Philip Lightner, Alyssa Reiser Prince and Michael Lucas will have their works displayed in the Sheetz and McLanahan Galleries of the Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts from Aug. 20 to Oct. 4. A reception will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. Aug. 27 in the Titelman Study of the Center.
Lightner, a part-time lecturer in visual arts at Penn State Altoona, served as a non-commissioned officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and obtained his bachelor of fine arts degree and master of fine arts degree in new media from Penn State in 2011 and 2013. His body of work "BPA Free Lining" looks at the suspension of memory and the relationship to the viewer. As networked systems continue to expand, the lived body is becoming increasingly camouflaged into a virtual body, removing the lived body even further from reality. An individual’s experience relies on how lived reality is presented to the conscious mind. "BPA Free Lining" was created using Phillip’s wife and child’s placenta as a stamp. Each fragment carries the residue of the mother and child’s lived body. The fragmented imprints commemorate the memory of birth and capture the presence and absence of the lived body(s) as it is camouflaged amongst the fragments of paper.
Reiser Prince is a painter and part-time lecturer of visual arts. She has exhibited at Miami University's Young Painters Competition in Oxford, Ohio; the Zhou B. Art Center's Wet Paint Exhibition in Chicago; the Greenwood Festival of Flowers in Greenwood, South Carolina; the McColl Center of Visual Art in Charlotte, North Carolina; and in the NoDa arts district in Charlotte; among others. She earned a bachelor of fine arts degree and art history minor from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a master of fine arts degree from Clemson University. Reiser Prince’s paintings in this exhibition, "Remembering," explore the relationship between time, memory and place. By combining painted images created from memory along with ones created from photographs, Reiser Prince is asking viewers to examine the ever shifting and fragmentary nature of their experience. Through place and memory, they are able to simultaneously occupy past and present, losing the sensation of linear time.
Lucas is an associate professor of visual arts. He earned a bachelor of fine arts degree and master of fine arts degree from Penn State in 1978 and 1981. Lucas may be best known for the pen and ink drawings he has exhibited extensively for some 20 years. Upon earning tenure at Penn State, his work shifted to relief sculpture, with particular attention to Byzantine iconography. The 17 carved panels in "Written in Stone – Carved Panels in the Byzantine Tradition" are destined to embellish a Byzantine style baptistery that will be part of a new Orthodox Church complex in Greenville, South Carolina. In collaboration with the church architect, Andrew Gould, the stones were designed using Byzantine stylizations and symbols. The work was executed using traditional hand tools such as hammers, chisels and rasps. The images represent artistic creativity within the parameters of an artistic and theological tradition.
The galleries are open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday to Thursday and before and during all performances. For further information, call the Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts at 814-949-5452 or visit the Penn State Altoona website at www.altoona.psu.edu.