Nicholas Harris - Drawn to Nature

Nicholas Harris - Drawn to Nature

Nicholas James Harris - a realist painter, and plein air master, can spend months on a single painting. Meticulous by nature, he combines old world painterly practices with contemporary technology, to create masterful paintings with impeccable attention to detail. Spending hours on the banks of the Wissahickon River in Philadelphia, he immerses himself in the subject matter of the landscape. This includes documenting the light and tracking the shadows as they change throughout the day. It is a slow process that is the antithesis of our modern-day world. He also focuses on architecture, both interior and exterior, with an occasional portrait. In all cases, he takes his observations and artistic practices to a level not often seen anywhere in contemporary painting.

Syd Carpenter: Place, Time and Memory.

Syd Carpenter, known primarily as a Ceramicist/scluptor, investigates the intersection of art and gardens, African American history, agriculture ,the land, and the human form. The scope and extraordinary range of her 50 year art career is being celebrated in an unprecedented retrospective that is being exhibited in 3 different museums….Woodmere Art Museum, the Maguire Art Museum at Saint Joseph's University, and the Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College. She is also the recipient of multiple fellowships including United States Artist Fellowship,Anonymous Was A Woman grant, Pew Fellowship [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pew_Fellowship_in_the_Arts] and an NEA Fellowship [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_the_Arts]. Carpenter's work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithsonian_American_Art_Museum],[4] the Metropolitan Museum of Art [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art],[21] and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Museum_of_Art]

Jeremiah Zagar: Everyone's Life Is an Epic Story

Filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar is interested in telling stories, and getting personal. Known for both his intimate documentaries such as "In a Dream", a film about his father, and his Hollywood feature films "We the Animals" and "Hustle", he has put together a career in filmmaking that is independent, authentic and original. His work has won major awards at Sundance, Doville, and South by Southwest, to name a few. "In A Dream" was shortlisted for an Academy Award and received two 2010 Emmy nominations, including Best Documentary. His latest success is the gritty HBO American crime drama "Task", where he was Executive Producer and Director of several of the episodes. He is in the process of finishing his latest film, "The Painted Bride" starring Jeremy Allen White, Mandy Patinkin, and Isabella Rossellini that is due out next year.

Larry Spaid: Exploration and Travel

Philadelphia artist Larry Spaid has spent over 12 years of his artistic life travelling the planet,living and teaching in different countries and experiencing different cultures. His expansive output of art includes painting, printing and various experiments with mixed media. He taught at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University for thirty-seven years. This included teaching in Rome, Italy and Tokyo, Japan, for seven years, and was awarded three major sabbaticals allowing him to return and travel extensively in South East Asia. He retired in 2010 as Professor Emeritus. He has exhibited in galleries and museums extensively in the US and internationally including the United Kingdom, Italy, and Guatemala. His work is represented in numerous private and public collections including the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and The Museum of Fine Arts in Tokyo Japan.

Adebunmi Gbadebo: Exploration of Heritage

Gbadebo's use of materials centers on her family history of enslavement in the American South, while her ceramics draw inspiration from traditional African pottery techniques, calling on her Nigerian ancestry. Fueled by research and a commitment to the archival record, Gbadebo's multidisciplinary approach investigates the complex relationships between land, matter, and memory.Grounded in historically and culturally significant materials such as indigo dye, human hair collected throughout the African diaspora and soil hand-dug from the True Blue plantation grounds in South Carolina, Gbadebo's practice is an exploration of heritage. She lives and works in Philadelphia. She received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and a certification in Creative Place Keeping at The New Jersey Institute of Technology. In 2023, she was the recipient of the Maxwell and Hanrahan Craft Fellowship and the Keynote speaker for the American Ceramic Circle annual conference. In 2022, she was a Pew Fellow at the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. She has exhibited her work across the US and internationally in Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia.