Exhibitions 2005 at the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art

PLEASE NOTE: All exhibition descriptions are excerpts from Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art's quarterly newsletter, L'Artiste.	Past Exhibition Highlights
	2009 2008	2007 2006	2005 2004	2003 2002
2005 January 16 - March 6 Josette Urso (American, b. 1959) Ballinglen View Over the Wall, 2000 Oil on panel, 6 x 8 in. Peter Schroth (American, b. 1955) Ben River View 3, 2002 Oil on paper, 9 x 13 in.	North and South Galleries *One View/Two Visions: Plein air paintings by Josette Urso and Peter Schroth* One View/Two Visions: Plein air paintings by Josette Urso and Peter Schroth, painters married to each other, is a selection of works painted by the pair traveling together. Josette Urso is a painter living and working in New York City. She received a Master of Fine Art degree in 1984 from the University of South Florida. She has taught at Cooper Union and the Chautauqua School of Art among other institutions and she is the recipient of many fellowships including one from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She has had residencies at the Weir Farm Trust in Connecticut, Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ireland and the Virginia Center for Visual Arts. Josette’s paintings do not attempt to be literal translations. They are intuitive expressions of places observed, condensed and re-imagined. Peter Schroth maintains a studio in Jersey City, New Jersey. He is well known for the lush landscape paintings he creates plein air on excursions to various locations throughout the United States and Europe. He received a Master of Fine Art degree from the University of Colorado in 1981. He currently teaches at the 92^nd Street YMHA (Young Men’s Hebrew Association) and Cooper Union in New York City after teaching in many other institutions during the 1980s and 1990s, including the University of South Florida where Peter and Josette met one another. Some of Peter’s awards have come from Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ireland, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Florida State Arts Council. The intent of Peter’s paintings is to elicit an emotional effect not so much a sentimental transcription of an exotic location. A gallery guide accompanies the exhibition and includes an essay written by Melissa Kuntz, Assistant Professor of Painting at Clarion University of Pennsylvania.
March 20 - April 24 Hoang Van-Bui (Vietnamese-American, 1975) June of 1990, 2001 Installation Hoang Van-Bui (Vietnamese-American, 1975) Code White (detail), 2000 Installation	North Gallery *Van Bui: Homefronts and Who We Are* South Gallery *Homefronts and Who We Are* Hoang Van-Bui is a Vietnamese/American conceptual artist whose work reflects cultural identity and diversity. He attempts to visually bridge the gap between one’s roots and one’s assimilation in a new found homeland. Using significant icons of both Eastern and Western cultures, he creates a poignant visual dialogue and powerful universal questions. Van-Bui’s art making focus from 2003 through the present to 2006 is and will be a body of sculptures and installations entitled Homefronts. His ongoing overseas art research is Skills of Our Ancestors. He hopes to bridge common values from the United States to the Mekong Delta. The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art presents Van Bui: Homefronts and Who We Are, an installation by Van-Bui in the North Gallery and Homefronts and Who We Are, created by area high school students in the South Gallery. Van-Bui has devoted several months to working with students from East Lake High School, Palm Harbor University High School and Tarpon Springs High School as they immersed themselves in all aspects of the art world including creation of work based on identity and cultural diversity and curatorial duties including exhibition design and layout. The students went through an application process reviewed by Van-Bui in order to be invited to participate in the program. The project was developed by Van-Bui, Education Coordinator Elaine Angelou and Curriculum Specialist, SPC Collegiate High School, Meg Delgato and required more than two years to plan and implement. Born in 1975, Van-Bui is the third son of a family whose ancestors came from the village of Dong Xuyen, Vietnam. He immigrated to the Tampa, Florida in 1975 and became a citizen in 1987. He attended the University of Tampa on scholarships and graduated in 1990 with highest art honors. In 1995 he earned a graduate degree from the University of Georgia, also graduating at the top of his class. Van-Bui has been selected by numerous prestigious organizations for his installations and as a presenter – the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the National Save Outdoor Sculpture program, the Cultural Olympiad International Exhibition at the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, the 1998 International Invitational Sculpture Symposium in Vietnam and the Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt in Berlin in 1999. He has attended over 50 exhibitions and received over 20 art world awards and honors.
