Abington Art Center is proud to host this artist talk, featuring one of our 2025 Spring Solo Series artists, Mari Elaine Lamp.
Our artist talks are a casual conversation with the artists featured in our exhibition programming and our community. Learn more about the exhibiting artists’ process and technique through a talk and a Q&A. Coffee and bagels are provided for free.
Mari Elaine Lamp
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.
For more information on a particular artist or piece please call 215.887.4882
This event is produced as part of our 2025 Spring Solo Series, on view from May 2 – June 9, 2025.
Our artist talks are sponsored in part by the Jenkintown Lyceum. Bagels are generously provided by Fill-A-Bagel in Jenkintown.
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.
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 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.
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.
Abington Art Center is proud to host this artist talk, featuring two of American Color Print Society members, Neila Kun and Jessica Barber.
Our Coffee Break series is a casual conversation with the artists featured in our exhibition programming. Learn more about the exhibiting artists’ process and technique through a talk and a Q&A. Coffee and bagels are provided for free.
Neila Kun
Neila Kun is a Philadelphia-based printmaker, who earned her BFA and MFA from Tyler School of Art and Architecture. Kun explores issues relating to personal history, cultural identity and the passage of time within her work, noting “art isn’t static, it is a state of mind, a set of feelings, a practiced craft, hard work.” Her prints, made with Akua liquid pigment, act as a visual exploration of change and impermanence, hope and loss, magic and longing.
Neila Kun’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Her work is held in many public collections, including The Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, PA, MOMA in New York, NY, The Saint Louis Art Museum in St. Louis MO, Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, PA, and Swarthmore College’s, McCabe Library in Swarthmore, PA.
Jessica Barber
Jessica E. Barber is a mixed media artist and printmaker originally from South Central, PA. Her intuitive approach to the creative process includes the use of monotype and lithograph printmaking, pastels, and mixed media painting. Most recently, she has expanded her studio practice to include cyanotype photography. For the last ten years, Barber has had a heightened interest in the natural world, fueled by hiking throughout the Mid-Atlantic, South Florida, and American West. This interest was further enhanced through volunteering and work-related activities spent at local preserves, presenting her with more opportunities to gain awareness of the natural history and preservation of their diverse ecosystems. The exposure to and enjoyment of the pristine beauty of open space and its inherent contrast to gritty, ephemerally abandoned areas being reclaimed by the elements has fueled her most recent works.
Jessica E. Barber earned her B.S. at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and her M.Ed from Cabrini University. She is a co-founder/vice president of Art 504 Creative Collective in Delaware County, PA and a secondary Social Studies educator in Philadelphia. In addition to solo and group exhibitions in Greater Philadelphia, her work has been shown in New York, Miami, Toronto, and Kansas City.
For more information on a particular artist or piece please call 215.887.4882
This event is produced as part of our American Color Print Society Members Spring Exhibition, on view from March 14 – April 21, 2025.
Our Coffee Breaks are sponsored in part by the Jenkintown Lyceum. Bagels are generously provided by Fill-A-Bagel in Jenkintown.
Abington Art Center is proud to host this artist talk, featuring two of American Color Print Society members, Alan J. Klawans and Bonnie Goldstein.
Our Coffee Break series is a casual conversation with the artists featured in our exhibition programming. Learn more about the exhibiting artists’ process and technique through a talk and a Q&A. Coffee and bagels are provided for free.
Alan J. Klawans
“The ideas for my art come from my family, my travels, books that I have read, movies that I have seen, fishing, trips and flea market adventures.”
Alan J. Klawans has pursued a dual career as both graphic designer and printmaker. This included being director of design SmithKline Beckman Corporation, teaching at the University of the Arts and Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia, PA, and being a design consultant for corporations within the Delaware Valley Region.
Klawans received his bachelor’s in Advertising Design and Printmaking at University of the Arts (formerly Philadelphia College of Art). His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Villanova University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, PA, and the Michener Museum in Doylestown, PA. Two of Klawans’ original digital prints have been recently acquired by the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, Massachusetts.
Bonnie Goldstein
“Printmaking is the medium I have used to express myself in my creative process for the past forty years. I have only used non-toxic materials, being mindful of my health and the environment. My current body of work exemplifies my ability to take on new challenges and learn from my failures in order to reap the benefits. I have always collected boxes, deconstructing them in order to see how they were designed. I found the deconstructed shapes intriguing and decided to try using them as my printing matrix; carving into them using the drypoint technique. Conforming my compositions to fit within the shape of a box is always a challenge but, I have fun, enjoy the challenge each time, and always find it rewarding. Whether I am using tools to scratch a surface to create a drypoint print or tools to carve wood or linoleum to create a relief print, I enjoy the process of manipulating a surface. The print “Glide” in this exhibit was a drypoint print made on a small cardboard box that grew exponentially into a 5’ x 3’ woodblock print.”
For the past 40 years, Bonnie Goldstein has been printmaking, keeping her health and the environment in her mind by using non-toxic materials. Collagraphs, dry point, relief and monotypes have been some of the printmaking processes she has used to express herself. Goldstein has created multiple series of prints for artists’ books and continues to work on new book projects.
