|
PAST EXHIBITS
Summer 2007 Exhibitions
May 17 through August 23
Main Second Floor Galleries
Kiff Slemmons
Re:Pair and Imperfection
First floor Gallery A
Kip Deeds: Towards a 49th State
First Floor Gallery B
Jessica Doyle: Intimate Environments
Third Floor Gallery
Emily Royer: Construction Sites
Satellite Gallery
The Rittenhouse Hotel, 210 W. Rittenhouse Square, 3rd Floor
Carol McHarg: Design Against Nature
Second Floor Galleries
Kiff Slemmons
Re:Pair and Imperfection
 |
Kiff Slemmons
Re: Keith
Lewis, Osorio Lobo
Pendant
Silver, beeswax, mouse bones
Courtesy of the artist |
During 2004
and 2005, metal artist Kiff Slemmons asked 18 of her
colleagues to send her fragments of their work that they
considered imperfect, broken or no longer usable. In her
request letter she emphasized that she did not intend to
"fix" the piece but instead to use the fragment as a
starting point for an entirely new piece that would be
hers but with respect for the ideas and work of the
contributing artist. Contributors include: Bettina
Dittlman, Sandra Enterline, Thomas Gentile, Lisa
Gralnick, Gary Griffin, Daniel Jocz, Esther Knobel,
Keith Lewis, Otto Künzli, Bruce Metcalf, Myra
Mimlitsch-Gray, Ramona Solberg, June Schwarcz, Joyce
Scott, Rachelle Thiewes, Terry Turrell, J. Fred Woell
and Joe Wood.
In Slemmons words: “This project resulted from
a long term fascination with the irony that, in an art form
obsessed with perfection, the imperfect can often be what
produces vitality, “ and with each piece, Slemmons had to decide
how she could interpret the notion of imperfection. In some
cases, she used the fragment intact, in others, she trimmed or
reformed it. In two instances she made works based on ideas
suggested by the fragment without actually using it. “In
addition to my fascination with imperfection, I needed to
understand in a more complete way what we mean by originality or
collaboration or appropriation. These little broken or
incomplete objects pushed me into areas of my imagination that I
had never visited. I normally start to work with a clear idea,
but this project forced me to begin with incoherence and
mystery.”
 |
Kiff Slemmons Re: Daniel
Jocz, Warning
Three Pins
Silver, steel shell casings
Courtesy of the artist |
By the end of the second year Slemmons had
created 30 works—pins, necklaces, and rings. The works are
displayed in boxes and accompanied by photographs of the
original fragments. The boxes were made by Karin Vance and Kim
Kopp, and are covered with handmade wild cotton and linen paper
made by Arte Papel Oaxaca, a paper atelier near Oaxaca, Mexico,
where Slemmons has worked as a visiting artist. A photograph of
each fragment in its original form is also on display.
 |
Kiff Slemmons
Re: Bettina
Dittlman, Aranea
Pin
Silver, enameled copper
Courtesy of the artist |
Over the past thirty years, Kiff Slemmons has
become known for creating jewelry as rich in concept and meaning
as it is varied in form and material. Her work is infused with
historical, cultural and literary references. Slemmons has
redefined for herself and colleagues the decorative and
historical traditions of jewelry, preferring the potential of
non-precious materials and the supremacy of concept to produce
thought provoking and often humorous pieces.
Slemmons' work has been published regularly in
American Craft and Metalsmith magazines, as well as in a number
of anthologies of American and European jewelry. Most well known
for conceptual work with non-precious materials and found
objects, she has recently worked with a local group of artisans
in Oaxaca, Mexico, to produce paper jewelry. Slemmons received
her BA in Art and French from the University of Iowa in 1968.
Her undergraduate studies included a year at the Sorbonne in
Paris. Self taught as a metalsmith, she has exhibited nationally
and internationally for over 30 years, with nine solo
exhibitions, and many group shows. Her work can be found in
numerous museum collections, including The Museum of Arts and
Design in New York, London's Victoria & Albert Museum, and the
Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C.
The original exhibition was produced by the
Chicago Cultural Center and a 64 page illustrated catalog with
an essay by Tacey Rosolowski accompanies the exhibition.
First floor Gallery A
Kip Deeds: Towards a 49th State
Storytelling in both words and in pictures, the works of
Kip Deeds weave a narrative based on continuing themes
the artist has been exploring throughout his career.
Mingling personal observations and experiences with
history—Deeds often utilizes a place or a story
entailing a journey as the impetus for an entire series
of works. For Towards a 49th State, Deeds makes his
final destination the state of Alaska—a journey
influenced by an earlier series involving what the
artist has termed the Arkadelphia. The Arkadelphia was
inspired by a sign he had seen while traveling through
Alabama. Appropriating the name, he symbolized the
Arkadelphia as an actual an ark, which ultimately served
in the pervious series as well as in Towards a 49th
State as a metaphor of traveling through history. In his
new series, the Arkadelphia makes the voyage to Alaska—a
state that has been romanticized throughout history as a
place of challenging and heroic journeys in the
unspoiled wilderness.
 |
Kip Deeds, Alasktic #1,
2006
Watercolor, ink and pencil
17 x 14 -1/2 inches
Courtesy of the artist. |
Aesthetically influenced by such artists as
Alice Neel, William T. Wiley, Edward Hicks, and Roger Brown,
Deeds employs the process of thinking and creating
simultaneously, resulting in an image that is layered both
physically and metaphorically. Employing prints, collage,
graphite, paint, and watercolor, Deeds combines his expertise as
a print maker with a more evocative and spontaneous application
of additional materials directly to the surface of the final
work. This layering allows the artist to generate an alternative
vision of a place or an event—one generated by the encounter of
history from the artist’s own point of view.
Kip Deeds received a B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art, Temple
University and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. Deed has had solo exhibitions at: Next Door
Gallery, Leland, MI (2006); Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial,
Philadelphia (2005); Hunt Gallery, Webster University, St.
Louis, MO (2005); Wakeley Gallery, Illinois Wesleyan University,
Bloomington, IL (2004); Sykes Gallery, Millersville University,
Millersville, PA (2004); Hutchins Gallery, The Lawrenceville
School, Lawrenceville, NJ (2003); and The Blue Shirt Project,
Birmingham, AL (2001). Among many other group exhibitions, Deeds
work has been featured most recently at: The Boston Printmakers
North American Print Biennial, Boston University, Boston, MA
(2007); International Print Center, New York, NY (2006); Perkins
Center for the Arts, Moorestown, NJ (2006); Springfield Art
Museum, Springfield, MO (2006); Vox Populi, Philadelphia (2006);
Arcadia University, Glenside, PA (2006); Art in City Hall,
Philadelphia (2006); Spector Gallery, Philadelphia (2006);
Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, Lancaster, PA (2005);
The Print Center, Philadelphia (2005); City without Walls,
Newark, NJ (2004); and Ben Shahn Gallery, William Patterson
University, Wayne, NJ (2004). Deeds teaches Printmaking,
Etching, and Lithography and is the Master Printer at Princeton
University, Princeton, NJ. He has also taught at Tyler School of
Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, Interlochen Center for the
Arts, Interlochen, MI, and the University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia. He has had residencies at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs,
NY; Frans Masereel Centre, Kasterlee, Belgium; Vermont Studio
Center; Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis, MN;
Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, NY; and the Ucross
Foundation, Ucross, WY.
First Floor Gallery B
Jessica Doyle: Intimate Environments
Mingling fantasy with reality, the collective work of
Jessica Doyle is a combination of drawings, paintings,
photography, and video that all explore both common and
spectacular events in the artist’s own life. Rituals,
places, people, dreams, and moments of revelation are
recreated—fusing fact and fiction onto delicately drawn
images, photographic and video self-portraits, and
expressive uses of color seen in both works on paper and
paintings. While the photographs and videos seem to
evoke the immediacy inherent to the medium, the drawings
and paintings often suggest the depiction of an event
from a vague and emotionally charge memory—equally
honest in their depiction as the images instantaneously
captured by camera or video. Whether real or imagined,
Doyle’s work expresses an authenticity as well as a
vulnerability, providing uncensored access to some of
the artist’s most private moments and thoughts.
