Current Exhibition:

Gift
August 2 - September 7 , 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 2, 6 - 9 p.m.

wünderarts is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition entitled GIFT, featuring paintings by Susannah Auferoth and Hillary Milens. The show, also marking the gallery’s one-year anniversary, opens with a reception on Saturday, August 2 from 6-9 p.m. and runs through September 7.
 
Susannah Auferoth, who has both a mechanical engineering and fine arts degree from UMASS Amherst, returned with her family to the Valley from New York City in 2001, and lives and works in a historic farmhouse in Hatfield that she and her husband have updated to suit their family’s lifestyle.  The artist works in her home studio where she creates paintings on paper and wood panel that explore color, form, and meaning.  While their horizontal orientation and bands of color evoke more traditional land or waterscapes, the inclusion of repeated images or figures in Auferoth’s paintings adds a layer of complexity and mystery while increasing the inherent abstraction of the works.  
 
Hillary Milens, a graduate of UMASS’ Fine Arts program, and the Executive Director of the Amherst Community Art Center was born and raised in Burlington, Vermont.  After concentrating mainly in sculpture while at UMass, she began experimenting with drawing and painting.  An exploration of surface, texture, and color, her paintings are made by building up and breaking down the surface of wood by applying layers of paint, scraping into it and marking the surface with various tools and techniques. An interest in repetition, organic form and the meditative process are present in the paintings.
 
In addition, works by Italian artist Alberto Mancini based on his concurrent exhibition of paintings  - I’ll tell you how the Sun rose  - inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson, will be on view in the rear of wünderarts for the duration of GIFT.  Mancini’s show, on view from August 2 – 10 at the Eli Marsh Gallery at Amherst College, is sponsored by the Emily Dickinson Museum, and includes 29 paintings inspired by Dickinson’s poetry. The exhibition is part of the 20th anniversary of the Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS), which holds its annual meeting in Amherst on the weekend of August 1. For more information on Mancini and the exhibition, please visit www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org.