Functional Misrepresentation catalog

Functional Misrepresentation

Rotational Exhibits

Park Towne Place Museum District Residences is uniquely situated on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway among the City of Philadelphia’s most cherished art and cultural institutions. The vision for the community is to fully integrate Park Towne Place into the fabric of the Parkway – providing a unique art experience for residents and visitors alike.

In addition to the permanent art collection on display, rotational exhibits like Functional Misrepresentation showcase both established and up-and-coming artists. Each exhibit includes companion educational and social opportunities to visit with artists who host talks and provide insights on their original works.

The award-winning Art Program at Park Towne Place is presented by AIR Communities, one of the largest owners of apartment homes in Philadelphia. For more information about AIR Communities, please visit our website at www.aircommunities.com.

All rotational artworks are available for purchase. Inquiries for purchases can be directed to Clare Finin at clare@inliquid.org.

Front Cover: Selection of works from Functional Misrepresentation

Functional Misrepresentation

@ The South, North, and West Tower Galleries at Park Towne Place Museum District Residences

October 2022 - February 2023

Curated by: InLiquid, InLiquid.org

Featuring:

Leila Cartier Randall Cleaver Billy Colbert Christina P. Day Han Wang Mallory Weston

, Billy Colbert

Across the Ocean Project: General Tso's Chicken #4, Han Wang

Functional Misrepresentations highlights six artists whose work uses the shared language of objects to discuss how they can act as vectors of memory; both personal and societal. The included artists, Leila Cartier, Randall Cleaver, Billy Colbert, Christina P. Day, Han Wang, and Mallory Weston show how objects can hold onto memories and be reconstructed to tell mythical tales of what was, and what could have been.

Christina P. Day mines the memories of interior places through her linoleum collage series. Using salvaged linoleum flooring, Day painstakingly cuts out the patterns, layering and manipulating them as a way of honoring and preserving them. Also using salvaged materials, Randall Cleaver’s assemblages utilize components that span his lifetime- an old tractor light from a yard sale in Maryland, a children's bicycle rescued from the trash, and bottle caps collected over forty years, all nod to the memories of fleeting moments and places.

Han Wang’s Across the Ocean Project weaves together the memory of culturally significant foods, forms, and patterns with more darkly complex reverberations of cultural appropriation. The blue patterns, caught between the authentic and Delftware reinterpretations, are undeniably beautiful as they revel in their hybridity. Also hybridizing cultures is Billy Colbert. In his work he combines a love of skateboarding in his American youth with the (often) unsung contributors of our human culture.

But what of worlds imagined, mythical, and fantastical? The unusual references Mallory Weston makes with her jewelry- a threatening snake, an oozing wound, a barbed cacti- offer an opportunity for escapism. They allow the wearer to amass and adorn themselves with the tokens that best represent their internal worlds on any given day. Also focusing on escapism through jewelry is Leila Cartier whose large scale collages made up of hand-cut images of jewelry from magazines give us a glimpse into a beauty that obscures hidden dangers, excess, and the disparity between expectations and reality.

Objects we encounter can lose their meaning, becoming merely another thread in our daily tapestries. But in the hands of the artists of Functional Misrepresentations, once familiar objects are elevated to take on new meanings that challenge us to consider the ways in which we take what seems to be true for granted.

Cicada, Leila Cartier

LEILA CARTIER

Leila Cartier holds an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL) and concurrently studied Arabic Language at Depaul University (Chicago, IL) with a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship. Her BFA in Art and Art History from Moore College of Art & Design (Philadelphia, PA) included a year spent with Temple University Rome, Italy.

Since 2016, Leila Cartier has been the Executive Director of CraftNOW Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA), an emerging organization uniting institutions, scholars and artists to promote the historic and contemporary role of the city in the fields of craft and making.

