Mitch Gillette: Treat, ca. 2000, pencil on paper, 16.5" x 20" x 2"

About:

Study for a larger work

Bio:

I've shown work extensively in Philadelphia at various venues, including Studio Diaboliques, Nexus Foundation for Today's Art, The Snyderman Gallery, and the InLiquid Gallery. Besides painting, I have created sculpture, installation, and performance works, including live tableaux of my own paintings. I formed a collaborative group with a choreographer and a composer to produce a dance production based on my comic, Tales of the Buffoon, which premiered at The Painted Bride Art Center. We were then invited to collaborate on a short video version of the same piece for public television station WHYY as part of the Pew Charitable Trust funded Spotlight series. The video, in which the dancers performed inside my drawings using special green-screen effects, later aired nationally and went on, as part of the series, to win a local Emmy. The composer, choreographer, and I continued to work together to create stage works which were performed in Philadelphia and elsewhere, including DIA Art Foundation in New York City. For the past fifteen years I have been solely at work on a 300-page graphic novel, also entitled Tales of the Buffoon, which is very near completion. And I will soon be releasing a recording of original classical piano music performed by pianist Tom Lawton.

Michael DeLuca: Big Puffy, 2019, pastel on paper, 17" x 17"

About:

I'm interested in visual oppositions, particularly the tangible versus the intangible, the two-dimensional versus the three-dimensional, and the graphic versus the atmospheric. I've been working from flat silhouettes that I cut out and mount on highly reflective paper. I place these shapes in a context out of time and illuminate them with a single top light. I then create drawings from them, where the process can last several days pushing and pulling endless amounts of subtle information.

I gravitate towards shapes with specific gestures within them. I think of them as being flat, but malleable; static, but expressive. I'm not interested in the grand or flashy gestures, just a simple nudge or bend is enough. Ultimately, I see these awkward but earnest shapes taking on figurative characteristics that playfully comment on the human condition.

Bio:

Michael was born in Philadelphia, PA, and currently lives and works in Paoli, PA. He earned his MFA in Painting from Indiana University in Bloomington, IN, and his BFA in Painting from Arcadia University in Glenside, PA. For a brief period of time, he also studied Painting and Drawing at the Glasgow School of Art in Glasgow, Scotland. Since graduating from Indiana in 2002, Michael has been teaching all levels of Drawing as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual & Performing Arts at Arcadia University. Michael's work has appeared in numerous gallery and university exhibitions across the United States, including "Drawing Resurfaced II" at Purdue University Galleries, "The Great Lakes Drawing Biennial" at Eastern Michigan University School of Art & Design, and "Drawn 4th and 5th Annual International Exhibition of Contemporary Drawing" at Manifest Gallery. He was the recipient of CFEVA's (Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Philadelphia, PA) Emerging Artist Fellowship, and has appeared multiple times in the publication New American Paintings.
Michael understands drawing as a medium unto itself. Working exclusively with pastel on paper, he uses 2-dimensional graphic shapes as subject matter to explore ideas of gesture, motion, and cause & effect. His shapes are flat, but malleable; minimal, but full. Sometimes they're observed, and sometimes they're invented. Either way, it's their ability to expand, stretch, slouch, or bend that interests Michael the most.

Gregory Brellochs: Coreum I, 2018, graphite on paper, 18" x 18" x 1.5"

About:

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 see image-making as a way of creating not just a physical relationship to concepts, but a sensual and emotional one as well. I want my work to be felt, not just experienced. 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.

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, 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 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.