Category Archives: Philadelphia Art Galleries

Philadelphia art galleries DoN has visited.

Jed Williams Studio, Halloween Open Studio Party

Jed Williams Studio, Halloween Open Studio Party, 615 Bainbridge St, Philadelphia, October 21, 5:00 – 7:00.

“The artist  “Knox” Peters will have her work up until Nov. 21st.  Visiting hours during this show are Saturdays 5-7pm and by appointment. To make an appointment call 267 570 7520 or DM me on Instagram, Messenger or at jedmwilliams@gmail.com Hope to see you at the show!”

Jed Williams, Sophie “Knox” Peters and Lily Gardner

HALLOWEEN OPEN STUDIO PARTY at Jed Williams Studio
HALLOWEEN OPEN STUDIO PARTY at Jed Williams Studio
HALLOWEEN OPEN STUDIO PARTY at Jed Williams Studio
Jed Williams Studio, Halloween Open Studio Party, 615 Bainbridge St, Philadelphia
HALLOWEEN OPEN STUDIO PARTY at Jed Williams Studio
Jed Williams Studio, Halloween Open Studio Party, 615 Bainbridge St, Philadelphia
HALLOWEEN OPEN STUDIO PARTY at Jed Williams Studio
Jed Williams Studio, Halloween Open Studio Party, 615 Bainbridge St, Philadelphia
HALLOWEEN OPEN STUDIO PARTY at Jed Williams Studio
Jed Williams Studio, Halloween Open Studio Party, 615 Bainbridge St, Philadelphia
HALLOWEEN OPEN STUDIO PARTY at Jed Williams Studio
Jed Williams Studio, Halloween Open Studio Party, 615 Bainbridge St, Philadelphia

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John James Pron, PHILLY AND ME: for better or worse, for richer or poorer…


“PHILLY AND ME:  FOR BETTER OR WORSE…FOR RICHER OR POORER…”

CERULEAN ARTS GALLERY 1355 Ridge Ave, Philadelphia 267-514-8647 www.ceruleanarts.com
My solo show of 20 rendered collages is displayed at Cerulean from 5 Jul thru 30 Jul 2023. The In-person reception is Sat 8 Jul 2-5 pm and the virtual tour & talk is Weds 19 Jul 2023 at 6pm (must zoom register. Gallery hours are Weds thru Fri 10m-6pm, Sat & Suns 12pm thru 6pm. I may also be at the gallery several Wednesdays. Welcome to come visit.

Theme: As a lifelong Philadelphian (mostly), I explore aspects of the city I love as well as worry about, look at its extraordinary-though checkered- history, and present ideas and images for its future. As an architect and teacher, I can’t stop commenting, pencils in hand.
MY PHILLY…for better or worse, for richer or poorer…

JOHN JAMES PRON:  ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a lifelong Philadelphian- mostly.  I was born in Northern Liberties, raised in the Northeast’s Oxford Circle, rented apartments in West Philadelphia and have lived for over fifty years right across the city’s boundary at Cheltenham Avenue.  I went to Philly schools- grammar, high school, undergraduate and graduate.  And I worked all of my professorial life in North Philadelphia.   My wife has long been intimately connected to this city’s healthcare community and both daughters attended Philadelphia universities.  


“PHILLY AND ME:  FOR BETTER OR WORSE…FOR RICHER OR POORER…”

I am also an architect by profession- certainly a creative artist, but one who was trained to balance my willful imagination with an ingrained moral and ethical responsibility to improve the lives of people, of the health of the community, the viability of cities and indeed the survival of this planet.  For almost 40 years, I was fulltime professor in Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture, nurturing students to believe in themselves as creative forces but also to take responsibility for bettering the world.   In this case, the artist is also a problem-solver. In my design practice and teaching, I specialized in ‘adaptive reuse’- preserving the essential character of a building (its ‘soul’), while adjusting spaces and functions for changing needs.  


“PHILLY AND ME:  FOR BETTER OR WORSE…FOR RICHER OR POORER…”

And so, in this solo gallery show, my mode of expression is the juxtaposition of existing images by others (photos or lithographs, archival or current) against my hand-drawn “reimaginings” of the place, the usage, or the meaning.  It’s a both/and strategy.   While it does make for interesting and unusual images to display, what is more important is that I am using my architectural-art skills to raise awareness of critical issues affecting human lives, even advocating for important social changes.  And so, along with the needed information, I am seeking to make an emotional impact on the viewer through my graphics. 


