Art and Music have traditionally explored separate aesthetic experiences – one visual, the other aural. In bringing together their unique qualities, this exhibition displaces musical instruments that share an aesthetic character with the music they produce, and sculpture that resonates with scintillating sounds: gongs and sonic reverberations.  A Balinese Gamelan, an orchestra of metal instruments including gongs and xylophones played with a mallet, displays a colorful visual promise of Indonesian customs that might have included parading musicians wearing brilliantly decorated costumes. Other musical instruments on view are fabricated from disparate materials familiar in non-musical settings, stringed instruments made from a cowboy boot, dust mop, coat hanger, parts of a gramophone, and leg cast, to name a few. Why this strange trio? They share a common goal in their challenge to the museum visitor to observe their appearance or to make them resonate as an invitation to touch and play them. Val Bertoia creates his “sonic” sculpture of repetitive rods of monel metal or brass surmounted with brass tops of various sizes. Long or short rods with delicate or heavy tops of bronze – the artist calls them “cattails” – the sculptures vibrate with melodious sounds when stroked. The musical ear hears distinct tonal differences, while the rest of us feel the soothing ringing of distant chimes. Bertoia’s sculpture evolves from that of his father, Harry Bertoia, a modernist artist from the mid 20th century who defined these sound sculptures during his experiments with welded resonant metals. Val continues his father’s legacy in Bally, Pennsylvania, showing his work in his studio in an elaborate setting among hundreds of vibrating rods. Ken Butler brings to the exhibition an idiosyncratic instrument collection from found objects selected for their visual properties, retaining the funkiness of identity with their origins. Most of these instruments are wired for electronic performance emulating violin, guitar cello. Some are more significantly endowed with physical elegance disguising the sources of their construction from coat hangers to phonograph parts, displaying less than their playability but promising more. Butler was trained as a studio artist, receiving three National Endowment grants to develop his new art forms. Turning to concepts that invoke musical sounds generated from objects not intended for this purpose, Butler has performed his hybrid instruments with such notable artists as John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, Butch Morris, Soldier String Quartet, and the Tonight Show Band. The exhibition in the Lore Degenstein Gallery offers its viewer the opportunity to “play” some of the sculptures as well as appreciate their visual effect. Gongs and bronze rods that shiver with motion and resonance when touched await the moment of activation. Brought to Susquehanna University from an exhibition organized by Professor Emeritus of Music, Paul Larson, at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the artwork raises new challenges for understanding the creative spirit. We greatly appreciate the continuing support of our program from the Charles B. Degenstein Endowment, which sponsors our programs and facilities our exhibitions and permanent collection of over 2,500 works of art at the Lore Degenstein Gallery. Dr. Valerie Livingston   Cowboy Boot, Ken Butler, 1997 Collection of the artist