Cohen Gallery

December 5, 2020 - January 3, 2021

GoggleWorks Center for the Arts is proud to present the 16th Annual GoggleWorks Studio Artist Exhibition!

Composed of a mix of emerging and established artists from a variety of backgrounds, the GoggleWorks Studio Artists practice and grow their craft, both individually and collectively, within our walls. Their studios, located on the second and third floors, offer them private work space with proximity to collaborate, discuss, and grow with other artists. Our seven communal studios in wood, warm and hot glass, printmaking, metals, ceramics, and photography offer them additional opportunities to explore creating across disciplines and media. Most importantly, GoggleWorks Studio Artists value their community and understand the importance of bringing the arts to others. Many of them volunteer to support our mission, teaching classes, offering open studios and demonstrations, and bringing the arts into local schools through our outreach programs. They are a vital component of our community and we are all richer for having them. This annual exhibition introduces some new faces, welcomes back some of our alums, and collectively showcases some of their best works.

This year’s exhibition includes work from:

Susan Biebuyck, Kevin Brett, Brent Brown, Lily Cernak, Alan Cernak, Anne Chase, Mary Lou Creyts, Miles DeCoster, Adry Eberhard, Cheryl Elmo, Suzanne Fellows, Ren Hernandez, James Maria, Kachina Martin, Sharon McGinley, Fran Parzanese, Rebecca Ross, Elaine Soltis, Barry Steely, Sybil Roe Thompson, Barbara Thun, Birdie Zoltan, Andrew Kaucher, Judy Lupas, Abby Ryder, Nancy Sarangoulis, Patricia Scialo, Joe Szimhart, Steve White, and Lauralynn White

Susan Biebuyck / Studio 319

Susan Biebuyck is known for her acrylic, oil, pastel, and watercolor painting diversity. Her work demonstrates superb observation and lyrical spirit. She has won honors and awards for exceptional painting. An inaugural GoggleWorks studio artist, she continues to serve on committees within GoggleWorks. She is a gallery director and curator of exhibits at Studio B in Boyertown. In 2012 her work joined the Worldwide Circus Terminal - Uncooked Culture, exhibiting in twelve countries including the 2013 Amsterdam Fringe Festival and 2014 New Zealand Fringe Festival which she attended. She regularly curates and exhibits in the cultural exchange between Reading, Pennsylvania and Reutlingen, Germany since 2010.

Kevin Brett / Studio 315

Kevin finds it very challenging to take every day, overlooked objects or subject matter, people or situations and capture them in ways that the viewer can extract feelings from personal experiences of their own. As when he worked in other mediums of visual art such as drawing, painting and sculpture, great effort is made to have everything within the compositions become valuable characters in the motionless plays captured through a lens. The use of unusual and dramatic angles gives the photographs views intended to make seemingly insignificant items a bit more powerful and emotional. Kevin's style of photography is very pure and traditional but there are always conceptual intentions behind all the fine art images created. While sometimes including people in his fine art photographs, Kevin attempts to capture what it is to be human within every image. Each image is titled with only one word. The ambiguity of a one word title only opens the door for the viewer, with freedom to roam their own thoughts rather than defining the images with a complicated heading trapping the viewer on the surface and not allowing the unrestricted journey beyond the scene.

Brent Brown / Studio 306

Brent Brown is a talented artist and special individual. He has not had any formal training in art, but he had a high school art teacher who was very encouraging and taught him how to work with clay, make stained glass and many other skills. He is currently working with paper, cardboard, glue, and acrylic paints to create creatures ranging from animals, Gremlins, super heroes, Muppets, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, TV and movie stars, to all the characters in Alice in Wonderland. He refers to his pieces as puppets because he has developed a way to give them moving arms, legs and heads with the use of cardboard pegs.

Lily Cernak / Studio 303

Lily Cernak shares GoggleWorks studio 303 with her father Alan. Her recent works include a collaborative series with Alan of traditional- and modern-style historical illustrations, and an in-progress yet-untitled illustrated light novel about life after death. She also teaches art, English, and Japanese classes at the GoggleWorks and online, and enjoys playing Dungeons and Dragons, watching excessive amounts of anime, and looking at cat photos on the internet.

