Brian David Dennis: Studio Notes 9/5/19 2, 2019, Digital Collage (printed on Endura Metallic), 28.25" x 28.25" x 1.38"

About:

This series of digital collages were created in response to the fabrication of the installation of the same title. The installation questions the boundaries between permanent and temporary, object and experience. Is one more valuable than the other, more noble, more worthy of all that was invested in its creation?

The work also continues my exploration of obsession and repetition. Production is a test of endurance and an engaging challenge. But it is also more. The demands contain a self fulfilling purposefulness. Within the repetition is a solace akin to a meditation.

Bio:

Brian was born in 1959, raised in a home with movable walls designed by his father, an aspiring artist. The fluidity of the modular arrangement captured Brian's imagination. His mother, a kindergarten teacher, encouraged Brian's constant building.

As a student, Brian considered following his passion for stage design, but sought the more personal expression of fine arts. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy and settled into mixed media. He later began to explore installation using the exhibition location as an essential part of the piece.

A life long resident of Pennsylvania, Brian has been in Philadelphia since 1984 with his life partner Keith Breitfeller. He began exhibiting with Vox Populi and remained an active member for 15 years. He has held solo exhibits at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Sande Webster Gallery, Fleisher Challenge and recently in Krems, Austria. He has been granted an Independence Foundation Fellowship and other awards.

Laura Storck: Lace Silhouettes Lingerie, 2016, chromogenic print, 11" x 14" x 1"

About:

Street photography can be a powerful platform for reaching the public, and motivations of the photographers can be as varied as the subjects themselves. Some photographers wish to raise awareness of social and political issues; others simply see public spaces as a continuously unending treasury for humor, while others may appreciate the challenges and risks that are associated with capturing street vignettes. My personal motivations for capturing street images is to adapt unusual and fleeting moments into a visual form that may be seen as relatable with the potential to be elevated to fine art.

Bio:

Laura Storck is an award-winning fine art and event photographer who is devoted to documenting timely discoveries of spot news, street art, mannequins, or the simply bizarre. Laura completed her Certificate in Digital Photography from the University of the Arts in Spring 2016 during which she served as a photography apprentice for the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program and on the Board of Directors for Da Vinci Art Alliance. Currently, she is a member of the Communications committee at The Plastic Club, as well as The Halide Project steering committee for the upcoming Philadelphia 2020 Photo Festival. When she isn't photographing, Laura can be found spending her free time in art galleries, basement punk shows, the library, or walking the streets of Philadelphia.

Patricia Moss-Vreeland: All the Remembering, 2017, archival pigment print, 29" x 20" x 1.5"

About:

I like capturing the feeling of something, not just the way it appears, as our emotions and experiences provide the shape and dimension to how we perceive and remember. Through a system of storage and retrieval, like the making of memory itself, land and water contain memories, a larger composite of time and place. I wanted to evoke movement for the passage of time and for the fleeting aspect to remembering, along with areas that give shape to imagining.

Bio:

Patricia Moss-Vreeland is an artist, author, poet, TEDx speaker, and thought-leader on the relationship between art, memory, learning, and creativity. Her work spans four decades and has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Informed by research in neuroscience, working with neuropsychologists, she integrates this knowledge about the functioning of the human brain and the construction of memory into her works, which was hailed in 1999 by the Baltimore Sun "an invitation to think differently about memory and the creative process". She works in a range of media, paintings, drawings, prints, mixed media collages, videos, and artist books, incorporating her poetry at times to suggest the ways that language and memory are intertwined.

Moss-Vreeland's works have been exhibited nationally at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art. She is in many permanent collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and The Norton Museum. Moss-Vreeland won a national competition to design the Memorial Room for the Holocaust Museum Houston, earning four awards, including the American Institute of Architects Honor award in Design.

Recently Moss-Vreeland's work was included in The New York Hall of Science, Science Inspires Art: The Brain, 2015. Recent solo exhibitions include; A Parallel Universe, Trinity College, Hartford, CT, 2016, Revelations and Transformation, Layers of Memory, Penn Memory Center, Philadelphia, PA, 2017, In Search of Meaning: Memory Becomes Us, Esther Klein Gallery, University City Science Center, Philadelphia, PA, 2019.

