The Naked Show
On View: April 26 – June 1, 2024 |
Wednesdays to Saturdays, 12 – 6 pm
Sara Allen
Daniel Dallmann
Brian David Dennis
Elissa Glassgold
Kathleen Greco
Nancy Gordon
D'nae Harrison
Susan Lowry
Emily Potts
Kathran Siegel
Carol Taylor-Kearney
Florence Weisz
Susan Wallack
John Wind
Robert Zurer
Major funding for InLiquid Gallery programming has been provided by PNC Arts Alive and the Penn Treaty Special Services District.
Additional support comes from The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Friends of InLiquid, and generous donors like you.
Thank you!
Gallery 108
1400 N. American Street
Philadelphia, PA 19122
InLiquid.org
Open Wednesday - Saturday, 12 - 6 PM & by appointment For inquiries and appointments, contact (215) 235-3405.
The Naked Show
The Naked Show brings together a group of fifteen InLiquid member artists whose work explores the many meanings of exposed human skin. Naked skin is the permeable and sensitive boundary between ourselves and the outside world, a border of endless fascination.
Representations of nakedness take many forms and meanings, evoking intimacy, sensuality, beauty, rawness, voyeurism, censorship, vulnerability, and innocence. Seen here through painting, photography, and sculpture, each artist addresses the myriad limitations and potentials of our infinitely varied human bodies. Emerging as a theme is how bodies are conveyed within stories.
Exhibition View, InLiquid Gallery
The role of the figure in storytelling, mythology, and heroic narratives is explored through repurposed and original figurations in the works of Susan Lowry, Robert Zurer, Elissa Glassgold, and Kathran Siegel. Works by Carol Taylor-Kearney, Daniel Dallmann, Nancy Gordon, and Susan Wallack point to artistic traditions of rendering bodies through figure drawing, studio sessions, and live modeling. Brian David Dennis and John Wind’s works reflect on the body as an erotic idealized image in gay and queer visual cultures, in renderings ranging from reverent to camp.
Cultural standards of beauty and ageism are critically approached in works by Sara Allen and Kathleen Greco, which abstract the body into intimate studies of wrinkles and textures. Florence Weisz and Emily Potts showcase fragility and vulnerability through diverse portraits of harm and healing, while D’nae Harrison offers an image of dynamic vitality through the body’s capacity to move, grow, and give life.
InLiquid is proud of its diverse pool of contemporary artists and celebrates the unique fifteen voices shown here as part of The Naked Show.
Exhibition View, InLiquid Gallery
The Naked Show Exhibition Review
by Jessica Connor
The concept of nudity carries a complex mixture of feelings, ideas, ideals, and expectations. It is the gauge by which some measure worth, the baseline from which some measure life, and the finish line for which some measure victory. Nudity strikes a familiar, but different, chord for each of us. This wide range of ideas and feelings around nudity makes it a powerful theme for a group exhibition.
On May 9, 2024, I attended the opening reception for The Naked Show. The Naked Show showcased the work
of 15 InLiquid artists around the bare human form. The variety of works featured in The Naked Show each represent the artists' relationship with the human body; either others’ or their own, and the range of ideas, emotions, and beliefs they evoke. Inseparable from the human body is the human experience, which is heavily
Susan Lowry Align, 2022
Mixed media collage on board, framed 17.5 x 21"
Florence Weisz My Left Knee, 2013
Collage with photo, alcohol ink papers, staples 10 x 10" $500 (all)
represented throughout the exhibition. The eclectic mix of perspectives, mediums, and interpretations featured in The Naked Show result in an exhibition marked simultaneously by serious self-reflection and assessment of oppressive systems, joyful whimsy, and clever imagination.
Memories--both public and private--shape our perceptions of nudity. Susan Lowry’s mixed media collages (Align and Taken) deconstruct then reassemble Romanesque images of bodies, reimagining the ways these figures interact with one another and the viewer. Elissa Glassgold’s works transmute childhood experiences and fantasies into fixed reality, using blacks, grays, and whites to layer dream and memory. Untitled (gouache) and A Girl will Fly (pencil) both position human forms within dream-like nature scenes inundated with
texture. Daniel Dallman’s detailed oil paintings arrange the naked form as part of the landscape. Instead of the focal point, the nude figures in Dallman’s works are humanized, made a part of a composite moment in time. Model and Artist suspends in time an ordinary, passing moment between artist and subject, and Contemplation of Contrasts places the object quietly in the background, facing away from the viewer.
Turning pain into art, Florence Weisz’s collection of postsurgery photo collages (My Left Knee 1-4) are a slight deviation from her usual work, yet still reflective of her
Oil paint and collage between two panels of glass
46 x 44 x 4"
$3,000
50 x 28 x 28"
John Wind, My Surfboard (The Secret Life of Felix Jesus Consalvos) (detail)
Kathran Siegel Lady of the Rocks, 2008 Linden wood figures, pine, rocks, gouache
Carol Taylor-Kearney Peep Show, 2019
iterative and reflective creative process. Weisz’s photobased collages served as a distraction from the pain of recovery by offering a different perspective of the source of the pain. In our brief conversation, Florence stressed the importance of photography--and art, generally--as a way to remove oneself from an experience and take a more objective approach to it. Similarly, Brian David Dennis’ w/t second summer is a series of nude self portraits that reinstate the human form into the natural world. Bodybuilding poses captured at various points of the day characterize each photo’s title (aspire, dusk call, westward, and pointe) with blurred anonymity.
John Wind’s My Surfboard (The Secret Life of Jesus Consalvos) is an ode to fantasy and the exploits of youth, as well as a rejection of the physical ideals of
white supremacy. A collection of personal ephemera pasted onto the front of a surfboard reflect upon a life of exploration, both external and internal. The back of the board is a release of the standards and desires of the male form. In an expression of a linked struggle, D’nae
Sara Allen, Folding (detail)
Exhibition View, InLiquid Gallery
Daniel Dallmann, Contemplation of Contrasts (detail) Elissa Glassgold, A Girl Will Fly (detail)
Brian David Dennis
w/t second summer - aspire, 2023 12 x 9"
Photograph on rice paper with vellum and rag
$550
Harrison’s Life Lines collages paint and natural materials. Living, organic, round shapes balance the scales against sharp, patterned lines and edges. A refusal of the hypersexualization of the Black female form, Harrison’s use of soft yarn, and warm tones create a shield from the oppressive gaze of a world hellbent on misjudgement.
In an ever-evolving exploration of womanhood, nature, and aging, Katharan Siegeil’s wood sculptures lay these experiences bare. Naked and Lady of the Rocks personify an outward journey to redefine and reclaim womanhood
and the Swan, 2022
in a changing body. The use of smooth and textured surfaces in these sculptures assert Siegell’s skill and process while simultaneously representing her recent life changes and experiences. Kathleen Greco’s photographs also intend to address the complexity of womanhood. Push embodies the constant and opposing demands placed upon women, the subject trapped in fabric, somehow bound by both the fabric and the environment
itself, all captured within an endless frame. The use of different mediums to explore similar concepts results in the kind of specific, yet varied positions drawn out by The Naked Show’s prompt.
The back corner of the gallery feels like a secret conversation between the artists; Emily Potts’ Bubble Gum Guy sits facing open palms, a fraction of the substance and size of the human forms after which it was molded. Combining familiar feelings, themes, and objects, Bubble Gum Chair recalls imagery of Bubble Gum Guy alongside abstract forms and seated in a chair, back facing the viewer. Between these representative pieces are Carol Taylor-Kearny’s Peep Show and Robert Zurer’s Leda and the Swan. Peep Show immerses viewers in colorful, complex imagery, layered collage over a back painted window pane, blurring the distance between viewer and art, peeper and peeped. Zurer uses oil paintings to separate human form from its own humanness by dissecting it then intertwining it with
Exhibition View, InLiquid Gallery Robert Zurer
nature. Leda and the Swan depicts the nude form in direct convergence with nature. These four pieces create a cove of abstract and stratified meanings.
Many of the works depict nudity as vulnerability. The vulnerability evoked in these works presents an opportunity to consider one’s own vulnerabilities and their relationship to them. Nancy Gordon’s oil painting captures a moment of reflection from both artist and subject. Maria Sitting on a Red Bench expresses a serene atmosphere in contrasting blues and reds. In Susan Wallack’s Reclining Nude (acrylic), a dark, contrasting background highlights an exposed and vulnerable naked form. This same vulnerability is mirrored by the subject’s contemplative gaze. Sarah Allen’s Light Along the Side
and Folding photographs use light and shadow to strike viewers’ emotions. Darkness---or light, depending on the viewer’s vantage point---cloaks each subject to capture the gentle balance of strength and vulnerability.
Nudity can be a polarizing concept. For some, the naked form is a source of shame and indignity. For the artists featured in The Naked Show, nudity is a tool for selfexploration and expression.
Pieces selected for this show ranged from explicitly to suggested nudity, exploring a few of the many ways humans get naked. The varied perceptions and experiences in this diverse collection of works is the greatest appeal of this special member exhibition. The Naked Show creates space for self-reflection and an opportunity to find a version of oneself in the works of others.
About the Author
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Exhibition View, InLiquid Gallery
Sara Allen
"I grew up in Vermont, went to Vassar College, and started teaching in the Philadelphia area in 1964. I married another teacher, moved to Mt Airy, stayed home with two children for seven years, and went back to teaching in the early 1970s. I taught middle and upper school English at Springside School in Chestnut Hill until retirement in 2006. Several years later I upgraded from a point and shoot camera to a Nikon SLR and started taking lessons at Basho and PPAC. Trees, flowers, landscapes, family until 2014 when I transformed a series of photos of a performance artist into silk hangings. Photography began to transform me, and during the pandemic I turned the camera on myself and discovered myself as an artist."
Sara is exploring ways of illustrating the naturally aging body with its creases, folds, and rough textures, its bumps and lines and spots. She seeks to make the ordinary body strange. The parts are familiar: the neck, the brow, the back, the fingers and hands, the legs and feet, the torso from the side or the back. The images are playful, unexpected, even strange. She hopes the images encourage the viewer to look anew at what is beautiful and fascinating about the human body.
$1,052
Light Along the Side, 2021
Photograph
24 x 24"
Folding, 2021
Photograph
24 x 32"
$722
Daniel Dallmann
"I grew up with art, and books, in the house: my father was a professional sculptor and my mother was a part time painter. I owe a great deal to the ambiance of that household, to my parents and to their encouragement; but above all to the books. There were so many books in that house, all kinds of books, encyclopediae and dictionaries, books on nature, music, literary classics and art. There were many years of National Geographics, which my father rescued from the trash during a public library cleanout. As a child I already knew a great deal of the work by Rodin, Velasquez, Giotto and many others, although I couldn't properly pronounce their names.
Since then I have earned several degrees and I've taught in a major art school for many years. I discovered Caravaggio while living in Rome in 1974-76. And I rediscovered him again in 2001-03. I have had the good fortune to know, and learn from, many of my colleagues and all of my students. Yet when I began to write a short biographical sketch that included events significant to my career, I could not resist writing about that house in which I grew up, and all those books."
(Excerpt) "I am certain that a painting must maintain a presence all it’s own, outside of, or in addition to, whatever it is that might be inferred by the representational elements. I realize very well that the true subject of my paintings is discovered only in small part from the recognizable objects in them. Of at least equal importance are the subjective and conceptual artistic strategies used to form the work. My investment is in the struggle to balance the identity of the represented world with the visual means of expression. To me that struggle is paramount because it is there that I experience the personal nature of my art. It is there that I sometimes discover content that I didn’t expect. It is there that I can express the respect that I have for the world, life and love. "
Contemplation of
Contrasts, 2023
42 x 32"
Oil on canvas
$4,400
Model and Artist, 1999 Oil on linen
x 26"
Brian David Dennis
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.
(left to right)
w/t second summer - pointe, 2023
12 x 9"
Photograph on rice paper with vellum and rag
$550
w/t second summer - dusk call, 2023
12 x 9"
Photograph on rice paper with vellum and rag
$550
(Excerpt) "As an artist, I crave the sweet moments while working when I slip beneath my own conscious control. While making art, I seek to lose awareness of the outside world and of myself. I am free when working from within, untethered to expectation and thought, even if what comes to the surface is the worst experience of my life."
-Brian David Dennis
Much as he rummages for art materials, he plunders the art cannon for influences. The project and the process dictate his sources. His tormented figures refer to Francis Bacon. The installations are direct descendants of Josef Svoboda's stage designs. Minimalist edicts temper his spontaneous chaos. Central to his aesthetic concerns are always balance, tension, and surface. “The piece is the subject, not the content”. There is a strong autobiographic thread running through his lifelong body of work. The narrative details in earlier projects were shrouded in diffusing layers. With a mature understanding, the confusion and conflict of his past have given way to peace. The always raw and emotive nature of his work is now infused with a powerful honesty.
w/t second summer - westward, 2023
12 x 9"
Photograph on rice paper with vellum and rag
$550
Elissa Glassgold
(Excerpt) "I studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, during which time I was awarded a William Emlen Cresson Memorial Traveling Scholarship. I hold a Bachelor of Fine Art and Art Education from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and MFA in Painting from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
From 1990 until 2010, during which time I was painting, exhibiting, and teaching part time, I also worked in the commercial field of Toy Design. I produced sculpted prototype dolls for Zapf-Creation Germany, whose products were featured at FAO Schwarz and in the European marketplace. My work became very well known in this milieu. I was nominated for many industry awards, several articles were written about my designs, and my work was featured in books which celebrated the works of contemporary Doll Artists. In addition to production work, I created individual mixed media sculptures/dolls, which were exhibited at such Venues as the Jacob Javitts Center Invitational: “The Doll as Art” annual exhibition at International Toy Fair. My works were included in venues related to the field of mixed media figural sculpture in group exhibitions in New Orleans, Chicago, and also in industry sponsored exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, and Germany."
"I consider my works to be visual narratives that illustrate the magical, transcendent and difficult experiences of childhood. My images are primarily autobiographical, but also are derived from my ongoing interest in the history of childhood as portrayed in literature, religious iconography, fairy tales and art.
I grew up in Detroit, Michigan during the years that the city began falling from its former grace as a prosperous and progressive metropolis. It was a time when children lived their daily lives away from watching parents, and amidst these landscapes of the banal, fascinating, and terrifying realms of their own elementary society, set out to explore the world and face its demons. I have been traveling back to these places in my work, and in the process have been trying to understand something that is both magical and fearsome at the same moment."
Untitled, 2019
16 x 20"
Gouache (framed)
$700
Kathleen Greco
Kathleen Greco is a conceptual visual artist. Her interdisciplinary studio practice comprises works on paper, photography, and sculpture. Greco received her MFA in Studio Arts from the University of the Arts and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Design from the Philadelphia College of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Applying knowledge from her industrial design background, she pairs relationships of materials and techniques to conceptual themes in her artwork with diverse mediums including graphite, charcoal, paper, fabric, and flower petals.
Her work has been featured in Artillery, Ginger, Hyperallergic, and the Washington Post. She has lectured at universities and colleges including, Lafayette College and the Royal College of Art London, England. Greco broadened her studio practice during a three week residency from the Civita Institute in the Etruscan hilltop town of Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy.
Greco's artwork has been exhibited in museums and galleries including the Museum of Art and Design New York, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C., Hayward Gallery, England UK, Woodmere Art Museum, Pennsylvania, The Delaware Contemporary, Delaware, the Elisabet Ney Museum, Texas, the Mainline Art Gallery, Pennsylvania, and Museum Frieder Burda, Baden- Baden, Germany. Her sculpture was included in the collaborative Coral Reef Pod World's installation in the Central Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2019, Venice, Italy.
Artist Statement
"My Material Body series comprises tightly cropped framed naked figures. The work examines the materiality formed between the surfaces; unsettling tension, personal boundaries, and resilience. I expose the perception of the female form while investigating cultural and social imprints related to the body. The folds convey time and movement as I examine the illusion where line and the skin blurs the boundaries of what is real, what is imagined, and what is desired. Looking for contradictions while empowering the form, I reframe the body allowing new perceptions to emerge."
Photograph - museum face mounted
Push, 2020
12 x 20"
$2,500
Nancy Gordon
"I am a graduate of Moore College of Art and studied with several known artists, including Giovanni Casadei, Paul DuSold, Alexander Shanks, Alan Sofer and others.
My work life took me astray of traditional artist expression. I had my own catering business for many years and was known for my artistic food displays.
I am now able to return to my root love…painting!"
"I love color and movement. My stimulus stems from the layers of color. The result is a realistic abstraction of nature. My inspiration is the nature that surrounds me which offers a vast variety of subject matter. Each painting is based on intuition and trusting my feelings. My passion is demonstrated by using colors that mirror my emotions. Through my process of painting, I discovered that expressing and communicating joy is very important. Experimentation is the source of my excitement during the painting process directed by the subject matter. Like snowflakes, my work is never the same twice."
Maria Sitting on a Red Bench, 2022
Maria Sitting on a Red Bench (detail)
D'nae Harrison
D’nae Harrison is an Award-winning Interdisciplinary Artist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 2014, she obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The Pennsylvania State University. In 2017, the City of Philadelphia commissioned D'nae to create a 52 in x 52 in oil painting, which remains downtown on permanent display. During the same year, her work featured with Six Summit Gallery for NYFW '17 (Fall). In 2018, her work showcased at the former Robert Miller Gallery in Chelsea, Manhattan during the Eminent Domain exhibition. In 2020, her notable “Shaded Oppression” painting received the 2020 Future Art Award conferred by MOZAIK Philanthropy located in Beverly Hills, CA. Recently, Harrison’s “Save The Date” mural featured on various news outlets such as WHYY, NBC10, CBS3, Yahoo News, and The Philadelphia Tribune in efforts to raise voting awareness during the To The Polls 2020 project in LOVE Park. D’nae is currently focused on creating a public art initiative dedicated to improving the quality of life in distressed and impoverished neighborhoods.
"As an Artist and Musician who is not afraid to use their voice as an instrument, my work speaks not only for me but for those who do not have the same freedom. I aim to inspire those who have been oppressed to practice self love, utilize their voices and trust in their vision. My most recognized body of work is emotionally charged and often juxtaposed against geometric based backgrounds. My color palettes are bold and bright although the contrast of “black and white” is referenced throughout various works. Linear patterns bounce throughout my work threading together both past and present day themes of hyphenated American culture, while exploring concepts of self-reflection and social commentaries particularly in response to inequalities and injustices."
Life Lines, 2017 30 x 24" Oil and yarn on wood
Life Lines (detail)
Susan Lowry
Lowry received her BFA from Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts), and her BA from Kirkland College (now Hamilton College). Her work is included in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Woodmere Museum, and Aramark Corporation.
Lowry is a visual artist living and working in Philadelphia. Using mixed media, she finds the practice of dismantling and assembling hybrid surfaces leads to unexpected outcomes. Drawing and painting are integrated with found and manipulated images. Her early work reflects the influence of Renaissance narrative painting, where time and events compress in a single frame. This theme of simultaneous this and that persists in her current practice. Sequence, framing, and context defy linear thinking. Lowry strives for a degree of awkwardness to heighten emotional or empathetic responses. Themes spring from an urge to find solace in memory, and experience while remaining anchored by a connection to place. Often, themes of abrupt change or gradual awareness are evident.
Align (detail) Taken, 2022
Taken (detail)
Emily Potts
(Excerpt) Emily Potts (b. 1996 Houston TX, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice gives material form to invisible and chronic conditions. Emily’s research focuses on the relationship between the brain, the mind, and the body in processing and healing from trauma. Her sculptures give material forms to her childhood memories, and she works in a wide variety of media, from traditional materials like ceramics and wood to unconventional materials like paper pulp and bubble gum. The unique sculptural forms she creates are made by hand to have strange and childlike qualities, so they are familiar but also strange and somewhat unsettling. Her work has been exhibited at notable institutions regionally and nationally such as New York Academy of Art New York, NY, Mid-South Sculpture Alliance’s Confab 2023 at the University of Oklahoma School of the Visual Arts, Norman, OK, the SAA Visual Arts Center, Springfield, IL, Union Street Gallery, Chicago Heights IL, and LHUCA, in Lubbock, TX.
Artist Statement
"I have created my work in order to unravel my sense of the world and challenge the narratives and beliefs I hold as truths. I explore the relationship between the brain, the mind and the body in the processing of trauma that originate in early childhood development and memory. I work to overcome the assumption that in order to heal something has to be completely resolved within the self. Instead, I offer that healing is an undescribed area, that is unmeasurable, and it is forever evolving and never finished.
My process of creating involves iterating the same forms in different media, and using the medium to understand the object in a new way. I utilize and experiment with a combination of materials from ceramics, steel, bronze, wood, and fibers to unconventional materials like paper pulp, gloop, and bubble gum. My overall vision for my work is to simulate the gesture and sensibility of a figure into systems that extend outside of the body but still allude to it.but in an unrealistic, imperfect, and nonfunctional way.
I believe that healing is an ongoing process, never fully attained. This is replicated in the- imperfect nature of the objects I make. I am not interested in chasing after a memory and seeking its validity or truth as a representation of what actually happened. I am however interested in embracing the uncertainty of an object and the memory tied to it."
Bubble Gum Guy, 2020
28 x 23 x 13"
Steel rod, aluminum, oil-based clay, Double Bubble Gum
Bubble Gum Chair, 2020
48 x 36"
Archival inkjet print (framed)
Kathran Siegel
Born and raised in New York City, Kathran Siegel attended Bennington College, where she studied painting with Jules Olitsky and Paul Feeley, sculpture with Anthony Caro and David Smith, and printmaking with Vincent Longo. She worked towards an M.F.A. at the University of New Mexico, but at the invitation of Newton Harrison and Paul Brach,(shadow wives: Helen Harrison and Miriam Shapiro) stopped her studies to help develop the program for a new art department at the University of California at San Diego. Following these experiences, Siegel moved to a loft in N.Y.C. where she continued to paint.
After a few years, she moved to Gainesville, Florida, where she taught at the University of Florida. While working on an MEd., Siegel took a woodworking class, which led her into 25 years of making studio furniture and other carved and turned objects. Until her retirement from teaching in 2011, she combined her studio practice with teaching art in Florida and in and around Philadelphia, where she currently lives. Her work is in several regional museum and public art collections. She was awarded an NEA Ventures Grant and later an Andy Warhol Foundation Grant. She has published a monograph on the artist, Mildred Thompson, as well as articles on the arts and arts education. Siegel is currently a member of Muse Gallery in Philadelphia.
"This body of work began as a challenge from a friend. Introducing me to the work of Henry Darger, and aware of my sculptural interpretations of the strangeness I perceived in nature, he challenged me to create a Blengin.
Uninterested in designing young girls with butterfly wings and lizard tails, I exchanged those for middle aged women with lizard and butterfly aspects. That was an idea which did excite me. At the time I was going through my own process of reidentification now as a woman past my prime. I was sensitive to a change I felt in the way I was being perceived out in the world. I liked the idea of using these Blengins as a vehicle through which I could explore those feelings. Over time, Blengins evolved into “Flower Girls.” Eventually I dropped all remaining reference to their Blengin origin, though I did stick with the figure for awhile longer.
Recently I have returned to some of that work. I have better ways now to mount the winged girls, using an approach I developed while solving the same problem in work done since. I have also made changes to the degree and type of detail in some of the later figures, such as "Naked," where I felt that by reworking her I could strengthen my original intention."
Naked, 2008-2023
51 x 14 x 12" Linden figure; White Pine, Plywood, Tile stand; Gouache figure; acrylic painted box
Carol Taylor-Kearney
(Excerpt) Carol Taylor-Kearney has been exhibited nationally and her art is part of both public and private collections including Wells Fargo Bank, Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP, Queensborough College, CUNY, Gloucester County Public Library, and Penn Medicine. Art Fairs she has participated in are the Parallax Art Fair and the Clio Art Fair. Support includes grants from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and Artist Fellowship, Inc., and artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Peters Valley Craft Center, and the Pouch Cove Foundation in Newfoundland. She is represented by Atlantic Gallery, an artist co-op in Chelsea, NYC and Cerulean Arts Collective in Philadelphia. She writes an art blog, www. whatsartblog.com, and presents the #OneMinuteCrit on Instagram. Most recently she has opened an art gallery in Collingswood, NJ called Powell Lane Arts. To find more information visit www.PowellLaneArts.com.
Artist Statement
"In my exploration of the naked human form, my artwork goes in two directions. For the larger, mixed media paintings on windows, I rely on art history by placing masterpieces in a context of contemporary life. In my more informal oil paintings on paper and illustration board, I limit the palette and allow the paint- its blotches, strokes, and color- to describe the naked figures that I observe. Strangely, although this is an exercise for freeing me to move my brush around, there appears to be a certain narrative element that I often don't recognize until I look at the finished work."
Reverse painting on glass of window with mixed media, collage, objects
Figure This, 2019 26 x 26 x 5"
Florence Weisz
(Excerpt) Florence Weisz was born in New York and maintained an art studio in South Orange, northern New Jersey, for 35 years. After earning a degree in Fine Art from Douglass College, Rutgers University, she studied in Paris and then in Jerusalem, where she also lived for eight eventful years, teaching art in special education schools.
Over the years she has established a full time studio art practice and enjoyed many opportunities to exhibit her art throughout the Metro New York area and beyond. The birth of her irresistible granddaughter four and a half years ago in Ardmore, drew her toward Pennsylvania. Florence and her husband sold their NJ home and in January 2018 relocated to Wynnewood. She has joined the Mainline Art Center and the DaVinci Art Alliance. She was fortunate to be offered a solo show at the Gladwyne Library Gallery this past May and June, to fill in a sudden hole in the curator's schedule. In the last six months she has met quite a few local artists and looks forward to finding a place for herself in the art community of the Philadelphia area.
"l love collage - it’s my primary medium. I create my own distinctive collage materials and search for innovative ways to express a range of different subjects. I love the excitement that comes with the collage process: the chance placement of elements and the accidental discoveries that lead me to explore new visual ideas.
My knee replacement surgery inspired these collages featuring repellent/ fascinating images of the medical staples closing my incision.
I took closeup photographs ‐ lurid knee selfies ‐ of my inflamed, stretched flesh gripped by surgical staples. In these collages I combined the digital photos with pieces of my alcohol-ink papers, some selected for their similarities to my own skin, and inserted actual office staples to suture the paper together.
Now, several years later, I am fully recovered, my new titanium knee allowing me full, pain-free mobility. Only a narrow, pale, seven inch scar down the center of my left knee reminds me that anything happened at all.
I realize that compared to others' health conditions that are life threatening and cause chronic pain and disability, my knee replacement was just a minor inconvenience in my life. However at the time of the surgery and during recovery I did experience my own personal trauma and found that I could soften the distress and refocus my attention by creating art."
My Left Knee 3 (detail)
Susan Wallack
Artist Statement
"The things I make— collage, assemblage, mixed media— are hybrids, internally diverse and externally beholden to a broad range of influences, from African masks to Renaissance Madonnas to the Merzbau of modernist Kurt Schwitters. Story-like, the pieces are narrative, but broken into fragments; their subjects, often women, recognizable but not exactly real. I wish to make something which invites many levels of interpretation, rather than dictating a single idea. In my pieces, backgrounds are often ambiguous (heavily patterned, black or abstract), suspending the image in a visual limbo, precluding fixed meaning and urging the viewer’s interpretation. In this sense, the work is incomplete, purposely so, propelled outward as is, into the unknown."
Reclining Nude, 2020
x 24"
on Bristol board
Reclining Nude (detail)
John Wind
(Excerpt) John Y. Wind is a mixed media artist, creating narrative portraits, assemblages and installations. His art explores the intersection of art, commerce, portraiture and history. It is fabricated with ephemera and objects collected from his own life and inspired by his obsessions. Wind is also co-founder of Maximal Art Inc, known for Modern Vintage; fashion jewelry and gifts, and sold internationally under the John Wind brand. Symbiotically, the language and materials of jewelry often find their way into his fine art.
John Y. Wind was born in Israel, raised in Philadelphia, and studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the Slade School of Fine Art, London. He has been active in Philadelphia's art scene for many years, serving in leadership roles at ICA, Vox Populi, Arts + Business Council, Fleisher Art Memorial, InLiquid, and now as President of the Dina Wind Art Foundation.
For more please visit www.johnwind.art.
Artist Statement
"My Surfboard (The Secret Life of Felix Jesus Consalvos) is a gay fantasia celebrating queer desire, pop culture, and some of the touchstone artists who arouse me in so many ways. It begins with the surfboard itself, a phallic signifier of unattainable California surfer dude cool, erect and posturing for all to admire. He is the blond and confident all-American boy, but by coopting him for art I could possess what was never attainable to me before...
The front is the public-facing side; all about color, collage and commerce. It shouts-out Warhol, trippy Fred Tomaselli, Robert Indiana, and more, more, more.
The back is private, hidden, coded, like the coded, secret desire of the self-taught master collage artist Felix Jesus Consalvos and the straining posing pouches worn by hundreds of Physique Pictorial pinups. But freed of their constraints, I add escort cards, models from the International Male catalogue, late 20th century analogue porn, and penises everywhere--dicks, pricks, cocks, tools, members, knobs, dongs, schlongs, peckers, and willies , a corrective to decades (centuries?) of closets and shame.
The work was created for my 2013 solo show at James Oliver Gallery (co-sponsored by InLiquid), "The Making of a Modern Man". There was a lot of naked work in that show... "My Surfboard" is the piece that feels the most current and compelling to me today."
Opposite Page:
My Surfboard (The Secret Life of Felix Jesus Consalvos), 2013
81 x 20 x 12"
Paper collage on surfboard
$4,500
Robert Zurer
Landscape 42, 2021 16 x 16"
Oil on wood $900
Artist Statement
"I am a native New Yorker who lived and worked in New York all my life until very recently when I relocated to Philadelphia.
I make intuitive, process-driven oil paintings containing a combination of figurative and biomorphic abstract forms.
I use no external source material and never start with a conscious idea or a plan. I start my work using random or automatic gestures. I then pay close attention and wait. I enter into a dialog with the painting, a call and response. It feels like an idea or an impulse is coming into me from outside, as if I am receiving a message perhaps from our collective unconscious.
In the final stages a narrative emerges which almost always describes our human condition, the struggle between spirit and flesh and living within paradox and duality."
Leda and the Swan (detail)
InLiquid
InLiquid is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to creating opportunities and exposure for visual artists and works with more than 300 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 Isabella at isabella@inliquid.org.
Following page: Exhibition view, InLiquid Gallery
