Arts and Entertainment

Rosemarie Fiore exhibition displays smoke paintings, collages and tools

Artist Rosemarie Fiore's exhibition, "Rosemarie Fiore," installed in HUB Gallery, is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily. Credit: Grace SouthernAll Rights Reserved.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The HUB-Robeson Galleries presents "Rosemarie Fiore," an exhibition of works from the last 10 years of Rosemarie Fiore’s career. The gallery exhibition, which will be on display through January 2022, includes Fiore’s large smoke paintings, collages and tools to be used in an upcoming performance on the HUB Lawn.

Rosemarie Fiore converts popular technology such as lawn mowers, cars, waffle irons, floor polishers, pinball machines, fireworks and amusement park rides into painting machines. Works on display in the HUB Gallery were made with pyrotechnic drawing tools produced by the artist to make marks with smoke.

Artist Rosemarie Fiore's exhibition, "Rosemarie Fiore," installed in HUB Gallery, is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily. Credit: Grace SouthernAll Rights Reserved.

Wobbles, spinning on and off, in and out of control are drawn with Fiore’s singular, artist-designed, spirographic tools. These tools engage the entire body, or many people's bodies, to move from a fixed point. Chance and chaos are tandem forces in Fiore’s work, building on the surrealistic technique of fumage as well as performance artists such as Carolee Schneeman, who worked with the limits of the body and drawing. Fiore responds to the physics of the tools she has created and their limits, since each tube or carton, once ignited, has a limited amount of pigment or painting "time" within it.

Rosemarie Fiore performing at Museum of Contemporary Art and Space 42 in Jacksonville Florida.   Credit: Courtesy of Space 42, Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville and Michelle Calloway An icompendium SiteAll Rights Reserved.

Fiore also will be dramatically painting with colorful smoke in an upcoming live smoke-painting performance on the HUB Lawn, supported by a Grants for the Arts Projects award. Fiore worked with students in the School of Visual Arts to develop the pyrographic tools that she will use in the fall 2021 performance (dates to be scheduled). Fiore worked with undergraduate students in a weeklong intensive workshop to create smoke-painting tools — called fire clubs and smoke boxes — that were designed, built and named by the students. The performance will result in three murals that will be displayed in the HUB-Robeson Center through 2024.

This exhibition is supported in part by the HUB-Robeson Center, Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, Campus Arts Initiative, Penn State Strategic Seed Grant Initiative, and National Endowment for the Arts.

HUB Gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, and admission is free. Gallery visitors are required to wear a mask at all times and practice proper social distancing in accordance with the University's COVID-19 guidance. Gallery capacity is limited to a maximum of five guests at a time.

For more information on this and other exhibitions, contact HUB-Robeson Galleries at 814-865-2563, or visit the galleries website. Keep up to date with HUB-Robeson Galleries by signing up for the listserv or follow the HUB-Robeson Galleries on Instagram @hubrobesongalleries Facebook @HUBRobeosnGalleries, and Twitter @HR_Galleries.

Last Updated June 24, 2021