Alan Cernak / Studio 303

I began my career in NYC creating large window display art for Bloomingdales. In 2006 I relocated to GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, and have been a juried studio artist there since. I create work in a variety of media, including acrylic ink, digital, acrylic paint, paper craft, mixed media sculpture, and colored pencil. I teach origami, drawing/painting, digital drawing, paper sculpture and Japanese language/culture classes at GoggleWorks, online, and at area schools. I also give presentations on the history of manga and Japanese culture at schools, universities, and anime/culture conventions. I regularly hold open house days at my GoggleWorks studio and frequently coordinate large-scale art and culture projects with area schools, museums, and universities.

Anne Chase / Studio 317

My work is meant to provoke or share an emotion with the viewer. I begin with a photograph or perhaps a memory but when the rigidity of the reference material becomes frustrating, I discard it. This allows the artwork to evolve into its own design.

Mary Lou Creyts / Studio 204

Mary Lou Creyts is an award-winning artist who specializes on oil, pastel and charcoal portraiture and pen and ink caricatures. She also enjoys creating colorful and energetic paintings of varied subjects. Her work can be found in private and corporate collections both nationally and internationally. She has extensive teaching experience and has also worked as a courtroom artist.

Miles DeCoster / Studio 323

Miles DeCoster is a painter, printmaker and media artist. He is a professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Kutztown University where he teaches interactive design. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions over the last 40 years and his artists’ books are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and other institutions.

Adry Eberhard / Studio 304

There are significant moments in everyone’s life that deserve to be captured. I am passionate about capturing those moments through art. Done well, emotions, personalities, and sentiments shine through. My inner drive to paint is fresh and new. My search has taken me to beautiful places and more importantly new friends who understand what it means to be driven to paint. When I am creating, my goal is for the viewer to fill in the blanks with their own experience. My specialties are portraits and landscapes. I am accomplished in oils, pastels, acrylics, charcoal, and watercolor. I’m hopeful that my work reflects the beauty of each person or place that I portray.

Cheryl Elmo / Studio 311

My themes are figural and tell a story. I am drawn to quiet emotions and invisible perceptions. I paint to generate compassion, reflection and appreciation by re-creating a simple moment and engaging the viewer to share and embrace the story. My painting process has been an evolution over decades. As I begin each painting with a few lines, I continue applying layers of color for weeks or sometimes months. While the work develops, figures and objects emerge with a puddle-like quality. I work to achieve a silent energy by balancing figural composition with application of color and texture. As a Millersville University graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree in Art Education, I taught high school for 6 years. Since then I’ve been an Information Technology professional for the last 18 years. I am a signature member of both Pennsylvania and Baltimore Watercolor Societies and have shown nationally and internationally since 1995.

Suzanne Fellows / Studio 314

Suzanne Fellows works in printmaking, painting, drawing, book arts, and digital surface pattern design. Formerly known for bringing awareness to extinction, her work is currently a celebration of the subjective nature of reality, the bliss of dealing with shapes and lines played out in brilliant color. Abstract work allows the artist the same freedom in visual experience that it gives the viewer. The viewer is free to “look for shapes in the clouds” or allow their eyes to wander about a painting and let it take them elsewhere, in the same way that one listens to a sonata. “Although I’ve cycled in and out of various disciplines for most of my life, I’ve been attracted to the same two blues since I was about eleven and my focus always comes back to the ecstasy of intense, saturated tertiary colors."

Ren Hernandez / Studio 209

My work explores the relationship between color, nature, abstraction and impressionism. Although a Registered Nurse by trade and by practice, I have been dabbling in color and paints ever since I was a child. While in nursing school, after my long and tough clinical days, I always found art to be soul-nourishing. Art and color and painting have always helped me move forward, advance with my goals, and it also helped me dream. I have been a healthcare professional for six years now and I remain as passionate in helping people in their toughest times.

