Past Exhibits at the Freyberger Gallery
September 2012, One Million Bones
September is dedicated to Genocide Awareness OMB is an international art activist project to bring awareness of worldwide genocide and raise funds for relief organizations. Artist lead workshops to make bones which will be collected and added to the thousands created across the country and installed at the Washington, D.C. Mall in May, 2013. Be part of it!
Oct. - Nov., 2012, The Life Atomic
Reading and Berks County have surely been part of the atomic age. Beginning with the movie, Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow, a Civil Defense production filmed in Berks County, and the 1955 Bernville Evacuation, a simulated evacuation to test civilian preparedness of the area, Berks County was a model area for Civil Defense readiness. Fallout shelters were scattered throughout the area, in homes, schools and even department stores. Items such as canned water, blankets, crackers, and disposal items for waste were common items in these shelters. And the city of Reading itself boasted a ?major? shelter ? that could house and protect 50 lucky citizens.
Those old enough to remember lived through a strange, halcyon haze of terror during the fifties and sixties. Children practiced ?duck and cover? drills at their schools; the bright black and yellow fallout shelters signs were both comforting, and frightening; we listened for the siren warning blast and scanned the horizon for the blinding atomic flash.
In those days, unlike today, the enemy was tangible; the enemy had a face ? the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.), and other communist countries. Exactly 50 years ago, the Cuban missile crises, a 13-day confrontation between the Soviet Union and Cuba on one side and the United States on the other was the closest we came to an atomic annihilation.
How does the Atomic Life compare with today?s threats of terror, bio-terrorism, war, and uprisings around the world? Are we safer now then we were then?
We would like to thank the John Burroughs, director of the Rogers Museum in Rogers, Arkansas, for loaning us the bulk of this exhibition, The Atomic Life. But we?d especially like to thank local collectors who have loaned us significant items, including David Beard, director of the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles, the Berks County Historic Society, especially Joshua Blay for assistance and items, James Swope, and Tracy Brant.
Thursday, Nov. 29, through Friday, Dec. 7, ArtSparks
Reception: 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 29
ArtSparks was conceived and created by Susan Rehhausser, a graduate student in the masters of liberal studies in community leadership at Alvernia University. The project ? to create original works of art in a triptych format by local students, children and other volunteers through community workshops ? is intended to re-spark the hope and imagination of people in the City of Reading, which was documented as one of the poorest cities of its size in the nation.
These works of art were delivered to areas of Reading in October, free for the taking by the residents of those areas.
Explains Ms. Rehhausser, ?The triptychs were made from the hearts of all these individuals with a sense of community, a sense of love. They were to be placed throughout the city with the hopes that those who need the words of encouragement or hope will find them, take them, and keep them as a symbol of change and inspiration. My hope is that people are inspired to make a difference in the city and maybe are inspired to make changes within themselves?. the project is intended to be a tipping point or at the very least a potential ignition point to encourage people to make a difference and realize they have a voice and can be an agent of change?