From staff reports
MIFFLINTOWN - A second exhibit of artwork by Alan Kruger Chack, of Mifflintown, opened at the Juniata County Library Nov. 20 and will remain on display for three months.
This show is devoted to 19 collages done in the spring this year. The artwork is "a kaleidoscope of images and colors that caught my eye and delighted my imagination," Chack said.
The collages "are quite different from the previous show I had of portraits," Chack said.
Collage is an artwork created by gluing different materials and images onto another surface. The current exhibition is a series of works using images from magazines, advertisements and other paper sources adhered to Bristol board.
"I first did collage art in 1964, but abandoned the art form for many years, although the assemblage of different images was something I did in my career as an architect for presentations to clients," Chack wrote in an artist statement.
"Most recently I was doing collages in a bound book just for the fun of reinterpreting the commonplace pictures found in magazines and newspapers to create a picture with a different meaning.
"In the spring of 2010, I decided to return to the collage in a larger format, in order to work faster and looser, challenging myself to make rapid decisions with less apparent precision and care than I was using in my portrait work done with oil pastels," Chack wrote.
"Collage permits me to get a lot of color and detail down on the Bristol board without waiting for paint to dry or fear of muddying colors. I am able to select the color palette and grab images from different sources to reinterpret them in the final picture. We all see partial images that stay with us and we connect the bits making connections from the disparate pieces: a piece of chocolate can become a face, whipped cream can become a galaxy formation, strings of pearls can become a creature from a deep sea. I can tell tales that the viewer either will understand or not, but in these pictures the narrative is less important than the final design.
"The artworks are totally personal views of the world as I sometimes see it, as is all work by any artist, and the viewer is invited to enjoy the designs and read into them whatever they wish," he wrote.
For more art by Chack, see www.bentwash.com.
