Lemuel, art quilt, 5.5′ x 5′, Carolyn Harper, MUSE Gallery
Look Me In The Eye: Portraits of Homelessness
Carolyn Harper, MUSE Gallery
I am a Philadelphian and an artist with an upcoming exhibition in Old City Philadelphia at MUSE Gallery, “Look Me In The Eye: Portraits of Homelessness” is a show of large art quilts and oversized hand embroidered drawings that use personal stories of homeless individuals, Philadelphians, to inspire empowerment and create visibility of those who have been left behind by our society.
My work combines art and action to produce meaningful social impact. The implementation of portraiture within quilting serves to empower the persons depicted, enabling them to see themselves through their own stories rather than qualifiers such as “jobless” or “homeless”. Through conversations and active listening, I learn about the individual stories of these overlooked and ignored community members. The large scale work forces the audience to confront images of people they would rather not see, and bear witness to the stories behind them.
Carolyn Harper
This work is extremely relevant to the times we live in, and I am grateful to The Puffin Foundation for providing me with a grant in support of my work. The Artist Reception will take place at MUSE Gallery, 52 N. 2nd Street, Old City Philadelphia, on Friday, November 1st from 5 – 8 pm. The exhibition runs through the end of November; Gallery hours are Wednesday – Sunday from 12-5.
Mission: Established late in 1977, the Muse Gallery is an artists’ cooperative dedicated to encourage and promote its members’ artistic expression through abstract, conceptual and representational forms. Reflecting an aesthetic that awakens awareness, the Muse Gallery affirms the shared experience of art between the artist and the community. Please see the membership page to view a detailed history of Muse. To join the Gallery: Muse Gallery is always interested in potential new members. We are often fully staffed and maintain a waiting list. Please visit our membership page.
Thank you to Carolyn Harper for the content of this post.
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Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Borges, Musa, and Khidir, 2019, Archival Inkjet Print, courtesy the artist.
Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Participatory Art Project on Learning, Unlearning, and Play, Haverford College
Last spring, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, as part of her Katowitz Radin residency at the Brooklyn Public Library, orchestrated a sprawling 120-foot site-specific text mural and interactive public art experience at its central branch on Grand Army Plaza. The project, known as Scoring the Stacks, invited visitors to explore wandering as a mode of learning by performing a set of instructions contained in a series of “scores” that, rather than depicting musical notes to follow, featured directions for language-based actions that could be taken throughout the space. For example, participants were invited to “Find a blue book. Read the last page and write down a word you’d like to use in a future conversation” and record their findings on carbon paper. Using the carbon copies of participant’s notations, a series of public programming in collaboration with artists Morgan Bassichis, An Duplan, and Brass Burlesque, led participants in the transformation of these notations into poems, songs, and dance movements.
Now Rasheed is undertaking her second experiment in this ongoing series at Haverford College’s newly renovated and renamed Lutnick Library. Scoring the Stacks (Experiment II) will turn Haverford College’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery into a satellite of Lutnick Library, offering visitors space for their own research, reflection, experimentation, and collaboration inspired by an installation of Rasheed’s recent work. Viewers will be invited to use a new set of scores to explore chance-based pathways through the library, gallery, arboretum, and other institutional spaces and collections as a way to encounter new ideas and build relationships between seemingly unconnected concepts.
Scoring the Stacks (Experiment II) likeits first iteration, gains its momentum from the concept of “primitive hypertext”—a term coined by Black science-fiction writer Octavia Butler, who has described it as a learning ethos attentive to the possibilities of a meandering, non-linear, associative, and agile process of making sense of the world. To engage in an act of “primitive hypertext” is to seek out opportunities to map generative relationships between wide-ranging ideas, words, objects, and experiences.
Rasheed, a former high school history teacher, is interested in how people learn and the role of wandering, de-accelerating, and nurturing tangential connections in building a radical ethos of learning that prioritizes process over product. As such, her scores “encourage visitors to wander, to slow down, and to learn by discovery,” as she told Artforum. Prints of her recent work will be on display in the gallery, but the exhibit is experienced in the “performances” of its 10 scores in the library and across campus. The finished, notated scores will be collected and reassembled in a book created by Rasheed and released towards the end of the exhibit’s eight-week engagement on campus.
Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a Brooklyn-based artist and learner from East Palo Alto. Her sprawling inquiry has led her to develop work that explores experimental poetry, reference texts, intimate intertextuality, techniques of non-institutional archiving, anecdotes of religious syncretism, histories of human as well as non-human communication methods, enclosure systems, and ecological studies. Rasheed makes her inquiries visible through an ecosystem of iterative and provisional projects including sprawling, Xerox-based “architecturally-scaled collages” (frieze magazine, winter 2018); interactive publications; large-scale text banner installations; digital archives; lecture-performances; library interventions; poems/poetic gestures; and other forms yet to be determined. Rasheed has exhibited at the 2017 Venice Biennale, ICA Philadelphia, Pinchuk Art Center, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, New Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, Bronx Museum, Brooklyn Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and The Kitchen, among others. She is the author of two artist books, An Alphabetical Accumulation of Approximate Observations (Endless Editions, 2019) and No New Theories (Printed Matter, forthcoming 2019).
Scoring the Stacks(Experiment II) will be on view Oct. 25 through Dec. 15 at Haverford College’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery and Lutnick Library. Join us for an artist’s talk and opening reception Friday, Oct. 25, from 4:30–7:30 p.m. at Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery. A book release and discussion will be held Wednesday, Dec. 4, at 4:30 p.m. in Lutnick Library 200. For further details: exhibits.haverford.edu/scoringthestacks.
Scoring the Stacks was conceived by Kameelah Janan Rasheed in its first iteration at the Brooklyn Public Library, curated by Cora Fisher. This is the second experiment in the artist’s ongoing series. Support for the exhibition and programs is provided by the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities and Haverford College Libraries.
Overseen by the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities and located in Whitehead Campus Center, the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery is open Monday through Friday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays 12 p.m. to 5 p.m., and Wednesdays until 8 p.m. For more information, contact Matthew Seamus Callinan, associate director of the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, VCAM, and campus exhibitions, at (610) 896-1287 or mcallina@haverford.edu, or visit the exhibitions program website: www.haverford.edu/exhibits.
Haverford College is located at 370 Lancaster Avenue, Haverford, Pa., 19041.
Thank you to Rebecca Raber for the content of this post.
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Four Must-Experience Art Events This Fall In Philadelphia
Moon Viewing Platform by Nadia Hironaka, Matthew Suib and Eugene Lew, is part of Site/Sound: Revealing the Rail Park, through October 19, 2019.
by Arturo Varela
One-of-a-kind artistic installations and experiences: Philadelphia’s full of them in October. Visitors can enjoy three weekends of audio-visual stimulation along the footprint of the Rail Park; five Halloween-themed experiences by famed choreographer Brian Sanders; an eerie, three-dimensional Ghost Ship along the Delaware River; and a colorful display of spinning tops (large enough to spin humans) at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.
The best way to enjoy these and other fall happenings in Philly: the Visit Philly Overnight Hotel Package, offering free parking and other perks and bookable at visitphilly.com.
