16th Annual GoggleWorks Studio Artists’ Exhibition December 10th 2021 - January 27th, 2022 Cohen Gallery Opening: Decmeber 10th, 6:00pm
GoggleWorks Center for the Arts proudly presents the 16th annual Juried Studio Artists’ Exhibition. This annual exhibition includes watercolor, oil, acrylic, photography, ceramics, sculpture, and multi-media pieces created within the past year. As you wander through this exhibition, take some time to wonder anew at the diverse talents that have come together in the largest center of its kind in the nation. Selected by the Exhibition Committee, GoggleWorks’ Juried Studio Artists range from emerging to established professionals with national reputations. They work in a variety of mediums in studios provided on the 2nd and 3rd floor of GoggleWorks’ main building. More than just a work space, GoggleWorks Juried Studios fosters growth by providing studio artists with a community of professionals in the field willing to engage critically with each other. These artists regularly collaborate on projects within the building and are engaged with the community beyond our walls. Isla Gordon Gallery Director GoggleWorks Center for the Arts
Susan Biebuyck / studio 319 ............................................................................ Kevin Brett / studio 315 ...................................................................................... Brent Brown / studio 306 .................................................................................. Janna Carrozza / studio 321 ............................................................................. Alan Cernak / studio 303 .................................................................................. Lily Cernak / studio 303 .................................................................................... Mary Lou Creyts / studio 204 ........................................................................ Miles DeCoster / studio 312 .......................................................................... Kristen Egan/ studio 305 .................................................................................. Cheryl Elmo / studio 311 .................................................................................... Roger Evans / studio 212 .................................................................................... Suzanne Fellows / studio 314 .......................................................................... Kachina Leigh / studio 313 ............................................................................... Judy Lupas / alumna ............................................................................................ Sharon McGinley / studio 323 ....................................................................... Rebecca Ross / studio 214 ................................................................................ Abby Ryder / alumna ........................................................................................... Patricia Scialo / alumna ...................................................................................... Elaine Soltis / studio 211 ..................................................................................... Barry Steely / studio 208 ................................................................................... Joseph Szimhart / alumnus ............................................................................. Sybil Roe Thompson / studio 206 ..............................................................
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Georgette Veeder / alumna ........................................................................... 12 Steven White/ Alumna ....................................................................................... 12
Susan Biebuyck / Studio 319
Kevin Brett / Studio 315
Nourishing her own creative spirit, Susan Biebuyck majored in studio fine art at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. She is known for her acrylic, oil, pastel and watercolor painting diversity; she calls herself “an art supplies junky” and works in a variety of media with fluency. Her work demonstrates superb observation and lyrical spirit and has won honors and awards. She is the founder & Gallery Director at Studio B, a fine art gallery in Boyertown, PA. In 2020 Susan moved her working studio back GoggleWorks and is grateful to be back in her arts home.
Kevin finds it very challenging to take everyday, overlooked objects or subject matter, people, or situations and capture them in ways that the viewer can extract feelings from personal experiences of their own. As when he worked in other mediums of visual art such as drawing, painting, and sculpture, great effort is made to have everything within the compositions become valuable characters in the motionless plays captured through a lens. The use of unusual and dramatic angles gives the photographs views intended to make seemingly insignificant items a bit more powerful and emotional. Kevin’s style of photography is very pure and traditional but there are always conceptual intentions behind all the fine art images created. 1
Brent Brown / Studio 306
Janna Carrozza / Studio 321
Brent Brown has been creating art since he was a small child and he calls it “the joy of my life.” He is currently working with paper, cardboard, glue and acrylic paints to create creatures ranging from animals, Gremlins, Super Heroes, Muppets, Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles, TV and movie stars, to all the characters in Alice in Wonderland. He refers to his pieces as puppets because he has developed a way to give them moving arms, legs and heads with the use of cardboard pegs. Brent Brown is a very talented artist and special individual. He suffered from a lack of oxygen at birth and later developed other mental illnesses. He has not had any formal training in art but he had a high school art teacher who was very encouraging and taught him how to work with clay, make stained glass and many other skills.
“Weaving art with respect for the environment has been a passion for many years.” Janna Carrozza weaves eco fabric developed into works of art. The weavings consist of many natural and ethically created material and fiber such as organic cotton, tencel, silk, soy silk, banana silk, and corn silk. A large portion of the fiber is often dyed with natural plants and flowers. Janna studied Fashion Design at Philadelphia University. She attended Kutztown University to earn degrees in Fine Arts and Art Education. Janna obtained a Masters in Education as well. Janna works as an artist and a Visual Art teacher in Reading, Pennsylvania.
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Alan Cernak / Studio 303
Lily Cernak / Studio 303
Alan enjoys creating large scale art involving cultural preservation and exchange. he regularly visits Japan for residencies with various Japanese arts programs and continued work on his shrine project---a series of recreations of damaged work from Japanese temples, shrines and castles of rural Japan.This can be accomplished using a variety of mediums such as digital drawing, colored pencil, and acrylic ink. Alan also often works with schools, universities and other organizations both in Berks county and Japan in a wide variety of programs.
