Cathy Sirianni to be Featured Artist atArtWorks at the Depor in Kane Friday

By Ruth Gentilman Peterson

Artist Cathy "Cat" Sirianni and her paintings will be featured at ArtWorks at the Depot in Kane taking place this Friday, November 2, 5-7 p.m.. The artist receptions in this annual Fall series are free and open to public. This is the final reception of this season. Come meet Gallery Artist Cathy "Cat" Sirianni, see what inspires her work and enjoy refreshments and conversion with artists, art lovers, and passersby.

"All around us, there are whispers of order in the chaos -- in a world of randomness and coincidence, there is an underlying pattern. I became interested in the mathematics of pattern, fractal geometry and chaos theory after reading Alan Turing’s work which mathematically generated the pattern of a cheetah’s spots by writing equations for the chemical reaction -- diffusion system which occurs during embryonic development. The idea that in even the most turbulent phenomena there is an overall organizing design appeals to me," noted artist Cat Sirianni. "It comforts me that the response to seemingly disorganized external factors is self-generating pattern, an order in what appears to be arbitrary."

As a reflection of Cathy's fascination with pattern, the repetition of shape or form, multiples, and self-similar elements dominates her work. She is most interested in single units which contain within them a repetition of elements. Her current paintings focus on life forms that exhibit a structural morphology which is highly mathematical, plants or animals which grow in patterned way.

The scale of the paintings and the macro approach to its organic content is reminiscent of the work of Georgia O’Keefe. "In general I have chosen a fairly large scale for objects which are fairly small in order to both call attention to these often overlooked objects and to the patterns within them. Tight cropping allows for the objects to explode off the canvas and take on a somewhat aggressive tone," Sirianni stated.

Cat is a Kane native, the daughter of Larry and Sandra Johnson. She is certified in Elementary Education and Art. Her teaching career includes three years at Colegio Bilingue in Valledupar, Colombia, SA, where she taught English; several years at Bradford Central Christian HS where she taught Spanish, and two years at Holy Rosary School where she taught K-8 Art. She began teaching at Kane Area High School in 2006. She completed her MA in painting at Edinboro University with her thesis show in November 2010. Cathy and husband Jim live in Kane. They have a son in college.

Sirianni describes her painting as a process that "generally accentuates both the patterns implicit in the structure and those related to surface color or design. While the final image is realistic, both the forms and the patterned elements are reduced to shapes which generally use areas of flat color and hard edges to define them. In the final layers, the crispness of edges and the pervasiveness of the pattern may be diminished by additional modifications to the surface to convey texture or more subtle color variations. While I explore the value scale of my subjects in preliminary studies, within the paintings I tend to use colors which fall in the mid-range of values and explore subtle shifts in color temperature to suggest depth or structure."

ArtWorks looks forward to seeing you at the Depot Friday.

Next up at the Depot -- the holidays take center stage at ArtWorks at the Depot with artisan market and ArtWorks gallery art containing a wide variety of media from two dozen local artists. Watch for December open house at the Depot, ArtWorks Gallery, Holgate Toys, featuring a variety of Depot produced books of local history, and "The Quarry", a novel by (Chief) Robert Carson recently published by his daughter Mary Carson Reehling. This and so much more for those who stop at the Kane Depot. Open Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. from June - December and for special events.