Winter 2012 Exhibition

Second Floor Galleries:
A Sense of Place
Marian Bijlenga, Marcia Docter, Pat Hickman, Ke-Sook Lee, Amy Orr,
Barbara Lee Smith, Wendeanne Ke`aka Stitt, Bhakti Ziek
Guest Curator: Bruce D. Hoffman
February 2 - April 21, 2012

Presented in conjunction with

First Floor Galleries:
Sondra Sherman: Found Subjects
Andrea Donnelly: Binary
January 26 - April 21, 2012

The Philadelphia Art Alliance is pleased to present three exhibitions opening in Winter 2012: “Found Subjects” by Sondra Sherman, “Binary” by Andrea Donnelly, and “A Sense of Place,” a group exhibition of contemporary textiles curated by Bruce Hoffman in conjunction with FiberPhiladelphia.

A Sense of Place

The Art Alliance will serve as a major site of FiberPhiladelphia, presenting “A Sense of Place,” curated by Bruce Hoffman. Hoffman, a former Director of Snyderman-Works Gallery, explores the theme of location understood as both a physical space and as a site in memory and experience.

Eight women textile artists are represented, each hailing from a different technical and aesthetic tradition in fiber: Bhakti Ziek, Barbara Lee Smith, Wendeanne Ke'aka Stitt, Amy Orr, Ke-Sook Lee, Pat Hickman, Marcia Docter, and Marian Bejlinga.

Each work in this exhibition is connected in a physical or metaphorical way to a specific locale. Ke-Sook Lee’s work Green Hammock is constructed from US Army Nurse’s uniforms dating from the Vietnam War. Lee, who lived through the Korean War as a child, found the uniforms at an Army supply store, and recalls being struck by the way they were torn, marked, and missing buttons, and thus reflected the experience of the nurses who wore them. The form of the hammock suggests a temporary structure for relaxation (one which can be installed almost anywhere) but the fabric’s own storied history connects the piece to a specific time and place. In their way, each work in “A Sense of Place” challenges the viewer to appreciate the literal manifestation of the work in front of them, and to imagine the time and place to which the work refers.

Hoffman’s selection of works that represent varied techniques and cultural traditions casts a wide and imaginative geographic net. Wendeanne Ke'aka Stitt’s work Niho Mano is a contemporary rendering of traditional Hawaiian kapa cloth made from tree bark. Pat Hickman’s piece River Teeth is comprised of the pieces of wood that resist decay when a tree dies and falls into a river. Hickman sources these "Teeth" from forests in Maine and assembles them into a grid, effectively “weaving” them together into a pattern in new physical context. At the opposite end of the spectrum, artist Amy Orr uses post-consumer waste to create three-dimensional works. Orr uses credit cards to literally clad the exterior of a doll’s house in her piece House of Cards, a work designed to highlight the way consumption literally encircles our homes with debt through the acquisition of unnecessary objects. Artist Marcia Docter responds to her experience of competing in the Iditarod sled race by assembling a mixed-media basket upon which perch an array of stuffed birds who appear to be watching video footage of the sled race in Alaska. These works address the themes of site and memory in unique ways and all employ fiber in ways both traditional and unexpected. The inclusion of found objects and tree bark alongside more familiar woven or quilted works demonstrates the expanding range of what “fiber art” can be.

Sondra Sherman: Found Subjects

"Found Subjects” is the first solo exhibition in Philadelphia by California-based metalsmith Sondra Sherman. For this project, Sherman has carved hollows into the pages of twelve vintage books and placed into the empty spaces a unique piece of jewelry inspired by the themes and illustrations of each book. Each book rests on a custom-designed lectern, evoking the atmosphere of a rare book room. This installation plays with the notion that a piece of jewelry is both a work of art on its own terms and an adornment for a person, and thus engenders different contexts in which to be appreciated and understood. While set into their books, each work is the “found subject” of that book, responding to an idea, phrase, or image in the book itself. Because each piece of jewelry can also be worn, the wearer of the piece – real or implied – can provide their own affective and aesthetic context for each piece as it is worn on the body.

Sondra Sherman was born and raised in Philadelphia and attended Tyler School of Art at Temple University. She received her MFA from the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, Germany. She currently resides in San Diego, CA, where she heads the Jewelry and Metalwork Program at San Diego State University. Sherman has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Tiffany Foundation Emerging Artists Fellowship and a Fulbright grant. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Arts and Design, the Racine Art Museum, the Renwick Gallery-National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, and the City Museum of Turnov, Czech Republic.

Andrea Donnelly: Binary

The Art Alliance is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Philadelphia by Richmond-based artist Andrea Donnelly. Donnelly creates large-scale woven works inspired by the form of inkblots, adapting the mirror image motif to a technique she has developed for weaving. She applies a monoprint to hand-woven cloth, then unweaves it, and reweaves it into two separate mirror images. She describes this process as a way of rendering the work “a literal record of its making, from the spontaneous application of dye and pigment onto the original cloth to the carefully controlled weaving process which creates the final bilateral image.” The human scale of her works make the viewer keenly aware of the physical act of weaving, lending a monumental quality and focus to an art form that is sometimes regarded as supplemental or merely decorative.

A Raleigh native, Andrea Donnelly received undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Art & Design from North Carolina State University in 2006. As a graduating senior, she was a recipient of the prestigious Windgate Fellowship. She returned to school for her MFA in Fibers, earning her degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2010. Andrea now lives, works, and weaves in Richmond, VA, where she has started a small business, Little Fool Handwoven Textiles, and writes the accompanying blog, little fool…(a small business romance).

Images:

Ke-Sook Lee, Green Hammock, Recycled Army Nurse Uniforms, Thread and mixed media, 2010

Sondra Sherman, Art in Everyday Life, Brooch: steel, nail polish; vintage book, 2010

Andrea Donnelly, Body Blot #1, handwoven cotton with pigment, 2011

For more information about Philadelphia Art Alliance Exhibitions, contact Melissa Caldwell at 215-545-4302 or mcaldwell@philartalliance.org.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Admission Fee:
$5 for adults
$3 for students and seniors
Pay what you wish on Fridays.