Artist Zena Gurbos Immersive Installation to be Featured in Wilber Mansion Exhibit

In the exhibition, Gurbo will replicate her home and art studio, and will be on site during most gallery hours working in her studio simulation. Additionally, the artist will designate space for a group exhibition featuring work by her community of fellow artists. The fully immersive exhibit will span throughout the galleries of Oneonta’s historic Wilber Mansion signifying different facets of the artist’s creative life—as an appreciator of art, collector of oddities, maker of mobiles, builder of sculptures, painter, and finder of lost things. 

“My eyes are trained to look for little treasures that have been discarded or abandoned by others. In picking up an object and bringing it home, I create a permanent space for it amongst other lost and found items,” Gurbo explains. “It saves the object from certain doom and transforms it into something new; it becomes art.”

For Gurbo, art is her first language. As the daughter of two artists, self-expression through any art form was encouraged from her earliest memories. Gurbo says that throughout her life, she has not only experienced the ways art brings joy, relief, and pride, but also witnessed its power throughout her 20+ years as an art educator working with artists from varying ages, abilities, and lived experiences. 

“Everyone is an artist,” she says, “whether what is made is ‘good’ is not of importance. Art is subjective and experiential.” Gurbo adds that by including a group exhibition of work produced by her diverse arts community, she celebrates that notion and the positive impact of creative connection.

The group exhibition features work by artists from Main View Gallery (a program of the Arc Otsego), where Gurbo was Art Director and an instructor for many years; artists from Kings Highway AHRC, where she currently teaches; members of her wildly talented family including Walter Gurbo, Christine Gurbo, Simone Mantellassi, Zara Zeidman, and Milo Mantellassi; and local artists / friends Karin Bremer, Terry Fox, Doug Jamison, and Christina Hunt Wood and others. 

According to organizers, several additional events will take place throughout the month of August including artist Q&As on 8/15 and 8/22 at 3pm; and a concert scheduled for August 21 at 6pm. The Wilber Mansion galleries and CANO are located at 11 Ford Avenue in Oneonta. For more information visit www.canoneonta.org.