I am constantly learning from nature, the current cultural climate, museums, art books, and art history. Every time I go into a new city or country, I make sure to visit a museum and learn everything about it. Even YouTube is an excellent source of learning for me. As an artist, it helps to stay relevant not only with the past but also the current. My influences and inspirations include the impressionist masters, post impressionism, fauvism, and abstraction particularly Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Erin Hanson, and Paul Cezanne.

James Maria / Studio 217

James Maria is an internationally exhibiting and award winning painter who maintains his studio practice in Reading, Pa. A graduate of Kutztown University’s Fine Art and Art Education programs, James draws inspiration from Pennsylvania's post-industrial landscape. Abandoned interiors serve as an unorthodox tool to explore and communicate spiritual truths. His work also employs art historical references, materials and techniques to subtly reinforce the relationship between the disparate elements of theology and the beauty of entropy.

"In recent watercolor works, I have employed the visual language of entropy and abandonment to discuss shifts in economy and industry while also developing a metaphor that helps to ask questions and make statements about the metaphysical realm. I use titles and iconographic conventions borrowed from historical Christian art to reinforce the subtle, overarching spiritual themes of my work that are otherwise layered in metaphor. Through these channels I make queries about human plans as they may relate to a Divine, permissive will.

Every time I take a reference photo, compose an image or pick up a paint brush, I strive to improve my skills as a visual communicator so that I can better participate, with my own voice, in the discourse held by fellow contemporary watercolorists and visual artists as a whole."

Kachina Martin / Studio 217

I am an artist who works in a variety of media such as fiber, encaustic, and collage as well as creating wearable works of art. I am drawn to old garments that show evidence of the hand that created the piece as well as the person who wore it. These indelible marks— stitches, stains, mended holes, and spots rubbed almost bare by continual contact with the body—speak to the hours invested in the making of the garment as well as the years that have passed as it was worn, again and again. Narrative is an integral part of fiber media and its ability to reference memory, trauma, and loss are concepts that I continue to explore.

Sharon McGinley / Studio 305

Sharon has been a studio artist at GoggleWorks for 15 years. This is the fourth book she and John Cech have collaborated on. The others are "My Grandmother's Journey" (Bradbury Press, Macmillan), "First Snow Magic Snow" and "Django" (Four Winds Press, Simon & Schuster)

Fran Parzanese / Studio 203

Fran Parzanese uses watercolor to express her feelings for the beauty that nature provides. The glimmer of fleeting light, the stillness of a winter day, the joyous color that surrounds us are examples of what she loves to paint. Her paintings have been shown in many regional juried shows, including the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society, the Berks Art Alliance, and the Yellow Springs Fine Art Show.

"Painting allows me to share my vision of what I see with my heart, not just with my eyes. I hope the viewer can feel what I see."

Rebecca Ross / Studio 214

For the past twenty-seven years I have lived and worked in the Reading, PA area. I earned a B.F.A. in art at the University of Nebraska in 1984 and received a M.F.A. in painting and drawing from James Madison University in 1987. I have continued to make and show artwork ever since. My works in this show are part of a series based on sketches made during live music performances at Reading’s 2018 Blues Fest and 2019 Jazz Fest. I start with on-site pencil drawings of individual figures and of the entire scene. Photos of the empty venue are also taken. Next, I set the figures back on stage in a detailed colored pencil drawing. The final work is a larger acrylic painting. This series reflects my life-long interest in listening to music and is also meant as a tribute to Berks Arts.

