After a remarkably easy time registering for courses, getting everything I signed up for at the time I desired, I went with Vito Sammartano of the art department and other fellow esthetes at Bradford Junior College where Vito is exhibiting his paintings through the 4th of February at the Laura Knott Gallery, from 9am to 10pm. Those of you who know Vito must like him as much as I do - but having an uncanny ability to divorce my personal feelings towards the artist as a person and to assume the posture of objective and impartial witness-critic, I assaulted the view with authentic tenacity.

Those of you who can rummage with any degree of success through a year of accumulated memory will remember that last spring the Winfisky Gallery had a private show of Vito's work, I must admit with some embarrassment that after all my rummaging I barely remembered the exhibit. This, I am sure, is of no loss to Vito. This exhibit, however, is a culmination of all the careful study Vito has been doing in the age of hard edge painting - with sunrises and sunsets as his theme. Ever since its conception I have been in dead opposition to the hard edge style with its bleak, boring bands of color. But when I looked at what Vito had done with this technique, will, let's just say I was as pleased as punch. With all tongue and cheek aside, I must say that Vito's past experimentation which was not all good had developed with exciting progress. As you walk the gallery from the right wall around finally to the end of the left, Vito's momentum and mastery of technique become more and more apparent, As I stated previously, I despise hard edge paintings, they are stiff and unimaginative, requiring only a reliable ruler and a steady hand. Vito, however, has used line and color to achieve a similar effect that some of the impressionist painters got with their use of a mosaic point painting technique. To stand on top of the painting is to lose it entirely. To stand back perhaps ten to twenty feet is to see the lines coalesce into an entire statement.

Vito's interpretations of sunrise and sunset are in no way impressionistic in character or sentiment— he is completely modern and somewhat abstracted. In spite of the modern approach the paintings are literal, they clearly express the subject.

The colors are brilliant. The suns, water and sky burn, orange and red - cooled by the blues and the sands - which by the way Vito also applies to the canvas. As strictly linear as is the technique: Vito has managed somehow to create the illusion of curves and movement. The landscapes breathe, the waters move, and the suns rise and set with gentle determination.

Kearney Ann Kirby