ARTSBRIDGE Members News

Donna's photos are at Phillips' Mill "Salon des Refuses" through March 29, 2008. Four matted photographs will be included during that show and June 1-22 at the 16th Annual Photographic Exhibition. The hours are 1-5 pm Sunday, Wednesday & Thursday. 1-9 pm Friday & Saturday. Phillips' Mill is 2 miles north of New Hope on Rt. 32.

Donna Lovely's photographs are also at the Churchville Nature Center, 501, Churchvillle Lane, Churchville, PA for the 18th Annual Churchville Photography Club Contest from Saturday, March 29 - Sunday, April 4. She has won an award at the show.

website: www.DonnaLovelyPhotos.com

NEWTOWN, Pa. - Internationally celebrated sculptor George R. Anthonisen of Bucks County, Pa., will be joined by his son, celebrated riverscape painter Daniel Anthonisen, and award-winning puppeteer and mask-maker daughter, Rachel Anthonisen-Gates in an exhibition of sculpture, painting and masks at Pennswood Village Art Gallery, Newtown. "Three Anthonisens" opens Sunday, March 30 with a reception from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm. The show runs through June 1, 2008.

"The Pennswood community welcomes this exhibit" said gallery chairperson Bernice Shapiro. "Not only is it unusual to have a family exhibition, but the Anthonisens exhibited their work at Pennswood in 1990, and we are thrilled to have them return.

Daniel Anthonisen earned his BFA in painting and drawing from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. His work has been exhibited at the Salmagundi Club in New York, and in Pennsylvania at Muhlenberg College, James A. Michener Art Museum, Travis Gallery, Woodmere Art Museum and Bucks County Community College. His work is represented in private collections throughout the country. The James A. Michener Art Museum purchased his work for their permanent collection. In 2002, he was awarded a grant from The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

"I am convinced there is a way to paint objects accurately and still maintain a timeless quality by painting things that deal with very basic elements like fire, water, earth, air and light," says Anthonisen. "I am concerned with exploring and contemplating the nature of who we are as human beings. This includes a diversity of subjects including landscape, people, interiors, objects and any combination of these things."

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Rachel Anthonisen-Gates is founder and Artistic Director of Signal Light Theatre, an award-winning puppet company. She is known throughout the area for her original one-person, two-character puppet show, "The Secret Life of Rodents," based on the classic tale of "Stone Soup." As well as performing puppet shows, Anthonisen-Gates also creates masks that are both gallery and performance worthy.

"Puppets and masks, both larger than life, work especially well with myth and metaphor," says Anthonisen-Gates. "They enable us to look deeper within ourselves and outside of ourselves. They work within a world of abstraction yet often carry us to recognize a poignantly simple, real and even primal part of ourselves."

George R. Anthonisen's public works are in the permanent collections of the U. S. Capitol, Hall of Columns; World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland; New York's Carnegie Hall; The Berman Museum of Art, Collegeville, Pa.; The James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pa.; Center for Interfaith Relations, Louisville, Ky.; Please Touch Museum, Philadelphia; Pennsylvania Academy of Music, Lancaster, Pa. and more than two dozen other sites. Most recently his work was featured at Yale University and in the exhibition, Life in Bronze: The Sculpture of George Anthonisen, in The Cooley Gallery, Old Lyme, Conn.

Anthonisen's work has been variously described as humanist and abstract, and overall, it communicates a wide spectrum of human emotion. John Zarobell, former Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1900, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum and currently a curator at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art says "...Anthonisen's art is to make people look at each other and to see themselves."

Admission is free. Gallery hours are 9 AM to 8 PM daily; gallery access is via the main entrance of Pennswood Village, 1382 Newtown-Langhorne Road, Newtown, PA (Route 413 South).