Elaine Soltis / Studio 211

“You must construct a circle mentally, a circle of light and intention," quoted from Stanislavsky, is the first step of the creative process of Contemporary Mixed Media Artist, Elaine Soltis. Her layering of mono print, collage, and embellishment, starts with thought affirmation, symbol, image or mark. Elaine has had the cumulative eight years’ experience of interviewing other Artists for TV, is a retired Actors Equity Member of 25 years, a 30 year Reiki Master, and Mixed Media instructor. She travels back and forth to visit her family in Mentor, Ohio, where she also has residence. Her work can also be found online at elainesoltis.com

Barry Steely / Studio 208

“calendar, girl” is my latest painting. I am always searching for, and hoping to find, weird, inspiring photographs of the past, especially from the 40’s and 50’s. An artist friend sent me a few wonderful images she had found on the web and we were both drawn to one particularly stark image of a woman in a pretty, very patterned dress. Suspended close to her was a calendar with a picture of two dogs. My friend challenged me to a paint off, and here she is. A new paint off is already in the works and it IS gonna be weird.

Sybil Roe Thompson / Studio 206

At an early age, Sybil Roe Thompson was diagnosed as being severely autistic. As a preschooler, she had a vocabulary of about eight words and a fierce destructive energy. Endless rounds of speech therapy, hydrotherapy, group therapy, dance therapy, and countless hours of individual mental health treatment brought her into a world where she could communicate and be self-sufficient with minimal assistance. She has a phenomenal memory which serves her visually when she draws her detailed scenes and designs, including interior and exterior scenes. She has painted furniture and a series of paintings on the architecture of Reading, Pennsylvania, where she lives. She has also started painting jewelry and household decorative items.

Barbara Thun / Studio 310

My recent landscapes convey my feelings in the past six months of the Covid19 pandemic. There is a stillness, even an emptiness, but also the serenity and beauty of what I see.

Birdie Zoltan / Studio 307

In my art, I am drawn to those everyday objects that strike me as eager to assume new roles and realities. Working primarily with found objects and castoffs, I create sculptural personalities of unrepentant whimsy. To fabricate each piece usually employs several techniques which could include casting, weaving, sewing, woodworking, and carving. The mood of each piece, and frequently its form, tends to arise organically from the materials at hand. I acquire the raw materials I use during my daily walks, from excursions to thrift shops, garage sales and junkyards, and by gratefully accepting donations offered by friends and acquaintances familiar with my eccentricities.

Andrew Kaucher / Alumni Artist

I love building art over years of time–building pieces that both become and tell a story. For these two pieces, The Magpie and The Box, it has been a journey. The plywood used was from an old painting that I made years ago at the GoggleWorks. The type-written story was inspired by my move out to the north woods of Minnesota. And these are the first pieces I’ve made in a long time that I truly care about, all thanks to the perspective given during this time of pandemic. The story here is that we move and life moves, whether we’re ready or not. It’s the people around us and places where we feel a sense of belonging that sometimes have the greatest impact on who we become in those times of uncertainty.

To Take With Him

by Andy Kaucher

Arlo could feel Cyclops’ warm breath on his right arm. Cyclops stretched and shook his head, his ears flapping intrusively.

“No, doggo! You’re gonna let them know we’re hiding.” Arlo moved his arm around Cyclops’ shoulders. A collar wrapped twice around Arlo’s wrist perfectly matched the one around his dog’s neck. Even when Arlo was far away from the safety of something like a hidden shrubbery in his backyard, in dangerous places like the fourth grade, he still felt connected to his best friend.

His voice lowered to a whisper. “There’s one now — don’t wriggle like that again, you doofus.” Arlo moved a few branches that obstructed his few. A magpie had landed softly about twenty yards in front of Arlo and Cyclops.

Out in the middle of the yard was the trap. It wasn’t the best trap he had ever built, but he was sure it was going to work. It had to work. All the other boxes in the house were already full, but Arlo found an empty one that was big enough to work. His parents wouldn’t notice. They were too busy deciding which dishes from the kitchen were allowed to live in the new house and which ones would be donated.

About 5 yards from Arlo, the box sat tilted, propped up by a stick. There was one of Dad’s dumbbells taped to the top of the box so when the bird was captured it couldn’t escape. A small plate of worms and berries was perfectly centered below where the box would land after Arlo pulled the string that was at one end tied to the stick and at the other resting in his hand. He had seen this kind of trap in cartoons, so he knew he had to do something smarter.

