Upcoming Solo Show: Transformations

Press release for my upcoming solo show, for which I am in continual panicky preparation. Hope you can make it. 

The Barron Art Center 

Transformations: The Art of Anthony Santella

'Predator Overhead', detail

The Barron Art Center Hosts “Transformations: The Art of Anthony Santella”
September 6-25, 2014    Artist’s Reception:  September 11, 2014 ~ 7-9pm

Woodbridge, New Jersey–The Barron Arts Center presents “Transformations: The Art of Anthony Santella.”  The exhibit runs September 6-25, 2014 with a reception Thursday, September 11, 2014 ~ 7-9pm. Light refreshments will be available.

Drawing on the traditions of African, indigenous Pacific Northwest & Medieval ritual art, Teaneck, NJ resident Anthony Santella creates sculpture and painting that reflects his own struggles with the fears and hopes of the modern world.  

“By placing mythic figures and surreal anomalies in modern contexts I want to question our faith in the reality of the waking world, its rules, and the primacy of its values: pleasure, power, control. Perhaps instead when we face the incomprehensible and die, bit by bit, sacrifice by sacrifice, we are most truly alive. At its best art is a tool that helps us face reality. In this body of work I have tried to challenge the viewer and myself to see reality through new eyes.”

Anthony’s work is motivated by an obsession with myth and relationships, those between people and between people and their environment. It is informed by the stories of others and by personal experience as a working scientist (Anthony earned his PhD from Rutgers in 2005, and works in research at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center), a husband and a person of faith. His sculptural work is executed in salvaged local trees, cut during construction or storm downed. This process has personal as well as political significance. Included in the show are several pieces reflecting on, and constructed with wood from trees with special personal resonance.  One, an 80 year old oak that stood over the artist’s childhood home destroyed his car when it fell during hurricane Sandy.  Another oak, about 250 years old and believed the 4th largest in NJ was removed last year after a long and public political battle. For a year Anthony took pictures of the stump daily; a selection of these is also on display. For the artist creating finely detailed figures from these discarded but resonant materials is both an environmental statement and an act of resurrection.

 Please join us for this thought provoking new exhibition. For more information please call the Barron Arts Center at (732)634-0413.

“Transformations: The Art of Anthony Santella,” the new exhibit at The Barron Arts Center is on view September 6-25, 2014 with an artist’s reception Thursday, September 11, 2014 ~ 7-9pm. RESERVATIONS NOT REQUIRED.


The Barron Arts Center is located at 582 Rahway Avenue in Woodbridge, NJ.
Gallery hours are Monday thru Friday 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday 2 p.m.-4 p.m.

The exhibition is sponsored by The Woodbridge Township Cultural Arts Commission chaired by Dr. Dolores Capraro Gioffre with support from Mayor John E. McCormac.

About the Barron Arts Center – Woodbridge Township’s Center for the Arts

The Barron Arts Center, listed on the national Register of Historic Places, recently celebrated its 135th Anniversary. With the support of the Woodbridge Township Cultural Arts Commission and under the direction of Cynthia Knight, the Barron Arts Center offers programming to the public free of charge.

Donations are appreciated and are essential to the continuation of free quality arts programs and exhibits. The Barron Arts Center always accepts donations for
The Mayor’s Food Bank & The Woodbridge Animal Shelter

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For more information or directions, please call (732) 634-0413.