Madelon Powers Gallery at ESU To Present Ciocca Prints/Yanashot Sculpture September 3 – October 4

Works by two regional artists who also teach in area high schools will open the the 2013-2014 exhibit series as East Stroudsburg University’s Madelon Powers Gallery.

Ciocca Prints/Yanashot Sculpture, featuring works by Mark Ciocca who teaches art at Pocono Mountain West High School, Swiftwater, Pa.; and Denis Yanashot, an art teacher at Riverside High School in Moosic, Pa., will be exhibited September 3 through October 4.   

“My current body of work is a reflection of personal, social and political observations through the media of relief prints and watercolor,” Ciocca noted. “As I look around at those events unfolding and the plight of individuals, communities and nations I am passionate in channeling my energy into creative visual statements.”

Yanashot’s sculptures reflect “the two-fold nature of expression . . . of earth and objects rooted to it and also of the skies of earth involving the natural flight of the birds and the flight of man. Many of the assemblages included in this body of work are my interpretations of different variations of flight.”

“I have also included a series of site specific mixed media sculptures for this venue,” Yanashot noted. “These sculptures consist of bone, rope, steel and wire that are suspended from the mezzanine. These components have been realigned in a rhythmic manner that may invoke primordial feelings in the viewer as to the temporary nature of life and the temporary purpose of bone to give finite life forms their structure.”

Hours for the gallery, located in the university’s Fine & Performing Arts Center, Normal and Marguerite streets, are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, Thursday and Friday. 

A reception for the artists will be held Sunday, September 8 from 1-3 p.m. in the gallery. Both the exhibit and reception are open to the public at no cost.

As an exhibiting printmaker in serigraphy and linocuts Ciocca has been recognized and rewarded on the local, state, and national levels. He was invited to participate in his first international solo exhibition in Germany, 2004, Kunst macht Druck (Art made with Pressure).

Ciocca’s professional endeavors have included participation at the local, state and national levels in education and art exhibitions, including the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s “The Lab School of Washington, D.C.”

Ciocca was accepted at the National Art Education Association’s Distinguished Fellows Multicultural Art Education Institute at the Ohio State University, The Teacher Institute in Contemporary Art and Design at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Teachers Summer Institute on Public Art at Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia. He also juried several local and state exhibitions and serves as an executive board member of Afa Gallery, Scranton, Pa.

Ciocca earned a master’s in education from the State of Pennsylvania, a B.S. in art education from Kutztown University and an Associates of Arts Degree from Keystone College where he was an art adjunct for several years. He has exhibited and won awards for his sculpture regionally, nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions.

Sculpture is now the focus of Yanashot’s artistic expression. Stone carving and mixed media are of particular interest to him sculpturally. Currently he is engaged in the direct carving of stone and creating mixed media assemblages with found objects.

A Scranton, Pa. native, Yanashot initially focused on painting and was a specialist in airbrush, touch-up and production line spray gun techniques in executing paintings on large canvases and Masonite. He earned a bachelor’s degree in art education from Marywood College and a master’s of education from Wilkes University.

For more information on the exhibit or reception, contact the Fine and Performing Arts Events Line at 570-422-3483 or esuarts@esu.edu.

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