Site/Sound: Revealing the Rail Park – For three Saturdays in October, Philadelphia’s emergent Rail Park and its surrounding neighborhood hosts a new festival that combines audio-visual art installations and diverse musical performances that are all shaped by their surroundings. Taking place above and below city streets, the 20 performances and programs honor the past, present and future of the historic corridor along the famed Reading Railroad. The event is a collaboration between Friends of the Rail Park, Mural Arts Philadelphia and America Composers Forum, Philadelphia Chapter. Through October 19, 2019. Various locations between Vine & Spring Garden Streets, 9th & 18th Streets, muralarts.org
2nd Sanctuary: A Multi-Experience Halloween Attraction – Brian Sanders’ JUNK brings Halloween-inspired performances to 2nd Sanctuary, a 19th-century Victorian church in the city’s Graduate Hospital neighborhood. The five distinct experiences—all focused on the 1970s and all encouraging audience participation—include a virtual reality, live action tour; a modern dance performance; and an escape room (all three of which require separate tickets; other two experiences included with all ticket purchases). Through November 3, 2019. 2040 Christian Street, (267) 406-6080, briansandersjunk.com
Ghost Ship – A 90-foot, site-specific, 18th-century ghost ship appears after nightfall on the Delaware River between Race Street Pier and Pier 12 (near the Benjamin Franklin Bridge). The eerie, three-dimensional hologram, created by Biangle Studio, recalls the free and forced migration people made on these American waters. Visitors to the ship can also enjoy the River Beer Garden at Race Street Pier, featuring food from Lost Bread Co. Bakery and drink from Mainstay Independence Brewing Company. Through November 3, 2019. (215) 922-2386, delawareriverwaterfront.com
Los Trompos – The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts’ Commonwealth Plaza is filled with more color and movement than usual thanks to Los Trompos (translation: the spinning tops), a creation of Mexican designers Héctor Esrawe and Ignacio Cadena. The installation features 10 beautifully woven three-dimensional spinning tops of various shapes and sizes that showgoers can sit in and spin on—all in an effort to promote collaboration and community interaction. Through November 17, 2019. 300 S. Broad Street, (215) 893-1999, kimmelcenter.org
2nd Sanctuary: A Multi-Sensory Halloween Experience
VISIT PHILADELPHIA® is our name and our mission. As the region’s official tourism marketing agency, we build Greater Philadelphia’s image, drive visitation and boost the economy.
On Greater Philadelphia’s official visitor website and blog, visitphilly.com and uwishunu.com, visitors can explore things to do, upcoming events, themed itineraries and hotel packages. Compelling photography and videos, interactive maps and detailed visitor information make the sites effective trip-planning tools. Along with Visit Philly social media channels, the online platforms communicate directly with consumers. Travelers can also call and stop into the Independence Visitor Center for additional information and tickets.
Thank you to Arturo Varela for the content of this post.
The 3rd Street Gallery is pleased to present POST: All Together Now, an annual members exhibitionfeaturing painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, collage, mixed media, ceramic and fiber art. This group exhibition coincides with the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours: POST 2019, a program of the Center for Emerging Visual Artists and one of the premier open studio tour events in the country. As aCommunity Partner with POST 2019, 3rd Street Gallery increases awareness of the arts in the wider community and strengthens bonds with fellow artists, local businesses, and neighborhood organizations.
South Galleries POST Tour 2019: Saturday October 12, 12-6pm
Gallery Hours: Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, 12 – 6 pm
About 3rd Street Gallery: The Gallery has been in existence since 1978, opening in its first space on the corner of 3rd and Bainbridge in South Philadelphia. As one of the oldest artist-run, fine art galleries in the City it has been home to thousands of Philadelphia artists. The members are a diverse group of artists of all ages and backgrounds. They are multigenerational, have advanced degrees in the arts as well as the sciences, work in diverse media from the traditional to the digital, range from the classically trained to the self-taught and include arts educators, award-winners, and artists whose work is collected by museums as well as by corporate and private collectors.
About the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours: Each October, the Tours span 20 unique Philadelphia neighborhoods, feature over 300 participants, engage audiences topping 30,000, and literally put Philadelphia’s professional artists “on the map” for locals and tourists alike. As an annual Fall festival of visual art, the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours includes self guided tours of artist studios and related creative workspaces, gallery exhibitions, demonstrations and workshops, artist talks, receptions, and guided tours.
Everything Counts, Ana Vizcara Rankin at Kitchen Table Gallery
World Map (Coffee), Mixed-Media Collage, 2.25 x 3 inches, Ana Vizcara Rankin, 2016
Ana Vizcara Rankin’s Viking Mill Studio, located in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, is filled with her mixed-media maps and new works that will be exhibited in her solo exhibition, “Everything Counts” at Kitchen Table Gallery beginning September 20, 2019. Ana is best known for her large-scale world maps inspired by migration patterns, colonization, and climate change. With Antarctica often oriented at the top and the Arctic Circle positioned at the bottom of the artwork, these maps challenge our notions of reality.
