MCCC Gallery Opens Frank Rivera Retrospective 'SELECTED WORKS 1945-2015' Today

In March, acclaimed artist Frank Rivera, of Hightstown, will return to his roots at Mercer County Community College (MCCC), where he taught art from 1967 to 2003. "Frank Rivera Retrospective: Selected Works 1945 - 2015" will be on display from today, March 10 through Thursday, April 2. The public is invited to an opening reception on Wednesday, March 11, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The Gallery is located on the second floor of the Communications Building on the college's West Windsor campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road.

According to MCCC Gallery Director Dylan Wolfe, the show will include work from all phases of Rivera's creative career, which in earlier years featured large-scale abstractions, while in more recent times has focused on smaller narrative pieces inspired by storyboard graphics and computer art. The exhibit even includes a few pieces preserved from Rivera's childhood.

Rivera notes in the exhibit's catalog, "The work...has been arranged by theme and subject rather than by chronology. It is the persistence of these themes and subjects - not always linear - that has shaped my vision over the decades."

An MCCC professor emeritus, Rivera is a painter and educator who has lived and worked in Mercer County, NJ, for more than 40 years. His work has been exhibited prominently in the United States, including exhibits at the Whitney Museum, the Luise Ross Gallery, and the Abington Art Center, as well as numerous venues in Paris, where Rivera regularly spends time painting. He is a graduate of Yale Art School, with an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania.

Rivera's previous exhibits have drawn glowing reviews. Cathy Vikso, of the Trenton Times, wrote, "There is an iconic quality to his pieces, recalling the carefully wrought panels and religious icons of medieval art." Dan Bischoff, of the Newark Star-Ledger, said," Rivera says [his] paintings are autobiographical, but each [work] seems more like a distillation than a rapidly jotted down memory, and their complexity in such small dimensions is made the more interesting for their visual clarity, though their meanings are often elusive." Dallas Piotrowski, former curator at the Chapin Gallery, noted, "The paintings of Rivera are for the mind."

Gallery hours are Mondays through Wednesdays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; and Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. More information about this and other exhibits at the MCCC Gallery is available at www.mccc.edu/gallery. Directions to the campus and a campus map can be found at www.mccc.edu.