“PHILLY AND ME:  FOR BETTER OR WORSE…FOR RICHER OR POORER…”

Picasso did just that in his monumental Guernica- maybe the most powerful anti-war painting in history.  More recently, visual artists such as Keith Haring, Banksy and Ai Weiwei do the same on contemporary issues.  The viewer may appreciate the artistic qualities, but one is also asked make a personal decision over the content: take a stand, get involved, connect to  others, contribute as you can.  Do something.

You can view my professional and academic career (including past gallery shows, architectural designs, lectures, etc) and my bio on my website  www.johnjamespron.com  


“PHILLY AND ME:  FOR BETTER OR WORSE…FOR RICHER OR POORER…”

“PHILLY AND ME:  FOR BETTER OR WORSE…FOR RICHER OR POORER…”

This is a city that I love- its parks and neighborhoods, its grand public buildings and cultural institutions, its superlative universities and breathtaking skyscrapers.  I also love its diversity…old with young, residents and visitors, extraordinary festivals near quiet enclaves, polished gentility and in-your-face grit.  A city of many races, many backgrounds, many beliefs. But I also fret about this city: the things that tear it apart, the endemic problems growing ever larger, the social behaviors that destroy unity and civility.  Here are my pleasures as well as my concerns, my savoring of its (sometimes checkered) past, my images suggesting a brighter future.  Warnings and wishes….I can only hope the new next mayor can rise to the challenge.

Thank you to John James Pron for the content of this post.

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John Singletary – Through Lines/Fault Lines

John Singletary - Through Lines/Fault Lines
John Singletary, Still Frame from Traces, 22:45 Minute OLED Video/Sound Installation

John Singletary – Through Lines/Fault Lines

The Gallery at Penn College (a Penn State Affiliate) 

Room 303, The Madigan Library, 1 College Ave., Williamsport, PA, 17701

On View Until March 23rd, 2023

Closing Reception and Artist Talk

Wednesday, March 22nd, 4:00-7:00 PM

Press Contact:

Cindy Davis Meixel 

Writer/Photo Editor

T 570-320-2400; x 7134

E cmeixel@pct.edu

Exhibition Hours:

Tuesday – Thursday: 2:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Friday: 10:00 AM – 8:00 PM

Sunday: 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Transcending the limitations of the photographic medium, John Singletary creates multidisciplinary installation experiences. His work graces The Gallery at Penn College through March 22. Singletary’s Through Lines/Fault Lines is the first exhibition of multimedia work on screens in the gallery’s history. Located on the third floor of The Madigan Library at Pennsylvania College of Technology, the gallery is in its 17th season.

John Singletary - Through Lines/Fault Lines
John Singletary, Installation View – Traces, 22:45 Minute OLED Video/Sound Installation

The exhibition includes two installations: Traces and Anahata.

“John’s new series, Traces, was created specifically for his solo exhibition in The Gallery at Penn College,” said Penny Griffin Lutz, gallery director. “Visitors will be immersed in an audiovisual experience that explores culture, beliefs and the human connection.”

Traces uses video, digital and stop-motion animation, historical footage, and audio. “Anahata” is photography-based and presented as an immersive installation on organic LED electronic canvases.

A photographer and multimedia artist based in Philadelphia, Singletary received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from The University of the Arts. His work has been collected by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Center for Fine Art Photography, as well as other institutional and private collections.

The artist says the imagery and vignettes in Traces, an ongoing multimedia work, depict “the extraordinary light and darkness in the human condition and life events such as the genesis of our existence and the purpose we serve to each other and ourselves.”

The audio component of the installation consists of a series of anonymously conducted interviews with a range of participants. The perspectives highlighted reveal the universality and individuality of values, the intersectionality of symbolism across cultures and lineages, and the perpetual cycles of life.

“Surveying the myriad and disjointed experiences that make up a life, ‘Traces’ explores the way we construct our internal narratives and create meaning from experience,” Singletary said.

John Singletary - Through Lines/Fault Lines
John Singletary, Still Frame from Traces, 22:45 Minute OLED Video/Sound Installation

Anahata explores human relationships and their connection to the divine. Choreographed movement was captured with an open-spectrum camera in a purpose-built, ultraviolet light studio where dancers performed in handcrafted costumes. The resulting dreamlike images are steeped in archetypal symbolism, mythology and mysticism.

A long-term collaboration between the artist and dancers, costume designers, makeup artists, choreographers and other artists, Anahata unveils a “frenetic tribe” that feels of another place and time.


The Gallery at Penn College is open 2 to 8 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fridays; and 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays. (The gallery is closed on Mondays and Saturdays and will also be closed March 5-12 during Spring Break.)

John Singletary - Through Lines/Fault Lines
John Singletary, Dryads from Anahata, 5′ x 3′ OLED Installation

Thank you to John Singletary for the content of this post.

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Still Life Crew: Gardening Above, Paradigm Gallery + Studio

Still Life Crew: Gardening Above at Paradigm Gallery, Philadelphia

Still Life Crew: “Gardening Above”A collaborative exhibition between January 27, 2023 – February 19, 2023. Opening ReceptionFriday, January 27 • 5:30 PM-8:00 PM RSVP here* Appreciated but not required

To kick off 2023 at Paradigm, Still Life Crew returns with their second exhibition as a duo at Paradigm. The artists behind the joint “Gardening Above” collection, Mando Marie and Hyland Mather, are bringing their collaborative work to a new level in this exhibition through a seamless creative process. The two have discovered new methods of formation through layering processes that have the feeling of tagging in a teammate in a competition or marathon, so in sync, but with each artist’s contributions and special skills holding their own through the details of the individual pieces. Rather than the previous side by side solo work collection previously shown on the gallery’s walls, each artist poured their hearts and vision onto the same surface for this exciting next step in the Still Life Crew’s growing and impactful oeuvre.

Mando Marie primarily uses stencil and mixed-media collage to create paintings that tether the viewer to a feeling of haunting nostalgia. Straddling a line between comforting and spooky, innocence and adulthood, life and spirit, her works find a real power in opposites and duality, evidenced in this series with several examples of her hallmark use of twin and mirrored imagery.


Hyland Mather’s abstract and often geometric painting style, along with his assemblage working technique are both featured in this series. As is his way, the assemblage work features abandoned, discarded, or ‘lost objects’ that have been rediscovered and made new again while maintaining an artifact-like status. In Hyland’s own words, “some lost stuff gets found again”.


About Mando Marie | An American painter and Stencilist, Amanda Marie has been splitting time, living and painting in Amsterdam and Portugal . She attended the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design (RMCAD) and has exhibited extensively in the US and Europe. She creates small works on paper and larger works on canvas for indoor exhibition. She also paints large scale murals primarily in outdoor urban, or garden settings. Her use of nostalgic storybook-like imagery is an invitation for viewing allegorical and highly painterly compositions . Signature in her very graphic work is the use of children and young adults as imagery tools to deliver clever, often subtle messages that can straddle a line between comforting and spooky. Other signature and recognizable traits in her work are the common use of ‘twin imagery’ and the consistent use of vintage sewing patterns as backgrounds to inform the compositions of her paintings.


About Hyland Mather | “I make stuff from junk. I pick up messes and try to make them into something I think looks good. i use the junk from the city, I use the stuff from the field, i use the bits in the forest, and the things in the trash. I hunt, collect, and gather, but only what I need for the work, for the play. color, shape, composition. Some lost stuff gets found again.”
Hyland Mather is an American assemblage artist and abstract painter, who grew up in Alaska and lives and works now, like Mando, between Amsterdam and Portugal. Best known for his use of found materials, Mather collects discarded objects and reassembles them to help them regain purpose. Mather has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and public spaces around the world. Accompanying his studio practice, Mather creates murals and urban art installations in various cities primarily in the United States & Europe.


EXHIBITION HOURS
Saturdays • 11:00am – 6:00pm
Sundays • 11:00am – 5:00pm
And 7 days a week by appointment.

LOCATION
Paradigm Gallery + Studio
746 S. 4th Street, 1st Floor / Philadelphia, PA 19147
info@paradigm-gallery.com / (267)266-0073

Media Contact:
Lainya Magaña, A&O PR
347 395 4155
lainya@aopublic.com

SOCIAL MEDIA
Instagram: @ParadigmGS
Twitter: @ParadigmGS
Facebook: facebook.com/paradigmgallery
TikTok: @paradigmgallery


About Paradigm Gallery
Paradigm Gallery + Studio was established in 2010 by co-founders and curators, Jason Chen and Sara McCorriston. The gallery exhibits meaningful, process-intense contemporary artwork from around the world. Paradigm Gallery is globally recognized and known as a tastemaker within their greater Philadelphia arts community. As the gallery grows, it maintains its original mission to keep art accessible. Through monthly donations, free public art installations, and initiatives like Insider Picks, Paradigm Gallery, continues to be a champion of small businesses and emerging and mid-career artists.