 |
Jessica Doyle, Orange
Sex Dream, 2006
Ink and acrylic on paper
22 x 30 inches
Courtesy of the artist. |
Doyle received a B.F.A. from Tyler School of
Art, Temple University and an M.F.A. in painting from the
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Recent solo
exhibitions include: Long Gone Sally (two-person exhibition),
Pageant Soloveev, Philadelphia (2006); Being, 40th Street Artist
in Residence, Airspace, Philadelphia (2005); and Exist, Project
Room, Philadelphia (2003). Doyle has been included in recent
group exhibitions at: Ad Hoc Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2007);
Arcadia University Art Gallery, Glenside, PA (2006); Boston
Center for the Arts, Boston, MA (2005); ThreeWalls, Chicago, IL
(2005); Ice Box Project Space, Philadelphia (2003 and 2005);
Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia (2004); 65 Hope Street
Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY (2004); Daniel Silverstein
Gallery, New York, NY (2003); and Project Room, Philadelphia
(2003). Doyle has had film screenings at: Brooklyn Underground
Film Festival d.u.m.b.o., Brooklyn, NY (annually from 2002
through 2005); Remote Lounge, New York, NY (2003); and the
Project Room, Philadelphia (2003). Doyle lives and works in
Philadelphia.
Third Floor Gallery
Emily Royer: Construction Sites
Combining simply drawn forms with a sporadic application
of gouache, Emily Royer’s work examines what she
considers to be the omissions that people make in the
perception of self in relationship to the outside world.
Literally flattening space and denying traditional uses
of perspective, Royer approaches her subjects from
multiple points of view, creating interesting
juxtapositions between foreground and background and
allowing the viewer to meander through the work without
a point of emphasis. By providing multiple points of
entry to the unfolding narrative, the viewer is made
aware of the constructed nature of selfhood and
environment, questioning an objective and universal
means of perception.
 |
Emily Royer, Untitled,
2006
Pencil and gouache on paper
32 x 18inches
Courtesy of the artist.. |
Royer received a BFA in Illustration from the
University of the Arts in 2004. Exhibitions include: Works on
Paper, Arcadia University, Glenside, PA (2006); New Voices, Rack
and Hamper Gallery, New York, NY (2006); Fidem, Sexial, Portugal
and Philadelphia (2006); For the Birds/Show Us What You’re
Hiding, and Seeing Red, both held at Studio C, Philadelphia
(2005); Big Art Show, Brooklyn, NY (2005); Ink Like Gallery,
Philadelphia (2005); Morals, Fables and @?# Like That, Koresh
School of Dance, Philadelphia (2004); and The Elys: Senior
Thesis Show, Hamilton Hall University of the Arts, Philadelphia
(2004). Royer has recently taught art at St. Peter’s School and
lives and works in Philadelphia.
Satellite Gallery
The Rittenhouse Hotel, 210 W. Rittenhouse Square, 3rd Floor
Carol McHarg: Design Against Nature
Employing her background as a landscape
architect, Carol McHarg engages the subjects of geology,
cartography, and land development as well the subject of
landscape in the history of art on equal terms. McHarg asks the
viewer to question the impact of engineering and design on the
environment, while questioning the accepted formal conventions
of landscape painting established in 19th century Romanticism.
From an exaggeration of perspective to the denial of perspective
itself--combined with flattened symbolic elements derived from
cartography--McHarg alters the landscape to become a material
manifestation of the relations between humans and their
environments, and a product of the dialectic of biophysical
environments and culture.
 |
Carol McHarg, Design
verses Nature, 2005
Mixed media
42 x 69 inches
Courtesy of the artist. |
McHarg received a M.A. in Landscape
Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and attended
the Studio for Advanced Studies from the Pennsylvania Academy of
the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. McHarg also studied painting under
the artist Osvaldo Romberg from 1998 to 2001. Recent selected
exhibitions include: Portraits, Finalist in Juried Online
Exhibition (2007); Digitations, ARTROM Gallery, Rome, Italy
(2006); The Post Modern Landscape, Brad Cooper Gallery, Tampa,
FL (2006), Just Paint, ARTROM Gallery, Online Exhibition (2006);
The National Arts Club, Online Exhibition (2006). Her work has
been included at: The Supper Club, Rome, Italy (2004); The White
Box, Philadelphia (2002); and the Pennsylvania Academy of the
Fine Arts, Philadelphia (1999). McHarg has a studio in
Philadelphia and commutes to New York to teach landscape design
at Columbia University. Her work is in several collections in
Italy and the United States. She is the author of the best
selling book Nature’s Design, published by Rodale Press, in
which she explains how to design with nature.
top
|
