News Release
November 2005
Bethlehem, Pa., November 29, 2005 -- Moment in Time: The Bethlehem
Steel Plant Today, a look at the Bethlehem Steel Works through the eyes of more
than 50 local, regional, and national artists, opens Thursday at Payne Gallery, where
it runs through January 29.
The pieces in the show represent the on-site impressions of those who participated
in a “paint out” organized October 2, 2004, by the Bethlehem Fine Arts Commission.
Some 60 artists participated in the paint-out, and 40 works by 50 of them have been chosen
for this exhibit.
Krista Steinke Finch, assistant professor of art (new media), and Jan Ciganick,
adjunct instructor of art history, brought five former students from the Art Club: Kirsli
Spinks ’05 (Lebanon, N.J.), Alana Speicher ’05 (Fleetwood, Pa.), Kristin
Roberts ’05 (Sellersville, Pa.), David D’Ostilio ’05 (Monroe, Conn.),
and Paula Cooper ’04 (Easton, Pa.). They were selected by lot because so many club
members wanted to participate.
The alumni worked in photography, charcoal, and pastel.Ciganick is a watercolorist
who specializes in renderings of buildings; and Finch works in photography and manipulated
digital photography. Moravian sent more students to the event than any other college
in the area.
Finch took first place in the show with a digital photograph of the outside
of the works, scraped and layered by hand. It was featured on the show’s invitational
postcard. Several more of her pieces also are in the show.
Ciganick’s watercolor, “Blast Furnace No. 4,” has completed
a busy fall. The original sketch and the larger finished painting based on it have been
featured in a solo show of Ciganick’s work called “Historic Buildings of
Eastern Pennsylvania” at Reading Area Community College through December 16. It
also was chosen for the juried Palette Club exhibit at the Allentown Art Museum, which
closed October 15. Now it is in Moment in Time.
A work by Kirsli Spinks also was chosen for Moment in Time.
The exhibition curator is Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu of Seton Hall University,
author of an essay in the catalogue to Monet in London, currently at the Baltimore Museum
of Art.
The show opens Thursday with a reception for the participating artists,
7:30-9:00 p.m. Thursday.
Payne Gallery is located on the Priscilla Payne Hurd Campus of Moravian
College, in Historic Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The Gallery is open 11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Tuesday through Sunday. The gallery is closed Mondays, major holidays and during school
breaks. Admission and parking are free, and the Gallery is wheelchair accessible.
Moravian College is a private, coeducational, selective liberal arts college
located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Tracing its founding to 1742, it is recognized as
America's sixth-oldest college. Visit the Web site at www.moravian.edu.