On Display

South Tower

Blue, 2017, 58 x 38”, Collage on stone paper

Red Jewel Beetle, 2019, 52 x 38˝, Collage on stone paper

North Tower

Cicada, 2019, 52 x 38˝, Collage on stone paper

June Bug , 2019, 52 x 38˝, Collage on stone paper

Thousand Legger, 2019, 52 x 38˝, Collage on stone paper

Contact gallery for price (all)

Time to Sit, Randall Cleaver

RANDALL CLEAVER

Randall Cleaver received his BFA in sculpture from Penn State (State College, PA). Afterwards, he spent twentyfive years living in Philadelphia, PA before relocating to Takoma Park, MD where he is happiest working in his shop.

Randall Cleaver’s father was a huge packrat, always bringing home something he found at an auction, flea market or junk pile. Cleaver would make his own toys or adapt existing toys with the raw materials found in the basement and garage of his childhood home. As a sculpture student it was a natural thing to scour salvage yards and rubbish piles for art supplies instead of buying new. This attitude of reuse and adapting existing parts still plays a major role in his work today.

On Display

South Tower

Music Time , 2021, 30 x 10 x 12˝, Metal marching band clarinet, wood clarinet horns, copper pipe, metal parts, $1,000

Talltail Time, 2022 , 15 x 40 x 40”, Car grill, tail fin trim, metal tray, glass lens blanks, clock movement, thermometer, $1,500

West Tower

Time to Sit , 2022, 29 x 43 x 43”, 19th century piano legs, plywood, bottlecaps, epoxy, vinyl, wooden lamp base, tincan, $8,000

, Billy Colbert

BILLY COLBERT

Billy Colbert holds a Bachelor of Science from Frostburg State University (Frostburg, MD) and an MFA from the University of Delaware (Newark, DE). He currently works as an Associate Professor of New Media at Delaware State University (Dover, DE). Colbert’s work examines cognitive dissonance in popular culture and celebrates the unsung contributors to American history.

On Display

West Tower

SB1, 2017, 20 x 9 x 5”, Assemblage, $1,700

SB2 , 2017, 23 x 10 x 7”, Assemblage, $1,700

SB3 , 2017, 30 x 10 x 5”, Assemblage, $2,500

SB4 , 2017, 16 x 10 x 6”, Assemblage, $1,700

SB6 , 2017, 20 x 10 x 4”, Assemblage, $1,700

SB7, 2017, 20 x 15 x 5”, Assemblage, $2,000

SB8 , 2017, 20 x 10 x 5”, Assemblage, $1,700

SB9, 2017, 19 x 8 x 5”, Assemblage, $1,500

North Tower

SB5, 2017, 12 x 7 x 5”, Assemblage, $1,700

SB10, 2017, 23 x 10 x 5”, Assemblage, $1,700

Roser, Christina P. Day

CHRISTINA P. DAY

Christina P. Day holds a BFA from the University of the Arts (Philadelphia, PA) and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI). She has participated in numerous prestigious artist residencies and independent researcher positions. She is currently on sabbatical from serving as Faculty and Chair of the Fiber Department at the Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore, MD).

On Display

South Tower

Climber, 2019, 17.75 x 15.25”, $3,000

Everlaster, 2019, 18.25 x 19.5 x 1.5”, $2,500

Next Gen Tuff Stuff, 2019, 15.75 x 17 x 1.5”, $2,500

Roser, 2019, 26.5 x 20”, $4,000

Trainer, 2019, 16.25 x 19 x 1.5”, $2,500

Materials (all): Hand cut and collaged flooring salvage, Plexi-glass

North Tower

Casement #2 , 2013, 16 x 13 x 5.5”, Found luggage, house paint, extracted wallpaper, polyurethane, $1,000

Faux Finish, 2013, 13.5 x 11 x 3.25”, Found Panasonic office phone, extracted wallpaper, house paint, polyurethane, $1,500

Overlock , 2011, 6.5 x 3.75 x 6.25”, Found crystal double doorknob and lock, house paint, extracted and re-aligned wallpaper, $1,800

Raze (rise), 2022, 69 x 43 x 2”, Hand cut and collaged linoleum flooring, glue, wood, $10,000

West Tower

Pointer, 2019, 10.25 x 17”, Hand cut and collaged flooring salvage, plexi glass, $2,500

Push, 2019, 10.375 x 13.625”, Hand cut and collaged flooring salvage, plexi glass, $3,000

Spray, 2022, 39 x 28 x 4”, Hand cut and collaged linoleum flooring, wood, glue, found candlestick wax, $8,000

(Top to bottom) Across The Ocean Project: Takeout ContainerPeony #2, Takeout Container- Peony #1, Han Wang

Han Wang holds a BFA from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (Guangzhou, China) and an MFA from the University of the Arts (Philadelphia, PA). She has shown her artwork throughout the Northeastern United States. Wang uses her place as an outsider in America and her surroundings as inspiration in her work.

