Nancy E. F. Halbert
Around The Block, 2024
Soft pastel
15 x 11"

Artist Statement
I have been seeing colors in blocks lately. I walk my dog everyday through my neighborhood of trees, funky decorated front porches, diverse neighbors, and eclectic houses that stand strong in Philadelphia. Walking with my Bo, helps to ground me, as I worry about the division between this" not so perfect " union. I can only hope it can continue to sit tall, even though I, feel it's "blocked" in so many ways. The beauty of the colors may be the walks only remaining redeeming feature.

Artist Bio
Nancy E. F. Halbert, a former dancer and choreographer, has a Master in Arts Education from the University of the Arts with a prior Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. She learned to draw in paint after retiring from dancing. After studying with premier teachers in the Philadelphia area, she started to show her abstract expressionistic work in exhibitions and galleries. In 2013, she was a fellowship recipient at Vermont Studio Center and was also juried in as a featured artist in Studio Visit Magazine

Nancy has won painting awards in several shows at The Philadelphia Sketch Club. She served as the volunteer director for five years at the artist cooperative MUSE Gallery in Philadelphia. Following MUSE Gallery; she was a member of 3rd Street Gallery and is currently exhibiting with Cerulean Arts Gallery, Philadelphia, PA.

Nancy has been a devoted and supportive art teacher in continuing education programs for over twenty years. She has taught painting and drawing in pastels, watercolor, oils, acrylics and art history to adults and children of all levels.

Ellen Rosenholtz
48 Brown Hares
Graphite and conte crayon
31.5" x 33"

Artist Statement

Forty-Eight Brown Hares was inspired by a summer's worth of rabbit deaths. This is a celebration of their life force. The circles of life and death memorialized in this drawing.

Artist Bio

Ellen Rosenholtz's graphite on paper series explores native flora and fauna of New Jersey. The work looks at the profound beauty of natural forms as they exist within animals and plants. The multiplicity of images underscores the interconnection of living systems, while geometric patterning enable the viewer to commune with the species through repetition of form. The semi permanence of graphite reflects the fragility of our biodiversity at any moment in time.

Ellen Rosenholtz is a New Jersey, U.S.A based artist whose work is about environmental concerns with a focus on native, invasive, and extinct flora and fauna. She has a B.F.A from University of the Arts and an M.F.A from Vermont College. Artistic accomplishments include a residency at the Rosenbach Museum and Library. She wrote art criticism for both the Philadelphia Weekly and Philadelphia City Paper and was the Director of Programs for the Painted Bride Art Center. Ellen exhibits regularly throughout the mid-Atlantic region.

EllenRosenholtz.com

Gregory Brellochs
Pulse, 2012
Graphite on paper
23" x 31"

Artist Statement

I find that the immediate and direct process of drawing serves as a means by which I can meditate on the fundamental nature of things. I want the concepts that I am exploring to resonate with the viewer on a basic visceral level. Like Niels Bohr's self titled model once served to make the concept of an atom's structure visually and conceptually accessible, so too am I interested in employing my art and the process of drawing as a way of visualizing and graphically realizing concepts which speak to a layer of reality beyond the senses, bringing such concepts back into a world of physical relationships that we can more readily relate to and grasp.

Artist Bio

Gregory Brellochs is a Philadelphia based artist, Professor, and the Visual and Performing Arts, Chair at Camden County College in Blackwood, New Jersey. Brellochs' work has been recognized through awards such as the 2018 Meyer's Family Award for Contemporary Arts, the Center for Emerging Visual Artists CDP Fellowship, the Wind Challenge Exhibition Series at the Fleisher Art Memorial, and the William D. Davis Award for Drawing at the Art of the State Exhibition in Harrisburg, PA. Brellochs has held numerous solo exhibitions and has been featured in a number of prestigious juried and curated group exhibitions both regionally and nationally. His work is included in the contemporary drawings collection of the Viewing Program through The Drawing Center in New York City. Brellochs earned his B.F.A. from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, and an M.F.A. from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

Fran Lightman Gibson
A New Day, 2023
Charcoal and hard pastel
30" x 22"

Artist Statement

The Bridge
I watched the cold January night shift into the gray of dawn, the bridge looming as a gateway into or out of the city. Perspective creates its own reality. Ice had gathered along the edge of the river, helping chill the wind. Then the sun peeked over the horizon and the world changed. The cold gray bridge transformed into a warm golden orange. It was as if hope and joy were beaming their way into the city. The audacity of that light, the ice remained on the river's edge, the wind was no less chilly and yet I basked in the illusion of warmth and the reality of my survival.

