Alteronce Gumby
These days, Bronx-based artist Alteronce Gumby spends most of his time in a New York studio, creating abstract, cosmic paintings. But the painter's first fascination with light, color and perception began in his hometown of Harrisburg.
His current exhibition, “If Herr Street Could Talk,” at the Susquehanna Art Museum features 25 pieces of his mixed-media art, just a few blocks from the childhood stomping grounds that shaped his artistic eye.
“He was right here in our backyard,” said Alice Anne Schwab, executive director of the Susquehanna Art Museum.
With it homecoming show, Harrisburg High graduate hopes to inspire the city young artists.
“You can come from a humble background and still be a creative person,” he said. “You can be whatever you want to be.”
As a child, the now internationally celebrated, award-winning painter not I recognize this as an artist a career path was open to him. His mother worked as a pastor and a secretary, and his father was an administrator of the state. He said there was no talk of pursuing creative careers for him working class Family. He stumbled in.
After Completion of a Vo-Tech program for drafting and design in After graduating from high school, he entered an architecture program at HACC and signed up to study abroad in Spain. He experienced an artistic awakening while visiting the Picasso Museum in Barcelona.
“It really opened my eyes to fine art, painting, drawing, ceramics and sculpture,” Gumby said said.
When he returned home, He remembers visit The Susquehanna Art Museum and others Contemporary art galleries in the area. He soon moved to New York City, where he continued to think about Picasso and eventually enrolled in the city's Arts Students League to practice figure drawing.
During this time a friend invited him the Museum of Modern Art.
“She kind of ghosted me, and so I ended up going alone and seeing this amazing abstract expressionist show,” he said. “From then on I was completely in love with painting and abstraction.”
He started painting in his room with bright colors, and soon a lecturer at the Art Students League suggested he go back to art school.
He did just that, enrolling at Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie, NY. as Art major. From there, he transferred to Hunter College And receive A BFA In Painting and then a M.F.A in painting and printmaking from Yale University.
He is Since then, he has spent nine years outside the classroom honing his uniqueness Technology.
Common Gumby's materials include oil and acrylic paint, gemstones, resin, broken glass, and fabric.
“And Fantasy,” he said.
His pieces put color theory into practice – sometimes playing with monochromaticity Colors, different times, high contrast Opposites. The highly reflective materials The Gumby applies to the surface of his pictures change the color of his pieces When The observer moves.
Be Fascination for the Shifting the viewer perception the color is in his experience as a person of color, he said, and realizing how color could be used to “open up the conversation.” around Color and the human condition.
Rachel O'Connor, Exhibitions Manager at the Susquehanna Art Museum, said his art is transportive in this way.
“One of the wonderful things his work can do is give you that moment to consciously observe color and light,” O'Connor said. “It also invites the viewer to take space to think even further about what color can mean to us.”
Nostalgic, Gumby also draws inspiration out of Light and colors he seen grow up To Mr Street, where to be maternal and paternal side Grandmothers lived or on the 1700- and 1500 blocks.
He can still see that clearly Shadow dances across the brick houses as He walked between his grandmothers' houses after school – the Light dances across the leaves he would Rake or the snow he would Shovel for her, and The rainbow falls through a Suncatcher hung on one of her windows.
He is described the exhibition as both a tribute and a gift to his hometown.
“Bringing the experiences I had back to Harrisburg and sharing my work with the community that helped raise me — that’s pretty big,” he said.
“If Mr. Street could talk.” runs until February 22nd Susquehanna Art Museum, 1401 N. 3rd St., Harrisburg. For more information, see www.susquehannaartmuseum.org.
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