Lyceum Gallery

April 17 - May 7, 2024

The spring Eastern Campus Student Fine Arts Exhibit is a lively show highlighting exceptional art work created by students on Suffolk County Community College’s Eastern Campus. The spring student exhibit displays works created in fine art disciplines, including Drawing, 2D Design, 3D Design, Color Theory, and Art Appreciation. There will be works on view in a variety of media and sizes. Community members and prospective students are welcomed to attend the exhibit to see the high proficiency attained by the students enrolled in Suffolk’s Eastern Campus Art Department.

Opening reception: Thursday, April 25 from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Hector Leonardi: Light Passages, an exhibit of paintings was on display at the Suffolk County Community College Eastern Campus’ Lyceum Gallery.  The exhibit ran from January 23 through February 25, 2023.  

About The Artist

Leonardi is a master of color. In his light filled Bridgehampton studio, he recounted the teaching of his Yale University mentor, Josef Albers, “Albers would point to a color area in my work and ask ’What is this doing?’” Questions like this would lead Leonardi to discover a myriad of color phenomena throughout his 60-year painting career.

Hector Leonardi’s 5 ft. high textured canvases contain lush cobalt blues or reds that create painterly filigrees that allow soft yellows and oranges to peek through. His color passages are structured in stripes, floating shapes, and atmospheric compositions in weightless color fields. Horizontals beckon one to enter these hallowed environments that harken to the natural world. In them, one can see influences of Gustav Klimt’s forests, Seurat’s optical mixing, and Klee’s abstractions.  

Leonardi described the open-ended process that leads to his ethereal, colorist works. He paints an initial layer on his canvas, and then he adheres patterned paint swatches that he creates previously from built up paint layers.  As Leonardi experiments by adding color elements, a visual dialogue takes place, in a back-and-forth conversation over time a finished work emerges. 

Hector Leonardi was born in 1930 in Waterbury, Connecticut. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University in 1955 after earning a Bachelor of Fine Art degree at Rhode Island School of Design. Leonardi worked for Industrial Designer, Russell Wright for 7 years before gaining a professorship at Parsons School of Design where he taught for 25 years. Leonardi was awarded a McDowell Fellowship in 1964.  In the early 1970s, Leonardi moved to Bridgehampton where he has devoted himself to his experimental studio practice.  Leonardi has exhibited his work in NYC, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Connecticut and internationally in Japan, Paris, and Venice.  For more information about Hector Leonardi’s work, please contact the artist at 631 537-7450.

Ruby Jackson: Delicious Inspiration, an exhibit of sculptures will be on view on-line at Suffolk County Community College’s Lyceum Gallery on the Eastern Campus.

Ruby Jackson, of Sag Harbor, has created a large and distinctive body of work in wood, ceramic, paper, pen and ink, and polymer clay.  Her imagery is inspired by natural forms which she abstracts and explores.  In them, one can see her love of the east end, and particularly her interest in underwater sea environments.  On view are Jackson’s miniature sculptures of food and under water seascapes created in multi-media.

Jackson’s work has been exhibited in galleries in New York City, Long Island, and Sarasota, Florida.  Jackson was featured in “Takeover,” at the Southampton Art Center in 2019 where she shared her artistic process along with her work.  Jackson is a two time recipient of the “Best Sculpture” award at the Guild Hall Members’ Show (East Hampton, 2017, 1996). Her work has appeared in a number of reviews and publications including Newsday “Tiny Food Made of Clay by Sag Harbor Artist,” by Kay Blough, (4/16/16) and Hamptons.com, (TAKEOVER! Artists In Residence – Curated By Amy Kirwin Debuts At Southampton Arts Center - Hamptons.com ).

