Introductions ’09 at The Galleries at Moore College of Art & Design, Widener Foundation Memorial Gallery, 20th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia is just so amazing – lot’s of wild mixed metaphors, deep narrative streams of consciousness and memes within memes within memes.  Brenna K Murphy’s “Roots #3” is a prime example of an artwork weaving multiple meanings of normal images, encountered daily, into an interesting story that plays in your mind like a movie.  Brenna’s “roots” are wrapped in human hair, completely encasing real tree roots, which are arranged lovingly on a large white wall.  DoN asked Murphy about the origins of the work, “Wrapping the roots is about home and the body.”  Growing up as a nomad, to Brenna the hair represents the body as home.  Donald Carter, who is rooted in Philadelphia, asked Brenna how she would sell the work.  Good question: the piece has already been exhibited at Eileen Tognini’s house but hanging from the ceiling, so the piece is growing and changing all the time.  Time, growth, security, luxury and fun all swirling together like twisted dreadlocks, representing culture and sub-culture, luxury and lunacy, safety and insanity all wrapped up in hair.  “Roots #3” is an adventurous idea, realized with meticulous craft, enthusiasm and industriousness – what more can we ask of art?  

Brooke Hine’s ceramic mixed media sculpture also has slippery hidden narratives, “These are a Few of My Favorite Things” is composed of ceramic, slip, stains, glaze and whiskers.  Real cat whiskers. 

Daniel Traub’s large format c-print is hyper-realism with a hypnotic story to tell about Chinese “Cities Edge”; the incomplete skeletons of future luxury housing is occupied by industrious people gleaning the pervasive demolition of old China and reselling to the secondary market.  An amusement park is on the horizon while stacks of doors and windows, each a metaphor, lean against the concrete.  Fabric and plywood fill the vacant windows like layers of pages from a book. 

 Diane Savona, “Sewing Bag Number One“.

 Brenna K Murphy, “Roots #3“.

Brooke Hines sculpture, Danielle Bursk, drawing. 

Daniel Traub, photograph.

Ben Volta @ Introductions ’09.