In a series of landscape paintings, Seward explores our collective use of technology, set against our desire to preserve the natural environment.

For the past five years, “Stealth Towers,” has been the subject of this inquiry, as real and imagined cell-phone towers are camouflaged as pine trees, church steeples, flag poles, barn silos, and totem poles. Depicted with traditional techniques, and with a nod to the Hudson River School style of painting, these works place communications infrastructure in a Romantic, sometimes religious, context.

“My attempt is to seduce the viewer with a beautifully painted image, but then discover a betrayal with a narrative contrary to the original emotion. I’m as conflicted about living in the post-modern world as anyone else, and present these works as open-ended questions.”

This new body of work looks at another current technological wonder framed against the sky: drone aircraft. The on-going quest to control the sphere geo-politically – black operations since the Cold War – continues as stealth drones dominate the skies over domestic and foreign lands. As unwitting ambassadors of American policy, drone planes demonstrate our reliance on technological solutions while, literally, being personally removed from the equation.

“I’m hoping that the viewer considers this surveillance tool from another angle, by juxtaposing the invasiveness of remote technologies with pristine landscape and, sometimes, to explore stylization of the piece from a non-Western tradition.”

peterseweard.com

Closing Reception Tremont ArtWalk Friday May 10 6 – 10 p.m.

Broken and picked over .. left as only a whisper in the wind … where fragments of the past lay, new life sprouts through reminding us that eventually mother earth will reclaim what was once hers. Sometimes we must go back to go forward.

Location: Randali Park Mall, North Randall OH

Bio: Bradley Miller. Bradley was born to a single mother’ in the summer of 1984 and has been an artist for as long as he can remember. After graduating high schooL his run-ins with the law and struggles with addiction landed him in the “clink’” ‘for several years providing an intense period of intellectual stimulation and some serious soul searching. After his release he attended Youngstown State University and later Cleveland State University studying fine art and photography. Today he is a proud father, an almost husband and has a promising future in both the culinary and photography fields.

Broken, and picked over . . . photography by Bradley Miller

Opening Reception Tremont ArtWalk Friday April 12 6 – 10 p.m.

Broken and picked over .. left as only a whisper in the wind … where fragments of the past lay, new life sprouts through reminding us that eventually mother earth will reclaim what was once hers. Sometimes we must go back to go forward.

Location: Randali Park Mall, North Randall OH

Bio: Bradley Miller. Bradley was born to a single mother’ in the summer of 1984 and has been an artist for as long as he can remember. After graduating high schooL his run-ins with the law and struggles with addiction landed him in the “clink’” ‘for several years providing an intense period of intellectual stimulation and some serious soul searching. After his release he attended Youngstown State University and later Cleveland State University studying fine art and photography. Today he is a proud father, an almost husband and has a promising future in both the culinary and photography fields.

Autism: A Mexican Adventure by Craig Matis opens ArtWalk Friday March 8 runs through April 4, 2013

This book installation exhibition at the Brandt Gallery, “Autism: A Mexican Adventure” is a series of panels which relate the story of an American father and his autistic son traveling through Mexico to help cope with his wife’s death. Using music, narration, and a mixed media technique of folded paper and 3-D pencil drawings, the story describes a surreal journey that invites the viewer to learn a little about the difficulties in raising a special needs child, all set in a Mexican landscape.

David Novak began photography in the 9th grade when he found an old Brownie camera in the family’s basement complete with film.  He took pictures of his sister (then twelve) and her new kitten, had the film developed, and found there were pictures on that same roll of film from when his sister was six. Like a Twilight Zone episode, he had stepped back in time and was instantly hooked.

Following up on the Euclid Park Beach photographs he took with the 201 Minolta he got in college and exhibited at Brandt Gallery in 2010, Novak’s new exhibit explores shadows in the digital age. Noting that “digital color is so honest, it can be unforgiving,” Novak explores how the shadows so integral to the black-and-white medium of 50 years ago return to impact the digital print.

Nancy Prudic, “Exchange: Visibility/Invisibility” (November 9 – December 22)

Nancy Prudic is associate professor of visual arts at Lake Erie College and has worked at the Cleveland Museum of Art in the Department of Education and Public Programming for eighteen years.
Prudic believes that art is informed by the questions one asks oneself. Throughout her career a recurring theme has been personal image and “How is it formed?” As a woman she naturally questions the issues of the female body image and perception, both personal and social that affect one’s sense of self.
This installation is intended as work in progress, as society’s perceptions as well as one’s self-image change over time.