LIVE Painting Round II - Artist Meet & Greet for The Art of Being: Curious and Curiouser Amanda Reilly & Jack Harris

Curated Beth Giacummo
September 20 – November 30, 2021

 

Virtual Artist Talk on FB Live | November 4 from 11:00 AM - 11:45 AM

Live Painting with Amanda Reilly in Memorial Gallery | November 9 from 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM

 

The Farmingdale State College Memorial Gallery is pleased to announce Fall 2021 
exhibition The Art of Being: Curious and Curiouser. Featuring the work of two madly creative artists, both at an important moment of their career, sharing a connection and bond created right here in our Farmingdale State College community as mentor and mentee. The exhibition includes a collection of pieces from both artists that give viewers a deeper look into their artistic journeys as well asrecent works, political posters, promotional materials, product design, and nostalgic works from their archives.
 
The exhibition is an exciting moment for the gallery and Visual Communications department, a unique opportunity to bring together mentor and mentee: Farmingdale State College full-time Professor Jack Harris and Alumna Amanda Reilly (2013).
 
Reilly and Harris have recently released bodies of work that coincidentally both delve into all that means to be human. 
Jack Harris curiously treats viewers to digitally painted epochal portraits of well known and familiar beings overlaid with emotive illustrious gestural lines making each portrait or surge with the spirit they capture.
 
Harris’ exquisite collection of iconized portraits are compiled into Harris’ recent publication, “Being Human”, also on display in the exhibition. The publication was released during 2020 and is available for purchase through blurb.com.
 
Viewers will take a trip down the rabbit hole with Amanda Reilly’s collection of uninhibited illustrations, paintings, and recent animations expressing raw human emotion and the deepest, darkest unfortunate habits and imperfections that make us more interesting, beautiful and mad at the same time. 

Amanda’s experience at Farmingdale was extremely successful and set her professional practice in motion. Most are lucky to find one mentor, but Reilly had a few! Reilly’s signature style was developed while attending the Visual Communications program. 
 
“What is so impressive about Amanda, and has remained true through her academic career and into her professional practice, is her definitive voice. She developed a personal visual style and idiom that is, and was, so distinctive. She has consistently and steadfastly developed her vernacular while building a body of work and a series of experiences that are the very definition of ‘style’.” - Jack Harris
 
Reilly worked with two of the department’s most loved professors, Jack Harris and George Fernandez. When asked to reflect on her experience at Farmingdale State College, Reilly explained, “Professor Harris’s mentorship, through his extraordinary guidance he instructed me on how to grow my brand and develop a visual language as both a designer and illustrator. Professor Harris constantly encouraged me to push my work further and dig to discover unorthodox solutions to visual creative problems that would allow my work to stand out. From designing books, creating interactive apps, to glazing paintings –  through his mixed media teaching methods, I’ve learned to embrace both traditional and digital media which has allowed me to become an interdisciplinary artist that continues to grow and evolve within the industry today. Through his mentorship I realized all the incredible ways I can apply my work, teaching me that as artists we are not just bound to canvases. - Amanda Reilly
 
“Under Professor Fernandez’s mentorship, through his compassion and dedication he taught me how to build up self confidence as an artist and take myself more seriously as a professional. Within his classes embracing traditional media was always emphasized as well as developing out of the ordinary visual solutions. Every project I worked on stretched the limits of my comfort zone as a creative. Over time, Professor Fernandez saw the manifestations of my mad mind doodled throughout my sketchbook pages and decided to take the time to independently mentor me. Through each and every project, I became more and more self-critical of my work as well as began to better refine the quality in which I produced it.” - Amanda Reilly
 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
 
AMANDA REILLY
Amanda Reilly is an interdisciplinary female contemporary fine artist and illustrator based out of New York. She has an unhealthy obsession with the color red and grew up absorbed in her doodles and drawings. She graduated from Farmingdale State College in 2013 with a degree in graphic design from their Visual Communications program. At FSC she received an outstanding academic excellence honors award by the Visual Communications department. Before graduating she started professionally showing at various art galleries within New York. She was awarded a spot in the Society of Illustrators Student Scholarship Exhibition as well as the Director’s Cut show at The Art League of Long Island in 2012. She is a self taught painter who is known for her energetic illustrative style and subjects immersed in chaos. Always an advocate for public arts, in 2015 she founded Sideshow Sketch Night, whose mission it was to merge the boisterous and colorful world of the NYC sideshow and cabaret scene with the young growing art scene of Long Island. With only a small team of two, she held exciting themed costumed live drawing events throughout Long Island, NY for two years. In 2020, “Human Nature”, her solo show at Muñeca Arthouse, consisted of 30+ new works and was featured in Hi-Fructose. She also exhibited and was published in the Society Of Illustrators 62 (2020).
 
 
JACK HARRIS
A transplant to New York, Jack is a member of the Society of Illustrators with a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, an MA from Syracuse University, and an MFA from Hartford Art School. I am often asked if I planned to be a professional student. The answer is “No”, of course, but I am a student of Design and Illustration as well as an instructor, writer, graphic designer, and illustrator.
 
As a faculty member at Farmingdale State College in Visual Communications my interests lie primarily in graphic design. I have written about Andrew Loomis (Illustration Magazine, Issue Twenty, www.illustration-magazine.com), Vincent Di Fate (Illustration Magazine, Issue 67), and co-authored a book with Steven Withrow for Rotovsion: A Master Class in Vector Illustration.
 
With a special interest in graphic storytelling such as children’s picture books, comic books and graphic novels, I have nurtured a healthy inner child who still collects comic books and isn’t afraid to say so. I hope this child-like joy is apparent in my work as well.
 
Memorial Gallery            
The Memorial Gallery's mission is to serve as a vital teaching instrument and visual resource that enriches campus cultural life as well as that of the surrounding community. This is to be accomplished through the exhibition of imagery related to the communication arts, which represent a wide range of media, cultures, and time periods.
 
The Memorial Gallery is located in Hale Hall on the campus of Farmingdale State College – State University of New York – 2350 Broadhollow Road (Route. 110).
Gallery hours: Monday through Friday from 9:00AM–4:00PM. Admission is free and the gallery is accessible to persons with mobility impairments. Please call in advance of your trip.
 
Due to current conditions, everyone is required to wear face coverings at all times indoors.
 
The College reserves the right to modify visitor protocols based on evolving conditions and may require additional restrictions to visitor access should conditions worsen.
 
For additional information, please call 934-420-2181