FLOW
Linda Celestian & Linnea Tober

November 2, 2018 - January 9, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday, November 2 | 5 - 9 PM during Art Loop

Flow is a joint Friends exhibition featuring artwork by local artists Linda Celestian and Linnea Tober. Together, they accentuate the flow of matter and bring attention to our natural world using contemporary techniques and traditional processes. 
Flow celebrates low and high-tech studio practices, from painting to Photoshop, to express their love and appreciation for the natural world and their relationship to it. Flow comments on the fluidity with which artists navigate media and thought, like ideas forming a river, picking up experiences along the way, eventually leading to a body of artwork. Celestian and Tober use that sense of "flow" to guide them through their creative expressions.

Linda Celestian creates fans of layered color to suggest a floating topology. Her paintings seep into the canvas, moving above and below other layers of paint to deepen the visual plane. Her work is experimental and ever-changing, much like the aquatic nature it's inspired by. Along with her two-dimensional work, Celestian creates hovering sculptures out of silk and wool, challenging gravity and space. These aerial wisps of vibrant color mimic and add dimension to the pools and streams of her paintings bound to the wall. There is no up nor down in her paintings and sculptures, they are unified by a multi-dimensional orientation that challenges traditional viewing experiences. Linda Celestian holds a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts completed in 1987 and a one-year graduate study in Painting and Sculpture in 1988, both from Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, PA. Grants from the Delaware Division of the Arts include artist residencies in 2002 and 2003, Opportunity Grants in 2012 and 2013, and Individual Fellowship Honorable Mention in 2014, and fellowship in painting grant in 2016.

Linnea Tober expresses her sensitivities through digital photography manipulation; however, by the end of her process, her style is indistinguishable from a painter's brush. Tober takes photographs in nature and brings the digital files into her studio to undergo a multitude of alterations that distort and morph the original image. Each piece contains a whirlpool of colors, some artifacts of the original image remain visible, but often they are completely recreated landscapes of vivid imagination. Linnea Tober holds an AA in graphic design from Brookdale, Lincroft, NJ, a BA in Art History from Kean University, Union, NJ and MAT in Art Education from Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ. Tober feels it is critical to give back to the community and has been involved in a variety of socially engaged projects since the beginning her artistic career. Some of the her most recent projects include the Mid-State Arts Resource Team (MART), Sharks for the Arts project, (supported arts funding and research), The Healing Power of Art show at The Guild of Creative Arts in Shrewsbury, (supported women's cancer education (both 2010 and 2011). 

Curated by Morgan Hamilton

Beckler Family Gallery

OPENING RECEPTION