Broome County Artists and Members | 2nd Annual Spring Flower Show
Scott Yurko | The Fierce and Fantastic Flower

On View: April 2nd – May 1st

The Second Annual Spring Flower Show highlights the beginning of the Spring season, gathering floral art from near and far to celebrate new life and renewal. Forty artists have submitted their work into this community show.

Included in the show will be a collection from Scott Yurko, whose mini exhibition is entitled “The Fierce and Fantastic Flower.”

THE FIERCE AND FANTASTIC FLOWER 

As artists, we inevitably paint our own lives. Those who live in the city find their subject matter in the high paced action and movement of urban life. They may tend to paint buildings and cabs, people moving about seemingly unaware of one another. 

Those who reside in a more rural setting may tend to paint landscapes of country life, chickens and cows, dragonflies and flowers. 

Personally, I have always had one foot on the pavement of the big city and one foot in the soil of the country. For me it creates emotional balance not limiting myself or the images I desire to create. Consequently, my subject matter tends to be more open and wide ranging. I find enormous joy in painting all of the above and so much more. As an artist I never know what I’ll be painting next nor, as a viewer, one never knows what to expect. I’m definitely not the guy who just paints portraits or pets, landscapes or shapes but rather anything that may be interesting to me at the moment. I live life and make paintings as if I’m on vacation snapping photos of everything new. Over the years, my collection of paintings has become the “scrapbook” of my life, the people and things I find so important as well as the most trivial images meant to accomplish nothing more than to touch the viewer in some way, to make them think or give them a smile, all equally important in my eyes. 

After a year of lockdown and stress due to Covid 19, I and the people of the BCAC Artisan Gallery felt like it was time to give you, the viewer, something simple, delicate and beautiful to look at, breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy the fierce and fantastic flower. 

I believe that although this collection of flower paintings is calm, pretty and easy to look at, it is not void of content. I, and the gallery, encourage you to take a mental break and enjoy this collection, let your mind wander as you turn the page in this artist’s scrapbook.

Scott Yurko was born in Upstate New York and received a dual A.S. in Commercial Art and Photography in 1986. In 1989, he graduated from the School of Visual Arts with a B.F.A. in Illustration and was later accepted into The United Scenic Artist Local 829, a union of artisans who make and paint scenery for movies, television and theater, in 1992. 

Although he has worked in all of these venues, Mr. Yurko spent the vast majority of the past 25 years at The Metropolitan Opera Association in New York City painting the scenery for the Opera, working with many of the top designers, and making their creations come to life, while learning a vast array of products and techniques. He resides on a farm in downstate New York and enjoys traveling, tending his chickens, and painting for “art’s sake” in his spare time.

Broome County High School Students

Regional High School Emerging Artists Competition and Exhibition

March 5th – March 27th

Broome County Arts Council and Fine Arts Society of the Southern Tier presents the Emerging Artists Competition and Exhibition. Open to all high school level students, this juried exhibition will be on display at the Artisan Gallery throughout the month of March. Six awards will be granted for Composition, Line & Color, Originality, Use of Medium, Level of Difficulty and Best in Show. Our jurors this year include David Zeggert, Professor of Arts at SUNY Broome, Claire Kovacs, Curator and Director of the Art Museum at Binghamton University, and Janice Wood of Fine Arts Society of the Southern Tier.

David Zeggert is a classical painter, illustrator, and Professor of Art at SUNY Broome located in Binghamton New York. David produces oil paintings with natural tendencies as fine art and illustration focusing on portraiture, resulting in various works being part of private and public collections, internationally. Currently, Zeggert received a gold medal from The Philadelphia Sketching Club for his portrait of Lennon as part the Phillustration annual exhibition. Recent exhibitions include Figuratively Speaking, Salmagundi Club, NYC and Cooperstown Art Association 83rd National Exhibition and a yearlong exhibit of portraiture displayed at the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany New York.

Claire Kovacs is the Curator of Collections + Exhibitions at the Binghamton University Art Museum. Kovacs obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, and her master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Case Western Reserve University – all in art history. Before coming to Binghamton, she curated exhibitions at the Figge Art Museum, Coe College, and the Krasl Art Center, and the Augustana Teaching Museum of Art. Her strategies for programming and exhibitions emphasize the ways that academic museums explore contemporary issues, foster interdisciplinary inquiry, create space for a multiplicity of voices and perspectives, and function as a site of dynamic community engagement. She emphasizes intersectional equity, diversity, accessibility and inclusion in collections, exhibitions, and programming.

Janice Wood is a native of Broome County and enjoyed drawing from a very early age. She has a Master’s Degree in Health Services Management but never had formal art training. Janice has always had a very creative side all through school, college and as a NYS Healthcare Administrator. Prior to her retirement, she became interested in the art and educational opportunities offered by the Fine Arts Society of the Southern Tier (FASST). She became a member and was elected to serve on the Board of Directors where she immediately assumed the role of Board Treasurer and later Board President.  Upon retirement, Janice began taking visual art workshops, attending demonstrations and participating in trips to museums in the area and aboard to enhance her art knowledge and technique. Janice prefers oil as her medium, but experiments with pen, pencil and acrylics. She continues to participate in educational programs and explores new venues in the area to display her art.

Melissa Restuccia

Crow Talk and Winged Whispers

February 5th – February 27th

I am fascinated with the similarity of crows to humans- the ability to be playful, their attraction to small “precious” shiny things, their cunning behavior and their need to be the center of attention. The butterflies and moths in my collection on the other hand represent for me a whisper of beauty-just out of our reach, elusive like long ago memories. As a child I would chase butterflies and moths in the yard and dream of having a mini collection in my bedroom. My collection, ​Crow Talk and Winged Whispers​, melds our everyday human constructs with our more elusive dreams and yearnings. The heavily patterned backgrounds are a nod to past events and historical textiles.

Melissa Restuccia is currently a high school Art Educator and K-12 Art Department Chairperson at Vestal Central Schools. Her teaching career has spanned 27 years in five local school districts. Melissa received a Master’s Degree in Social Science from Binghamton University, Bachelor’s Degree in Art Education from Marywood University and an Associate’s in Fine Arts from Keystone College. She also received a full Presidential Scholarship to the School of Visual Arts in New York City where she attended for one year and studied Illustration.

Richard B. Henry

Paintings of the Northeast Region of America

January 8th – January 30th

The landscape has always been the focus of my interest, and the Plein Air movement that has been gaining momentum over the past several years has really been exciting. I feel that I have grown as an artist and my work has benefited as a direct result of working from life.  There are challenges when painting in this manner but it’s rewarding to see what you get after a few short hours. Conditions such as the changing light, clouds, rain, wind, bugs, bees and an occasional wild animal are just a few. Painting from life forces you to really look at your subject and it requires you work faster and make decisions in a more spontaneous manner. That result is a fresher painting and although not every piece works out the way I may have envisioned the benefits are a better connection to the work I do.  Many of the paintings here are painted in that manner.

Richard Henry began his formal art education at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh under the watchful eye of American Master Harold F. Edmonds and went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree (BFA) from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 1979. After college, Richard entered the workplace as a commercial artist, building an outstanding career as art director and technical illustrator with technology firms, including IBM and Lockheed Martin. Throughout those years, Mr. Henry also continued his devotion to fine art, mastering many different paint mediums including oil, watercolor and graphite, developing his unique artistic language and continuously exhibiting his paintings at galleries and art shows throughout the Northeast and New England.