On Display

South Tower

Across The Ocean Project: Takeout Container- Peony #1, 2021, 6 x 3.5 x 3.5”, $600

Across The Ocean Project: Takeout Container - Peony #2 , 2021, 6 x 3.5 x 3.5”, $600

Materials (all): Porcelain, hand-painted with blue underglaze

North Tower

Across the Ocean Project: General Tso’s Chicken #4 , 2016, 9 x 6 x 10”, Porcelain, underglaze blue and white decoration, ceramic decals, lacquer, gold-leaf $1,200

Across the Ocean Project: General Tso’s Chicken #7, 2018, 7 x 5.5 x 9.5”, Porcelain, underglaze blue and white decoration, ceramic decals, lacquer, gold-leaf $1,200

Flesh: Spring, 2018, 8 x 7 x 9.5”, Porcelain, blue Mason stain decoration, lacquer, gold-leaf, $1,300

West Tower

Across The Ocean Project: Hand Sanitizer #1, 2021, 8.25 x 4 x 2.25”, $700

Dragon, 2020, 5.5 x 4.75 x 3.5”, $500

Hand Sanitizer #2 , 2021, 4.75 x 1.5 x 2.5”, $200

Hand Sanitizer #3 , 2021, 4.75 x 1.5 x 2.75”, $200

N95 Face Mask , 2021, 3.25 x 5.5 x 3.75”, $200

Phoenix, 2020, 5.75” x 4.5” x 3.5”, $500

Materials (all): Porcelain, hand-painted with blue underglaze

(Top to bottom) Pixel Leaf Brooch #1, Saguaro Cactus Brooch, Mallory Weston

MALLORY WESTON

Mallory Weston is an artist currently living and working in Philadelphia, PA. Weston holds a MFA from Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI). Her studio work has been exhibited widely as well as her collaborative efforts with the JV collection, a group of seven art jewelers based in Philadelphia. Weston currently works as an Associate Professor of Metals/ Jewelry/CAD-CAM at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture (Philadelphia, PA).

On Display

South Tower

Pixel Leaf Brooch #1, 2021, 8 x 5 x .25”, Anodized Titanium, brass, leather, cotton, powder coat, $850

West Tower

Constrictor Choker #1, 2016, 12 x 16 x .25”, Gold-Filled Bronze, silver, gold plated brass, leather, cotton, thread, $3,800

Dingbats (Black), Dingbats (White) 2014, 17 x 12 x 2”, Oxidized copper, sterling silver, nickel, leather, thread, $2,300 (each)

Skin Shed #1, 2016, 24 x 9 x .25”, Gold-filled bronze, nickel, copper, leather, thread, $3,800

North Tower

Barrel Cactus Brooch Pair, 2013, 4 x 4 x 5”, Brass, steel, spray-paint, cotton, polyester, thread, $1,650 Fuzzy Cheetos Frown Brooches #1, #2 , #3 , 2013, Dimensions

Variable, Brass, nickel, paint, flocking, cotton, polyester, thread, $475, $575 , $675

Saguaro Cactus Brooch, 2013, 10 x 3 x 2”, Brass, nickel, spray-paint, cotton, polyester, thread, $1,450

Weeping Sore Brooch, 2013, 10 x 4 x 1”, Brass, nickel, spray-paint, leather, cotton, thread, $1,250

InLiquid

InLiquid is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to creating opportunities and exposure for visual artists and works with more than 280 artists and designers. It serves as a free, online public hub for arts information in the Philadelphia area. Find out more at www.inliquid.org.

All rotational artworks are available for purchase. Inquiries for purchases can be directed to Clare Finin at clare@inliquid.org.