Ana points out, “It’s really very self-centered of us to think that we can perfectly and logically orient the entire solar system. There is no clear up or down in the universe.” We are now confronted with new information, a previously unseen, nonbinary conceptualization of our existing world view.
Elucidation of the unseen seems to link Ana’s early drawings and paintings to her new work. Blockchain Bootstrap, a large-scale, mixed-media, unframed canvas cascading from ceiling to floor in Ana’s studio, is one example that will be exhibited in “Everything Counts” at Kitchen Table Gallery. Blockchain Bootstrap, completed in 2019, measures 196 x 96 inches and was created with metal leaf, tar, acrylic, graphite, and charcoal. Large, map-like areas of grey tones ranging from white to black are linked through extensive layers of mark making. Drips, lines, splatters, paint strokes, carefully applied metal leaf, and blocks of drawing that resemble a binary language or program code become a materialization of the elusive nanoseconds or hashtags that link together successive commands and blocks of data. Such links are activated every time you boot up your laptop or digital device. Through careful observation of digital imagery and engagement with the process of drawing or painting, in Blockchain Bootstrap, Ana strives to better understand the split seconds that successively make up our virtual worlds.
Ana’s attempts to understand complex and split-second phenomena are materializations of occurrences and abstract theories typically hidden from our immediate sight. Her Dispersion Drawings, including Bubble Chamber 2 and Bubble Chamber 7, are small graphite and gesso drawings on reversed drafting film that are comprised of light dots, lines, and spirals on darker backgrounds. These delicate works, rendered in grey tones, map out subatomic activity ignited inside bubble chambers, an obsolete technology used to detect electrically charged particles. The chambers contain liquid heated to a level that allows bubbles to form, and their movements are mapped using a large-format film camera. In keeping with Ana’s interest in deconstructing binary theories, quantum mechanics opposes earlier models that describe subatomic structures solely as particles. The dispersion drawings serve as a map or materialization of the abstract theory.
The dispersion drawings extend to astronomical activity only detectable via high-powered telescopes. Crab Nebula is a 24 x 24 inch gesso and graphite drawing on reversed drafting film mounted on panel. Scattered white marks move forward and backward against a dark background or universe to unveil the ongoing process of a supernova exploding and dispersing into space. Once again, in her quest to better understand the world through the process of making, Ana draws our attention to that which occurs, but escapes our vision.
As our studio visit came to an end, I asked Ana if she has always been drawn to the unseen. Describing herself as a chatty child, she recounted one particularly talkative day at the age of four when her grandfather suggested, “Ana, why don’t you try to draw silence?” Ana stayed with that drawing for a long time, illustrating the silence her grandfather sought. She smiled and let me know, “My grandfather held on to the drawing and I was able to see it as an adult. I guess I’m still trying to draw silence.”
Ana’s mixed-media paintings and drawings will be on exhibit in “Everything Counts” at Kitchen Table GallerySeptember 20 to October 6th, 2019. You’re invited to the Opening Reception Friday, September 20, 2019, 6:00 to 9:00 pm.
Crab Nebula (dispersion diagram), gesso and graphite on drafting film, reversed, mounted on panel, 24×24 inches, 2019
Ana Vizcara Rankin is an Uruguayan American artist based in Philadelphia. She holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and a BA in art history from Temple University. Her work has been exhibited internationally and throughout the United States, including at The Brandywine River Museum of Art and the Embassy of Uruguay in Washington DC. Ana is the recipient of numerous awards including the Judy McGregor Caldwell Purchase Prize, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Essie Baron Memorial Award, Temple University, the Billikopf Award, Temple University, the Gundersheimer Merit Award, Temple University, and 1st Prize Sister Cities International, Stillwater, OK. Her work is held in international public, corporate, and private collections. You can learn more about Ana and her art at avrankin.com.
Thank you to Paula Cahill for the content of this post.
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