Opening Reception - Freedom Redacted, an exhibition by Wynn Yarrow

The ARTS Council invites you to Freedom Redacted, an exhibition by Wynn Yarrow on display in our Small Works Space, from Monday, July 27 - Friday, August 21. The ARTS Council is open Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm, at 79 West Market St., in Corning's historic Gaffer District.

Please join us for an opening reception and meet the artist on Friday, July 31, from 5-7pm. Remarks and an artist talk will begin at 6pm.

About Wynn:

For Wynn Yarrow, art and life are inseparable, approached slowly, quietly, and with contemplation. She has been called an artist’s artist. Her work “the landscape of dreams” is known for its high color and exuberant emotion. Her work explores transition and metaphor. “Everything is always changing. Nothing truly exists as it appears. As humans, we simultaneously seek change and desire stability. That is the paradox.”

She has exhibited in a dozen museums and as many colleges and universities. She has exhibited at Kyoto International Community House, Kyoto, Japan; Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, New York; Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY and Penland School of Craft, Penland, North Carolina.

Her art comforts patients and families at the Mayo Clinic, Penn State Hershey Medical Center, the Boston Children’s Hospital, and in the UHS Healthcare System. She retired from West End Gallery, Corning after 40 years of representation. Her commitment to future generations is evident in her commissions for pediatric hospitals and Tanglewood Nature Center’s Children’s Garden. She taught art and nature with award-winning museum/school partnerships for over twenty years.

About Freedom Redacted:

The urgency of the moment demands I put my life’s work to the side temporarily. I gathered the curiosity and exploration I honed at the intersection of nature, science and art, and brought it to this project.

During the first year of Trump’s second term, I began to hear the phrase, "constitutional crisis," and wondered how much of the Constitution was under threat. I set out to investigate. Freedom Redacted is the outcome.

I worked from digital scans of the original documents (the Preamble to the U.S. constitution and the Bill of Rights.) I was faithful to variations in lettering styles between documents written by different scribes. I used historically original spellings and letters, which are occasionally different from those used today, such as the long S. I limited redactions to the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the constitution. These spell out certain civil rights, and acknowledge that additional rights exist. They guarantee the government’s protection of “liberty and justice for all,” words we have spoken a thousand times when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Democracy calls her People to be informed, to ask important questions and to seek clear answers. Thomas Jefferson said, “Eternal Vigilance is the price of democracy.” Let us all be vigilant now.

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This project is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, administered by fiscal sponsor, The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes.

Artwork provided by Wynn Yarrow.