Artist Bio

My paintings are about the visual and psychological energy of the city expressed through the angularity of its architecture and infrastructure, painted with live, rapid, interesting brushstrokes. This high energy is sometimes offset around the edges of the urban landscape by a very different treatment of trees, bushes, and grassy areas as an impression of dabs, dashes, lines, and scumbled paint.

Although these paintings straddle and integrate impressionist and expressionist ethos, they represent two different stylistic trends. One is more expressionist, bold, and brushy. The other is more linear, graphic, and refined. These paintings beckon the viewer through dramatic perspective and suggest a curiosity and a journey. Landscape or Cityscape, the metaphor of "Take Any Road," is usually close at hand in the work.

Finally, there is a tease in these works to see the next level of detail, but the attempt is to have the viewer create that detail while viewing the paintings.

Claire Owen
Will You Follow., 2008
Graphite on paper
Framed under plexiglass
21" x 27"

Artist Statement

In my painting I maintain an interest narrative, by exploring cautionary tales once told to children, now carried forward in the fairy tales of children's literature. These tales, she believes, have settled into our collective imagination, remaining with us as adults. We nod with recognition at the twist of fear in the child lost in the forest. We can admire the cunning children use to see themselves safely away from the predators jaws. I often use the forest as a setting for her paintings, and as a character itself. From European folk tales to contemporary literature, the forest remains in our imagination a place where the real and fabled intersect.

Artist Statement

Claire Owen is a painter, and poet, living and working Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She received degrees in illustration and printmaking from Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester New York where she grew up. She moved to Philadelphia in 1977 and established her own imprint, Turtle Island Press which produced fine print, limited edition artists books. She taught studio and book arts at Drexel University and Tyler School of Art. Since retiring in 2015 she continues her studio practice in painting, as well as poetry. She is currently a docent at The Rosenbach Museum and Library.

Miriam Singer
new address, 2025
Pencil, marker, acrylic on panel
6" x 6"

Artist Statement

I use a variety of media including traditional printmaking, collage, markers, and acrylic paint to create small and large works on paper and panels. Most of the works are a response to a walk or daily travel through neighborhoods that I spend time in. I generally draw in a sketchbook or sometimes on a single sheet of paper while out in the field. I draw architecture and objects by looking. Often, bringing the drawings into my studio where I add sketches to paper or panels. I draw or paint from sketches, memory, photographs, and from invention. These works are about physical materials, color, and line and a playful response to my daily experience in the built environment.

Artist Bio

Miriam Singer grew up in Buffalo, New York, having attended Brandeis University, and earning her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art. Singer has shown work in galleries, alternative spaces, and numerous public spaces including with Paradigms Gallery, The Albright Knox public art program in Buffalo NY, James Oliver Gallery, The Philadelphia Airport and even bus wraps at the Navy Yard. Singer uses a combination of printmaking and drawing media to create her unique works on paper, and designs for public art projects. Singer lives in Philadelphia and currently teaches printmaking at Fleisher Art Memorial and is a member of the artist collective, Space 1026.

Cassandra Petruchyk
Bulldog, 2015
Ink, oil pastel, Bristol board, acid free
13" x 17"

Artist Statement

I use drawing to give a visual voice to both domestic and wild animals, giving recognition and respect to honor them all.

Artist Bio

I have lived around art my whole life. My father was a painter, and my mother, who raised me, is a sculptor. Both parents taught art in various institutions from college to elementary grades, and mynmother was always my art teacher. She still is today.nI started drawing at a very young age and my family loved and encouraged it. I went on to study art in school. I received a BFA from the University of North Florida where I studied with Louise Freshman Brown. Wjile I earned a BFA, I also had a great interest in the biological sciences. After graduating I worked as an artist, producing work, showing it regularly and selling it.