Eric T. Kunsman: Solitude, 2012, archival pigment print - Lucia print on edition etching rag, 30" x 30" x 1"

Courtesy of HOTE Gallery

About:

In 2003, shortly after moving back to the Philadelphia area, I brought a group of my photography students from Mercer County Community College to the Eastern State Penitentiary on a field trip. It was a great photographic site. The reports I had heard about the architecture of the facility were definitely true, and the light and feeling of abandonment really gave off a sense that the Penitentiary might still be inhabited by ghosts or spirits. But there are a lot of abandoned spaces like that, so my first trip to the site would probably have been my last if I didn't return to Philadelphia on a completely different class trip a few weeks later - this time, as a student.

On that trip, one of my University of Arts professors, Heidi Kyle, introduced us to the American Philosophical Society's conservation lab. Almost as soon as we entered the conservation lab, I noticed three books titled 'Eastern State Warden's Logbook.' I opened it idly?and then spent the entire visit pouring over its pages.

The Warden's entries brought the Penitentiary to life for me. Through his words, the space now felt inhabited and connected to deep emotions - infused with new meaning. Though his writing is detached, the warden clearly got to know the prisoners far more personally than you would expect. The logs include details about prisoners' families, whether they could read or write, whether they felt guilty about their crimes, whether they were penitent. While my photographs from the earlier visit captured a lot of the physical presence and feeling of the Penitentiary, it was the writings that started to, literally, flesh out the functional and human effects of this altruistic, but ultimately disastrous, Quaker experiment with reforming criminals. On that day, the genesis for this show clicked.

I started returning to the Penitentiary. During each trip it was at least a half hour before I could start photographing. I found myself instantly reflecting on some of the Warden's words, wandering through the space, and rediscovering things through his eyes and his reflections.

Bio:

Eric T. Kunsman (b. 1975) was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. While in high school, he was heavily influenced by the death of the steel industry and its place in American history. The exposure to the work of Walker Evans during this time hooked Eric onto photography. Eric had the privilege to study under Lou Draper, who became Eric's most formative mentor. He credits Lou with influencing his approach as an educator, photographer, and contributing human being.

Eric holds his MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and holds an MS in Electronic Publishing/Graphic Arts Media, BS in Biomedical Photography, BFA in Fine Art photography all from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.

David Graham: Marilyn Monroe, Palisades Park, NJ, 1991, chromogenic color print, 31" x 30" x 1"

About:

I photograph the American cultural landscape as well as Americans themselves. This print is from "The Land of the Free".

Bio:

Work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Princeton University of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Art, International Center of Photography, NYC. Eight monographs including "American Beauty" and "The Land of the Free", Aperture, "Only in America", Knopf. Professor at the University of the Arts.

David is represented by Laurence Miller Gallery, NY, NY; Etherton Gallery, Tucson, AZ; and PDNB Gallery, Dallas, TX.

Lauren Lyons: Matt, 1997, photography/archival pigment print, 33.5" x 45" x 2"

About:

This vintage photograph of Philadelphia singer/songwriter, Matt Sevier, was the first portrait I'd ever taken. If you'd like to know more about the photo shoot, please visit my website and read the blog post titled, "Missed Opportunity."

Bio:

Philadelphia based photographer, Lauren Lyons, has been honing her craft since 1997. Originally, a photographer in the music business, Lyons blends her photography skills with her love of music. Her client list has included Interscope Records, HBO, PETA, Philadelphia Magazine, and Philadelphia Style Magazine. Most recently, Lyons has launched a new blog which is planned to be heavily rock and roll inspired. She resides in Philadelphia and spends her summer months in Quogue, New York with her tennis pro/musician husband.

Keryn Huang: Ovis Aries, The Source, 2006, archival digital C-print, 20" x 24" x 2"

About:

I shoot with infrared film because it allows me to capture a scene in a particular way - infrared is sensitive to the invisible light spectrum and its recorded effect can bring forth a quality to the air that is seemingly diffused or atmospheric. I seek find and transmit the essence of a landscape in my studies, along with the balances and geometries within nature. This shot was taken on the Normandy coast of France; many sheep surrounded yet only one remained at "The Source" - water.

Bio:

Keryn Huang was born in Colorado. She has been exhibiting for over 10 years beginning in Italy where she lived prior to moving to New York and where she currently lives. She has exhibited in Europe, Mexico, New York and Miami. Her landscape and still life photographs focus on the natural world. Vast landscape is the inspiration for much of her work which is rooted in the rich and very terrain of the western United States. She favors natural light to evoke nature's power, the effect of atmospheric changes on light.

