Tag: exhibitions

Faculty, Staff, and Member Show

This exhibition runs concurrently with Art Behind Bars from Sept. 10-Oct. 19. Learn more here.

For any inquiries about work on display, please contact Gallery Manager, Amy Cook, at acook@abingtonartcenter.org.

Art Behind Bars

This exhibition runs concurrently with our Faculty, Staff, and Member show from Sept. 10-Oct. 19. Learn more here.

For any inquiries about work on display, please contact Gallery Manager, Amy Cook, at acook@abingtonartcenter.org.

Solo Series Spring 2026

Untitled (Om in Yoga 2), 2023 | Guizi Gao | Oil on linen | $3,000

On View April 24 – June 1, 2026

Opening Reception | Friday, April 24 | 6:00p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Artist Talk | Stephanie Manzi, Guizi Gao, & Ben Pranger | Wednesday, April 29 | 6:00 p.m. – 8:00p.m.

ARTISTS

Guizi Gao – Realm of Chaos

Guizi Gao is a figurative expressionist oil painter whose work explores the human body as a mutable vessel shaped by social, biological, and psychological forces. Working in large-scale oil painting, she fuses Renaissance and Baroque compositional structure with gestural distortion and layered, tactile surfaces. Influenced by the London School, particularly Francis Bacon and Jenny Saville, Gao treats paint as corporeal matter, building and erasing flesh-like forms. Her signature headless or obscured figures are stripped of fixed identity, transforming from portraiture into archetypal presences that carry social, emotional, and existential resonance.

Gao’s series Realm of Chaos – Amazing Grace are inspired by Daoist cosmology, tracing cycles of vital spirit descending into the body, awakening, self-tempering, and spiritual renewal. Figures dissolve into organic geometry, translucency, and childlike symbolic forms, reflecting the flow of qi气, resilience, and the natural ascent of the heart-mind. The works engage themes of womanhood, pregnancy, breastfeeding, loss, and rebirth, presenting the body as both intimate and universal while highlighting the delicate balance between vulnerability and strength.

Gao holds an MFA in Oil Painting from the China Academy of Art and completed graduate study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her work has been exhibited internationally in the United States, China, France, the U.K., Japan, and Norway, earning Merit Prizes from the Salmagundi Club International Figurative Art Competition.

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Stephanie Manzi – Net Change

“My work is rooted within ecology and presents itself as abstract spaces of color, layered marks, soft patterns, and material depth. I am often searching for way to show life at the infinity level, with images that can read as micro or cellular points of view as well as macro perspectives of mapped out land or road systems. I like the tangle- it toys with grief inside the confusion of history and relationship to nature, as well as the celebration of material and color that paint has to offer.”

–Stephanie Manzi

Stephanie Manzi is a painter and educator from Upstate, NY, based in Philadelphia, PA. Her work studies ecology through color, pattern and material. She received her MFA at Tyler School of Art in 2022 and her BFA from SUNY Purchase in 2014. Her work has been shown on both coasts, including Big Ramp Gallery, Ice Box Projects and Pilot Projects in Philadelphia, PA, as well as Las Laguna Gallery, Covet Gallery, and Shoebox Projects in Southern California. Manzi received the Award of Excellence at Conception Arts NYC, Faculty Committee Life Grant from PCA&D and had work featured in Tinge Magazine and Friend of the Artist. She was a resident at Grand Marais Art Colony, Mount Gretna School of Art and ChaNorth Artist Residency and is an upcoming resident at DaVinci Art Alliance for 2025. Manzi most recently had work on display at Valdosta State University, a solo show at The Southern Vermont Art

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Ben Pranger – Recursive Terrain

“My wall-based constructions slowly grow into emergent forms. Small pieces of wood are stacked and glued, drifting off course to traverse the space in front of the wall. The work follows simple rules that unfold organically to create entangled, rhizomatic structures. Many of the constructions suggest futuristic cities rising out of the rubble of their own destruction. Fragments from previous work coalesce into stairways, passages, apertures, enclosures and pyramids, leading the viewer through labyrinthine architectures. These indwellings map a recursive mental space that morphs into evolving worlds.”

– Ben Pranger

Ben Pranger has shown his work throughout the U.S., including recent group shows at Gallery Petite (NY), Curious Matter (NJ), Art House Gallery (NJ), Drawing Rooms (NJ), Artist-Run/ Satellite Show (Miami), Trestle Gallery (NY) and Grizzly Grizzly (PA). He has participated in artist residencies at Kohler Art/Industry, Fine Arts Work Center of Provincetown, the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Program, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and has received sculpture grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the New Jersey Council for Art.

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For inquiries about work in our exhibitions, please contact our Gallery Manager at acook@abingtonartcenter.org.

Solo Series Fall 2025

Nothing is as it was, 2025 | Barbara Brady | Oil on canvas

On View Sept. 12 – Oct. 20, 2025

Opening Reception | Friday, Sept. 12 | 6:00p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Artist Talk | Wednesday, Oct. 15 | 6:00 p.m. – 8:00p.m.

ARTISTS

Barbara Brady – Marking Time

Barbara Brady creates expressionist paintings, drawing inspiration from her environment, world events, and personal experiences. Through expressive brushwork and bold color, Brady not only creates little worlds within larger spaces, but also captures glimpses of inexplicable moments within her work. Her paintings act as a visceral response to life and the world.

Brady lives and works on the coast of Maine. She received her BFA from Rosemont College and completed her post-graduate study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA. After a 30 year career working as an art director and graphic designer for publishing and healthcare organizations on both coasts, it wasn’t until moving to coastal Maine in 2001 that painting became her passion. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions within galleries, museums and cultural centers, and her work is held in corporate and private collections internationally.

Barbara Brady’s Marking Time is on view in our Tile Gallery.

Mike John Murray – Happily Imperfect Together

Interdisciplinary artist, Mike John Murray, crafts objects that are intricate, unusual, yet whimsical. This is evident in how he plays with materiality and form, combining rough and smooth textures, stark colors, and recognizable and unrecognizable motifs. Murray’s work feels unreal and almost dream-like in how they are structured, leaving the viewer yearning for context. He acknowledges this ambiguity, noting “[my work] lingers at the edge of a more primal experience, quietly resisting the impulse to explain themselves.”

Mike John Murray was born in Vermont, and exposed to the Hudson River School of painters early in his youth, sparking interest in art. Murray received his formal arts education at a small university in rural Pennsylvania, and spent his time post-school traveling and learning from artists and craftspeople from across the Americas and Europe, influencing his studio work.

Mike John Murray’s Happily Imperfect Together is on display in our Book Room Gallery.

Teresa Shields, I Feel Seen

Teresa Shields weaves her fascination with fabric, thread, and wool fiber into a unique and colorful artistic journey. Her work invites viewers into the intricate world of embroidery and wet-felting, where she skillfully interprets abstract shapes and unravels new dimensions in materiality. Drawing inspiration from nature’s intricate designs–plant forms, human eyes, and cell structure–and the female gaze, Shields’s exhibition presents her unique perspective on women’s experience. Her sculptural eyeballs follow and see the audience in a way that allows them to be observed while actively returning attention. The sculptural necklaces connect her process to the earliest adornment of human bodies and the manner in which women use external objects of beauty to create meaning. 

Teresa Shields is an artist based in Jenkintown, PA. She earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Mass College of Art. Known for her idiosyncratic work that beckons tactile engagement, Shields has exhibited across the country, accumulating over 20 awards and collections by eight institutions. 

Teresa Shields’s I Feel Seen is being exhibited in our Kellner Gallery.

Lisa Kelley, Respite

Lisa Kelley is a trauma-certified artist and advocate who is committed to building community through art-making. Inspired by the urban landscape she grew up in, as well as the fields and forests she takes respite in, Kelley sees the beauty “in decay, in rusted steel, in golden fields, in wings in flight, in the squeal of sirens, the rumble of the el, the rustle of the trees, the song of the birds.” Her artwork serves as a call to action, helping bring awareness to those struggling with addiction and giving them a voice through collaborative artwork. 

Lisa Kelley earned her BFA from Moore College of Art and Design and is a teaching artist at Prevention Point and Philly Home, organizations that serve people with substance use disorder and homelessness in the Kensington and Fairmount neighborhoods of Philadelphia. 

Kelley recently completed her 2 year artist residency at Abington Art Center’s Little Meetinghouse. Throughout her residency, she not only hosted free, monthly community art-making events, but also created a new body of work informed by the connections she has made as an artist in residence and continued connections with those in Kensington.

Lisa Kelley’s Respite is on view in our Community Arts Gallery.

For inquiries about work in our exhibition, please contact our Gallery Manager at acook@abingtonartcenter.org.

Solo Series Spring 2025

Primordial Soup, 2022 | Kristen Letts Kovak | Oil and acrylic on wood panels, $6,000

On View May 2 – June 9, 2025

Opening Reception | Friday, May 2 | 6:00p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Artist Talk | Saturday, May 17 | 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Artist Talk | Wednesday, May 28 | 6:00 p.m. – 8:00p.m.

ARTISTS

Cecelia Grant, Mixed Media

The One We Live In, 2023 | Acrylic on mylar, $1,500.
Open Concept, 2023 | Ceramic, $350.

Cecelia Grant is an interdisciplinary artist working in printmaking, sculpture, and painting. Her work is self-referential, utilizing instances and subjects from previous paintings that then become molded in ceramic and used as objects in her still life sets. The result of which is a group of automorphic works not siloed in ideas of still life, architecture, nor nature.

Grant creates her paintings on atypical surfaces, typically cardboard or translucent polyester film, also known as mylar. She developed a unique method of installing her translucent mylar paintings with air between the mylar surface and the wall, allowing for light to project from the wall through the translucent surface and giving the work the illusion of floating. When using cardboard as a surface, she labels the media in detail, allowing audiences to create associations between consumption of food and art materials, and creation.

Cecelia Grant’s work has been included in the nationally juried exhibition Crosscurrents at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ Annenberg Gallery in 2019. She has also shown work in both juried and group shows in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Italy, and solo shows in Kutztown and Ambler, PA. Grant was awarded the Board of Governor’s Scholarship to study painting at Kutztown University and earned her BFA in May of 2020. In her time as a student, she trained for a semester in Rome at Tyler School of Art. She currently serves as a faculty member at Gwynedd Mercy Academy High School and upholds her studio practice through visits to galleries and museums.
Cecelia Grant’s Leveled Ground, Unleveled Ground is on view in our Tile gallery.

Kristen Letts Kovak, Painting

It Could Go Either Way, 2023 | Ink, acrylic, and oil on wood panels, $6,000.

Kristen Letts Kovak is an artist, professor, and curator based in Pittsburgh, PA. She resists clarity within her work, shifting images into states of disarrangement that explore the uncertainties of living with chronic illness. Her drawings and paintings are evident of this; they balance opposing forces to arrive at harmonious states of disequilibrium. 

Out of Order, on view in our Kellner gallery, is a visual reflection on living with chronic illness and disability, where even the present is wrapped in uncertainty. Each painting, like each day, begins as an unsettled conjecture. While largely abstract, Kovak’s artworks begin with a threadbare link to representation in both form and technique. She then deliberately resists clarity and shifts the images into states of disarrangement and imbalance. The finished pieces are records of her visceral decisions and the accumulation of renegotiated visual pathways. She invites the viewer to join her on unexpected detours, “where a wrong turn can be embraced, rather than avoided.” 

Kristen Letts Kovak earned her BFA from Mercyhurst University and her MFA from MICA. Since 2012, Kovak has taught drawing, painting, perception, and applied aesthetics at Carnegie Mellon University, where she also serves as Senior Associate Dean of the College of Fine Arts.

Her works have been exhibited widely with solo exhibitions at colleges and universities, and her paintings and drawings have been featured in more than fifty group exhibitions, including the Center for Contemporary Art, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, SPACE gallery, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Wildling Art Museum, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, IUPUI, Muskegon Museum of Art, Erie Art Museum, Museum of the Red River, Woodson Art Museum, and the State Museum of Pennsylvania.

Mari Elaine Lamp, Painting and Installation

Wish Book (detail) | NFS
Frottage Wallpaper (detail) | NFS

Mari Elaine Lamp is an artist living and working in Philadelphia, PA. Her training in representation has led her beyond the figure as an end in itself and into an investigation of the spaces that the figure inhabits, both psychologically and physically. 

Wish Book, on view in our Book Room gallery, is a site-specific installation that dives deep into Abington Art Center’s rich history as a former private manor and its ties to Sears and Roebuck company through the building’s original owner Lessing Rosenwald, heir to the Sears fortune. Interested in how one gets their ‘stuff’, the everyday objects one dreams about, acquires, and uses, Lamp explores material objects and their ties to history and the consumer. Her frottage installation hung in our Book Room gallery takes direct inspiration from the wallpapers, fireplaces, and artwork that was available for purchase in the Sears and Roebuck catalogs of the early 20th century. Her paintings reference a portion of the vast selection of objects available particularly in the early decades of the catalog, from tools and clothing to guns and bibles. She notes, “while what we dream about may have changed, [the] desire itself is always present, an interior catalog of wishes fulfilled and unfulfilled.”

Mari Elaine Lamp received her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2017 and studied at The School of Representational Art in Chicago, IL. In 2021, Lamp presented a solo show at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, NJ, featuring her domestic interior paintings. She has also shown at Gross McCleaf Gallery, the Woodmere Art Museum, and Fjord Gallery in Philadelphia, On Stellar Rays in New York, the Workhouse Art Center in Lorton, Virginia, and the Katzen Art Center at American University in Washington DC.

Athena Petra Tasiopoulos, Encaustic

Withstand, 2023 | Encaustic wax, collage, and mixed media on panel, $2,500.

Athena Petra Tasiopoulos is a mixed media collage artist, who explores mental and emotional blueprints, the push and pull of interconnectedness, and the delicate nature of equilibrium through her encaustic works. 

Tasiopoulos works with recycled and found vintage papers, encasing them beneath a layer of encaustic, also known as beeswax. Her artistic practice acts as a form of meditation on transience, transformation, and the beauty of imperfection, gravitating toward soft and muted color tones. The repetitive patterns and primitive marks she carves and scrapes into the surface of the wax speak to the imperfections of the human hand and the vulnerability of materiality.   

Athena Petra Tasiopoulos is originally from Pennsylvania, but currently resides in central Vermont. She is represented by Soapbox Arts gallery in Burlington, VT, and her work is collected internationally. Her work has been featured in publications such as ELLE Magazine (USA and Japan), Frankie Magazine (Australia), and Collage by Women: 50 Essential Contemporary Artists by Rebeka Elizegi (published by Promopress, Spain).
Athena Petra Tasiopoulos’ Inner Spaces is on display in our Community Arts gallery.

For inquiries about work in our exhibition, please contact acook@abingtonartcenter.org.

Primordial Soup

American Color Print Society Members Spring Exhibition

On View March 17 – April 21, 2025

Opening Reception | Saturday, March 15 | 2:00p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

American Color Print Society Members Spring Exhibition

In the year 1939, the founding members of the American Color Print Society decided to create an organization for the exhibition of color prints. This was a time when only black and white prints were considered worthy of display in museums and galleries. The three founding members were Florence V. Cannon, Mary Mullineaux and Waunita Smith.

The American Color Print Exhibition of 1940, which included the work of the 85 original members, heralded the arrival of the color print as an American print medium. The use of color in printmaking encouraged artists to experiment with the traditional methods of printmaking such as lithography, block printing, etching, intaglio and monotype. This led to other printmaking techniques including the use of collage, found materials and digital printmaking. 

There have been many distinguished members during the eighty-plus year history of the organization. Among them have been Benton Spruance, Jerome Kaplan, Stella Drabkin, Jacob Landau, Dorothy Hutton, June Wayne, Eugene Feldman, Ethel Ashton, Bernard Kohn, Jeanette Kohn, Mildred Dillon, Abraham Hankins, John Taylor Arms, Richard Hood, Francoise Gilot, Samuel Maitin, Elizabeth MacDOnald, Jack Gerber, Thelma Grobes, Idaherma Williams, and Merle Spandorfer.

Today, the American Color Print Society is a national non-profit corporation with the following purpose:

“To promote and foster original graphic art: to encourage and promote exhibitions of original color prints and to educate art students and the public about the varied techniques of original color printmaking.”

Venues of recent exhibitions have included Villanova University (Connelly Center), the Print and Picture Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Cheltenham Center for the Arts, Abington Art Center, The Plastic Club, the Chestnut Hill Gallery, Philagrafika International Print Festival, and the Mark Arts Center (Wichita, KS).

For more than 80 plus years, the ACPS membership has not only been inventive with their technical skills, but has grown geographically as well. In addition to Pennsylvania, members represented in our exhibitions are from New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, California, Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Michigan, and New Mexico.

Juror

Lisa Kelley is a teaching artist
at Kensington Storefront and Prevention Point, organizations that serve people struggling with addiction and homelessness in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. She earned her BFA from Moore College of Art and Design and is a trauma-certified artist and advocate, committed to building community through art-making.

Award Winners

Best in Show

How Many Years Since My Birth

Bates Mandel, Screenprint (20 layers), Archival Digital Print, $400.

 

Second Prize

A Past Forgotten

Herbert Appelson, Hand-threaded Embossment, $2,000.

 

Third Prize

Planets of the Universe

Robert Reinhardt, Monoprint Collage, $300.

 

Honorable Mentions

Bonnie Goldstein, Gliding, Woodblock Print, $2000.
Valerie Dillon, Woven Ladder, Collagraph, Linocut, and Embroidery, $250.
Margo Tassi, Snow, Beaver River, Etching $600.

Exhibiting Artists

Bobbie Adams
Marlene Adler
Nancy Alter
Herbert Appelson
Rhonda Babb
Janet Badger
Jessica Barber
Alyse C. Bernstein
Doug Billings
Art Brener
Bill Brookover
Elaine Buono
Maryann Cannon
Kathleen Chapman
Ron Chereskin
Valerie Dillon

Donna Douglass
Susan Dubrunfaut
John Formicola
Bonnie Goldstein
Susan Hoffmann
Robert Hunter
Georgina Johnson
Theresa Kehrer
Julie Kring
Neila Kun
Michael Lasuchin
Steve Kennedy
Hee Sook Kim
Alan Klawans
Victor Lasuchin
Patricia Shaw Lima

Michael Long
Bates Mandel
Martha Martin
Carole Meyers
Miki Nagano
J.A. Panetta
Robert Reinhardt
Virginia Rosa
Darrell Smith
Patty Smith
Charles Spitzack
Elizabeth Stricker
Margo Tassi
Ani Vassileva

Select Works

Solo Series Winter 2026

Coloring Book, 2023 | Ezra Thompson | Oil on linen

On View Jan. 16 – Feb. 23, 2026

Opening Reception | Friday, Jan. 16 | 6:00p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Artist Talk | Michelle Marcuse | Wednesday, Feb. 4 | 6:00 p.m. – 8:00p.m.

ARTISTS

Michelle Marcuse – Fray

“Emerging from the slopes of Table Mountain in Cape Town, where apartheid’s shadow cut through my childhood innocence, I learned early that beauty and brokenness are not opposing forces, but interconnected narratives that I can reimagine. Alongside my brother, we constructed elaborate tales of make-believe worlds from the overgrown African outdoors. This became my first topography of repair as we collectively pieced together our imaginary environments, unconsciously practicing rebuilding a fractured world. My childhood seemed idyllic, but the ever-present specter of South Africa’s politics loomed in the background. Since then, I have continued to wrestle with the potential for harmony and discord to co-exist simultaneously.

My practice has become an extension of these early impulses: to create environments, transform brokenness and reimagine possibility. Characterized by fragmented compositions, my work is defined by the presence of my hands as both a destructive and constructive force. Working in abstraction, I blend real perspective with areas of flat pattern, forming hybrid, textured landscapes. Creating form is like solving a puzzle; each piece evolves through experimentation and discovery. Process is central to my practice, and I prefer to innovate over technical proficiency. Guided by a deliberate yet restless inquiry, I explore the tension between rhythmic delineation and negative space. Materials — wire, raffia, string, and found cardboard— are chosen for structural malleability. These everyday items reflect the contradictions feeding my work, oscillating between states of value and insignificance. Moving from earth to factory, they become commercial waste that I translate into abstract form. Whether large and free-standing or small and wall-mounted, the act of constructing material leaves behind messy remnants—visible layers of texture that keep my work in flux. In a world increasingly drawn to perfection, these are important to me as I seek evidence of human touch and its inherent vulnerability.

Through aleatory connections and pattern recognition, I trace the hidden architectures of chaos, making visible the intricate markings that connect and transform—leaning into complexity, and holding its contradictions alongside its aspirations, reassembling both materials and hope itself.”

— Michelle Marcuse


Michelle Marcuse is a South African-American artist whose work explores the contradictions that shape our perception of reality, often influenced by the lens of cultural heritage. Born in 1957 in South Africa, she immigrated to the United States in 1984, establishing herself in Philadelphia where she maintains an active studio in Fishtown. Marcuse holds a Bachelor of Design from The Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Israel and a BFA in painting from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia.
Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows at prestigious venues including the Corcoran School, BLAM Projects, Taller Boricua, Little Haitian Cultural Center, Art Life Foundation, and Restart Museum in China. In 2024, Marcuse became a resident artist at the Brandywine Print Workshop, where she collaborated with Master printmaker Alexis Nutini. That same year, she participated in (re)FOCUS/2024, a significant citywide exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of Philadelphia Focuses on Women in the Visual Arts. Marcuse is also a 2025 recipient of an Anonymous Was A Woman award—an unrestricted grant awarded annually to 15 woman-identifying artists over 40 at a critical junction in their career.

Notable earlier exhibitions include Cultivated Spaces at Rowan University (2022), which examined socio-economic, cultural, and environmental concerns in creative practices; Arte y el Amor at Taller Boricua, NYC (2016), where she exhibited alongside her partner in a show exploring how relationships sustain artistic practices; and Borderless Caribbean at the Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance in Miami (2015), which investigated the fluidity of thoughts, materiality, and cultural exchange.
A CFEVA Fellow alumni and Joan Mitchell Foundation shortlist honoree, Marcuse’s work resides in several collections, including The Philadelphia Art Museum. Her commitment to fostering an artistic community extends beyond her studio practice—she previously served as co-director of HouseGallery, a community-based art space in her residence in Fishtown. Marcuse is also a 2025 recipient of an Anonymous Was A Woman award—an unrestricted grant awarded annually to 15 woman-identifying artists over 40 at a critical junction in their career.

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Ezra Thompson – The Kid Stays in the Picture

“My recent paintings have been concerned with the theatre of memory. In revisiting memory and the past through the photograph, I am attempting to re-learn the use of ‘signs’ to understand and communicate reality. Beginning with the snapshot, I select everyday experiences of life that appear to be instantly unfolding. The initial awkwardness of the subject is only secondary to my larger concern — the experience of loss and exclusion: loss of loved ones, loss of affection, friendship, and innocent joy. In creating this body of work, there is an attempt to recapture that loss and thus save it from destruction. It is only through this re-visitation of the photograph in adulthood that one hopes to ‘fill in’ or at least ‘pick up the pieces.’ The painting thus becomes a true remembrance of things past.”

— Ezra Thompson

Ezra Thompson is an artist whose work navigates abstraction, surrealism and realism, exploring the intricate forces that shape identity and the complexities of self-perception. Through his paintings, Thompson engages in a dialogue between the conscious and subconscious, the personal and the universal.
Ezra has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Aljira Emerge in Newark, New Jersey. He was granted the American Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship and a Rothenberg Fellowship for projects in Copenhagen and Berlin, respectively. His work has been exhibited at the Parrish Art Museum, Heckscher Museum of Art, Ferrara Showman Gallery, Gallery 263, Greenwich Art Society and other venues in the Greater New York region. Most recently his work was selected for the White Columns Curated Artist Registry. He has also served as a Curatorial Intern at the Whitney Museum of American Art and held a position as a Conservation Assistant at the Frick Collection’s Art Reference Library in New York City.
Thompson received a BFA from The Cooper Union (NYC) and an MFA in Studio Art from Stony Brook University (NY), where he is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Art. He is based in Long Island, NY.

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Karen Cooper – kozukuri – small works

“My work is quiet. I take a meditative approach. My desk is cluttered with fractured pieces, but then I’ll take a piece and put it next to another and it begins to tell me something… to tell a story. When I add the next element the story may change. Sometimes, as I add to the story, finding the next element becomes more and more difficult. I’ll put the work aside for days, weeks or months. Then, suddenly, the solution will appear, like an insight that solves a mathematical puzzle. The work contains color and form, but also white space, which plays an equally powerful and important role. I recently started to add thread to collages as a connective tool; a way to help the eye move around the work in a balanced way.”

— Karen Cooper

Karen Cooper has a background in graphic design, having completed coursework through The School of Visual Arts and studying closely with graphic designers, Dale Moyer, Ed Benguiat, and Roger Ferriter. She built a business as a freelance mechanical artist, which involved the precision manual assembly of type and images before the advent of computer-based graphics, and worked for graphic design companies including: Bernhardt/Fudyma Graphic Design; Vignelli & Associates; Nautical Quarterly; Upper & Lower Case; Peckolick & Associates and Sothebys. Cooper then founded her own studio as a graphic designer, working primarily with corporate health care hospitals and service providers in the New York Metropolitan area.

Karen Cooper began to work with hand-dyed cloth, composing abstract pieces using quilting techniques, but it wasn’t until moving to Japan for two years that she grew an interest in handmade washi paper—an element that remains evident in her work. She experiments with small, abstract collages incorporating found paper, washi paper, thread, cloth, and other everyday materials.

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For inquiries about work in our exhibitions, please contact our Gallery Manager at acook@abingtonartcenter.org.