Vietnam is a country in transition.  Intrigued by the rapid transformation of Vietnam, one of the fastest growing economies of the world Monmouth University professors, Mark Ludak and Andrew Cohen have returned multiple times to photograph this region.  A dynamic, youthful country, especially seen in mega-cities like Ho Chi Minh City (Sai Gon), it is a country where the traditional and contemporary are reconstituted into distinctively Vietnamese manifestations.

After working almost 20 years as an illustrator with her husband Stanley Martucci, in 2000 Cheryl Griesbach began creating a body of paintings based on her interests in European 18th and 19th century still-life, botanical, and landscape art. Cheryl’s painting technique was derived from Flemish painting that she had explored as a student at The School of Visual Arts where she is now on the faculty since 1985. Her method includes the manipulation of segments of Northern European paintings and incorporating that imagery in building a new landscape, like a stage. Cheryl has received many awards, including last year’s best in show at the Monmouth Museum’s 38th international juried awards show.

Cheryl’s daughter Claudia, having grown up with both parents as artists, gave her an innate inclination to explore her imagination and develop knowledge of oil painting.  Admitted into The School of Visual Arts, her parents alumni, Claudia in her third year first began to primarily use oil paint as her medium to illustrate the 18th century fairy tale Donkey Skin by Charles Perrault.  Claudia graduated with honors and was then accepted into the Masters Program, Illustration as Visual Essay, with a limited class of 20 students. With her background in Illustration and skills in using oils learned from he mother, all of Claudia’s paintings tell a story. Her end of the year show paintings began to carve out some of the subject matter she wanted to explore, “that behind every exquisite thing that exists there is something tragic” a quote from Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray. Claudia is currently working as a painting assistant to the artist Jeff Koons, while pursuing her own personal work.

In this exhibition, artist and Monmouth University Art and Design faculty member, Tonya D. Lee presents a collection of multi-discipline work that explores the abstraction of nature and environment through the combination shapes, patterns, moments and pauses that are derived from passive spaces, fleeting thoughts and changing winds. Location and process are in a conversation about ephemeral moments of beauty. Using a multi-disciplinary process of combining painting, drawing, collage, construction, and digital media, the obsessions with materiality explore form and color as an echo of the present overlapping past presents — form and color negotiating to exist as object and subject.

Oceanids are some 3000 nymphs in Greek mythology who watch over fresh water: rain, clouds, lakes, springs and rivers, as well as pastures, breezes and flowers. They are the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys. Coscia, the Chief Photographer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has spent countless hours with classical sculptures, photographing them in various settings and seasons. He focuses on the qualities of light on sculpture in changing conditions, and the shifting effects of natural light on stone surfaces. His photographs of museum pieces explore elements of the art outside the context of the museum setting.

His recent work draws on Man Ray’s solarization techniques. This effect reverses the shadow areas and transforms the sense of weight and volume of the objects, so that they appear suspended in air or water. The forms are evocative of earthly creatures or fossils; photographing and printing them using recreated old photographic techniques removes time specificity, so that they also are suspended in time.

Coscia, Jr. received his MFA from Hunter College in 1989 and his BFA from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in 1982. His photographs have appeared in numerous publications and museum books, most notably Light on Stone, a photographic essay published by Yale Press in 2004.

Featuring the work of Monmouth University graduating seniors who will receive their degrees in Graphic Design.