The Focal Point Gallery was founded twenty-five years ago by photographer Ron Terner. Like most artists, Terner felt the need to communicate his work and have some control over its presentation. Starting a gallery simply seemed a way of achieving those ends. Such an endeavor is, of course, much more easily imagined than realized, especially on a miniscule budget -but the business of artists is to make concrete realities out of impossibilities.

     The gallery was launched and remains on City Island, a small-town-like enclave at the edge of the Bronx, and not in Manhattan where most New York galleries are clustered (and where rents are prohibitively high). This location appealed to Terner both because of the congeniality of the community, with its boatyards and shipwrights, and the availability of appropriate space at a reasonable rent.

     Work was and is chosen for display solely on Terner's assessment of its strength of vision. Questions of saleability, fashion, or correspondence to a particular aesthetic have no place in his scheme of things, and so work is not subjected to judgments extraneous to its integrity, and an artist's thought can be presented intact. As a result of this and of Terner's wide-ranging comprehension of divergent artistic intents, the work shown at the gallery and presented in this book is not uniform in style, content, or point of view. What unites it is its intensity of vision and discipline of craft.

     What we celebrate here, then, is not the mere survival of a particular place, but the exuberant life of an embodied idea and the idea that being committed to art as a serious, communicative, and social act is not some easily dismissed idealism, but a way of being which, even in the imperfection of circumstance, can flourish.

The Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 12 noon to 7pm with additional evening hours Friday and Saturday from 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm.

By car, take either Cross Bronx east, or the East River Drive over the Willis Ave. Bridge, or the Long Island Expressway to the Clearview north-all three connect with the Bruckner Expressway (US 95) to Orchard Beach/City Island, exit 8B. Follow exit ramp to road over second bridge (City Island Bridge.) Go three traffic lights (to Fordham St.) It is the fourth store before the third light on the right side.

By bus and subway, take the No. 6 IRT Lexington Ave. train to Pelham Bay. take the City Island bus from Pelhma BAy to City Island Ave. at Fordham St. Focal Point is the fourth store before Fordham St. on the right side. 321 City Island Avenue.

For more information call Ron Terner at Focal Point Gallery  718-885-1403 or Fax 718-885-1451. Mailing address is 321 City Island Ave., City Island, N.Y. 10464

© Focal Point Gallery 2003