Jackson grew up in Queens, New York and developed a variety of sculpture techniques while living in NYC.   After moving to the East End of Long Island, Jackson earned a degree in Art Education from Long Island University.  For more than a decade, she served as Assistant to the Director of the Pollock-Krasner House in East Hampton, New York.  Jackson is passionate about teaching art to children and has conducted workshops in the public schools, as well as for the Nature Conservancy, The South Fork Natural History Museum, and the Children’s Museum of the East End. Below is a link to a 2016 talk that Jackson gave about her work at the Parrish Art Museum in Watermill, NY

Watch this video to see how Ruby creates her artwork.

The Student Fine Arts exhibit is a lively display of work created by students studying Drawing, 2D Design, and 3D Design. Due to the pandemic students have been creating art remotely. The Lyceum Gallery is celebrating their accomplishments in an on-line exhibit. Prospective students are encouraged to view the exhibit to see the high proficiency attained by students in Suffolk’s Eastern Campus Art Department.

Celebrating Women’s History Month, Suffolk County Community College’s Lyceum Gallery presents Elaine Grove: Welded Steel and Paint, an on-line exhibit of sculpture and painting.  Grove, working with steel and cast iron, creates an aesthetic play of found objects.  The artist speaks about her work from her East Hampton studio, leading viewers on a tour of her War Wagon, Line, and Block series, along with her paintings on metal.

Grove’s War Wagons are outdoor, welded steel works that roll on wheels and range up to 12 feet wide.

“War Wagons were Pre-Renaissance Italian wagons sent out to announce war on neighboring towns.  I consider the different types of war, such as political, class, race, gender, and by extension, types of war wagons possible for today,” Grove said.

Grove brings us inside her studio showing viewers her Line series.  Food Chain is a welded steel, linear progression of objects that relate to each other in an anthropomorphic interaction. 

In Grove’s Block series she incorporates the paint splashed wooden blocks that her late husband used to prop his canvases on while working, incorporating memory and personal history into her work.

Originally from Oklahoma, Grove moved to New York City in 1969 after earning a BA/BFA in art, with concentrations in world literature and philosophy.  In New York City, Grove worked as an actress, model, set designer, and illustrator.   She learned to weld at the Sculpture Center on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  This began her 30-year sculpting career.  She and her husband, abstract expressionist Dan Christensen, moved to East Hampton in 1983 joining the vibrant artist community of the east end.

Grove has exhibited her work in Chicago, Illinois and throughout the east coast of the United States, including New York, Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Grove’s work was included in the Telfair Museum, Jepson Center exhibit, Sculptures from the Permanent Collection in Savannah, Georgia (2014, 2007), The Heckscher Museum Biennial in Huntington (2014), and solo exhibitions in a number of galleries in New York City and the east end of Long Island. Elaine Grove was a featured artist in 100 Artists from the Mid Atlantic by Ashely Rooney, 2011. 

For more information about Elaine Grove visit: http://www.elainegrove.com

 

Journey: Travels North, an on-line exhibit of black and white photography by Christine Morro will be presented by Suffolk County Community College’s Lyceum Gallery. The exhibit includes images from Morro’s experiences in four northern regions: North Jutland, Denmark; The Isle of Lewis, Scotland; Faroe Islands, Denmark and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Describing herself as a “Creative Ritualist,” Morro’s artistic process is a form of meditation. Each year Morro travels north on a pilgrimage, connecting to the land for a spiritual grounding.  Morro encounters unfolding imagery, discovering sacred qualities in what some might consider ordinary. 

Walking. Sensing. Exploring.
Listening to an inner compass, the artist is drawn to light on water, rock formations, and textures of sand and grasses.  Working in photography and poetry, Morro has narrated her virtual exhibit with her original writing. With an emphasis in the artistic process, Journey: Travels North is the physical evidence of Morro’s creative ritual. 

Morro describes her artistic process:

“The 17th century poet Matsuo Basho wrote Narrow Road to the Deep North. It is a book I turn to again and again. In the Narrow Road fragments of prose and haiku trace Basho’s last journey, a kind of pilgrimage. Bearing witness, the traveler and poet draws on the tradition of diary and travel writing. This style became known as Haibun, braiding external images observed enroute and the internal images that move through the traveler’s mind. I have tried to honor the same tradition in Journey: Travels North.”

