The Northeastern Biennial Twenty Fifteen opened its eighth juried exhibition on Oct. 17 and closed Nov. 12. This series brought together artwork from artists living and working in the Lackawanna County area.

This year’s exhibit was juried by Hal Bromm, an art dealer and founder of Hal Bromm Art & Design Gallery in Manhattan. Bromm is known for having opened the first contemporary gallery, which hosted “new talent” to collectors in the Tribeca area.

Marywood University’s Mahady Gallery is one of the four host galleries of this event; the other spaces used include AFA Gallery, The Hope Horn Gallery at The University of Scranton, and ArtWorks Gallery & Studio.

Jurors selected graduate student Annmarie Holler to display her work in Marywood’s exhibit. Holler said she was ecstatic to have this opportunity.

“This is something that if I have it on my resume employers are definitely going to be like “wow” because I was chosen out of so many others,” she said.

Hundreds of pieces are entered, but only so many are selected to be included in this event. There are also four awards given to artists at each of the venues; $500 for 1st place, $250 for 2nd, honorable mention, and a one-person exhibit.

Candace Conville, an art therapy graduate student at Marywood, works in the Mahady Gallery and was very involved in the process of loading in the pieces to the gallery. She said Holler’s piece stood out to her.

“It’s really different. The colors and shapes are cool; it’s different shades of blue that are just very precisely painted on and it’s really hard to do that,” Conville said.

Holler said she was inspired to create this piece when she visited New York City and saw reflections made by the buildings.

“The idea behind it is the use of color,” said Holler. “[The buildings] made very unique shapes against their windows.”

After toying with her photos she started sketching shapes and came to this one that she really liked.

“I’ve always been interested in illusions. How far could I push a limited amount of colors? So I just used different hues of blue,” Holler said.

Holler noted that each of the four galleries used in the biennial had their own style, or theme to them.

Holler said the theme of Marywood’s gallery, “was like one half of the gallery looked like it was color and shapes, some of the other pieces even looked similar to mine, but the other half there was a lot of different technique used; there was fabric, drawing, prints, painting.”

“It was a beautiful gallery. A lot of people were saying that Marywood’s set-up was done great,” said Holler.

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