Resting right next to the plate of worms was a russet potato, painted black and blue and white. Fake, iridescent-blue feathers were jammed into the butt of the potato, while a small toothpick-constructed beak stuck out of the opposite end. He knew it wasn’t perfect, but Arlo was still proud. He even brought it in for show-and-tell the day before at school.

“It’s going to the worms, Cyclops!” Arlo whispered, starting to shake a bit with excitement. Cyclops didn’t seem to care so much about the magpie. He just liked being outside with Arlo. The magpie walked toward the pile of worms and berries. It wasn’t a particularly majestic bird, but it captured all of Arlo’s attention. Arlo was sure that the most interesting things were magpies and the best magpies were here. There were no magpies in Delaware. Mom and Dad’s new jobs were in Delaware, but jobs are way less interesting. None of Arlo’s friends were in Delaware, but they already were less interesting.

That’s why he set the trap.

That’s why he was trying to take one with him.

That’s why a fully-grown bird was for the first time in its life staring down at a starchy doppelganger. Confused, but peckish, it hobbled toward the plate. It cocked its head this way and that, inspecting the box and pecking once at the potato.

“Go, go, birdie! Go, go, go! And—” Arlo pulled the string. The box softly landed over the bird, the dumbbell adding just enough weight so it couldn’t fly up and push the box off. “We did it!” Dancing his way out of the shrub, the rest of the plan was buzzing through Arlo’s mind.

First, he had to make sure the bird wasn’t hurt. Second, he needed to be extra careful while transferring this special creature into the birdcage he made from one of Cyclops’ old dog crates. Third, the toughest part, was sneaking it past Mom and Dad. Although, Arlo was pretty convinced that once his parents met Spud, as, of course–he’d already named his new magpie friend, they would think this was a great idea, too.

Leaping with joy, Arlo had to slow himself down before pressing an ear to the box to make sure his new friend wasn’t injured. The weight of the dog collar around his wrist reminded Arlo to make sure Cyclops wasn’t going to do anything too friendly either. Birds and dogs, he decided, definitely don’t speak the same language.

“Cyclops, sit,” and Cyclops sat. Arlo told him to stay, too, just to be safe.

“Hi, Spud. My name is Arlo,” he began in a soft, friendly voice, “I’m going to lift up the box. If you fly away, I’ll be sad, but if you stay, you can sit right next to me in the van. Delaware is really nice — that’s what Mom said to me, too.”

Arlo laid down in the grass, the cage by his side. He figured it best to lift up the box just a bit, at first, to see if everything was all right and to give Spud a few more encouraging words about Delaware. To Arlo’s surprise, Spud didn’t seem nervous at all when he peeked.

Slowly lifting up the box, he saw Spud nestled up next to the russet, softly pecking at some of the worms.

Using the same kind of voice his teacher did when she was asking another student to do something important, Arlo asked, “Okay, Spud, will you hop into your cage?” and Spud did. Arlo never thought of himself as a bird trainer, but he guessed in that moment, with Spud as his prodigy and with one or two more trips to the library, he could be a pretty good one.

He stared down at his new friend. The bird stared back and was still, both out of fear and interest. In the bird’s eyes, Arlo saw the reflection of everything outside the cage. Himself. The sky. The trees and bugs and other birds. He saw the freedom of his home in Minnesota. He saw a quiet place to read his favorite books without cars whirring by. A yard to go out in his underwear and not worry about his neighbors feeling embarrassed. The treehouse he and Dad built last summer that they promised to camp out in one last time before they left. Arlo saw reflected in the magpie’s eyes the safest place he’d ever known. The place where he had become the best version of himself. And he didn’t want to take that away from anyone.

Not even a bird.

Dropping a few more berries and worms into the cage for Spud, Arlo asked him about his bird family. He asked Spud what he liked the most about Minnesota and spending all his time outside. They both agreed that lakes are pretty great and that the ticks are really mean this time of year.

