September 5 – October 19, 2003

The Gallery of Fine Art, Edison College, is pleased to present a 30 year retrospective of the landmark digital works of Laurence Gartel.  Mr. Gartel worked with video guru Nam June Paik in the early 70’s and created art out of primitive analog systems.  This exhibit of Gartel’s work is a journey through the entire digital medium while watching the development of one of the true pioneers of computer art.

Mr. Gartel is known world wide as the “Father” of Digital Art.  His biography is included in “Who’s Who,” “Who’s Who in the East,” “Who’s Who in American Art,” “Who’s Who inAmerica,” and “Who’s Who in the World.”  His work has been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), NYC, PS1, NYC, Princeton Art Museum, Long Beach Museum of Art, the Norton Museum of Art in Florida, and the Smithsonian Institute, to name a limited few.

Born and raised in New York City, Mr. Gartel had the opportunity to teach Andy Warhol how to use the Amiga Computer, went to art school with fellow student Keith Haring, and started his electronic career working side by side with Nam June Paik at Media Study/Buffalo in upstate New York.  Gartel has had many associations with musicians such as Debbie Harry (Blondie), Sid Vicious (Sex Pistols), Stiv Bators (Dead Boys), Johnny Thunder (New York Dolls), Ace Frehley (Kiss), and Wendy O. Williams (Plasmatics).  Recently Gartel has created artwork for Pop Culture stars such as Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears.

http://gartelautomotion.com/

October 31 – December 7, 2003

The Gallery of Fine Art is pleased to present the work of George Snyder and Dan Meyer. With literally hundreds of exhibits to their credit these two versatile artists have exhibited their work from coast to coast.  From gallery shows to museum exhibitions to corporate collections their work is recognized throughout Florida and nationally.

George Snyder’s work has been shown in the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, the Huntington Museum of Art, W. VA, the Jacksonville Art Museum, FL, the Vero Beach Center for the Arts and the Brevard Art Center and Museum, FL to list just a few.  Mr. Snyder’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Maitland Art Center, FL, theVero Beach Center for the Arts, FL, Jacksonville Art Museum, FL and Huntington Museum of Art, W. VA, as well as in the corporate collections of General Electric, Upjohn Company, the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond,VA and Federal Express.  Snyder received a BFA from Marshal University, W. Va. and a MFA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Dan Meyer’s work has been exhibited throughout Florida and includes shows at the Vero Beach Center for the Arts, the Brevard Art Center and Museum, FL, the Norton Musuem of Art, FL and Florida Atlantic University to list just a few.  Permanent collections of corporate and public institutions that have Meyer’s work include Standard Oil, Palm Beach International Airport, Florida Atlantic University, Harley Davidson, Absolut Vodka and McDonalds Corporation to name a few.  Dan studied at the Chicago Art Institute, the American Academy of Art and the Naguib School of Sculpture, Chicago.

The exhibit features the individual work of both artists, and the collaborative efforts that combine their sensibilities.  While Mr. Snyder’s work is generally abstract, his wall constructions and freestanding forms are color-based patterns painted on basic shapes (cylinders or tubes and rectangles.) Mr. Meyer’s work tends toward a more fantasy-based realism utilizing a broad range of materials in both 2 and 3 dimensional formats.  The common ground between both artists is quickly evident.  Rich in color and overall patterning, the resulting collaborative work has a whimsical presence with high technical accomplishment. 

 http://georgesnyder.com/          http://www.studioegallery.com/category20DanielMeyer.html

January 16 – February 22, 2004

The Gallery of Fine Art, Edison College, is pleased to present the rarely seen work of David Budd.  David Budd was born in St. Petersburg, FL on March 31, 1927.  He attended the School of Architecture at  the University of Florida in Gainesville between 1946 and 1948 before studying interior design at Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Fl.  It was in Sarasota that Budd met artist Syd Solomon. The influence Solomon had on David pushed him in a new direction, toward a career as a fine artist, a painter.  In 1954 Budd moved to New York where he joined the Art Students League.

Between 1954 and 1960 Budd met artists at the Cedar Street Tavern, the hub of the New York art world at that time.  There he met artists Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Willem DeKooning.  Budd is generally considered to be a second generation Abstract Expressionist but his work is considerably more Eastern than is implied by that association.

