Artwork created by Audrey Bordonaro
Artwork created by Audrey Bordonaro
Artwork created by Mike McCord
Artwork created by Mike McCord
Artwork created by Molly Katner-Reed
Artwork created by Molly Katner-Reed
Artwork created by Kris Miller-Siple
Artwork created by Kris Miller-Siple
Exhibition on view:
February 1, 2024 – March 23, 2024
Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:20 – 4:00 p.m.
Three Queens and a Joker is a four-person exhibit referring to the artworks of one man and three women, who all live within the same general area and practice different disciplines and skillsets within the arts.
Artists Reception and Gallery Talk
Tuesday, February 27, from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m., in the Student Community Center on campus.
Live music to be performed by Laura M. Kramer, concert saxophonist and coordinator of continuing education and workforce development at Penn State Schuylkill.
Meet the artists
Audrey Bordonaro
Bordonaro studied interior design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and received her bachelor's in art education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Following her graduation, Bordonaro worked at Blue Mountain School District for 36-years, where she taught high school art classes and then transitioned to a guidance counselor role. Later, she would pursue graduate study in art at Kutztown University.
After her retirement, Bordonaro resumed and developed her love of creating art. The creation of her art is influenced by her life experiences through nature, music, words/poetry, feelings and emotions. Bordonaro's approach to producing art is very intuitive and deeper than what's reflected on the surface. Creating allows her to express what words cannot always say – it's a healing experience and one which she hopes transfer through to the viewer.
Her work consists of representational art as well as abstract works, but Bordonaro is at her most creative when executing an abstract piece. She's fascinated with creating and using a variety of materials, such as acrylic, oil paint, mixed media, and cold wax. The mediums used are dictated by her experiences and ideas of expression.
Bordonaro feels privileged to have exhibited her work in juried shows such as "Art of State," Berks Alliance Exhibits, the Art Association of Harrisburg's "International Juried Exhibits," The New Arts Program's "Small Works Exhibits," the Susquehanna Art Museum's "Art & Science of Color Exhibit," and the "Grand Scott Juried Exhibits, the Art of Jazz."
Mike McCord
Art has been a primary force in McCord's life since early childhood, when his Uncle John first showed him how to draw a puppy by tracing his thumb. Throughout elementary and high school, he was known for his drawing ability and the constant movement of his pencil during class – a habit he's still know for today.
Growing up, McCord was urged to study commercial art. Following high school he became one of the first students in Williamsport Area Community College's new advertising art associates degree program. The program was strongly grounded in the technical aspects of the trade of art and led him to a career in advertising, publishing, computer graphics and printing.
McCord moved to Southern California while working in the art department of the PennySaver, a weekly direct mail advertising publication that served 103 communities. Eventually, he managed the nightshift art department which was a high-pressure, deadline-driven, production art department – which utilized the now outdated cut and paste method of mechanical art production. While there, he got his first taste of computer graphics when the company purchased Compugraphic Advantage, a precursor to the desktop publishing tools of today. McCord had a natural aptitude in this arena, leading him to seek training in other types of computer graphic equipment – resulting in a job with a Silicon Valley computer graphics company. Following that, he worked for various start-up publishing and graphics business in Southern California and honing his skills in this emerging technology.
He returned to Pennsylvania in 1990 with his knowledge of graphic arts, to find employment in the printing industry, working for a sheet fed, offset printing company in the Lehigh Valley that serviced the metropolitan areas of Philadelphia and New York, working closely with advertising agencies and art departments in a variety of industries. In 1996, McCord returned to Schuylkill County and returned to graphic design.
In recent years, McCord's spirit of public service drew him into the political arena, but his love of drawing and painting has never wavered. His creativity has always been an integral part of every venture he's undertaken in life. At 65, McCord is pursuing his lifelong passion with renewed vigor and determination learned from experiences with entrepreneurial personalities and the lessons of political life.
While some people keep a journal, McCord keeps a sketchbook. In recent years, he's been transitioning his work out of his sketchbook and into the public eye. Last year, he won a second-place award in the Allied Artists Art Show for his water color painting tilted, "The Walk Home." He's also done caricaturing for charity events and private parties, and has also developed and organized an urban sketchers group in Schuylkill County as a way to find more artists like him, looking for ways to explore their art.
Molly Kantner Reed
After having spent her working career in the non-art world, it was just a few years ago that Kantner Reed started to paint again. While growing up, she was encouraged to pursue art by her artist mother, which led her to pursue and receive a fine arts degree from Kutztown University. Although she put her paintbrush aside following graduation, she maintained a deep love for anything in the arts.
A little over a decade ago, she signed on for studio space in the then newly opened Walk In Art Center in her hometown of Schuylkill Haven. The art center experience, which lasted seven years, got her back in touch with her artistic side, and she resumed painting. Following her retirement, she moved her studio from the Walk In Art Center to the small, former apartment housed above her garage. It's there, that she currently spends her afternoons leisurely painting.
Although Kantner Reed's past paintings' subject matter has been of local landscapes depicted realistically, her current easily recognizable endeavors are of patterned grids, which are of a more conceptual nature. She created this series of grid paintings based on the concept of a brainteaser game she enjoys working, Sudoku. While trying to solve a newspaper Sudoku puzzle one day, she began thinking that if the concept works with numbers, then why not with colors, shapes, or patterns? What she found while translating her first numerical puzzles into colored paintings, was that a kind of exciting rhythm and energy were created on the canvas which go unnoticed in the black and white numerical puzzle.
Throughout this painting series, Kantner Reed varies each canvas by using methodically themed color selection and application. She often employs a textural component via thick and loose, "swooshy," strokes of paint. Recently, she has introduced the repetition of the human figure into her Sudoku works via a collage process. Sometimes, she works in a full 81 block Sudoku format, and other times just in a smaller detail of the full grid, perhaps just focusing on 25 blocks.
Her subject matter must reflect imagery and ideas personal to her. Ever concerned with color interaction and the texture created by the stroke of her paintbrush, there is always an obvious sense of energy, movement, and rhythm in her paintings.
Kris Miller-Siple
Miller-Siple grew up in an artistic family, which help direct her into the world of art. Her mom and dad had a wonderful artistic flair in their home décor and also in the fashions of the day. She was fortunate to visit New York City from a young age, and be exposed to all the visual beauty the city has to offer, and she began to create art as gifts for family and friends in her early childhood.
In the fourth grade, Miller-Siple suffered an eye injury leaving her in the hospital for a month and temporarily blind in one eye. After regaining her vision with the addition of glasses, she remembers coming home to the chartreuse green of the blossoming leaves on her tree-lined street. She believes the accident gave her the gift of truly studying and looking at the world around her. Throughout her time in school, her teachers gave her the opportunity of doing murals and art projects from first grade until her high school graduation.
Her high school art teacher paved the way for Miller-Siple to pursue art at Kutztown University, where she earned her bachelor's in art education. After graduation, she had the honor and privilege of teaching art at all levels. All her life, she experimented with two-and-three dimensional art forms and numerous media before discovering the beauty and luminescence of oil painting studying with Bruce Becker at the Warehouse Studio in Reading, Pa.
Common and whimsical readymade objects from sentimental experiences are the primary focus of Miller-Siple's oil paintings. She begins the process by photographing the objects strategically until the exact composition is achieved. The photograph of the object is then drawn on canvas, and comes to life in oils. These readymade objects take on their own persona standing alone in space, having a conversation with their shadow. Emphasis on the play of light and color in the shadow is a metaphor for looking back in time. Miller-Siple's shadow play paintings are meant to inspire and reawaken pleasant memories for the viewer.