Smithtown Township Arts Council is pleased to present Glimpses of Surrealism at Mills Pond Gallery Saturday, July 7 through Saturday, August 4. The public is invited to an opening reception Saturday, July 7 at 2 pm to meet the exhibiting artists, view the work and enjoy poetry by George Wallace, music by Sal Santiago and dancing by Wendi Weng. Information or directions millspondgallery.org. 631-862-6575. Mills Pond Gallery hours are: Wednesdays through Fridays 10 am – 4 pm and Saturdays and Sundays 12 pm – 4 pm. Admission to the Gallery is free. The gallery is located at 660 Route 25A, St. James, NY 11780. All parking in rear lot off Mills Pond Rd. (directly across from 199 Mills Pond Rd.)

Surrealism was the 20th century art movement that explored the hidden depths of the ‘unconscious mind’. The surrealists sought a new kind of reality which was found in the world of images drawn from their dreams and imagination. They sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination. By employing fantasy and dream imagery, artists generated creative works in a variety of media that exposed their inner minds in eccentric, symbolic ways. Although Surrealism is most usually associated with anything that seems odd, uncanny, or freaky, initially surrealist art was romantic and revolutionary in its goals. The Surrealism movement has had a lasting impact on painting, sculpture, literature, photography and film. Surrealism has never disappeared as a creative artistic principle. We hope the works and artists exhibited illustrate a few of the varied ways in which surrealism survives today as a diverse and viable visual vocabulary.

Michael Krasowitz’s work is an exploration of the unknown recesses of imagination and thought. He uses the process of automatic drawing, an intuitive way to create figures and space, to seek universal and fundamental interrelationships. Michael sees art as a vehicle for self-actualization as well as inspiration for the viewer to access their own internal creative voice. Michael’s work deals with the deconstruction of myth to “reset” the initial inspiration to express archetypal ideas in visual imagery. Inspired by the exercises of the surrealists, Michael created his own visual language, a variation of Asemic writing, became the basis for his early imagery.

Lauren Matsumoto’s surreal and playful work is often categorized as part of a new vein of “Contemporary Surrealism.” She uses raditional painting and drawing techniques and collage hotographs and sketches into her paintings. “The central theme of my work is nature, the cycle of life and how we relate to it. Pivotal to our lives in a materialistic society are all the objects and paper ephemera we accumulate- all the stuff that builds up in our homes and in particular the items we treasure and then leave to our offspring when we die. My work asks the question– what if we were all gone, but all our possessions remained?”

Louise Millmann’s desire to focus specifically on collage began on an 18th Century writing desk located in an old house on Pawley’s Island, South Carolina in the summer of 1997. She found a clear narrative forming as she arranged the piles of visual imagery culled from the stack of magazines found in the basement. Her latest collage series examines her reaction to the surreal political agenda that significantly impacts the fate of woman and children living in the United States. The collage narratives delve into the irrational state of affairs concerning educational freedom and personal safety.

In this world Mark Strodl Mark spent 30 years on Madison Ave (PR Firms) where he saw the horrors of manipulation & propaganda everyday on an unsuspecting public in all media, where clients were written about on the front page in the glossiest of fashion in major publications. “Much as in what I willingly show you & prefer to hide at the same time. I do not make Art for money, I make art to right a wrong, to make sanity of an insane world, to appease things from my grave when I am gone, to say the things that we are all thinking yet never say out loud. That there is above all dialogue, an irony, respect within everything & a view. I am of coarse a rebel, in love with life, yet there is all this stuff that needs to be told, it spills out on my canvases.”

Damon Tommolino says “The point of my paintings is to provoke as much thought as possible. I try hard not to overly point a viewer in any one specific direction. I don’t believe this is my job as an artist. I would much rather present several ideas or options or paths for any viewer to take throughout any given piece. Therefore, I purposely leave a certain amount of ambiguity in the work. At its best, viewers will be able to make connections between the characters I paint and their own lives.”

Smithtown Township Arts Council is a 501(c) (3) not-for-profit organization, funded in part by Town of Smithtown and public/private donations.