The ArtSalon goes to Conway, October 4th, 2019

6:30 pm, presentations begin at 7pm
$5-$10 suggested donation
At the International Dzogchen Community Tsegyalgar East, 18 Schoolhouse Road in Conway, map

Parking at the Tsegyalgar is limited. Please look for people to guide you to park in nearby lots unless you have accessibility needs.

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Conway Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
The evening begins at 6:30pm with mingling and light refreshments, and presentations start at 7pm. A brief Q&A period with the artists follows the presentations. 

This ArtSalon is coinciding with the fabulous Conway Festival of the HillsThe festival takes place from Friday until Sunday. Please click here for a schedule of events.

Presenting Artists:

Nick Criscuolo
Nick Criscuolo graduated from Montserrat College of Art in 2003 with a BFA in painting, and an MFA from UMass Amherst in 2019. He makes animations and other experimental graphics, dabbles in video game design, and currently teaches computer animation at UMass. He has done animation and illustration work for NASA, MTV, CBS, Adidas, and Engadget. His work has been featured on filmmakermagazine.com, animalnewyork.com, boingboing.net, engadget.com, lifehacker.com, cartoonbrew.com, and others. He has attended artists colonies including Macdowell, Yaddo, VCCA, and IPark.

 

Shona Macdonald
Shona Macdonald was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and educated at the Glasgow School of Art and at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  She has been an active artist and teacher for over two decades. Her work has been exhibited in the USA, Canada, Germany, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. She is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

 

Efrem Marder
Efrem Marder is a painter who settled in Conway, MA, after obtaining a degree in Art from Bard College in 1973. The needs of a growing family led him back to school where he completed an MA in Math In 1980, and spent the next 30 years at an investment management firm, while continuing artistic pursuits as possible. Since 2010 he has more actively pursued his abstract painting, utilizing an intuitive improvisational approach, unconstrained by predetermined concepts. He has shown in Amherst and in Provincetown MA galleries, but primarily his work has been seen at the private Conway gallery where he and his wife, curator/artist, Marit Cranmer, exhibit works from their collection.

 

Sheron Rupp
Sheron Rupp found her love of photography around 1969 when she attended a couple photography workshops. Leaving her career in publishing, Sheron, at almost forty, received her MFA degree in photography from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1982. Today, Sheron Rupp is best known for her color photographs of children and families living in rural, small towns in the U.S. Her photographs are included in a number of museum collections, and she has been the recipient of a number of awards, including a Guggenheim grant in 1990. This past spring her book of early color photographers, Taken from Memory, was published by Kehrer Verlag.

Michael Tillyer
Michael Tillyer is best known for his work as founding director of the Anchor House of Artists in Northampton, including his 2017 launch of the New England Visionary Artists Museum, and for his, what many consider outsider-like, wood figurines he makes. What is less known about him is his connection to mathematics and minimalism at the outset of his career. In this short talk, Tillyer reflects on leaving college, on his first Northampton exhibit of minimalist configurations at Available Potential Enterprises in the late 1970’s, on the revolution that bore his entrance into narrative wood sculpture and what comes beyond. He has something to say about the “outsider” genre filter, too.