDAY NIGHT 6-8pm!!!

Gallery Talk 5:30