The Morning Call from Allentown, Pennsylvania • 54

Lafayette exhibit salutes architect of Williams building THE DETAILS ARTISTS OPEN THEIR STUDIOS Thirty-three artists will participate in the eighth annual Hidden Treasures Studio Tour on Nov. 16-17 in Lehigh and Berks counties. Discussions and demonstrations will take place in eight studios in Allentown, Kutztown and Topton. Items for sale range from tapestry handbags to silk paintings, mosaics to garden accents. The free open house will run from 10 a.m.

to 5 p.m. Maps will be available at each studio. The studios are listed at www.hidden-treasurestour.com. Or call 610-797-1586 (DeLana Hornbeck). 1 By Geoff Gehman Of The Morning Call Architect Joseph Biondo likes to show how a building works by showing its works.

The Bethlehem native transformed an automobile warehouse into Lafayette College's Williams Visual Arts Building, a light box of snaking ducts, bruised concrete columns and oil-drum sinks. Even the zigzagging bricks work overtime as shadow sculptors. Williams is an ideal site for an exhibition of Biondo's concepts for six buildings, including Williams. The designs show his preference for industrial materials and origami shapes, for floating steel roofs over flexing concrete sheds. Based in Wilkes-Barre.

Biondo likes to challenge humanity. His House Equanimity, for example, is a cut-up, cushioned rectangle, an alien in a Northampton subdivision of cookie-cutter homes. Its main living area faces a walled courtyard, to picture-frame the sky and shield Biondo's clients from three-car-garage monstrosities. It's made of cast concrete, to honor the birthplace of Portland Cement. Biondo likes to embrace nature's challenges.

His Pes- ly split personality. The concrete Grossman Gallery in the Williams building suits Biondo's intricate, tactile models, which are perched on concrete blocks. The floor is intriguingly rolled up to create a pit for an audience-participation project. It's framed by a wall of concrete blocks arranged, like the building's bricks, in a wild wave. Joseph Biondo, architectural drawings, photographs and models, through Nov.

30, Grossman Gallery, Williams Visual Arts Building, Lafayette College, 243 N. 3rd Easton. Biondo will lecture at 4:30 p.m. today in Room 108 of Lafayette's Williams Center for the Arts, High and Hamilton streets. At 7 p.m.

he will lead a discussion and audience-participation project in the gallery. 610-330-5831. SURREALIST SHOWCASE Prints and original paintings by surrealists, abstractionists and traditionalists will be offered for a major discount on Saturday at Thurston Royce, a gallery in the office of a real-estate corporation. Three drawings are by Giorgio de Chirico, star of a significant show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Rene Magritte is represented by five pieces, including the iconic, poster-friendly "The Son of Man." Courtesy of Lafayette College WILLIAMS VISUAL ARTS BUILDING at Lafayette College houses an exhibit of the work of Joseph Biondo, a Bethlehem native.

It is also part of the exhibit The architect designed the building. This is sleek architecture that's not for the meek. With a steel, mat-like roof floating over a louvered box, a summer cabin in the Adirondacks resembles a jacked-up Composed of opposing con-crete-and-galvanized sheds, a vacation house above Lake Winola, Wyoming County, is a 1950s split level with a serious The 60 works were acquired by accountant Bruce Loch, director of Thurston Royce. He was a collector of glass sculpture until four years ago, when he bought "Art of the Deal," a typically spooky, sneaky print by Mark Kostabi. It led him to purchase works by de Chirico, Dali and other Kostabi mentors.

Since then Loch has been on the lookout for surrealist up-and-comers. One is Vladimir Kush, a Russian native living in Hawaii. He likes to turn a pear into a mandolin, and kissing lovers into the clasps of a purse. ART PAGE 9 St John's United Church of Christ 181 S. Broad Nazareth presents A The Annual Robert H.

The Bel Canto Children's Choir Directed by Joy Hirokowa Sunday, Nov. 17, 2002 at 3:00 p.m. Ticket Donation $8 free Childcare by Prior Reservation Xl Only (Deadline November 8) -J For More Information Call Church Office 1 610-758-0893 i A kowitz House, in Thurmont, is a semi-lodge banked around a forested mountain. The roof is supported by logs set into the plunging hill. The chimney is a waterfall of harum-scarum stones.

The living room has a wall of logs facing a wall of windows. Call the style Adirondack Mod-erne. iio tiOJ. nit muwuk. call Fisie-tnee yom students' writing sExills! The Morning Call's Newspaper In Education (NIE) program is offering a new super-sized curriculum called "Writing Skills" for the 2002-2003 school year.

7 Filled with 40 NIE activities tied to national and state standards plus 18 activity sheets, "Writing Skills" is for grades four and up. For more information on this new curriculum and how you can get newspapers for your classroom, .,11 -a CM 770 1101 ian wiiuy Duiiiiiaoiuiu M-F 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m..