In the Gallery:
Raeford Dwyer
Westchester Community College/Peekskill Extension Center
September 8 – October 10, 2009
Opening Reception: Tuesday, September 15, 2009, 5:30 pm – 7 pm
Artist’s Talk: 6:30 pm
Photography has been Mr. Dwyer’s passion and artistic tool of choice from a very young age. He began the manipulation of his photographs in the early 1990’s with the discovery of a new set of tools; a Macintosh computer, a transparency scanner and Adobe Photoshop. Up to that point he had mostly been interested in the accurate representation of remote and often beautiful areas of the natural world.
These new tools opened up vast new possibilities in expression. He found it possible to add more of the emotional content he experienced in the place where the photo was taken, back into the final image. He has noted that he does not have a fixed way of working. The process is somewhat malleable, sometimes He conceptualizes the final piece and goes out and photographs various elements, like doing carpentry – working different pieces of wood and then assembling them into something else entirely. Sometimes the process can be like sculpting, he comes across a raw slab of an image and has to get rid of what doesn’t need to be there for the finished piece to be revealed.
Kent Miller
Caps
October 13 – November 28, 2009
Opening Reception: Tuesday October 13, 2009, 5:30 pm – 7 pm
Artist’s Gallery: Talk 6:30 pm
Born in the coal regions of Pennsylvania, USA, Kent Miller has maintained a close connection to his blue-collar hometown. Within this context, much of his work portrays a sense of isolation intermingled with calm and wonder. This new body of work is derived from Mr. Miller’s background in the glam, alternative and 80’s music scene. It is charged with emotions from his relocation to NYC in late 1989.
Mr. Miller is drawn to vibrant colors, textures and the destruction of shape. His series ‘Caps’ focuses on all of these elements. The caps are bright, colorful pieces collected from around the world; some old, some new, some crushed, some rusted. Each has its own distinct personality. The caps will evoke unique impressions within each viewer: maybe nostalgia, happiness, irony, or even visual violence. Do you wonder where the caps have been? Have they traveled great distances? What has the human race done to them since their incarnation? And how much of the cap has nature tried to reclaim? It’s only a cap. It’s fun to dream about where it’s been.
The ‘Caps’ series is printed on Kodak Endura Metallic photographic paper. The unframed print sizes are 20×20 or 6×6 with signed original editions to 100/100.
Evan Read 
December 8 – January 16, 2009
Opening Reception: Tuesday, December 8, 2009, 5:30 pm – 7 pm
Artist’s Gallery: Talk 6:30 pm
Mr. Read creates meticulous digital images of odd or eccentric arrangements by using irregular pattern, geometry and elements of diagrammatic language. He was influenced early on by the flat simple forms and strong colors of pop art and also the clarity of minimalist art.
He tends to structure an image around some sort of representational form. Common elements are light, clouds and rudimentary architectural forms. His work explores the question of how abstraction relates to the everyday world.
These pieces work to transform something mundane, banal or abject into something pleasurable, transcendent or euphoric.
Lecture Series:
Jackie Battenfield 
The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love
Tuesday, October 6, 2009, 7 pm
Ms. Battenfield will be sharing insights from her recent book that provides the information, tools, and techniques, for developing and sustaining a successful art career. It provides answers to the challenges artists face everyday including real-life examples, illustrations, step-by-step exercises, and bulleted lists that allow readers to dive in and begin working immediately.
Author Jackie Battenfield maintains her own career as a visual artist. She teaches professional development classes at Columbia University and the Creative Capital Foundation.
The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love was released in Summer 2009 and will be published by Da Capo Press.
No fee for enrolled students, PE-P189 All others $5, register for PE-P190.
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Alluring Androids and
Robots in Film, Photography and Art
A lecture by Julie Wosk
Tuesday, October 20, 2009, 7 pm
Filmmakers, photographers, and artists have long been fascinated by the idea of artificial women that seem alive. The Stepford Wives, Lara Croft, the latest in female Japanese robots look so real they can easily fool the eye. This illustrated slide-lecture showcases colorful images of female robots, androids, talking dolls, mannequins and other artificial women ranging from early automatons to lifelike female heroines in today’s video games. These images tell a startling tale of changing attitudes toward science and toward women themselves. The virtual women also raise provocative new questions: do men and women each view female robots differently? How do these images reveal men’s fantasies and fears about women? What happens when we can no longer tell the difference between an artificial woman (or man) and a real one? Will these ultra-realistic robots enhance our lives or challenge our humanity?
This Speakers in the Humanities event, which is free and open to the public, is made possible through the support of the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Speakers in the Humanities program has linked distinguished scholars with diverse audiences since its launch in 1983, bringing the best in humanities scholarship to thousands of people at hundreds of cultural organizations in virtually every corner of New York State. This program is just one of the ways the New York Council for the Humanities helps all New Yorkers to lead vibrant intellectual lives by strengthening traditions of cultural literacy, critical inquiry, and civic participation.
This Event is Free and open to the public.
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Pecha Kucha: Peekskill
Join Area Artists, Designers, Teachers and Students for
Pecha Kucha Night at the Center for Digital Art in Peekskill
Thursday December 3, 2009, 7 pm
Join us for a special night of Pecha Kucha presentations by area Artists, Designers and Creatives. Using the Pecha Kucha format, a presenter shows 20 images for 20 seconds a piece, for a total time of 6 minutes, 40 seconds.
Pecha Kucha was devised in 2003 in Tokyo to give young designers a venue to meet, network, and show their work. They devised a format that kept presentations very concise in order to encourage audience attention and increase the number of presenters within the course of one night. They took the name Pecha Kucha (usually pronounced in three syllables like “peh-chak-cha”) from a Japanese term for the sound of conversation (“chit-chat”).
No fee for enrolled students, PEP-196 All others $5, register for PEP-197.
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Nina Weinberg Doran
Studio Focus:
