Upcoming
Home Body
This exhibition is experienced in two parts – Home, an indoor gallery exhibit at 3 Dots Downtown and Body, a walk in which viewers forage for artworks amidst Downtown State College. Home Body invites the audience to imagine the possibilities and consider the consequences of human and nonhuman interactions that create our lived environments.
Blood Lines
September – November 2023
A multimedia exhibition honoring, witnessing, and celebrating reproductive experiences, featuring local artists. Hosted by Ridgelines Language Arts and curated by artist/educator Maggie-Rose Condit-Summerson, with an accompanying literary event on October 5th.
Laurencio Ruiz: theLASTree
June 1 – August 26
theLASTree is a lyrical family-friendly puppet show featuring seven vignettes with two main characters One is Mother Nature, the storyteller, who asks for help as she explains why she is afraid of the human-caused climate crisis: the consequences of deforestation, pollution and plastic waste, and the suffering of her ecosystems. In the end, she encourages the audience to engage in three fundamental sustainable practices: reduce, reuse, and recycle to protect the air, water, land, and all living creatures. The other character, the Last Tree, is an ancient tree, fed up with humans but who refuses to die.
After its premier in 2018, theLASTree is back, and this time at 3DoTS.
75% of paper, plastic, textiles, and wood used for this production are made from recycle materials; and no puppet has been hurt during this production.
Artist Statement
I have been concerned about climate change for the last 40 years although we didn’t have back then the terms we use now. Since then, I have been a defender of our environment and everything in it. I started back in high school; I entered a drawing called “the Last Tree” into an art competition held across all the high schools in Mexico City without expectations to win and I won first price. That award gave me the drive to continue creating art that speaks to and exposes the damage and consequences of deforestation and pollution of the air, land, and water. Forty years later, from that drawing and my role as an artist translating scientific knowledge led, in the fall of 2018, to theLASTree: A Puppet Tale from Nature About Loss, Hope and Us. Its visual lyrism is the result of the combination of interdisciplinary puppetry, movement, sound, and music. In 2021, I created and produced a miniature version, called theLASTree Toy Puppet Theatre, also constructed with recycled materials.
Now I am happy to share with you my State College community the original production as an art exhibit at 3Dots Gallery and live perfornces of theLASTree Toy Puppet Theatre. Hopefuly this exhibit led to finding local communities and others across the district, the state and beyond to spread the seed. After all, this is our planet, our home, the only one we have.
Why puppetry? Well, puppetry consolidates the diverse aspects of my artistic work; it gives me an active voice, a visibility, an identity. I believe that puppetry transcends culture and language and gets at the essential, our core, our humanity. Just as puppets are used as part of medical healing, they can bridge seemingly insurmountable gaps between people. Puppetry has the unique ability to mesmerize and allure an audience in a distinct way. Even when the narrative of the story is unfamiliar, the puppet’s vitality makes it less threatening. Puppets can generate a safe playground for both the puppeteer and the audience, to be more tolerant and open to that which is different, to the eerie, the weird and the odd. In that way, puppetry allows us to explore new, unfamiliar, even uncomfortable realms.
Learn more at laurencioruiz.com
Deirdre Murphy: Nest Alchemy
April 11 – May 27
Deirdre Murphy is a contemporary visual artist who decodes the interconnectivity that exists in art and science via the lens of biomorphic patterns, data visualization and climate change. Through the mediums of painting, printmaking and collaborative sculpture, she has explored the effects of climate change on avian migration, nesting structures and ecosystems. Her research has led to collaborations with scientists ranging from ornithologist, biologist, neuroscientist and virologist from the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, Penn State, Lehigh University and Integral Molecular Laboratory. Artist residencies include Penn State University’s Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center, Winterthur Museum, Hawk Mountain Bird Sanctuary, Powdermill Nature Reserve and Drexel University’s Academy of Natural Science. Murphy has been the recipient of the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts, Percent for the Arts, Humanities Lab, Lehigh University and Leeway Grant. She has exhibited extensively in museums and galleries most notably Winterthur Museum, Zillman Art Museum, Palm Springs Museum, Biggs Museum of American Art, New Bedford Museum and Tacoma Art Museum and the Philadelphia International Airport. Current 2023 exhibitions includes a solo show titled “Nest Alchemy” at 3 Dots Community Gallery in State College, PA and “RIsky Beauty: Aesthetics & Climate Change” a invitational group exhibition at the Nurture Nature Center in Easton, PA.
