Autumn Salon: An Annual Members Exhibition Celebrating Philadelphia Studio Tours 2017

October 8-29, 2017 

The 3rd Street Gallery is pleased to present Autumn Salon: An Annual Members Exhibition featuring painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, collage, mixed media, ceramic and fiber art. This group exhibition coincides with the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours: POST 2017, a program of the Center for Emerging Visual Artists and one of the premier open studio tour events in the country. As a Community Partner with POST 2017, 3rd Street Gallery increases awareness of the arts in the wider community and strengthens bonds with fellow artists, local businesses, and neighborhood organizations.

First Friday, October 6, from 5-9 pm

POST 2017 weekend Saturday and Sunday, October 7 & 8, 12-6pm

Artist’s Reception will take place on Sunday, October 22, 1-4 pm.

In Memoriam

Marjorie Grigonis     1940-2017

Born in Baltimore, MD, Marjorie Grigonis lived and worked in her studio in Philadelphia for the past 30 years. She attended George Washington University and The Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC, receiving her MFA from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 1965. Grigonis taught art for 14 years in the Fine Arts departments of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ; Middlesex College in Edison, NJ; the College of Charleston, Charleston, SC; and for one year in the Art Department of The Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr.

Ms. Grigonis was one of the founders of the Amos Eno Gallery in NYC in 1973, and was a recent past director of the 3rd Street Gallery, a co-operative gallery in Old City, Philadelphia. In 1992 Grigonis was the recipient of a residency at the Vermont Studio School; in 1995 she was awarded first prize in painting in Art in Pennsylvania ‘95 at the State Museum in Harrisburg; in 2009 awarded the Van Sciver prize in the annual juried show at The Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia.

She spent part of every year for the last three decades on the rocky coast of Maine, and has visited other countries whenever possible. The varied environments and traveling itself influenced her work. She repeatedly visited Japan, France, Germany, Mexico, China and Italy. A trip to Morocco and the Sahara was the inspiration for a group of paintings. 

Ms. Grigonis’s solo exhibtions included The Knapp Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), 3rd Street Gallery (Philadelphia), the Newark (NJ) Museum, Maine Maritime Academy(Castine, ME), Amos Eno Gallery (NYC) and the inaugural show for the Monsanto Gallery at Lander College (SC). She has shown at the State Museums of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and South Carolina, Woodmere Art Museum, Mint Museum (Charlotte, NC) and various private galleries. Her paintingsand prints are in the collections of the University of NC, the Medical University of SC,  Pennsylvania Hospital, Wyeth Ayerst International, Inc., and in numerous private collections, in the US, France, England and Germany.  Her work, drawings, paintings, prints, has always been abstract, the styles varying over four decades.

Marjorie’s last solo exhibition at 3rd Street Gallery was in May of 2012, after which she exhibited in the Associate Member group show each year until 2016.

Magda Elias is presenting a series of"gobelins," or rug wall hangings, constructed ofwool and acrylic. She draws inspiration for these unique and often whimsical latch-hook rugs from her environment and from the masterpieces of art history. As an avid museum-goer, she likes to re-imagine paintings and sculptures to fit her aesthetic. In the well-known tradition of artists reinterpreting their predecessors' work, Elias takes well-known pieces and makes them her own. Elias says " For the artist, the practice of reconfiguration is fluid and emancipatory, always respectful of previous masters’ interpretive arrangements, yet incessantly in pursuit of a new one that is rebelliously “I”-centric.

Exhibition Highlights:

First Friday: June 2, 5-9 pm.

Artist Reception:  Sunday, June 11, 1-4

First Friday, May 5, 5-9 pm

Artist Reception: Sunday May 7, 2-4 pm

In Drawing Wilfred Owen, Cone presents work based on the poems of Wilfred Owen, one of the British "Trench Poets" of World War I.  After a pause of several years, she returned to the poems and made a journey to the battlefields from Verdun, France to the Menin Gate, a monumental portal in Ypres, Belgium that honors the 54,395 missing Commonwealth war dead killed in the Ypres Salient.  It was through the original city gate at the site that British and American soldiers left for the front. Having come of age during the Vietnam War, Cone finds that the poetry of the Great War is incredibly powerful and resonates with her. She translates this feeling into her visual work.  Her show includes pastel drawings, photographs, and mixed media.

Cone has an MFA in Painting from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.  Prior to that, she was a fine art photographer working in platinum and palladium.  Cone has exhibited extensively in Philadelphia, the Tri-State area and around the country including Maryland, Texas, New York City, and New Orleans. Her work is in collections in the Delaware Art Museum, and the art galleries of the University of Notre Dame and Vassar College, as well as in corporate collections.

Tassiou gaining inspiration from her past artwork and with her internal thoughts, ideas, and imaginative reconnections, she constructs new and in a way surrealistic environments of the external world. 

Abstract and elemental movement is at the center of her artistic process.

She is Incorporating shapes and lines that mimic the rhythms and the forms of organic materials from the nature by using a mixed media of acrylics, oils, pastels, embossing paper and digital prints. 

First Friday: April 7, 5-9PM

Artist Reception: Sunday April 9, 1-4PM

The 3rd Street Gallery is pleased to present We Persist, a group exhibition of artists who will show work in a variety of media including painting, video, photography, ceramic, sculpture, and fiber.

Howard Brunner is an MFA photographer whose most recent body of work was created during walks through the urban landscape of Philadelphia. His work is represented in collections in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Allentown Museum of Art, and the James A. Michener Museum of Art. Brunner is also a professor at Temple University's Architecture Program.

Peter Cunicelli is a ceramic artist whose work contrasts smooth fluid forms with the sharp lines that join them. Lately his work "walks the fine line between form and function" and includes pieces such as bowls, pitchers, and lamps in which functionality is as important as aesthetics. His work has been exhibited inPhiladelphia and surrounding areas.

Francesca Costanzo is a painter and videographer who will be presenting Complexion: Dark, a video on the current political climate surrounding immigration and immigrants. Costanzo honors the struggles and successes of all immigrants by focusing on the story of her maternal grandfather, Umberto Liberati, who emigrated from Italy in 1920.

Constance Culpepper's work is a study in domesticity and the commonalities of personal experience. In her paintings and collages she depicts heavily patterned interior scenes with vibrantly colored objects that she uses as a framework for conveying emotion. A featured artist at Select Fair Art Basel Miami 2013 and 2014, Culpepper's paintings were recently exhibited at the 2016 Democratic National Convention Headquarters.

Nancy E.F. Halbert is an artist, art educator and former dancer with MFA's in Art Education from the University of the Arts and in Dance from Temple University.  She was also a member of Muse Gallery in Philadelphia and its Executive Director for three years. An abstract figurative painter, her work is full of color and movement. Halbert exhibited in juried shows at the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, The Betsy Meyer Memorial Show at the Main Line Art Center, and the James Oliver Gallery.

Andrew Hart is an architect (B. Arch Temple University, M. Arch Cornell University) and educator, currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Architecture at Philadelphia University. In this exhibition he is departing from his drawing practice in which he combines architectural images throughout history with contemporary cultural references to present a sculpture engraved in wood based on the etchings of the Baroque architect, Giovanni Piranesi.

Mary Beth Kazanicka, a corporate design and space planner for 25 years, is an expressionist painter who describes her process as "trusting and letting go". She proceeds intuitively, discovering images as she paints.  Kazanicka exhibits in and around Philadelphia. In 2013 she was awarded first prize in the Wayne Art Center Exhibition in the category of Abstract Art.

Katherine Kurtz, a longtime member of 3rd Street Gallery, is an abstract expressionist painter who loves to make large works in dense bold colors softened by translucent layers and delicate lines. She uses figures, objects and forms to create expressions of mood and states of being. Kurtz has exhibited extensively in and around Philadelphia and won First Prize at the Goggleworks exhibition in Reading in 2014.           

Ellen Silberlicht is a sculptor, ceramicist with an MA in ceramics and fiber artist who combines media to create unique works that marry Raku vessels with colorful felted wool sculpted in whimsical organic shapes. Her work has been sold in the US and internationally and has been recognized with awards, including honors at the Art of the State in Harrisburg, Pa, the Northeastern Biennial Show, and ArtPop.

James Stewart Following a forty-year career as an illustrator, art director and graphic designer Stewart has been painting full time since 2009. A colorist, Stewart paints lyrical landscapes that find their balance between the abstract and the representational. He starts with watercolor sketches on site from nature and then goes to the studio where, in a more abstract approach, he proceeds to add color until an image occurs. He aims to paint his response to a place at a moment in time.

Jacqueline Unanue is a native of Chile and received her art education there, including an MFA in Graphic Design as well as training in drawing, painting, art history and textile art. Her abstract paintings on canvas and paper employ gestural mark-making and colors that are influenced by the palette and forms of the Chilean landscape, the country's pre-historic rock art, and its classical music.  Unanue has exhibited extensively in the US, Chile, Spain and Ecuador.

Dan Evans is an artist and art educator. He has taught art history at the Community College of Philadelphia for over 40 years. A graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Evans is landscape painter, whose works reflect his moods about places he loves and his images "come from the borderline land between the conscious and the subconscious, the poetic world of imagination." Concerned with creating new color combinations in his work, he also explores the quirkiness of line and drawing, flat decorative patterns versus depth, and the illusions created by light.

First Friday, March 3, 5-9 pm.

Artist Reception: Sunday, March 5, 1-4 pm

Keith Sharp

Keith Sharp, a photographer, offers the following view on his recent work: "Perception is a multifaceted and complex subject. Being visual learners and creators, perception is something that all artists are familiar with. Yet, everyone sees the world differently as the understanding of any image is in the “eye of the beholder.” However, we also understand and comprehend differently due to our psychological, socio-cultural, political, or religious make-up. Therefore, something can be blocking or impeding our view visually and physically as well as impeding our understanding and stance on life mentally. Within this series, the focus is on perception in a variety of ways. In some images, I have blocked the view by having to look through something, almost like a veil. In other images, I show the same scene or concept in which the one scene has been transformed, morphed, or shifted from one picture to the next or within the same picture. It’s all a matter of how we look at life."

Bio

Keith Sharp is a photographer based in Media, PA. Solo exhibitions include: Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, PA; The Arts Club of Washington, Washington, DC; The Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE; Philadelphia International Airport, Philadelphia, PA; US Botanical Gardens, Washington, DC; and FotoFest, Houston, TX. His work was included in various group shows, including: Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE; and the Robin Rice Gallery, New York, NY. Collections include the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA; and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Radnor, PA

First Friday, March 3, 5-9 pm.

Artist Reception: Sunday, March 5, 1-4 pm

In this exhibition, Hall presents a body of work that has developed through the experience of adopting a new city, building a home, and what continues to resonate.  Rendered in Sumi and walnut inks on paper, these works are a meditation on how affinity builds attachment and the comfort derived from that sentimentality.  

Bio

Matthew Hall is a Philadelphia-based artist working with gestural drawing, books, text, and works on paper. He attained an MFA in printmaking from Penn State in 2013, and a BFA from Alfred University in Ceramics and Expanded Media in 2006. Between 2006 and 2011 he worked with several Salt Lake City stage arts groups as a graphic designer for Mills Publishing. In 2010 he co-founded Gray Wall Gallery and worked as a curator. His studio is based out of Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood where he also works with InLiquid.org as a graphic designer.  In October 2012, his work was named "Best in Show" by juror Brook Seidlemann in "Homage: Past Influences" at the Target Art Gallery in Alexandria VA. He participated in an artist residency at the Vermont Studio Center in June of 2013 and has designed the season