OSilas Gallery’s annual pARTners Exhibition is a highlight of the spring season, featuring art created by local high school students with special needs in collaboration with Concordia College New York students and the OSilas Gallery & Art Studio. This spring, just as students delivered their work to the Gallery for installation in anticipation of a March 12 opening, Concordia College closed in response to the pandemic, and the art sat unhung in the shuttered Gallery for months.
With the young artists from Tuckahoe and Bronxville High Schools unable to gather in the Gallery or experience the excitement of an opening night reception, Executive Director Elizabeth Vranka was determined to hang and photograph the show for them. With the help of Jennifer Lotz, an OSilas Gallery Advisory Board member, and Ines Abukhadra, a senior at Bronxville High School, the show was installed.
“As soon as the show went up, I knew we needed to share it more widely – even if only virtually.” said Vranka.
Inspired Concordia’s 2019-2020 college theme of Civics and Civility, the students worked over several months to create pieces expressing kindness, tolerance, inclusion and a sense of home.
“The Gallery has become a colorful world of peace and harmony,” said Vranka, “with crafted trees gracing welcoming streetscapes, and collaged and painted houses evoking a sense of community and belonging. This is a colorful, joy-filled exhibition that reminds us of the kindness and goodwill we experience in our communities every day. The delay of its installation has only made the show more powerful and relevant. I’m so grateful for the student-artists who shared their work and for the art teachers who made it possible.”
High resolution images, along with a short video of the exhibition can be found at www.osilasgallery.org.
OSilas Gallery looks forward to reopening to the public on September 17. For more information about OSilas Gallery and its events and exhibitions, plus new protocols to keep visitors and staff safe and healthy, please visit osilasgallery.org.
OSilas Gallery integrates the visual arts into the cultural and educational life of the Concordia College campus and surrounding community by providing quality exhibitions and programs that are diverse in style, content and media; memorable, thought-provoking and spiritually enriching; and of artistic originality, integrity and excellence.