Tag Archives: artist

Participatory

KAMEELAH JANAN RASHEED’S PARTICIPATORY ART PROJECT
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 iterationgains 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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Tattooed

HENRY BERMUDEZ Tatooed Nature
Tattooed Nature #2, 2019   30″ h x 22″ w  acrylic paint, paper

HENRY BERMUDEZ, Tattooed Nature, HOUSEGallery

October 4th – 31st, 2019

Opening Reception: Friday, October 4th, 6 –9 pm

Location: HOUSEGallery, 1816 Frankford Ave, Philadelphia, PA, 19125

Hours: by appointment


PHILADELPHIA OPEN STUDIO TOURS: OCTOBER 13TH 12 – 6 pm with Michelle Marcuse and Henry Bermudez

Emerged from the Caribbean tropics, the artistic life of Henry Bermudez has been an unexpected hybrid of ideas informed by an acute sensitivity to the past, stenciled as part of a personal inventory onto different foreign places that throughout his life have become his home and artistic working territory.

Henry’s paintings are steeped in mythical dream imagery within an other-worldliness of carefully constructed creature and plant forms. Further defined by his identity as a Latino, his visual itinerary combines symbols and myth from pre-Hispanic cultures charged with powerful influences from Judaeo-Christian and Afro-Caribbean religions, and further melds these with the iconography of western contemporary art. This blend of cultural diversities is his autobiographical vision that further defines itself through immersion into societies other that the one he was born into. Henry’s art transcends timelines and national boundaries as he joins magical dimensions of symbols with supposed western rationality.

Thank you to Michelle Marcuse, Co Director HOUSE Gallery for the content of this post.

www.housegallery1816.com

www.henrybermudezart.com

www.michellemarcuse.com

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Anahata

John Singletary, Detail of Providence, 3′ x 30′ Photography Based OLED Installation/Pigment Print

John Singletary – Anahata

The Delaware Contemporary

200 S Madison Street, Wilmington, DE 19801

Opening Reception: Friday, May 3rd, 5:00 – 9:00 PM

Museum Hours:Monday closed, Tues. 12 – 5pm, Weds. 12 – 7pm, Thurs. & Fri. 10 – 5pm Sun. 12 – 5pm

Philadelphia native, John Singletary, is a fine art photographer and multimedia artist. His educational training includes both Drexel University and a BFA in Photography from The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA. He has exhibited at The Pennsylvania State Museum of Art, LG Tripp Gallery and The James Oliver Gallery. As well, his work is represented in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Center for Fine Art Photography and The Haverford College Archives.

Anahata is a photographic exhibition that uses its mode of presentation to transcend the limitations of the medium in a multi-disciplinary installation experience. Photographs are animated through multiple state-of-the-art OLED panels used as electronic canvases. The technology is synchronized to create joined, large format displays, some forming 8′ x 8′ luminous squares or a 30′ Greco-Roman frieze-inspired composition. Images materialize out of walls and recede back into darkness, as would apparitions in this oddly familiar living space. These and other works are set to original music composed by John Singletary and Matt Hollenberg.

Installation View, Clarise, 8′ x 8′ Photography Based OLED Installation

While the ambition in Singletary’s presentation is of distinct merit, it’s not mere technology doing the real work. The photographic quality in his highly ornamented images demonstrates a conscious and masterful use of the medium. Influenced by a production approach found in theater and cinema, Singletary and his crew built a black box studio in a Victorian house in Germantown, PA as a set for the photography in Anahata. This long term collaborative project enlisted dancers, theater performers, costume designers, make-up artists, choreographers and set technicians. And, in this black box studio, the dream-like imagery, extracted from mythology, symbolism and mysticism directs the narrative in Anahata as it explores human relationships and their connection to the divine.

John Singletary, Clarise, 8′ x 8′ OLED Installation/Pigment Print

In John Singletary’s inventive world of Anahata, the artist commands an ancient cry from demons and gods in spear-decorated headdresses and cocoon-like webs that conquer and connect us. From there, he uses an advanced understanding of technology to move forward seamlessly into a hyper-lit future. With his sensitivity in making this unique grand scale production personal and through his exacting print work, the fantasticality in Anahata becomes very real.

