Color, bold forms accent ASU Gammage exhibit


Acrylic paintings, some on canvas, some on glass and some on wood, and digital prints inspired by data streams for sunspot cycles and solar wind, will be on display at ASU Gammage Oct. 21-Nov. 23.

Featured artists are Geoff Gildner of Tempe and Mary Bates Neubauer of Chandler.

Gildner’s acrylic paintings endeavor to “translate the limitless soul of the human condition.”

“The artwork is about continual discovery … sometimes for a second time,” Gildner says. “It is often playful, yet thought provoking, and also deeply evocative. Each piece is contemporary, expressed with a vibrant and earthy Southwestern color palette.”

Gildner graduated from ASU in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in history, with elective studies in art history, architecture and landscape architecture. He taught in South Korea then came back to ASU to study architecture at the graduate level.

He briefly served on the design teams for the Mesa Arts Center and Tempe Center for the Arts, during which time “painting became a central aspect to my life, and has become an endeavor that has led to further experimentation and expression,” Gildner says.

Neubauer is a professor of sculpture in the Herberger School of Art at ASU, where she runs the foundry program. Her exhibit, titled “Solar Streams,” is from her “Inside Information” project.

“All the images have information-bearing surfaces create from long, streaming graphs of data,” she says. “They are renderings of fully three-dimensional digital files with infinite capability for variation in scale and color."

"Numbers provided the original source for the images. Large data streams of solar wind and sunspot cycles were integrated onto helixes, cones and Bezier curves, then given color, material and lighting attributes. The data streams were then taken through several computer programs written specifically for the project.”

Neubauer’s original work – some of which she carried out “on endless cold, rainy nights, sitting at a small computer console at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Aberdeenshire, Scotland,” was sponsored by a Creative Research Grant from the institute for Studies in the Arts (now Arts, Media and Engineering), the Partnership for Research in Spatial Modeling and a Katherine K. Herberger Research Award.

Viewing hours at ASU Gammage are 1 to 4 p.m., Mondays, or by appointment. Due to rehearsals, event set-up, performances, special events and holidays, it is advisable to call ahead to ensure viewing hours, since they are subject to cancellation without notice.

For more information or to make an appointment to see the exhibit, call (480) 965-6912.