Arlo said one last goodbye and opened the cage and Spud flew out. Arlo knew Spud would be okay, just like Arlo now knew he himself would be okay too. “Magpies have to stay with magpies,” he guessed. “I think the best place for me is with my flock, too.”

Arlo turned around, grabbed the russet off the ground, and put it into the box. He and Cyclops went in to finish packing. The moving truck would be at their house the next day, and they had to make sure the russet made it safely to the new house.

Judy Lupas / Alumni Artist

Judy Lupas is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and has had a working studio for 25 years. Her work is mainly impressionist/abstract and colorful. She shows in national, regional and local art shows and has had solo shows at Spring Hill Gallery, The Vermont Studio, The Hill School, Art Fusion, and The Giotto Gallery in Assisi, Italy. Her work, The Wrestlers, was accepted into the permanent collection at PAFA. She has taught art for 20 years and loves working with beginners. Her work is collected in homes, corporate center conference rooms, and local insitiutions. She has been reviewed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily Local in West Chester, and the Reading Eagle.

Abby Ryder / Alumni Artist

Abby Ryder is a screenprinter, illustrator and Berks County native. She teaches and prints her own work (and Goggleworks merchandise) in the printshop in Studio 201. She hasn't been especially productive artistically over the course of the pandemic, but she's hanging in there.

Nancy Sarangoulis / Alumni Artist

How I make paintings: I start by making an automatic drawing. Then I intuitively cover the drawings with layers of paint. The painting tells me when to stop, and I intuit a meaning after the work is finished or nearly finished

Patricia Scialo / Alumni Artist

My photographic works are created from an intuitive starting point, transforming the subject through light. With a background of living and working in a craft community the use of raw materials and the handmade print are important components of the image making process. As an intern in 1980 I was introduced to historic photographic processes that included making emulsions by hand and printing using the sun. These techniques extend into my work today. Through the lens, I view the subject as an abstract form emphasizing line and shadow. In the printmaking process I continue to manipulate the image with various applications such as encaustic, graphite and photo oil. When composing a photograph, I strive to create depth, giving the viewer the opportunity to look within, pause and contemplate the subtleties of what lies beneath.

Joe Szimhart / Alumni Artist

Playing with metaphors and contrasts in imagery funds my art production. My images blend in the viewer’s mind, hopefully to produce surprise, entertainment, and insight. I first sold artwork in the late 1960s, so I have been at this art game for a long time and still having fun with it.

Steve White / Alumni Artist

I am a self-taught artist. My paintings are primarily landscapes done in oil or transparent watercolor. I have always been emotionally drawn to render scenes and events where I live. My attachment to the outdoors motivates me to record scenes on paper as a way to preserve what I see disappearing. I feel that you don’t have to go much further than your own back yard to find inspiration and subject matter. I believe that before an artist can paint he needs to learn how to see! An artist’s gift is his ability to see something special in an otherwise ordinary scene and with absence of elegance dares to repeat nature in all its intricate simplicity.

Lauralynn White / Alumni Artist

Lauralynn White graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA (BFA 1990 illustration/art history). She instructs for Chautauqua Special Studies, and is former Curator/Director of Contemporary Art Gallery, Chautauqua, NY (2018-19) and Gallery Director at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, Reading, PA (2010-18). She is currently focusing her energies on creating new work. White has exhibited widely and holds membership in National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) , Woman Made Gallery, Chicago and the Visual Arts, Chautauqua (VACI). She splits her time between Chicago, IL, Chautauqua, NY and Reading, PA.

"Life begins with the body and ends with it. I work primarily with the nude figure. It is the standard, a repository for everything that humanity has experienced and is inextricably connected to the environment in which we live. It is our common link to the natural world. I began with the female figure because it is my personal point of reference, yet the male form has found its way into my works as an integral part of the natural equation. I spend a lot of time working through base emotions to attain a higher plane of consciousness. I illuminate that primal relationship by fusing the human form to the land and exposing the sacred in all things."

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