Clara Fritzsche Library will host Imagiscapes II

SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio—5 October 2005 – Notre Dame College’s Clara Fritzsche Library will host “Imagiscapes II” a showing of digital art by collaborators judy blattner Klein and Sheila N Markowitz.

Sheila N Markowitz began working in the visual arts in 1973 and taught ceramics to adults and children for sixteen years. She won more than two dozen prizes for her pottery and several for her photographs before developing Imagiscapes on her computer two years ago in partnership with judy blattner Klein. Klein has been studying art since 1962, focusing on watercolors, oils and printmaking. Her work in traditional media has been seen in numerous local and regional juried shows since 1976, when she won the first of many prizes. Markowitz and Klein’s collaborative pieces have appeared locally in juried shows. “Imagiscapes II” is their second joint exhibition, and marks a return to the Clara Fritzsche Library Gallery for Klein, who exhibited in the 2001 Orange Art Center Printmakers show.

According to Klein and Markowitz, Imagiscapes are a celebration of the complexities and visual surprises that can result from a “what if” approach to making art on the computer. Photographs, paintings and three dimensional objects that have personal significance to the artists or connect to them in some way are digitally scanned, layered and manipulated to build texture, color and detail into a final composite image of art and imagination. This is a complex process involving a seemingly limitless array of decisions to create the final piece. Happy accidents as well as deliberate choices alter the character, emotional content, and sometimes the meaning of the image that results. Electronic wizardry provides a wide array of options and tools which give free range to the imagination, with painstaking hand-to-mouse manipulations controlling the final Imagiscape. Just as the artists make personal artistic choices in selecting raw materials, the ambiguities created by the mysterious landscapes or imagery invite the viewer’s imagination and examine the role of the viewer in completing the work of art.

Digital technology allows exact reproductions of images but also allows a number of possibilities for the final image. For this reason, a conscious decision was made that no two pieces produced by the artists would be exactly alike. The one-of-a-kind artworks are printed with Epson lightfast inks on archival fine art paper.

The exhibit runs from November 17 through December 16, 2005. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, November 17th from 7 to 9 p.m. The event is free and refreshments will be served. The exhibit hours are Monday -Thursday 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday - Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, contact Karen Zoller at (216) 373-5267.