Budd’s first solo exhibit took place in 1956 at the American University in Washington, D.C.  In 1958 and 1960 he exhibited at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York.  Shortly afterward, he moved toParis where he exhibited in Europe for the first time at the Galerie Stadler.  The work in that, and subsequent exhibits of the time frame, were in collaboration with the writer William S. Burroughs. 

Budd lived and worked in Europe for a decade.  During the 1960’s he produced paintings that had broad undulating lines and forms painted in flat color with no texture.  Structural elements from the paintings of the “60’s can be found in the heavily textured paintings of the 1970’s, which began some of his most important work.  The later period’s hallmark was an undivided monochromatic field unified by horizontal brush strokes. 

After returning to the United States Budd exhibited in New York at the Tibor de Nagy, Max Hutchinson and Susan Caldwell galleries.  He also taught at the School of Visual Arts.   Between 1973 and 1986 Budd was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and was the joint recipient of the Peggy Guggenheim Award.

Severe health problems began plaguing Budd in the 1980’s.  A weak heart and poor circulation in his legs made it dufficlt for him to walk for any extended time or distance.  Chemotherapy for cancer further weakened him.  Despite his numerous medical problems and discomfort, he remained active and produced the “Journey Without Maps” and “Silver System” series.  David Budd died of heart failure at his home in Sarasota,Florida on October 9, 1991.

Major public collections holding David Budd’s work include:  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and the Whitney Museum of Art, New York.  

The work in this exhibit spans the career of David Budd with an emphasis on some of his most hauntingly beautiful work created from the 1970’s on.  Key elements of the exhibit include the “Bisbee Blue” series as well as the “Journey Without Maps” and the “Silver System” series. The latter two represent some of the last work the artist produced.

The work in the exhibit was organized and selected by Ron Bishop, Director of the Gallery of Fine Art, Edison College.  It could not have come together without the assistance of Kevin Dean, Director of the Selby Gallery in Sarasota as well as Corky Bowes who was married to David Budd.  Ms. Bowes oversees the work that survives the artist and generously loaned all of the work selected for the exhibit.

Marilyn Bridges
March 5 – April 18, 2004

Coinciding with the 100 year celebration of the Wright Brothers first flight, the Gallery of Fine Art at Edison College, Fort Myers is pleased to present the work of Marilyn Bridges, one of the world’s foremost aerial photographers.  Marilyn began her career in the mid-1970’s when she was introduced to the owner of a small local newspaper, The Naples Daily News.  After showing him her photographs of the Naples area, he gave her a chance to do a once a week pictorial centerfold of her choosing for the paper.  She went looking for stories from the shuffleboard contests to finding alligators in the Everglades from the small airboats.  Now she is hanging out of the open doors of small airplanes looking for the remains of ancient civilizations to photograph, the results of which can now be seen at the Gallery in an exhibit titled  “Egypt: Antiquities From Above.”

Since receiving her MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1981, she has published 7 books and CD-ROMS.  Bridges was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982, a New York State CAPS Grant in 1983, a NEA grant in 1984 and a Fulbright Fellowship in 1988.  She was elected a fellow of the Explorers Club in 1988 and in 2003 received the Wings Trust Award.   Her work has been shown in more than 300 exhibits worldwide and is in more than 80 museum and private collections. 

“Egypt: Antiquities From Above” constitutes a journey up the Nile from Giza to Abu Simbel, documenting the architectural remains that span nearly 5,000 years of Egyptian history.  While Marilyn Bridges follows the footsteps of early explorers, archeologists and adventurous travelers of the past centuries, she does so from a unique perspective of high above the NileValley that nourished the civilization that gave birth to extraordinary monuments.

British novelist Penelope Lively has said, “A visit to the Nile Valley wonderfully concentrates the mind.  The great monuments – the pyramids, the temples, the tombs – put the onlooker neatly in perspective.  You feel diminished, in every sense – by the sheer weight of all that stone and by the implications of those great reaches of time…. Mortality is the theme of the NileValley.  The great monuments are statements of defiance – the attempts of kings and queens to surmount the human condition.”