Originally from Northport, Morro lived in Sag Harbor for the past 11 years and currently resides on Nantucket Island in the village of Sconset. 

Morro earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Textile Design and International Marketing with a minor in Spanish from the Fashion Institute of Technology and studied painting at the Art Students League (1987 – 1991) where she worked under renowned figurative painter, Harvey Dinnerstein.  Morro was awarded a four-week painting fellowship at the Vermont Studio School in 1998.

Morro’s photographs, paintings, and monoprints are in collections in the United States, Denmark, England, and Spain and she has exhibited her work throughout the east end of Long Island, in New York City and at the Cheekwood Fine Arts Center in Nashville. 

Morro teaches a writing workshop which she calls, Creating As Ritual and has taught at Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School and at Hunter College High School. 

For more information about Christine Morro’s work visit: https://forthetimebeing.weebly.com/

Morro’s writing and other works:

• Humans and Nature
  Morro writes about the Poqueira Valley of Capileira in Spain
• Morro’s work in Spain

• Morro is currently working on a book of poetry, Earth’s Vespers.  Morro’s poetry appeared in the spring 2020 publication of the Corbel Stone Press

• Morro’s writing can be found in The Land Lines Project

The Lyceum Gallery presents the Eastern Campus 2020 Student Applied Arts Exhibit. All works were created by students who live locally in areas surrounding the Eastern campus.

The Lyceum Gallery presents, SPLASH, an on-line exhibit of abstract photography by Meryl Spiegel. SPLASH is a visual commentary on Climate Change with photographic abstractions that are rich with colors and motion. The artist depicts a celebration of nature and the wonders of creation, while expressing a lament for the losses in our natural world due to man’s inability to protect our environment. Images engage the viewer’s imagination with a hint of recognizable imagery that alludes to speed, heat, and sound, harkening to extreme weather patterns. The artist narrates the exhibit with her original writing.

Spiegel works with digital and medium-format cameras to create images that look more like paintings than photographs. Spiegel studied at the International Center of Photography and the Center for Media Studies in Manhattan as well as the Image - Ouverte School of Photography in the South of France. A former freelance journalist for The New York Times, she is also a writer with a Master of Fine Arts in English & Writing.

Spiegel has exhibited her work widely on Long Island at venues that include The Parrish Art Museum, Art Sites, Ille Arts, The Westhampton Performing Arts Gallery, The Islip Museum, St. Joseph’s College, Ashawagh Hall, The Southampton Cultural Center, The Remsenburg Academy, The Quogue Library, and The East End Arts Council (EEAC).

in 2019, Spiegel was invited to exhibit her photography at the prestigious Venice Biennale. Her photograph, Fountain Play, received an Honorable Mention from the Julia Margaret Cameron GALA Awards. In 2016, her series, PHANTOMS and SPLASH, were awarded as nominees by the Fine Art Photography Awards. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), Mark09 professional development participant and a recipient of two NYFA Special Opportunities Stipend awards (2011, 2006). Spiegel’s photography received a Best In Show at the EEAC Annual Photography Exhibit (2008). Spiegel’s photography was featured in the Stony Brook University Literary Journal, The Southampton Review (2012).

For more information about Meryl Spiegel visit merylspiegel.com.

Meryl Spiegel teaches photography workshops that were sponsored by the New York State Council on the Arts in 2019 and 2017. She also writes a Blog called, “An Evolving Life,” for the The Hummingbird Post.

Howard Kanovitz is perhaps the most poetic of the group of New Realists who began to forge novel expressive truths from the camera’s photographic image in the Sixties.

Visit artist website

Howard Kanovitz: Visible Difference

This volume offers the first overview of American photorealist and Pop painter Howard Kanovitz (1929–2009), dubbed by Barbara Rose the grandfather of photorealism. Kanovitz's landmark 1966 Jewish Museum solo exhibition is widely deemed to have launched the genre.