Thank you to Paradigm Gallery for the content of this post.

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Emma Amos

Philadelphia Museum of Art to Present First Major Retrospective Exhibition Dedicated to Emma Amos (1937–2020)

Emma Amos Retrospective PMA
“Godzilla,” 1966, by Emma Amos. Oil on canvas, 50 × 46 inches; framed: 51 1/4 x 47 1/4 inches. Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art, Utica, NY.

October 11, 2021January 17, 2022 

Morgan Galleries and Jane and Leonard Korman Galleries 150153 

In October, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will present the first major retrospective exhibition of the work of Emma Amos. As a member of the Black artist collective, Spiral, in the mid-1960s, an active participant in the Guerilla Girls of the 1980s, and a pathbreaking multimedia artist until her death in 2020, Amos made vibrant, witty, and passionate works that challenge, unsettle, and sometimes altogether reject the dominant visual codes of American life. Across her prolific career, Amos’s art explored the links among personal biography, history, and the politics of race and gender in America. Organized by the Georgia Museum of Art, Emma Amos: Color Odyssey surveys Amos’s body of work from the late 1950s to the 2010s for the first time, highlighting her bold approach to printmaking, painting, and weaving, and the distinctive combination of disparate materials and artistic techniques that she employed to produce works of unmistakable artistic and critical charge.

In an interview in 1991, Amos remarked, “Every time I think about color, it’s a political statement.” The exhibition will explore the rich implications of that claim, following the ways in which Amos’s works investigate aspects of identity and privilege while unsettling the lines between figuration and abstraction, craft and fine art, beauty, and power. Emma Amos: Color Odyssey will begin with the artist’s early years when, finding her way to New York by way of London, she would become the youngest and only female member of Spiral, which formed in response to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. These early works reveal an artist beginning to connect an interest in abstract expressionism to problems of figuration and subjectivity posed by the realities of American racism, with Amos exploring the significance of color as it relates to the Black female body. This subject would go on to become a major focal point throughout Amos’s career as she began to engage more deeply with mediums such as weaving and printmaking and to participate in the feminist and multicultural debates of the 1970s and 1980s.

Emma Amos Retrospective PMA
“American Girl,” 1974, by Emma Amos. From the portfolio Impressions: Our World, Volume 1, 1973-1974. Printed by Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, New York. Etching and lift ground aquatint (edition of 35), plate: 15 3/4 × 19 13/16 inches; sheet: 22 1/8 × 30 inches.; framed: 27 1/2 × 35 1/2 inches. Purchased with the Lola Downin Peck Fund, 2018. Image courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2021.

The exhibition is organized chronologically and thematically, tracking how Amos pushed her painting, weaving, and printmaking practices and often combined these media to better represent the grace, beauty, and power of Black figures, from anonymous models to leaders such as Paul Robeson and Zora Neale Hurston. Color Odyssey follows Amos’s deepening critical investigation into the centrality of race and gender to the values of Western art, notably though the making of massive multimedia works that interrogate the power and authority of the artist. The Philadelphia presentation of the exhibition will give emphasis to the ways in which these thematic and political concerns pushed Amos to experiment widely with materials and techniques, particularly in print.

Highlights among the early works include the painting Godzilla, 1966 (Munson Williams Proctor Institute of Art) which features three front-facing seated women, one of whom is nude, another is seen clothed, and a middle figure appears faceless. Each figure is depicted with brownish limbs of various skin tones while the overall composition offers a rich arrangement of gestural forms placed in combination with flat, unmodulated swathes of contrasting color. The artist returns to the theme of the female trinity in 3 Ladies, 1970 (Philadelphia Museum of Art), a color etching, printed relief, and screen print in which lyrical gestural elements have given way to a sharp juxtaposition of graphic shapes that convey the artist’s virtuosity. This experimental, five-part composition underscores her ongoing pre-occupation with femme-centric themes. Among the notable works of the artist’s later production is Tightrope, 1994 (Minneapolis Institute of Art) which illustrates, in bold acrylic colors on linen with African textile borders, the monumental struggles Amos faced as an artist without the privileges afforded to white masculinity. In this monumental narrative self-portrait, Amos resolutely strides across a tightrope while donning a Wonder Woman costume that is only partially concealed under an artist’s smock. In one hand, she indignantly raises a T shirt emblazoned with an image of the naked torso of Gauguin’s Tahitian child bride while in the other she confidently wields a pair of paint brushes against a night sky.

