Solo exhibit focuses on photographs

MILLB ROOK -- A show of digitally enhanced photographs by artist and graphic designer Joe Tantillo is on dis¬play at The Upstairs Gallery at Merritt Books through early July_
Tantillo, a Dutchess County resi¬dent, has been a painter whose ab¬stract expressionism earned him com¬missions and awards. Along with his wife, Maura Shaw, he founded Shawangunk Press, and together they published regionally oriented books. "Owl's Journey," written by Shaw and illustrated by Tantillo, covers 400 years of Dutchess County history seen through the eyes of the young people who lived in the area. And Tantillo is produced promotional material for area hospitals and earned an I Love NY award for its Dutchess Tourism guide. Today he is a Webmaster and Graphic User Interface designer for a software company.
Recent photographs in Tantillo's solo show, Between Worlds, at The Upstairs Gallery cover a range of sub¬jects from views of Ireland to local im¬ages, including a rusting railroad car and the old Cadillac above. Using digi¬tal enhancement techniques, Tantillo plays with the color schemes of the photographs "to produce a new and dif¬ferent graphic vocabulary," he says.