She describes today’s landscape “as a temporal kaleidoscope, with everything coexisting – the pyramids and the temples and tombs alongside the ruins left by the Romans and the Greeks, the mosques of the Mamluks, the surviving shreds of eighteenth and nineteenth century Cairo.”

As much of the antiquities of the Nile are located in military-sensitive zones, which prohibit aerial reconnaissance.  It was only after months of security checks and bureaucratic debate that Bridges was finally allowed to photograph the sites.  Her previous documentation of the Nazca Lines of Peru and the Maya civilization of theYucatan proved to be the deciding factor in the Egyptian government’s decision.

While Marilyn Bridges’ photographs provide a visual framework for archaeologists to survey the extensive boundaries of historical sites, her fine art background does not limit her work to scholarly inspection.  Bridges’ photographs, usually taken at low altitudes from a single-engine aircraft or a helicopter, force the viewer to examine the landscape from an unfamiliar perspective.  Composition and detail are explicit in the images and the balance of light and dark tones give a rich flavor to the photographs.  Through photographic studies of ancient sacred and secular architecture and equally poignant surveys of the contemporary landscape, Bridges has instigated a dialogue with which to examine man’s future.

To Bridges, these ancient sites in Egypt are both a testimony to the genius of the builders and an affirmation of the Egyptian people.  Yet, as they speak of the past, they also define the present.  Industry and urban sprawl and the effects of pollution threaten the sites as much as nature in the past once covered them with sand.

This exhibit features 52 black and white gelatin silver print photographs executed between 1984 and 1993.  Included with the exhibit are panels and maps to further place the exhibit in context for the viewer.  Visit MarilynBridges.com for additional biographical and resume information.

http://www.marilynbridges.com/

April 22 – May 5, 2004

The Gallery of Fine Art, Edison College, will be hosting the annual student art exhibit from April 22 to May, 2004.

Full and Part time students taking art classes over the past year will have their work on display and be eligible for category awards.  The reception and awards ceremony will be held on Thursday, April 22 from 4-6 P.M.with the awards presented at 5 P.M.  Artwork on display includes Painting, Drawing, Photography, Design, Ceramics I and Ceramics II.

The opening reception is open to the public and refreshments will be provided by the Docents of the Gallery of Fine Art.

Awards sponsors this year include the SW Florida Craft Guild, the Docents of the Gallery of Fine Art, the Humanities Faculty and Dr. and Mrs. Richard Rush.

Bob Rauschenberg
June 4 – July 11, 2004

Edison College is pleased to announce that the Gallery of Fine Art at the Lee Campus will be named “The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery” at a dedication ceremony scheduled for Friday, June 4, 2004.  Coinciding with the dedication ceremony, a new exhibit of Mr. Rauschenberg’s work, “Scenarios,” will be on display in the Gallery from June 4 to July 11, 2004.

World acclaimed artist Robert Rauschenberg has been a friend of Edison College since 1980 when his first exhibit took place at the Gallery of Fine Art.  Subsequently, the gallery has hosted eight exhibits of his works and an additional two exhibits have taken place in the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall.  With the June 4 exhibit and another exhibit planned for January of 2005 the remarkable total of 12 exhibitions have taken place at Edison College over a 25-year span.  Mr. Rauschenberg’s generosity led to the establishment of an endowed fund to benefit the Gallery in March 2000.  The Edison College Foundation created the fund from the proceeds of the sale of limited edition prints and posters of Rauschenberg’s work.

Rauschenberg has created a new limited edition print entitled “Restoration,” and will donate signed prints to the Gallery of Fine Art for purchase through the Foundation at the June 4 ceremony.   The artist’s generous gifts, along with State matching funds, have resulted in an endowed fund at a level which meets the College’s guidelines for naming its facilities. 

The reception will be held in the lobby of the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall beginning at 6:30 p.m., with the exhibition of “Scenarios” and Gallery Open House scheduled for 6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.  The dedication ceremony is planned for 8:00 p.m.

July 15 – August 19, 2004

This annual favorite features the artwork of local and national artists that have been donated for auction to benefit ACT, INC.  The preview exhibit includes work by national artists such as Rauschenberg, Pottorf, and Rosenquist as well as dozens of local favorites.

http://www.actabuse.com/