Artspace Gallery to host ‘The New Horizon'

Environmental protest works by Jean Benfante STROUDSBURG - Have you noticed a change in the Pocono landscape? Do you find yourself questioning the decisions by politicians to allow the paving over of paradise and unchecked development in the area? Then, the next solo exhibit at the Gallery in Stroudsburg is for you! Throughout the month of April, and in honor of Earth Day, Stroudsburg’s ArtSpace Gallery will welcome resident member-artist Jean Benfante’s “The New Horizon.” An artist’s reception will be held on Saturday, April 14 from 5 to 9 p.m. Benfante will be available at the opening, where she hopes her works will act as a catalyst to serious discussion on the destruction of the Poconos, and the effect this has on its human and animal residents. In earlier showings, Benfante’s expressionistic oil crayon renderings focused on the human world of spiritual and dream investigations. With her solo exhibit at ArtSpace Gallery, the subject turns to the timely topic of the Pocono Region’s transition from a quiet rural life to one suffering the more modern consequences of urbanization. Beginning her art career and artistic foundation at Keystone College, and the Tyler School of Art, in Philadelphia, as a sculptor specializing in bronze, Benfante continued her art training on the Masters level at the University of Arizona, when she began to move away from the time-laden sculptural process, and into the more personal and immediate investigations oil crayon offers. Time spent in the Southwestern U.S., alive with the colors of the Sonora Desert and mountains, was her initial view of what happens when a natural landscape is quickly changed to an urban setting, “The same things I saw happen in Tucson, the building, the destruction of the desert, and the influence of the population on the natural order of things, are the same things I have seen in the Poconos and Northeast Pennsylvania where I was raised,” lamented Benfante. Benfante approaches her subject with a colorful palate highlighting the altering of the landscape and the lurking perception that behind the seemingly deep, dark rows of roadside trees, the woods are not very dark, nor deep. Anyone who has lived in or visited the Pocono’s on a regular basis over the past 20 years will connect with the transcendental view Benfante explores. New residents will be asked to have a different experience. They will be tendered the following query by the work, “Do you want the region to remain the natural setting you moved here for, or do you want your kids to grow up in the same concrete environment you left?” “The New Horizon” is in the symbolic representations of the skyscraper as an agent of urbanization and the tree as the stronghold of the natural landscape, where the message of the exhibit takes hold. Throughout the pieces, the viewer is presented a competition between the two forces fighting for control of the region. The skyscraper attempts to wrestle more ground for steel and glass, while the trees try to hold on to the natural landscape. And while it may be a foregone conclusion, Benfante refuses to believe that all of the land will be destroyed; however, she warned, “An innocuous little skyscraper playing peek-a-boo behind a tree at first, seems harmless and innocent, almost a nuisance. The initial building spurt had that affect on the Poconos. I want people to see that this has turned into a battle between the tree and the skyscraper.” For further information on the show, or the ARTSPACE Gallery, call 570-476-4460 or visit our Web site at www.artspacegallery.net .