BRIDGING THE GAP Exhibition Opens at Flushing Town Hall Today

BRIDGING THE GAP: A traveling group exhibition featuring 50 artworks representing 40 artists from Queens, New York is a multi-venue show, curated by LIC Artists, Inc (Long Island City Artists) and Amy Winter, Director Godwin-Ternbach Museum, in collaboration with Flushing Town Hall. It reaches out to the varied communities near LaGuardia Community College, Flushing Town Hall, and Queensborough Community College, to highlight and showcase the broad diversity and creativity of Queens' artists.

The exhibition will show at Flushing Town Hall (137-35 Northern Boulevard on the corner of Linden Place) from Thursday, June 27 to Sunday, July 14. There will be an opening reception today, June 27 from 4-7 p.m. Gallery hours will be 12 - 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday and art works will be on sale.

On Saturday, June 29 at 2-4:30 p.m. there will be a family workshop on sun printing. Families should bring objects to print, translucent items or things with an interesting silhouette. Leaves, flowers, lace & feathers are common items that transfer well through Sun printing. BRIDGING THE GAP exhibition artist Mary Pinto will lead the event. Tickets are $20 per parent + 1 child, $10 each additional child, available now at http://www.flushingtownhall.org/events/?cat_id=1006

BRIDGING THE GAP brings together the talent of many visual artists residing and working in Queens, and handsomely succeeds in portraying a large sample of the artistic life of the borough. It illustrates that there is life outside of Manhattan, well beyond the frontier of Long Island City, reminding us of Saul Steinberg's classic cartoon of the map of the United States where NYC represents two-thirds of the space of the frame to imply that it is the symbolic center of the universe. But here we redraw the map and extend the boundaries beyond Manhattan Island, to celebrate the fact that on the other bank of the East River, a community of artists has regrouped and thrived.

Displaying 40 artists and 50 works, the exhibition reveals not only the remarkable ethnic diversity for which Queens is famed, but the rich stylistic practices available to contemporary artists; and shows that they are often related. Artworks representing both figurative and abstract traditions-painted, drawn, fabricated, constructed, photographed, conceptualized-with portraits, landscapes, narratives, and formal studies in all media-revisit and revise the foundations of modern and contemporary art practices with passion and sensitivity.

Some pieces are directly related to the artist's past or present reality-images of memory or observation, whether actual or metaphorical, that evoke home, family, friends or cultures deeply embedded in the artist's consciousness and surfacing up from that mysterious amalgam of skill, feeling, and ideas that we call creativity. Other works are cerebral or analytical, starting with a concept or theme that is then executed in thoughtful variation, whether metaphysical or empirical, to express each individual's unique vision.

What is undoubtedly true, as seen in this show, is that visual art, like music and poetry, is deeply connected to our identity and spirit, and that it is alive and well in Queens. Just as musicians, from Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and other jazz legends called Queens their home, there is today a society of visual artists in neighborhoods throughout the borough that share a special history and a vibrant present that we are proud to call our colleagues and friends, and to showcase at the center of Queens in Flushing Town Hall. The exhibit will move to La Guardia Community College, on the western edge of Queens, in LIC, a locus for art and education, and ends its run at Queensborough Community College Gallery in Bayside, on the eastern tip of Queens by the waterfront.

By Amy Winter, Director, Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College

BRIDGING THE GAP is produced by LIC Artists, Inc., a 501 c(3) not for profit organization in collaboration with Flushing Town Hall, La Guardia Community College, and Queensborough Community College. LIC Artists, Inc. would like to thank Amy Winter, our Juror and Curator; and our partners at Flushing Town Hall: Ellen Kodadek, Executive & Artistic Director, Gabrielle Hamilton, Director of Education and Public Programs, and Shawn Choi, Director of External Affairs, for making the first leg of this exhibition possible. We would like to thank our partners, Faustino Quintanilla, Director of the QCC Gallery at Queensborough Community College, and Professor Cris Cristoforo of La Guardia Community College.

BRIDGING THE GAP is made possible in part by the Queens Council on the Art with funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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