Steven Dunning, June 1993

For Immediate Release:

The Main Street Museum Of Art is proud to present its second show (in as many months) for the nineteen hundred and ninety-three summer art season.

Announcing an exhibition of the large scale, colorful, truly fabulous, Pop-Camp works of Steven Dunning.

Having quickly established itself as one of the upper valleys premier watering holes for artists, and stomping grounds for professional bluegrass musicians; the Main Street Museum now turns its attention from arcane, transcenden�tal, and travelogical Photo-Colorizations To The Ultra-moderns—the devotees of “isms” of every kind. Mr. Dunnings work will create a precious atmosphere within our front rooms yet will also pack the punch of Post-Stonewall, Gay Activist Weltanshaung. It will be the first time White River Junction will be treated to the creations of the dreamy nether world of our “Gay subculture”, and so we look very much forward to yet another “first”.

Visitors to our Museum will be greeted by large panels of pure color, and transparent layers of images: “plastecene goggles”, boys keen on muscle development, and talent-less starlets will jostle each other for our undivided attention, elbowing each other in the ribs and chuckling over our amazement. An ingenious screen of some kind of polymer is planned by the artist for our windows [sculpture installation of baseball bats with long steel nails —ed.], and perhaps our interior space as well, lending a kind of Sternbergian, continental density to the already chaotic ambiance.

The grandson of one of Busby Berkeleys favorite set designers, Steven Dunning has recently emigrated from Cincinnati and the muddy banks of the Ohio River to Manchester, Vermont and our green and pleasant Hills. Sometimes described as “Carmen Miranda on Steroids”, Mr. Dunnings work has been shown in the past year at the North Bennington Independent Artists Space, the In Situ and the Semantics Galleries of Cincinnati, and the Capital District Lesbian and Gay Community Center, Albany, New York. His awards and inclusions in group exhibitions have been too numerous to mention, and his work has been reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, and others. His work was seen in 1992 at Springfield, Massachusetts World aids Day Exhibition.

We feel honored to have an artist of Mr. Dunnings caliber among us and hope that as many as possible will attend the opening where there is sure to be some kind of entertainment provided as well as the conviviality and effervescence always attendant where groups of mercurial artists and sculptors gather to shriek and philosophize in manners that are still, in many of our fifty states, against the law. It is also believed that the neigh�boring Catamount Brewery will, once again, enter into some type of informal partnership with our art endeavors to provide liquid happiness;

Compliments Of The Main Street Museum Of Art.
“may it please you,” david fairbanks ford, june nineteen ninety-three grand street, manhattan.