By JD Latorre • Special to The Current
In the quiet neighborhood of Jim Thorpe’s West End, a small artist’s studio & art gallery sprang up this summer. With its primary focus on showcasing works by Yvonne Wright, Studio YNW also serves as a workspace and a home to a multimedia artist from Toronto with a Master’s degree in art history and a Bachelor’s degree in fine art, now living in Jim Thorpe.
Distanced from the busy downtown, Studio YNW makes its presence known in an almost out-of-the-blue manner when one walks up West Broadway towards the Old Jail. Nestled in a mostly residential part of town, the gallery offers a welcomed break and attraction. “Come in & shop art” advertises the banner wrapped around the railing, promising a diverse selection of fine art and photography.
Small but quaint, the gallery offers a sampling of Yvonne Wright’s art-merchandise carefully displayed throughout by way of stylish throw pillows, unique tote bags and decorative wall hangings, in addition to beautifully printed stationary cards, notebooks and art prints (giclée) – all featuring Yvonne’s paintings, drawings and photography, reproduced in a variety of materials.
Art indeed takes many forms at 100 West Broadway, and perhaps even startles the unsuspecting visitor with the artist’s often surreal forms of expression, her keen eye for human frailties and sense of humor.
For the most part Yvonne Wright’s creative preoccupation with the whimsical is primarily confined to portraiture, however not exclusively, and is most profoundly represented by a series of allegorical ‘bird women,’ whose relation to the feathery species of the perching order is not accidental, but intentional. Whether executed in acrylic, or pen-and-ink on paper mediums, Yvonne uses the narrative of the line, a style of calculated precision, to convey a story.
Often small in size, her works acquire a unique relationship with their viewers revealing themselves more intimately at closer inspection. The eclectic collection falls into the category of what Joan Miró once noted about art: the works must be conceived with fire in the soul, but executed with clinical coolness.
In recent years, while enlarging the scope of her artistic milieu, Yvonne Wright has transitioned into the world of digital media, privileging Adobe Photoshop, as her favorite editing software. Photography has enabled the artist to explore a deeper sense of the mystery that lies within nature’s diversity, coupled with her innate sense of curiosity about life. The unexpected, the hidden, and the playful is perceptively revealed anew in her aesthetically re-purposed vintage objects, architectural elements and the natural world, when the atmospheric properties of light and shadows are applied to their forms, color and texture.
The artist’s enthusiasm for the extraordinary quality of Pennsylvania heritage and nature steams from her family’s long experience living in Jim Thorpe and collecting vintage objects at a time when such pursuits were not in vogue. Yvonne’s mother had run an art & antique gallery, first on Race Street and then on West Broadway.
Being an avid antiques collector, she rescued many unique pieces of furniture and home wares over the years that otherwise would have fallen into neglect. Hence, Yvonne’s fondness for age-old ordinary objects that once served purpose, and today are discarded in the attics-of-time.
Undeniably, climbing a few steps to enter Studio YNW is worth the effort, and perusing art prints, greeting cards and more, as an affordable alternatives to the original works, may not only indulge your senses, but enrich your soul.
Studio YNW
100 West Broadway in Jim Thorpe
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