May 8 - July 2 Mariano Yunta Lopesino (Spanish, 1938) Dream of Paris (Paris Rêvé), 2000 Oil on canvas, 58 x 63 1/4 in. Mariano Yunta Lopesino (Spanish, 1938) La Promesa á Velazquez (The Promise to Velazques), 2004 Oil on canvas, 102 1/3 x 88 1/2 in.	North and South Galleries Mariano Yunta Lopesino: A Spaniard in Paris The idea of the image in space has always been a component of my work – Yunta Mariano Yunta Lopesino, known as Yunta, was born in Mondéjar (Guadalajara), Spain in 1938. As a child he demonstrated an artistic talent and studied at art academies in Madrid and San Fernanado, Spain. For the past 25 years Yunta has lived and worked in Paris, where he maintains a studio in the Montmartre section of the city. He has also published several books in Spanish that have established a reputation as a writer and poet. The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art is pleased to organize the exhibition Yunta: A Spaniard in Paris, comprised of 22 oil paintings and 15 drawings. The works selected represent the artist’s mature style applied to variety of subjects including scenes from everyday life, cityscapes and portraits. A highlight of the exhibition is a tribute to the great Spanish Baroque master Diego Velásquez and his famous painting Las Meninas. In The Promise of Velásquez, Yunta has replicated the optical realism of the master and overlaid it with his own technique of implied activity within the illusion of three dimensional space. Also included is El Pozo, a more abstract work created in 2004 as a memorial to the terrorist act that happened in a Madrid train station. The exhibition included a Gallery Guide with essay by Michael Milkovich, Director Emeritus, St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida.
July 17 - September 4 Taylor Ikin (American, b. 1938) Take a Hike,Too, 2004 Watercolor on YUPO, 20 x 26 in.	North and South Galleries *Fragile Florida:* Watercolor Paintings by Taylor Ikin The exhibition is comprised of paintings that were initially part of the Hillsborough Collection, a series of site-specific paintings based on local imagery in Hillsborough County’s environmentally protected lands and protected properties acquired through the Environmental Lands Acquisition Properties Program (ELAPP). ELAPP was established by the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners in 1987. The general public does not have access to these protected areas making Ikin’s paintings unique and truly one-of-a-kind. Says Ikin, “While aesthetically conceived, my work focuses on preservation.” The original collection has now been expanded to include Pinellas County and new works will be added for our exhibition. Taylor Ikin is an environmentalist in addition to a painter and works exclusively on YUPO paper, a synthetic paper that does not destroy any trees. She was educated at Holton Arms School in Washington, D.C. and is a self-taught artist. She has had several one-person shows, teaches workshops locally, nationally and internationally and is active in numerous watercolor societies.
September 18 - October 30 Susan Archer (American, b. 1942) Pineapple Perspective #2, 2003 Watercolor on paper, 40 x 52 in.	North and South Galleries *34^th Annual Exhibition of Florida Watercolor Society* This exhibition of the Florida Watercolor Society (FWS) coincides with the annual convention which is at the Westin Innisbrook Golf Resort this year. The exhibition provides Florida watercolor artists with a venue to exhibit their work along with fellow watercolorists from around the state. The gathering also is an opportunity for anyone interested in watercolor to not only view the exhibition but meet with artists of national acclaim as well. The Florida Watercolor Society began in 1972 with 26 members. It is now the largest state watercolor society in the country with 1200 members and the state exhibition is recognized to be among the top in the country. The goal of the FWS is, “to contribute to the cultural atmosphere of our state and to educate and assist anyone interested in the watercolor medium.” In support of their goal, the FWS presents a $2500 scholarship to a college or university located near the site of the annual convention. The 2005 scholarship has been awarded to St. Petersburg College student Jimmy Gilliland.
November 13 - January 8, 2006 Nikos Kypraios (Greek, b. 1944) St. Nikolaos, 1994 Oil on paper mounted on board, 39 1/3 x 25 1/2 in. On loan from the artist Nikos Kypraios (Greek, b. 1944) Angel, 1994 Oil on paper mounted on board, 19 2/3 x 23 2/3 in. On loan from the artist	North and South Galleries Nikos Kypraios: Icons In celebration of the 100^th anniversary of Epiphany in Tarpon Springs Florida, the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art presents Nikos Kypraios: Icons. The exhibit will focus on 24 images based on Kypraios’ 1994 study of Byzantine icons in Greece. These images and other Kypraios drawings and paintings in the exhibit reflect a post-modernist aesthetic of deconstructed fragmentary images according to Stelio Lydakis, art history professor at the University of Athens. In addition the exhibit will be enhanced by three works from the Tampa Museum of Art’s The Classical Past antiquities collection. The pieces represent the influence of ancient art on later Greek art and include a Kalpis vase, an Athena owl coin and a fish plate, all dating from the 4^th and 5^th centuries BC. Nikos Kypraois is a Greek-born artist from the island of Samos. In the 1960s while living in Athens, he worked in the field of graphic arts. In 1972 he left Greece due to the military Junta, making him one of the artists of the Greek Diaspora. He then immigrated to Melbourne, Australia to raise his family. There Kypraois found a community of artists and was able to devout his energies to his artwork. He returned to Greece in the early 1990s and now divides his time between a home in Athens and one in Samos. Kypraois has received many awards and acclaim for his exhibitions, including one for his show at the Korous Gallery in New York last year. The Museum is pleased that Robert C. Morgan, an internationally known art critic, served as the guest essayist for the exhibition Gallery Guide. He writes for Art News, Art Press, Sculpture Magazine and Tema Celeste, Milan. He has authored catalogs and books and has organized numerous exhibitions as an independent curator. Currently he lives in New York and teaches at Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts.