Time is a Circle: Generational Craft Practices, includes the work of Mona Cliff, Wansoo Kim, Hùng Lê, Jada Patterson, Jason Wang, and Aleah Washington.

The public is invited to the exhibition’s opening reception from 6 to 8 pm. The exhibition includes work by Mona Cliff, Wansoo Kim, Hùng Lê, Jada Patterson, Jason Wang, and Aleah Washington, and runs through February 3, 2024.

For centuries craft practices have been passed from generation to generation keeping traditions alive and preserving history, while building communities through the making process. These shared practices are a testament to the resilience and perseverance of many cultures throughout the world.

The six artists in the exhibition use craft traditions to carry on generational practices while unearthing aspects of their own histories within a broader historical and artistic context.

Mona Cliff is an Aniiih, Nakota, and Eastern European artist whose beadwork and fabric applique are the foundation of her practice and heavily based in generational knowledge. Hung Le combines textile traditions with photography to examine his family history in the backdrop of the Việt Nam War and their immigration to the United States. Material culture and personal histories are at the center of Jada Patterson’s work. Using braided sweetgrass, Patterson references ritualistic healing and imparts power onto the mundane object. Wansoo Kim uses traditional ceramic Korean vessel forms and unorthodox ornamentation, to invite viewers to consider the revealed and the hidden, the internal versus the external. By embellishing the inside of his vessels, he reminds us to examine what is beyond outward appearances. Jason Wang draws on his Chinese heritage to create functional ceramic vessels that revolve around experiencing community. His textured teapots, cups and saucers, are intended to create a sensory experience that invokes a strong emotional response to further dialogue about identity, mental health, and mindfulness. Aleah Washington explores identity, environment, and community through her abstract wall hangings and functional ceramic work. She shares personal memories and reflects on shared histories using bold color on her quilted wall hangings and stitched pattern designs on her ceramics.The artists in the exhibition demonstrate a command of craft and a deep understanding of their role in safeguarding craft traditions and histories.

A native New Yorker, Terry Winters graduated from Pratt Institute in 1971, focusing on painting. Through the 1970s, while studying nature, especially molecular level life forms, Winters honed his craft as a drawer and a painter until he was ready for his inaugural exhibition in 1982 at the prestigious Sonnabend Gallery. Later that same year he began his first foray into printmaking at Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) on Long Island. Winters became one of the leading printmakers in the U.S. At first, he was leaving his Manhattan studio one day a week to work with the master printers at ULAE, and that later escalated to up to four days a week. As art historian Richard Axsom wrote in “The Philosophers’ Stone: The Prints of Terry Winters:”

Printmaking is a forum whose procedures and collaborative protocols have allowed Winters to explore the expressive nature of his drawings. For an artist whose cardinal subject is protean form, printmaking encourages a changing image through the various proofing phases that lead to an editioned print. A print reflects a progressive history of alterations. It is a record of mutation, an accumulation of discrete changes that has no exact counterpoint in drawing or painting.

Over the years, Winters’ paintings, drawings, and prints have been featured in major retrospectives at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Wrestling, sparring, pretend and fantasy allows us to practice for the real world, a real world that asks individuals to engage in a social economy. In this social economy we sell the body as a product forever blurring the lines between consent, maturity, play and desire. Here we lose sight of individuality and fall into our roles. The part of the child, the man and the woman become intertwined in a pageant of desire. Toys and photographs engage us in never ending foreplay, forever wiring our brains to fulfill a predetermined destiny towards this inescapable narrative.

Join Philo Northrup and Kathryn Marie Hogan as they navigate the fine line between play and sex through object and image. In their show “For Play,” Philo & Kathryn tease out the paradox in our culture’s obsession with sex whilst asserting that you can grow up to be anything.

Come join us this Friday from 6 – 10pm from some electrifying art and have fun with our local businesses. The Thirsty Chariot will be serving up some holiday cheer and the energy will be high!

1739 Walnut St

Join us for a First Friday reception from 5 – 8pm on December 1st, featuring:

Player by Peregrine Honig, Exhibition Hall

Player directs the audience into seven theater sets by Peregrine Honig. Each 6x9 foot oil painting presents life size characters in pigment layered backgrounds waiting for their light. Staring out from the woods, swinging from the moon, hanging by their ankle, the viewer is invited into and out of the dark. The characters and audience are players being played.

Player will be on display at Studios Inc through Saturday, December 23rd.

The artist will be available on site for a meet and greet from 6 – 8pm.

Understudies and Auditions will be on display in conjunction with Player November 17th through December 30th at Blue Gallery. For all inquiries, please contact kellyk@bluegalleryonline.com.

Then, There, Here, Now: 

Celebrating the History of the Studios Inc Residency Program, Studios.gallery

This group exhibition is on display in Studios.gallery and our salon hallways through the end of the year. All pieces in this exhibition are for sale and proceeds go directly to funcing the Studios Inc Residency Program.