Andrew Cameron Zahn: X'Cambo: Micaela, 2017, digital media: archival ink on heavyweight paper, 16" x 20" x 2"

Courtesy of CRUXspace

About:

This piece was created a part of a large scale, site specific video installation:
August 19th, 7-9 pm at CRANE ARTS, Gray Area Gallery,
1400 N American St, Philadelphia, PA 19122

-X'Cambó is a multi-channel interactive video installation and print series dealing with the interaction of humans and nature over time.

-After being asked by Mina Zarfsaz (a curator, artist, and professor at Temple University) to be in my first solo exhibition - This new work, X'Cambó is a large scale, site-specific video installation being show at The Crane Arts building on Saturday, August 19th, 7-9pm. The opening reception event page is here.

How The Project Came About:

-For the past year I have been collecting and documenting video, stills, and audio from remote areas in Mexico, Canada, and the USA.

-After two other successful Kickstarter projects: The Darkening of Spaces and Hack Philly, I have decided its time to make a new body of work - X'Cambó is a culmination of this work - I will be showing both this video installation and also a series of prints.

-The funds raised from this project will go towards the large expense of building an installation of this scale and complexity.

Bio:

Andrew Cameron Zahn is a digital designer, artist, and curator based in Philadelphia. Working at the intersection of New Media art and design, his projects include working with Penn Medicine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The American Cancer Society, Swoon Studio, Jefferson University, The Energy Coop, The University of the Arts, Organizing Corps 2020, Skai Blue Media, Villanova University, and U.S. Women In Nuclear, among others.

Founding Cloud Shop Studios in 2014 with work including web design and development projects. Recent fine art projects include a solo exhibition X'Cambo, at Gray Area Gallery. Curatorial work includes his founding of CRUXspace, Philadelphia's only New Media art gallery.

Zahn was educated in New York at the Pratt Institute. He earned his B.F.A. in Multimedia and holds an M.F.A. in studio art sculpture from the University of the Arts.

Janusz Kawa: Time & Light, 1995, photography, 20" x 24" x 2"

About:

This photograph was taken in Mexico, Chiapas

Bio:

Janusz Kawa was born in Warsaw, Poland. Studied photography and film at The Art Institute of Chicago in USA. Afterwards he moved to Paris, France where his photographs began appearing in major world publications such as French Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Australian Vogue American GQ, New York Times Magazine and Interview.

Since then he has moved throughout the world as professional photographer capturing the essence of people through portraits from world-renowned artists such as Morgan Freedman, Luciano Pavarotti, Ann Sophie Mutter, Louise Bourgeois, Daniel Day Lewis among others. During that

time his personal work included projects from India to Morocco and Mexico. The thread running through much of his personal work shows the nomadic spirit of people similar to his own way of life.

He also teaches photography at The School of Visual Arts (SVA) and International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York

He has shown his work internationally in Mexico City, Paris and New York City where he is currently based.

Daniel Shepelavy: ONLY PAPER IS ARCHIVAL, 2015, photography, 16" x 24"

About:

ONLY PAPER IS ARCHIVAL is among an ongoing series of impromptu vignettes of mannequins entitled "Jane of the Waking Universe".

Bio:

Artwise, I work in gouache, watercolor, & graphite - along with collage & photography. It's all usually some cocktail of realism, abstraction, glamour & technology - spiked with pulp, eros & melodrama.

Daniel Shepelavy: TELLING LIES KEEPS MY TEETH WHITE, 2015, photography, 16" x 24"

About:

TELLING LIES KEEPS MY TEETH WHITE is among an ongoing series of impromptu vignettes of mannequins entitled "Jane of the Waking Universe".

Bio:

Artwise, I work in gouache, watercolor, & graphite - along with collage & photography. It's all usually some cocktail of realism, abstraction, glamour & technology - spiked with pulp, eros & melodrama.

Richard Ryan: Tectonic Series: Spruce Inch, 2006, archival pigment print mounted on Dibond, 30" x 30"

Lindsay Sparagana: Las Salineras de Maras, Peru, 2019, inkjet print, 18" x 24"

About:

This photograph is a double exposure made in camera of salt mines in Maras, Peru, that pre-date the Incans.

Bio:

Lindsay Sparagana (born 1983, Reading, PA; lives in Philadelphia) earned a BFA from the University of the Arts (UArts), Philadelphia and an M.Ed from Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University, Philadelphia. Sparagana has worked collaboratively with many diverse communities, in Philadelphia and as far away as Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru, to facilitate art making. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Sparagana is The Print Center's Artists-in-Schools Program Coordinator. She is also a Master Lecturer in the Photography Department at UArts and an adjunct faculty member in Community Arts Practices at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University.