Downtown art gallery opens new summer show

Strolling around the Prima Gallery's new summer show, it's easy to forget every art piece and its respective price tag has a unique history, similar to the gallery itself. Tiny pots stock the shelves, mimicking the artists' hands who crafted them. Oil paintings snake up the stairs, offering narratives of the painter's life. Even a broom takes on meaning after hearing its torrid past from the broom's sculptor, David Eppinghouse, who retrofitted the cleaning tool with neon lights. \nAs the summer show opened at the Prima Gallery Friday night, art lovers had a chance to mingle with well-known and emerging artists to hear these stories behind their work. The summer show, "Paints, Pots, and Prints" opened to the tunes of a live accordion player and the excited chatter of exhibited artists, avid collectors and curious onlookers. Various artists made an appearance to reflect on their individual pieces, view other artists' works or grab a piece of pizza from the reception table.\n"We have old and new and rich and poor (artists) if you can use those generalities," said Eileen Rice, who has worked for the Prima Gallery the last seven years. \nThe Prima Gallery has maintained this hodgepodge of artists since the gallery first opened 37 years ago, in 1968. According to Rice, the first gallery owner, Rosemary Frasier started the Prima Gallery with other "faculty wives" because no Bloomington art gallery existed at that time. This original start-up team created the first gallery behind where Pygmalion's stands on Grant Street.\nMoving to Sixth Street 10 years ago, the current Prima Gallery took over space once owned and used by the Princess Theatre. The large glass windows and doors in the front of the gallery once housed the theatre's screen. \n"The (Prima) Gallery was the first gallery and it's lasted forever," said art exhibit installer and gallery artist David Eppinghouse. "This is like a flagship for the local art scene."\nIn the past year, the Prima Gallery has undergone more changes. The current owner, Linda Fratianni, bought the gallery last July. For the past year, she has been establishing her vision for the gallery with several month long shows and now the summer show. \n"I think we're different in how we present our shows, in our objectives," she said. "This show's objective is to present emerging and established artists." \nIU Fine Arts professor Rudy Pozzatti, recently named a "living treasure of Bloomington" by the Bloomington Area Arts Council, is one of the most established artists at the summer show. Pozzatti said the summer show gives his fans a chance to see what he's been working on, instead of waiting three more years for his next one-man show. For his pieces, "Prismatic V" and "Prismatic II," Pozzatti manipulated European candy wrappers to design the realistic looking stained glass windows in his pieces. \n"The wrappers in Europe are much nicer color-wise, design-wise, and the chocolate is damn good," said Pozzatti. \nFormer IU student and Evansville artist Shirley Kern mixed art materials for her summer show pieces. Kern created her oil paintings on wood slates and then added metal bolts to make the paintings appear like houses. Her four-squared wood image also plays on her notion that "everything's connected." \n"I sort of like to go back and forth between flat plane and sculpture so now I'm somewhere in between," said Kern, who used Asian influences to create impressionistic paintings.\nDavid Turner Hannon's oil paintings tell stories more than they conjure impressionistic images. Each of his four exhibited oil paintings not only includes the artist himself, but tells some facet of his life story. Not surprisingly, Hannon began as an illustrator and then moved to oil painting. \n"(I like) the narrative appeal where you're telling something beyond just one image, even though you're only giving one image," said Hannon. \nUnlike some of the more well-known artists, Hannon, a 2000 IU grad with an MFA in Fine Arts, got involved in the summer show completely by accident. When attending an opening at the Waldron Arts Center, he wandered into the Prima Gallery and introduced himself as an artist. Rice asked if he would be interested in displaying there. \nFor some of Prima Gallery's artists, it's just that simple. Jenni Cure, a local artist, walked into the gallery with her original wood cuts for the gallery exhibitors to examine. Those two original works, "Tree Shadow Two" and "Tree Shadow One," now hang in the summer show. \nIn addition to the summer gallery hours, artists and art lovers alike can view the show during the Downtown Gallery Walk July 8. As the eighth stop on the Gallery Walk, the Prima's Gallery Summer Show will provide Bloomington patrons an impressive collage of artistic talent.\n"It's the best commercial gallery in Bloomington -- the most established with the highest caliber of work," said artist Patricia Cole, whose ballpoint pen on paper drawings also hung in the summer show.\nPrima Gallery is located at 109 E. Sixth St. and is open Monday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.