galleries
Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education 8480 Hagy's Mill Road


Marisha Simons

Ghosts and Shadows

September 6, 2008 - January 2, 2008

Contact Info

8480 Hagy's Mill Road
Philadelphia, PA 19128

tel 215-482-7300
scee@schuylkillcenter.org
www.schuylkillcenter.org

About the Exhibition

The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education’s Environmental Art Program is pleased to announce the opening of Ghosts and Shadows, presented in partnership with The Center for Emerging Visual Artists.

Guest curator Warren Angle says of this exhibit, “Jennifer Chapman, Keiko Miyamori, Kara Rennert, and Marisha Simons were chosen to produce site specific installations because of their poetic sense of place. Each artist has set up a dialogue with the natural and human constructed landscape at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education’s Second Site location. They have mined specific references to place and sensations of past and present using audio as well as visual components in the construction of their works.” Ghosts and Shadows will open at the Schuylkill Center’s Second Site, a historic farmhouse and barn, at the corner of Port Royal Avenue and Hagy’s Mill Road, Philadelphia.

About the Artists
Jennifer Chapman, a photographer living and working in New Jersey, will return a semblance of life to the abandoned Brolo Family farmhouse and barn in her piece, Habitat. Chapman says, “This project is designed to remind us of the human history at “Second Site,” as well as to emphasize the persistence of human presence in the space. By acknowledging the role that humans played in constructing (and deconstructing) the site, the project recognizes the farmhouse and barn as one of many habitats in the area. While "looking in" to the space and stepping backwards in time, we might consider the traces we will leave in our own habitats.”

Keiko Miyamori’s Human Bird House will entail a large-scale tree rubbing collage on the front side of the building wall of the old barn in combination with other small bird houses in near vicinity of the barn. Miyamori, a Japanese artist with a background in traditional Japanese painting, says, “I am interested in creating imaginary spaces where unity between nature and humanity can co-exist. I communicate through sculpture, installation, drawing and painting.” Approximately fifty bird houses will be suspended around the barn, and several wooden birdhouses will be suspended in the shed area next to the barn. “The exaggerated size of ‘Human Bird House’ in contrast to the relatively small birdhouses situated next to it requires the viewer to allow for humor as well as partake in the abstract moment,” Miyamori says.

Kara Rennert, a visual artist living in Philadelphia, will present the reanimation of the barn space with her installation entitled Breath. “Through this piece, I want the audience to be reminded of the emotional and physical experience of being with an animal, especially one that used to live there and used to be so integral to our lives and survival,” she says. “Too often in our modern world, and especially for city dwellers, people lose their connection to the animal element of their natural world. I would like to create a reminder that we used to have a closer relationship with the animals with which we share this planet.”

The final artist, Marisha Simons, is a printmaker, installation artist, designer, fine art edition printer, and teacher from northern California. With her exhibit Ghost Forest she attempts to catalog man’s impact upon the environment, specifically plant and tree life, through his environmental degradation from land clearing, demand for materials, contribution to global warming, and his careless introduction of invasive exotic species and diseases. “I have created a visual representation of a selection of endangered and extinct plants and trees, and I invite the viewer into a forest of ghost plants: translucent silk panels that move when the viewer walks past, delicate images floating above the ground, no longer planted in the earth with a subtle epitaph sharing the plant’s history. My hope is that my viewer will experience Ghost Forest by walking amongst the trees, spending time with the images in an imagined place where once they might have dwelled, and engaging emotionally with the idea that each of us have options about the impact that we make upon the environment with the daily choices that we make,” she says.

About the Gallery
The mission of The Schuylkill Center is to promote, through environmental education, the preservation and improvement of our natural environment by fostering appreciation, understanding and responsible use of the ecosystem; by disseminating information on current environmental issues; by encouraging appropriate public response to environmental problems; and also to maintain the facilities of The Schuylkill Center and conserve its land for the purpose of environmental education. The Art Program was created as a new interpretive department blending SCEE’s two mission-driven objectives: land preservation and environmental education. The objectives of the art program at the Center is to enhance awareness and appreciation for the environment through art forms and activities that incorporate education, presentation, and participation with community groups; to provide creative and professional opportunities for emerging and under represented professional artists; to provide an alternative art venue for citizens in the local community; and to enhance awareness and appreciation of art forms and artwork that specifically address the natural environment either through materials, concept, or imagery. The Art Program at the Center is the only one of its kind in the City of Philadelphia and the only professionally run art space in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia.


Image copyright © 2008 Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education and Marisha Simons

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