She also taught art at The Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, PA for twenty-nine years, noting that teaching and being a productive artist go hand-in-hand and complement each other.
Bonnie Goldstein received her BFA from Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, PA, and her ME from Arcadia University in Glenside, PA. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Abington Club in Abington, PA, the Speer Gallery at the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, PA, and the 705 West Printmaking Gallery, Jenkintown, PA. She has also won several awards, including the Esther Rose Fisher Printmaking Award; the Larmon Photography Award, Jurors Award: Best in Show, Cheltenham Art Center; Honorable Mention at the Riverfront Renaissance Center for the Arts and, the Mary R. Koch Art Center, Wichita, Kansas, Hugh and Dorothy Hutton Intaglio Award, Honorable Mention at The Plastic Club, Philadelphia, PA, and the Sarah A. Peters Fine Arts Traveling Fellowship Award from Moore College of Art and Design.
For more information on a particular artist or piece please call 215.887.4882
This event is produced as part of our American Color Print Society Members Spring Exhibition, on view from March 14 – April 21, 2025.
Our Coffee Breaks are sponsored in part by the Jenkintown Lyceum. Bagels are generously provided by Fill-A-Bagel in Jenkintown.
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.
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
Featured Artists: Michelle Marcuse, Ezra Thompson, and Karen Cooper
ARTISTS
Michelle Marcuse – Fray
Kellner Gallery
“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
Tile Gallery
“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
Book Room Gallery
“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.
Eric Anthony Berdis’ work simultaneously celebrates the contributions of queer artists and reflects on the violence and oppression that has lingered and continues to linger throughout queer history. This juxtaposition of celebration and reflection is evident in their childlike play of materials and connections to queer art history. Happiness and play are vital to survival, and Berdis, being a queer artist themself, is no stranger to this. They note “joy is an act of resilience—a critical method of subverting hegemonic narratives of suffering.”
Kate Strachan
Using a blend of materials—wax, wood, ceramic, and felt—Kate Strachan draws upon her Pennsylvania Dutch heritage to create work that comprises relics and manuscripts that convey and preserve the rituals of action, sexuality, and silence. Her artwork reflects the ancestral manuscripts that detail life, death, spiritual poetry, and house blessings, typical of Pennsylvania Dutch Frakturs. With an emphasis on materiality, Strachan notes, “I weave together ceramic for its fragility and coolness, felt for its capacity to evoke silence, wax for its encaustic technique symbolizing preservation, and wood for its primal origins…Through these materials, I tell my own story, layering meaning and texture to explore the depths of human experience.”
For more information on a particular artist or piece please call 215.887.4882 or contact acook@abingtonartcenter.org.
This event is produced as part of our 2025 Winter Solo Series, on view from January 16 – February 24, 2025. Our artist talks are sponsored in part by the Jenkintown Lyceum.
Free exhibition programming is made possible through your generous donations. Please consider making a donation to Abington Art Center today. Thank you for supporting the arts!
Silver Spring, Alicia Finger, Acrylic on cut paper, collage
Saturday, February 1 2024 | 10:00a.m. – 12:00p.m.
FREE | In-Person Event
Abington Art Center is proud to host an artist talk, featuring 2025 Winter Solo Series artists Alicia Finger and Jenna Hannum.
Please join both artists for a morning of fruitful discussion, as they dive deep into their artistic practices and bodies of work. Our talk will be held in our Kellner gallery. Our artist talks are sponsored in part by the Jenkintown Lyceum. Bagels are generously provided by Fill-A-Bagel in Jenkintown.
Free programming like this is made possible by your generous donations. Please consider making a donation to the center today.
Alicia Finger encapsulates her memories and visits through a combination of painting and collage. Using water-based paints, Finger begins by developing a series of paintings on paper, inspired by places she has been to. She then begins the meticulous process of cutting, rearranging, and layering the material to create dimensional paintings that break beyond the bounds of the paper plane. This evolution parallels memory, noting “as my memories of these places and experiences evolve, so do these works.”
Flora Wilds
Jenna Hannum combines scientific illustration with unconventional portraiture to catalog childhood memories, family medical histories, and the biological journeys of loved ones. Following the tragic passing of both her mother and sister, her work stems from her desire to have spent more time as a caretaker. “Creating ink from the ashes of medical records and repurposing the tangible items left behind by [her] mother and sister”, Hannum’s careful renditions allow her to retroactively be a caregiver, even posthumously.
For more information on a particular artist or piece please call 215.887.4882 or contact acook@abingtonartcenter.org.
This event is produced as part of our 2025 Winter Solo Series, on view from January 16 – February 24, 2025. Our artist talks are sponsored in part by the Jenkintown Lyceum. Bagels are generously provided by Fill-A-Bagel in Jenkintown.
Free exhibition programming is made possible through your generous donations. Please consider making a donation to Abington Art Center today. Thank you for supporting the arts!
Scarecrow-Gold Eyes, 2025 | Textiles, embellishments, handmade paper on wooden armature, $3,000
Scarecrow-Puppy, 2025 | Textiles, embellishments, handmade paper on wooden armature, $3,000
“Using personal secrets, queer history, and gay boy glamour, my work builds a world for my audience to enter.”
– Eric Anthony Berdis
Eric Anthony Berdis’ work simultaneously celebrates the contributions of queer artists and reflects on the violence and oppression that has lingered and continues to linger throughout queer history. This juxtaposition of celebration and reflection is evident in their childlike play of materials and connections to queer art history. Happiness and play are vital to survival, and Berdis, being a queer artist themself, is no stranger to this. They note “joy is an act of resilience—a critical method of subverting hegemonic narratives of suffering.”
Eric Anthony Berdis’ Paper Bullies and Friends of Dorothy’s is being exhibited in our Community Arts gallery.
Another Place, Another Time, 2024 | Acrylic on cut paper, collage, $1,025
Beginning to Understand the Terrain, 2022 | Acrylic on cut paper, collage, $625
“Each piece has gone through a range of stages and appearances, reemerging as different works each stage.”
– Alicia Finger
Alicia Finger encapsulates her memories and visits through a combination of painting and collage. Using water-based paints, Finger begins by developing a series of paintings on paper, inspired by places she has been to. She then begins the meticulous process of cutting, rearranging, and layering the material to create dimensional paintings that break beyond the bounds of the paper plane. This evolution parallels memory, noting “as my memories of these places and experiences evolve, so do these works.”
Alicia Finger’s Reconstructed Places is on view in our Tile gallery.
The dying of the light, 2022 | Oil, graphite, and embroidery on linen, $2,400
It wasn’t deadly (III), 2022 | Oil, graphite, and rabbit skin glue on paper, $1,800
“These new portraits on paper and linen, combinations of fine art and craft, are an elegy to the women I’ve lost and a way to retroactively be a caregiver through drawing and embroidery.”
– Jenna Hannum
Jenna Hannum combines scientific illustration with unconventional portraiture to catalog childhood memories, family medical histories, and the biological journeys of loved ones. Following the tragic passing of both her mother and sister, her work stems from her desire to have spent more time as a caretaker. “Creating ink from the ashes of medical records and repurposing the tangible items left behind by [her] mother and sister”, Hannum’s careful renditions allow her to retroactively be a caregiver, even posthumously.
Jenna Hannum’s Elegy is on view in our Kellner gallery.
“Our artwork serves as a curiosity cabinet, a repository where we place ourselves within the collected fragments of our existence. Much like the rooms we inhabit, our creations become filled with impressions of our identities and experiences.”
– Kate Strachan
Using a blend of materials—wax, wood, ceramic, and felt—Kate Strachan draws upon her Pennsylvania Dutch heritage to create work that comprises relics and manuscripts that convey and preserve the rituals of action, sexuality, and silence. Her artwork reflects the ancestral manuscripts that detail life, death, spiritual poetry, and house blessings, typical of Pennsylvania Dutch Frakturs. With an emphasis on materiality, Strachan notes, “I weave together ceramic for its fragility and coolness, felt for its capacity to evoke silence, wax for its encaustic technique symbolizing preservation, and wood for its primal origins…Through these materials, I tell my own story, layering meaning and texture to explore the depths of human experience.”
Kate Strachan’s I n v i s i b l e Sight is on display in our Book Room gallery.
For inquiries about work in our exhibition, please contact acook@abingtonartcenter.org.
Abington Art Center is proud to host an artist talk, featuring High in Fiber artists Bren Ahearn and Flora Wilds.
Please join both artists for an evening of fruitful discussion, as they dive deep into their artistic practices and bodies of work. Our talk will be held in our Kellner gallery. Hot chocolate, hot apple cider, and light fare will be provided.
Bren Ahearn
Bren Ahearn is a Philadelphia-based fiber artist who uses textile crafts to explore masculinity’s conflicting messages and to document personal experiences.
His most recent series, School Shootings in the USA, on display in our Kellner gallery, combines his experience as an educator being trained for active shooter situations, and the ongoing issue of gun violence in America. Each pennant within his installation represents a school at which there has been an active shooting and is created in the school colors of each affected school.
Flora Wilds
Flora Wilds is a New York-based fiber artist who creates work from found materials and objects that are traditionally tied to femininity.
Wilds’ Bikini Quilt Column, on view in our Book Room gallery, is part of an ongoing series that reflects on the gendered histories and cultural associations of objects. Her artistic practice lends itself well to the reflection on American culture, the learned societal gender roles, and the material synchronicities that stretch through time.
For more information on a particular artist or piece please call 215.887.4882 or contact acook@abingtonartcenter.org.
This event is produced as part of our Fall Juried Show, High in Fiber, on view from November 8, 2024 – January 6, 2025. Learn more about this exhibition and the jurying process here!
Free exhibition programming is made possible through your generous donations. Please consider making a donation to Abington Art Center today. Thank you for supporting the arts!
