Emerging Artists Exhibit, ARTOLEDO, Returns to 20 North Gallery

Three local emerging artists show their work at downtown gallery

20 North Gallery announces the latest incarnation of their Emerging Artist Exhibition, ARTOLEDO 2011, the commercial gallery debut of three rising regional artists: Molly Corfman; Daniel Steck, Jr. and Guy Sutherland.  The show features a dynamic combination of mixed media Pop Art sculpture and digital photography.  The exhibit will continue through June 3, 2011.

ARTOLEDO 2011 gives 20 North Gallery the opportunity to promote the professional development of promising new talent in the Toledo art landscape.  All three of the artists selected for the show have been establishing their artistic identities in the community, but have not yet been featured in a major commercial gallery setting.

Gallery owner, Eric Hillenbrand, says, “We view our reoccurring ARTOLEDO exhibit as an opportunity for 20 North Gallery to nurture and retain Toledo’s rising artistic talent and give new artists a chance to enter the commercial art world in their home community—and, at the same time, give Toledo art buyers an opportunity to have a first viewing of what is Toledo’s continuing, rich art legacy.”  The first three weeks of ARTOLEDO 2011 coincides with Artomatic 419, a downtown multi-venue, multimedia art event that serves as an arts incubator for the Greater-Toledo community.

20 North Gallery and the exhibiting artists will be welcoming friends and collectors at ARTOLEDO’s free public “Meet the Artists” Reception on Saturday, April 16th from 6 – 9 p.m.  Reception attendees can enjoy light refreshments and conversations with these emerging local talents.

Molly Corfman is a photojournalist, web designer and native of Toledo, Ohio.  She started her career as a photojournalist for the daily Sentinel-Tribune, covering Wood County, Ohio.  She earned her bachelor's degree in photojournalism from Kent State University and has interned as a photojournalist for The (Toledo) Blade, Denver Post, and The Orange County Register.  She has also freelanced for the Associated Press. Her news photographs have been published internationally in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and London Observer, among numerous other print and online publications.  She has been awarded by The National Press Photographer's Association, Ohio News Photographer's Association, Society of Professional Journalists, Hearst Journalism Awards Program and Ohio Public Images.  As a web developer, Molly has won the Crystal Award and several Merit Awards from the Women In Communications, Toledo Chapter.  Her ARTOLEDO exhibited works feature her Maumee River Landscape Series and Travels Through Europe, photographs taken during her recent sojourn abroad.

Daniel Steck, Jr. is a native Toledoan, currently a full-time student in Biology and Small Business Management at Owens Community College in Toledo. His many art interests include writing screenplays and poetry, as well as his passion for digital photography, in which he is self-taught—applying the techniques of invention and imagination he utilizes in his business training.  In his limited-edition digital photography work, he uses only basic editing techniques of cropping and exposure adjustment to emulate the nature of the traditional darkroom.  Steck’s ARTOLEDO exhibited works focus primarily on his Neighborhood Series, capturing images of Toledo’s urban landscape and familial territories, creating pictorial narratives that are simultaneously familiar and mysterious.

Guy Sutherland is a retired insurance claims adjuster who has been a regular performer in Toledo’s community theater scene for almost 5O years.  He also harbors a life-long passion for the costume, craft and narrative of science fiction—becoming a devotee of low-budget, black & white serial films and television in that genre in the 1950s.  Since that time, he has crafted hand-made rayguns from a variety of materials.  Beginning with the creation of well-loved toys for his own use, he later built more sophisticated models for his own child and finally turned to sculpting elaborate mixed media creations of complex design—all of which echo the futuristic styling and ingenuous fantasy of America’s “atomic era” and the golden age of science fiction.  Under the studio name of Sudzy, Sutherland participates in regional science fiction and comic book conventions, sharing his raygun avocation with other devotees of the genre.

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