Join us at The Gatehouse Coffee Shop for an opening reception celebrating the work of artist and educator Rhea Nowak.

This exhibition brings together selections from Nowak’s Reading and Weaving and Call and Response series—two bodies of work rooted in her ongoing fascination with notation, communication, and the act of reading itself. Her work considers how humans construct meaning through marks, symbols, and systems, drawing connections between language, landscape, and lived experience.

As Nowak reflects, it took humanity roughly 2,000 years to develop an alphabet, yet children can now learn to read it in about 2,000 days. Her work plays with that tension between complexity and accessibility—between what is slowly built and quickly absorbed. In her hands, reading extends beyond text into terrain, rhythm, and perception.

Rhea Nowak received her BA from Bennington College in Printmaking and Painting, her MFA from the University of Connecticut in Printmaking and Drawing, and a Master Printer Certificate from Il Bisonte in Florence, Italy. She is a Professor at the State University of New York at Oneonta, where she teaches printmaking, design, and artist’s books. Her work has been exhibited across the United States, Europe, and China.

In this exhibition, themes of rhythm, structure, and translation surface through layered compositions and extended formats that suggest time, narrative, and transformation. These works invite viewers into a space where meaning is not fixed, but unfolding—shaped by attention, context, and presence.