NORWICH - June Tyler’s “Retrospective Exhibition” is now on display in the Mariea Brown and Raymond Loft galleries in Norwich. Tyler won “Best of Show” in the Chenango County Council of the Arts 2004 Members Exhibit, which awarded her with this one-woman show. This high quality fine art exhibit will feature paintings, drawings and prints that Tyler made from 1975 through 2005 with an emphasis of abstract nature themes.  Tyler says of her work “my art-making involves an organic creative process. The cycle often begins with an experience, which is visually and emotionally or spiritually stimulating. I begin to represent what I have seen in a naturalistic manner. Over a period of time, as I examine this experience from a variety of angles through color, light, different materials… what I have seen and experienced is visually transformed.” 

Tyler began experimenting with abstraction from natural forms during her college years at SUNY Potsdam in the mid-1970’s.  She incorporated the ‘doodles’ from her lecture classes with those she observed in nature such as the shapes and colors of a shell.  Prior to moving to graduate school in Madison Wisconsin, she began working with abstractions from human forms.  The painting and prints from this time include oils on canvas and lithographs.  After receiving her M.A. in Graphics and Painting from the University of Wisconsin she took teaching positions in Syracuse and Auburn where her artwork once again returned to nature abstractions.  During the 1980’s she began working with man-made objects that evoked similar feelings as some of the natural forms had.  As with the natural subject matter, she began working representationally with the items and then began to experiment with the colors, lines and forms so they would transform into something else.

In the mid to late 1980’s, she had the opportunity to travel to Europe with her art students and mother.  The architectural ruins were so organic looking that she was inspired to work with that subject.  She could see the organic, cave-like forms of her earlier paintings in the stone arches and vaults of the Roman architecture there.  The textures and colors of the stone in the ancient villages and small Romanesque churches were warm and rich.  She did numerous studies, both realistic and abstract and incorporated these elements into her artwork.

She returned to graduate school at Syracuse University to receive an M.F.A. and her studies focused on architectural and man-made forms expressed in stone lithography, etching and monotype printing.  She was intrigued with using an umbrella as a form because it conveyed tension and relaxation simultaneously similar to the relationship of skin, muscle and bone of the human body.  Over the years, the umbrella has become a symbol of shelter and humanity to her.

At Syracuse University she was also introduced to papermaking and bookmaking.   Her interest in nature was rekindled while pulping straw and hay into paper.  She created a limited edition artist book with a poem that she wrote about the experience of memory transforming the adult into a child again. She used her own paper for the cover of that book titled A Trip to the Nut Tree. The papermaking has become a way of life for her through her summer workshops of papermaking at her home studio in Norwich called Pondside Pulp & Paper. (for more information about her workshops go to http://members.aol.com/tylerpaper/pondside.html)

In 1994 Tyler moved to Norwich and set up her studio where she continued working with artist books and handmade paper. Due to the beautiful, translucent quality of the paper, it was a natural step to make lamps out of it.  Her artist’s books are sculptural and are referential to shelter images such as cave dwellings and organic forms.  She is particularly drawn to the accordion book structure because of its similarity to the umbrella form, which has appeared in her work for several years.

The imagery in her work has fluctuated largely in response to her environment. She says “the natural beauty of this area with the variety of plants, flowers, birds and animals was the stimulation to get back into drawing from nature again.  For me, the process of drawing is very similar to meditation. Some of the drawings are referential to interior spaces. In the ‘Interior Series’, each drawing leads to the next and I am inspired by the creative process.”

The exhibit runs through July 7 with gallery hours Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or by appointment at the Chenango County Council of the Arts, 27 W. Main Street, Norwich.  For more information call 336-2787 or go to www.chenangoarts.org.