The Chazan Gallery @ Wheeler is presenting works by painter Jon R Petro and glass and video artist Natasha Harrison from September 22 – October 8, 2006. There will be an opening reception for the artists on Friday, September 22, from 5 - 7 p.m. The public is invited.

Jon Petro’s work deals with the issues of disassociation and abstract imagery. “I am now, in a very real sense, working backwards; trying to remove all association with those images that I’ve maintained a dialog with for years… it’s a reversal of the method that I’ve used to create art since I started to paint.” Petro has found that abstract imagery “has a greater connection to the gesture or movement that the painter used to create it.” Petro studied at Clark University and Worchester Art Museum. Exhibitions include those at Contemporary Artist Center, Hampden Gallery, Jonathon Podolsky Gallery, and MPG Contemporary. He has guest lectured at Clark University and is a recipient of 2006 Cultural Fellowships Award. His work is included in the DeCordova Museum Corporate Program Collection.

Natasha Harrison is intrigued by the intrinsic beauty, flexibility, possibilities, and limitations of working with glass as a sculptural medium. She strives to integrate the dynamics of the material into movements in her sculpture. Her lampworked glass components are combined with organic elements in a way to echo nature and evoke a feeling of depth and etherealness at the same time. As the Founder and Executive Director of Island Arts, a non-profit arts organization featuring an art gallery and educational and community programs in Newport, RI, Harrison has set her own track as a working artist and a business woman. Harrison graduated from Rhode Island School of Design, receiving her BFA in Glass. She has shown in the Traveling Exhibition with Rhode Island School of Design, the Mesa Gallery in Mesa, Arizona, the Deblois Gallery in Newport, RI, and four consecutive years at The Newport Art Museum.