Emma Amos Retrospective PMA
“All I know of Wonder,” 2008, by Emma Amos. Oil on canvas with African fabric borders, 70 1/2 × 55 1/2 inches. Collection of Mary Ryan, Courtesy of Ryan Lee Gallery, New York.

The organizing curator for Emma Amos: Color Odyssey is Dr. Shawnya L. Harris, Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art at the Georgia Museum of Art. “Coming of age during the countercultural movements of the 1960s and straddling various artistic movements from abstract expressionism to pop art, Amos reckoned with issues of race, class, and gender roles that emerged in the development of her style,” Dr. Harris said. “Her imaginative and sometimes satirical take on cultural difference shifted and grew richer over the decades, merging various media and blurring categories of fine and applied arts as a form of resistance.”

At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the exhibition is curated by Laurel Garber, the Park Family Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings, with the assistance of Theresa A. Cunningham, Margaret R. Mainwaring Curatorial Fellow. Garber, who wrote the catalog’s essay on Amos’s prints, added: “The sweep of Amos’s career opens a window onto an artistic practice that is guided by a rich creative and political engagement in American life. Her work is at once approachable and challenging, inviting reflections on identity, beauty, and femininity. Throughout her career, Amos worked in a wide range of printmaking techniques, including intaglio, screen print, monotype, and collagraphy, and we will show the broad range of innovative editions, monoprints, and other printed works on paper so that visitors can fully appreciate the interconnectedness of her vision across media.”

Catalogue

Emma Amos: Color Odyssey is accompanied by a major scholarly volume of the same title, edited by Dr. Shawnya L. Harris, and published in hardback by the Georgia Museum of Art (ISBN: 9780915977468). This catalogue includes an introductory essay by Dr. Harris and contributions by the artists Kay Walkingstick and LaToya Ruby Frazier, each of whom offers a personal reflection on Amos. Lisa Farrington, Associate Dean for Fine Arts, Howard University, discusses Amos’s place in the history of women artists. Phoebe Wolfskill, Associate Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, focuses on the performativity of race and gender in Amos’ work. Laurel Garber explores the artist’s career-long printmaking practice and her collaborations with master printers. The book is available at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Store and may be purchased on site or online via Philamuseum.org.

About Emma Amos

Emma Veoria Amos was born in 1937 in Atlanta, Georgia. Her family owned a drug store established by her father and grandfather, the first Black pharmacist in the state. She attended Antioch College in Ohio, graduating in 1958 with a degree in fine art before moving to London where she earned a diploma in etching at the Central School of Art in the next year. Arriving in New York in 1960, she joined Spiral, the artist activist group which included Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff, Norman Lewis, and Charles Alston. In 1965, she earned her master’s degree in education from New York University and later taught at the Dalton School in New York. She also held positions as a textile designer and served briefly as a host of a television show about craft. Amos was an important member of Heresies, a feminist magazine founded in 1976 by Joyce Kozloff, Miriam Shapiro, Lucy Lippard, and others. As a member of the Guerilla Girls, Amos protested art world injustices including the unequal representation of women in the arts. In 1980, she began a teaching at Rutgers University, where she would become Professor and Chair of Visual Arts at the Mason Gross School of Art. She retired from Rutgers in 2008. The artist moved in 2019 to Bedford, NH in 2019 where she died the following year. Emma Amos: Color Odyssey premiered in January 2021 at the Georgia Museum of Art and traveled to the Munson Williams Proctor Institute in Utica, NY (through September 12, 2021) before its final stop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Support

The exhibition is organized by the Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia. This program is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, University of Georgia. At the Georgia Museum of Art, additional support was provided by the W. Newton Morris Foundation and the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art.

In Philadelphia, Emma Amos: Color Odyssey is made possible by the Kathleen C. and John J. F. Sherrerd Fund for Exhibitions, the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, and Emily and Mike Cavanagh.

Credits as of July 19, 2021.

Social Media @philamuseum

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