Lily Cernak shares Studio 303 at the GoggleWorks with her father Alan, and has been active at the GoggleWorks and in the eastern PA arts community for the past 10 years. She teaches drawing, comics creation, Japanese and ESL, and is currently also working as a freelance JP->EN translator for an independent manga publishing company. Lily’s lifelong love of visual storytelling probably began watching Studio Ghibli and Disney films as a child, and become an absolute obssession in high school when friends introduced her to Shonen Jump comics. Lily’s favorite artist is Hiromu Arakawa, and her favorite activity when not reading comics or watching animation is scrolling through cat memes online.
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Mary Lou Creyts / Studio 204
Miles DeCoster / Studio 312
Rainbows of color! Energetic pulse! A tickle of whimsy! I aim for beauty!
Miles DeCoster is an artist who works in a variety of mediums both traditional and contemporary. His current work involves writing code that generates high-resolution images for digital printing.
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Kristen Eagen / Studio 305
Cheryl Elmo / Studio 311
Kristen Egan is a mixed media artist specializing in sculpture and illustration. Merging gourds, wood, antler and horsehair with paperclay, resin, and acrylics, her work explores concepts like evolution, predator/prey relationships, and totemic imagery. In an attempt to merge tribal aesthetics with a modern understanding of our place in the universe, her sculptures often reference elements of folk art and mythology, and feature bright patterns and ornamentation juxtaposed with natural surface textures.
A passion for painting was cultivated during early years and further developed at Millersville University pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Art. For nearly 50 years, my career with watercolor has been shaped by the complexities of emotion and the development of individual expression using everyday situations to communicate the stories. Studying people has provided understanding of how relationships can be impacted by a simple gesture. My artistic journey evolved by painting anonymous people seeking to capture their moments that surround their relationships. The figures in the paintings are key to the narrative of telling a story while developing a human connection and prompting the viewer to participate in the moment. 5
Roger Evans / Studio 212
Suzanne Fellows / Studio 314
Roger J. Evans received a B.A. in Elementary / Secondary Art Education from McKenderee University, with a Special Talent Scholarship. Roger believes that painting is the by-product of true art: the art of perceptions. “I have worked with both graphic and fine arts throughout my career. I have had a working studio at The ArtWorks at Donecker’s and now at GoggleWorks. My original watercolors and lithographs have sold both regionally and nationally.” Pennsylvania watercolourist for forty years.
I’m not as confident in my “I am” statements as I was pre-Covid. So much has changed and who and what I am as an artist isn’t clear yet. I am planning an Artist Residency for one (me), while I am between semesters this winter. I’ll be in my studio every day painting and trying to figure it out again.
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Kachina Leigh / Studio 313
Judy Lupas / Alumna
I am an artist who works in a variety of media such as fiber, encaustic, and collage as well as creating wearable works of art. I am drawn to old garments that show evidence of the hand that created the piece as well as the person who wore it. These indelible marks— stitches, stains, mended holes, and spots rubbed almost bare by continual contact with the body—speak to the hours invested in the making of the garment as well as the years that have passed as it was worn, again and again. Narrative is an integral part of fiber media and its ability to reference memory, trauma, and loss are concepts that I continue to explore.
Judy Lupas is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and has had a working studio for 25 years. Her work is mainly impressionist/abstract and colorful. She shows in national, regional and local art shows and has had solo shows at Spring Hill Gallery, The Vermont Studio, The Hill School, Art Fusion, and The Giotto Gallery in Assisi, Italy. Her work ,The Wrestlers, was accepted into the permanent collection at PAFA. She has taught art for 20 years and loves working with beginners. Her work is collected in homes, corporate center conference rooms, and local insitiutions. She has been reviewed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily Local in West Chester, and the Reading Eagle. She lives with her husband in Lower Pottsgrove, Pa. 7
Sharon McGinley / Studio 305
Rebecca Ross / Studio 214
Sharon McGinley, artist and illustrator, was born in Reading, PA, an area rich in the Pennsylvania German culture. Although she has been influenced by this highly decorative and symbolic folk art, her work displays a tapestry of sophistication and artistic sensitivity that transports the viewer to imaginative worlds filled with meaning and beauty. She has exhibited with, and been commissioned by, numerous museums, art associations and corporations, including The National Museum for Women, Washington, D.C.; The Maitland Museum, Lakland, FL; The Illustrators Traveling Exhibition and the Gainesville Department of Cultural Affairs. Grief knocks at the door. Reluctantly, I answer and find you there. In your embrace I am reminded, love is stronger than death.
