Tracing the Sky: Steve Poleskie’s Aerial Theater on Paper

Marywood University’s Maslow Study Gallery for Contemporary Art will host Tracing the Sky: Steve Poleskie’s Aerial Theater on Paper, an exhibition celebrating the vibrant works on paper created during Poleskie’s most celebrated period of artistic innovation (1968–1998).

The exhibition runs from October 9, 2025 through January 16, 2026, with a public opening reception on Thursday, October 9, from 5 to 7 pm. The project is curated by Ryan Ward and Evan D. Williams and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog, produced in collaboration with Marywood University’s Aviation and Graphic Design students.

Artist and writer Stephen “Steve” Poleskie (1938–2019) is best remembered as the originator of Aerial Theater – a radical fusion of art and aerobatics in which he piloted a smoke-trailing biplane through choreographed maneuvers, creating ephemeral drawings in the sky. Accompanied at times by music, dancers, or parachutists, Poleskie’s airborne performances were hailed by critics.

While the performances themselves vanished into air, Poleskie developed a remarkable body of works on paper – screenprints, etchings, collages incorporating flight maps, and richly colored drawings – that remain as vivid records of his aerial artistry. These works translate the drama of the sky into two dimensions, capturing the energy of flight, the graphic power of wing and smoke, and the imaginative reach of an artist who made the heavens his canvas.

Born in Pringle, Pennsylvania, Poleskie was a self-taught artist who rose to prominence in New York in the 1960s as the founder of Chiron Press, the first fine-art screenprinting studio in the city, where artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Helen Frankenthaler made prints. In 1968 he moved to Ithaca to teach at Cornell University, where he learned to fly and began the experiments that became Aerial Theater. His career embodies the restless invention of an artist who reimagined what drawing could mean – on paper and in the sky.

The exhibition at Marywood University brings together a selection of these rarely seen works on paper, immersing viewers in the visual language of flight, abstraction, and performance. It offers an opportunity to revisit Poleskie’s visionary art-making in the air and to reflect on the enduring legacy of an artist who quite literally expanded the boundaries of the picture plane.

Exhibition Information:
Tracing the Sky: Steve Poleskie’s Aerial Theater on Paper
Maslow Study Gallery for Contemporary Art, Marywood University

October 9, 2025 – January 16, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 9, 5–7 pm
Gallery hours and additional programming information available at:
marywood.edu/community/galleries or rward@marywood.edu