The Delaware Contemporary

Phone: 302-656-6466 (main)

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

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Air

Lois Schlachter, Jed Williams Gallery

Spring’s in the Air, Lois Schlachter, Jed Williams Gallery

 

Spring’s in the Air, Lois Schlachter: April 7th – 22nd, 2018

Jed Williams Gallery, 615 Bainbridge Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19147

Artist Reception: April 7th, 2018, 5:00 – 7:00pm.

JED WILLIAMS GALLERY is excited to celebrate the coming of Spring with its new exhibit, a solo showcase of painter Lois Schlachter. Let’s bring Spring in, in style! With Lois Schlachter’s exuberant, colorful work dHer unique abstracts have a meticulously composed, “clean” feel to them, which goes hand in hand with a wonderful sense of compositional whimsy and a mellifluous, subtle color schemes. The distinctive geometric shapes set off eternally revolving fractal-like hues.

According to Lois Schlachter, “Her paintings at Jed Williams Gallery are examples of her love of geometric shapes and bold vibrant color. These pieces were created by letting her subconscious mind guide her hand. She works directly on the canvas, continually drawing throughout the painting process. The use of line and color help to navigate the viewer across the canvas providing an avenue to discover one fun spot after another.”

Lois Schlachter, Jed Williams GalleryTravel Dreams, Lois Schlachter, acrylic on canvas

This painting is “Travel Dreams” and will be on display at Jed Williams Gallery. How do I do whatI do? I start by heavily coating the canvas. Then, whatever paint is left on my pallet from my previous painting I start applying it to the canvas. I am not really thinking about anything, I’m just having fun. It’s kind of like doodling. Sometimes I’ll splatter the paint and let it run. It is all very loose. Most of the time, I have no preconceived plan or idea. I allow my subconscious mind to wonder. I go to the part of myself that is the child, uninhibited and painting to please myself. Sometimes I get lucky and it starts to look like something. – Lois Schlachter

Lois Schlachter, Jed Williams GalleryFeathered Friends, Lois Schlachter, acrylic on canvas

Lois Schlachter, Jed Williams GalleryGuardian Angels, Lois Schlachter, acrylic on canvas

This piece is “Guardian Angels”. With all three paintings, early on, they started to look like something. At this point, it’s time to get serious and I really start to work the line. The more that I work in a geometric format, the more I understand that shapes and lines are related and it is up to me to find that relationship. It’s time to work the color, balance the forms, study the positive and negative spaces and get a rhythm going. Depending on the size of the piece, I have likely been working for a few weeks and there are many more weeks of work ahead. – Lois Schlachter

About Lois Schlachter

Lois Schlachter is a graduate of The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and Philadelphia College of Art now the University of the Arts. She is a prolific painter working primarily in acrylic and considers herself as an Abstract Expressionist. Previous exhibitions include GoggleWorks’ “Artists Equity” Show (Reading, PA, 2013). In 2014 she received four Special Recognition Awards in the “16th Annual Contemporary Art Juried Online International Art Exhibition” hosted by Upstream People Gallery.

About Jed Williams Gallery

Jed Williams Gallery is a unique art space owned and operated since 2010 by artist Jed Williams. In it Jed Williams showcases up and coming and inspiring artists from the local area including Jed Williams himself, along with providing a look into the workings of an actual artist studio. The gallery shows a variety of thoughtful, cutting edge works in various media with a focus on abstract painting and mixed medium.

Jed Williams Gallery also involves the community through art workshops, as well as local music and fashion talents with free music events, parties, trunk shows. Jed Williams Gallery is part of the revitalization of Bainbridge St., just one block south of South St. It aims to contribute to the vitality and unique, fun spirit of Bainbridge St. and the Queen Village/Bella Vista neighborhood.

Jed Williams Gallery has shown local talents such as Kevin Broad, Lorraine Glessner, Dennis Flynn, David Stanley Aponte, and more.  The gallery has also collaborated with social/art non-profit organizations such as Philly Stewards, InLiquid, Project HOME, and Art Sphere, Inc., other art venues such as the Hex Factory, and curators such as Sean Stoops and Anna Cherniahivsky.

Thank you to Lois Schlachter and Jed Williams for the content of this post.

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