Daniel Chard
		During the past ten years I have been experimenting with color and pattern in  landscape imagery.  Scores 
		of paintings were produced, a few suggesting the character of the new work.   Departing from traditional 
		through-the-window-realism, recent paintings present imagined landscapes.  The familiar subject matter, 
		released from the  structure of linear perspective and any photographic references,  is sustained with its 
		own spatial logic.   The image is developed with  consideration of the landscape illusion and the graphic 
		space,  many of the lines and shapes belonging to the picture plane at least as much as they belong to the 
		realistic space.  The resulting mix of two-dimensional and three-dimensional elements is the basis for much 
		of the  visual effect.  The  truth or correctness of the space is to be experienced in the phenomena of the 
		completed painting.  

		I have always been interested in painting constructed around the dynamics of the picture plane. Painting has 
		been most interesting to me when the imagery is reinforced with an elaborate understructure. This 
		understructure serves as a context for the image, giving value to visual elements. The context is not simply 
		good composition or good placement.   It is more like the "ground" in the  "figure and ground" relationship.  
		The "ground" is not the object of our attention.   Rather, it allows the "figure" to be seen in a particular way.   
		I work on the context to set things in motion--colors, shapes, and patterns, what would seem to be basic 
		design stuff.   At every stage of the painting process,  fields, patterns, roads and architecture are 
		reconsidered  for the larger context.   In the end, the imagery is largely about relationships in graphic space 
		compounded by illusions of dimensional landscape space.

		These landscapes are a direction or path for my visual thinking.  I can see  many possibilities for future 
		paintings in the present work, though I am not forcing the present work into the future visions.   I  allow each 
		painting to complete itself, suggesting its own possibilities in the painting process.   I am intrigued by the 
		notion that the paintings are somewhat beyond my grasp.  It is the irrational character of the work that keeps 
		me interested.  Intuition and imagination guide me through the development of each image.   At this point, 
		the painting process requires more faith than understanding.   

		Daniel Chard

		Stephen Fox
		"Our task is not to create more images of light, but to release the light that is trapped within the darkness" 
		- Carl G. Jung

		"...it is the function of art to open the consumable things of the tangible, visible world, so that the radiance 
		- the same radiance that's within you - shines through them."

		I continue to be fascinated by the visual and psychological potential of nighttime imagery. The interplay of 
		light and atmosphere within ordinary settings forms the principle language of these paintings. Having worked
		with landscape for many years, I find myself relying more and more on my own visual vocabulary than on 
		particular references from the outer world. Several of the works in this exhibition have little to do with places 
		which actually exist. Documentary faithfulness means little to me as compared to the opportunities for 
		structure and metaphor that a particular landscape provides.

		In addition, the human figure has entered my work as a new avenue for exploration. As with the landscapes, 
		I am more intrigued by the mood conveyed and the questions raised than by any specefic interpretation of
		the depicted situation.

		Stephen Fox  -April, 2000

	
		Franca Ghitti
		"I see sculpture as an alphabet that tries to set up a lost kind of communication. My work in wood and iron is 
		an attempt to revisit a kind of alphabet I have seen in forgers and in the craft of woodcutters. The signs, 
		notches, knots, and crucibles that are part and parcel of my sculpture represent the specific language of 
		millers,sawyers,smiths and peas-ants:elements that define a non-metropolitan civilization and find 
		intercontinental affinities.

		I may say that my work involves a projectual representation of the historical layers of my native valley 
		(Valcamonica). The forms I utilize are primary forms, that also function as arche-types of the organization of 
		territorial space. My work seeks to transform a geometrical space into an historical space in which we may 
		perceive the construction of an alternative alphabet of historical memory."

		Franca Ghitti -April 2000

		Roy Colmer
		My approaches to photography are either conceptual or intuitive. When working conceptually, I prefer to work 
		with sequence and time. On other occasions I select a location and uncover what is there, working intuitively.

		I now work almost exclusively in color. I find this expands the notion of what may make a photograph. Color 
		has a life of its own and cannot be contained into a formula. Most of my images are stripped to essentials. 
		I attempt to gain the immediate freshness of a first impression. To allow more freedom I preset my camera 
		to a fixed distance and preset the aperture. This allows me to work without thinking of adjustments, or 
		anything distracting while shooting.

		I hardly ever request permission to take photographs. I feel that the arrangement must be between the 
		photographer and subject with as little interference as possible. I remain unobtrusive when photographing 
		people, and work without too much presence. Using color has caused me to examine subject matter, that I 
		deemed not worthy in my earlier black and white work.

		Roy Colmer -January 23, 2000

		Robert Berlin
		Daguerreotypes, while representing one of the earliest forms of photography, manifest a unique visual quality 
		that remains very compelling to this day. I became fascinated with the depth and luminosity which results 
		from light reflecting off the metal surface and back through the image. This interest led me to experiment with 
		translucent photo-images fused onto metal surfaces. I soon found that the fusion of translucent color with 
		aluminum plate provides an enhanced saturation/intensity that also becomes responsive to the viewing angle.

		In this present series I deconstruct the image as I search for its essence. On aluminum plates, I record written 
		and painted traces of social and spiritual graffiti by shrouded cultures. Isolated fragments from diverse 
		communities, dislocated from their sources and almost abstract in their presentation, can provide an unusual 
		narrative. For me, these fragments become an iconographic vocabulary that is both foreign and distant yet 
		compelling and intimate. On the gallery wall I arrange the elements of this vocabulary in a larger group as an 
		installation, in order to evoke the intensity, diversity and spirituality of another people. Paradox remains within 
		this visual text that is at once fragmented and whole, silent yet heard.

		Robert Berlin -April, 2000