These artworks are part of a series inspired by my lifelong interest in musical performances. My process is that I attend live performances where make a series of pencil sketches, which are supplemented by photos I take of the empty stage. The works in this show are based on a 2019 performance at Reading’s Jazz Fest. After sketching the performance, further sketchbook drawings refine composition and placement of figures on stage. The next step is a detailed colored pencil drawing. A larger acrylic painting is made based on the colored pencil drawing. My objective is to make artworks of people making music, not to make portraits of celebrities. Therefore, figures are sometimes very generic. These works are meant to be a tribute to Berks Arts. Their staff has been very supportive of my art career over the past twenty-two years.
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Abby Ryder / Alumna
Patricia Scialo / Alumna
Abby Ryder is a Lancaster area artist who teaches and prints at Goggleworks. Right now, she is big into Flair pens, daily doodling in her sketchbook/journal, and compiling lists. She hopes to come up with another really, really good idea for a print sometime soon.
“My eye is continually attracted to the transformation that occurs through light while viewing closely through the lens. The subject itself becomes an abstraction as I compose using shape, line and texture”. Patricia Scialo has exhibited at numerous art centers on the east coast and internationally. She is the 2020 winner of the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards, Barcelona, in the categories of Abstract, Alternative Processes and Children. She now resides on the North Shore of Massachusetts.
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Elaine Soltis / Studio 211
Barry Steely / Studio 208
Elaine Soltis is a contemporary mixed media artist, and is located in Studio 211 at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, Reading, PA. Having been a mixed media weekly class and workshop instructor this decade for GoggleWorks and local cable television, BCTV, (live and video), Elaine has shown proficiency and versatility in varying mediums and technique.
People, people, people. That’s what i draw. That’s what i paint. That’s what i love to look at. Most of the images for the series have been taken from old black and white photographs found in personal albums or unusual flea market finds. Searching for patterns and selecting colors is the fun part. If you are in “the flow,” the hours and hours of intensive painting just fly by. Kidding.
Elaine’s studio is busy and welcoming with a community synergy, fresh design, and colorful creative process. Vibrant, seasonal images, are radiant within a world captured, not necessarily by reality, but by a love of nature, beauty, and abstract. 10
Joseph Szimhart / Alumnus
Sybil Roe Thompson / Studio 206
Art studies at University of Dayton, OH and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Exhibiting since 1969. Goggleworks studio artist 20112018. Private studio at my Stowe, PA home. I like odd juxtapositions and employ subtle humor. Most of my work is a mix of realism with abstraction and loose, decorative marks.
At an early age, Sybil Roe Thompson was diagnosed as being severely autistic. As a preschooler, she had a vocabulary of about eight words and a fierce destructive energy. Endless rounds of speech therapy, hydrotherapy, group therapy, dance therapy, and countless hours of individual mental health treatment brought her into a world where she could communicate and be self-sufficient with minimal assistance. She has a phenomenal memory which serves her visually when she draws her detailed scenes and designs, including interior and exterior scenes. She has painted furniture and a series of paintings on the architecture of Reading, Pennsylvania, where she lives. She has also started painting jewelry and household decorative items. 11
Georgette Veeder / Alumna
Steven J White / Alumna
I create staged environments defined by human presence. I sculpt fibers to extremes with textures, scale, and forced perspective. I challenge the audience to enter my world of illusions. I entertain contemporary issues and call for consciousness. I studied art at Montclair University, where I received a Bachelor of Arts in art education. After a teaching stint, I returned for advance studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. My works have been widely exhibited in galleries and represented in many public and private collections. Recognition at the local and national level include the Pennsylvania Governor’s award, Cresson Memorial Scholarship and publication in the Fiber Arts Design Book 7, Best of American Sculpture Artist, Vol II 2010.
I am a self-taught artist. My paintings are primarily landscapes done in oil or transparent watercolor. I have always been emotionally drawn to render scenes and events where I live. My attachment to the outdoors motivates me to record scenes on paper as a way to preserve what I see disappearing. I feel that you don’t have to go much further than your own back yard to find inspiration and subject matter. I believe that before an artist can paint he needs to learn how to see! An artist’s gift is his ability to see something special in an otherwise ordinary scene and with absence of elegance dares to repeat nature in all its intricate simplicity.
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About GoggleWorks Center for the Arts GoggleWorks Center for the Arts consists of a 145,000 square foot, five-story community arts center in what was formerly the Willson Goggle Factory Building. GoggleWorks features eight large teaching studios in ceramics, hot and warm glass, metalsmithing, photography, printmaking, woodworking, and virtual reality; 35 juried artists’ studios; exhibition galleries; and the offices of dozens of arts, culture, and creative economy organizations. The complex also includes the Boscov Film Theatre, which presents art house films daily, and the open air retail space, which retails the work individual artists from around the country. GoggleWorks provides the local and regional community with year round access to art through exhibitions, public demonstrations, community partnerships, and events. It offers art education to all ages and skill levels through term classes, handcrafted home workshops, maker dates, mini-maker! family workshops, visiting artist programs, summer camps, and the After School Arts Program. To learn more visit goggleworks.org and follow us @goggleworks.
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