Deirdre Murphy earned her MFA degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her BFA degree from the Kansas City Art Institute. Murphy is a Teaching Assistant Professor at Lehigh University where she teaches painting, printmaking and art based climate change courses. Her work can be found at www.deirdremurphyart.com
ClearWater Conservancy’s 2023 Art & Chocolate
Welcome! ClearWater Conservancy’s Art & Chocolate gallery exhibit showcases the work of local artists across a variety of styles and mediums. While each piece of art is one-of-a-kind, they all share one remarkable similarity – the artists who created them chose to donate and auction their work to support ClearWater’s efforts to protect and connect vital landscapes, wildlife habitat, and waterways throughout our region.
Art and nature are closely connected and often found within each other. Both also have a tendency to connect our community in the most positive of ways. Can you reflect on the last time you explored a local outdoor destination, listened to local music, or created your own piece of art? How would you describe the feeling or feelings that followed? If you found yourself feeling inspired or in awe, that’s not a coincidence. Art and nature are two of just a few things that can elicit a sense of awe, a feeling that’s proven to increase our generosity, raise our willingness to help someone, and boost a positive mood.
ClearWater Conservancy expresses its sincere gratitude to the artists and community partners, including 3 Dots Downtown, who make Art & Chocolate a successful fundraiser and celebration in support of local conservation work. A supportive community, inspiring local artists, and awe-inspiring nature — just three of the countless reasons that makes Central PA such a wonderful place to live, work, and play. We also thank you for being here today. Enjoy the show!
P.S. Wondering about the chocolate portion of Art & Chocolate? Join us here on February 17 from 4-8 p.m. for cocktails, sweet treats, and gallery show for everyone. You can reserve your own box of treats by purchasing a Super Sweet ticket online.
Masked
Emily Steinberg, Michael Green, Bill Doan // Fall 2022
Masking is a complex act with as many histories as there are cultures. Mask traditions cover the gamut of human belief systems and practices from the mystical to the practical and from the political to the personal. COVID-19 has created yet another complex series of masking practices that vary across the globe.
Each artist has their own distinct response to “masking,” while sharing a common approach: combining images and text in the tradition of Graphic Medicine and Visual Narratives to make what are broadly called “comics.” Masked reflects the outcomes of their collaboration and the process (which involved many Zoom meetings and conversations) to help them build solidarity despite working alone. Visit the exhibition’s digital companion: https://tinyurl.com/MaskedExhibition
Landscape | Landuse
For over a century, artists have found inspiration in the nineteenth century expeditions of America’s southwestern frontier conducted by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). As both a romantic and scientific endeavor, these surveys and the dramatic photographs that accompanied them, inspired unprecedented westward expansion and nationalist fervor combined with a hunger for mineral wealth that continues to shape our relationship with the land. Landscape | Land Use includes a selection of artworks inspired by notions of landscape as both national inheritance and raw material, repurposing imagery from these surveys – along with historic mapping and modeling techniques used by surveyors themselves – to visualize the complex forces that shape our relationship with the land.
Home Body
This exhibition is experienced in two parts – Home, an indoor gallery exhibit at 3 Dots Downtown and Body, a walk in which viewers forage for artworks amidst Downtown State College. Home Body invites the audience to imagine the possibilities and consider the consequences of human and nonhuman interactions that create our lived environments.
The Dreamer’z Dojo
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, alone and hopeless in a world full of stress and division. Is that the only option? This exhibition explores that question by bringing to life an illustrated book.
America’s Social Fibers
The Molok
You Are Here
Country Charm
Going Home
Faux Venus
The Works of Tiara Zhane`
Stimulus
The Works of Geoffrey Hobart
The Works of Barbara Metzner
The Works of Susan Smith Graham
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