January 18 – February 15, 1995
Beaver College Art Gallery
Juror: Paula Marincola, Gallery Director, Beaver College Art Gallery
Participating Artists
Carolyn Healy, Michael Macfeat, Quentin Morris, Anne Seidman
1995 Press Release
“…Beaver College Art Gallery is pleased to inaugurate [A Closer Look], a new biennial series that will focus in area artists. The first exhibition in the series will include work by Carolyn Healy, Michael Macfeat, Quentin Morris and Anne Seidman, and will be on view from January 18 through February 15, 1995. An exhibiting artists’ roundtable discussion, moderated by artist and art critic Mary Murphy, will be presented on Wednesday, January 25, at 6:30 p.m. in Stiteler Auditorium. The opening reception in honor of the artists will take place in the Art Gallery immediately following the roundtable discussion. The discussion, exhibition and reception are free and open to the public.
“The Beaver college Art Gallery, located on the Beaver college campus at 450 S. Easton Road in Glenside is open 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. For more information, call the Art Gallery at 215-572-2131.
“[A Closer Look], which will alternate years with the Art Gallery’s long-running ‘Works on Paper’ juried show, has been initiated in order to present in greater depth the work of selected area artists who have previously exhibited in the “Works on Paper” show and whose achievements warrant greater attention. It will also point out significant relationships among artists working in this community. This year’s exhibition has been curated by Gallery Director Paula Marincola; guest curators will be invited to participate in the selection process in future years.
“‘We wanted to find more ways to serve the needs of the many talented artists working in our area,’ notes Marincola, ‘and we believe this new biennial series will allow us to present deserving artists’ work in greater depth as we diversify our program.’
“This year’s [A Closer Look] includes painting, sculpture and drawing, and opens a comparative dialogue between abstraction and assemblage as articulated in the work of the four exhibiting artists. Healy, for example, constructs objects from found materials in improvisatory ways that are sometimes toy-like and whimsical; sometimes poetic and moving. Macfeat’s spare sculptures are indebted to a post-minimalist emphasis on materiality. His unexpected placements and juxtapositions of materials often have a deliberately flatfooted kind of visual humor. Morris’ enigmatic, large circular abstractions, exclusively black monochromes, plumb the inventive possibilities that can be derived from deliberately limited means. His works are imbued with spirituality, but the socio-economic connotations of the color black — Morris is African-American — are also components of the paintings’ overall meaning. The repertoire of forms in Seidman’s gestural drawings are arrived at through both intuition and computer generated arrangements. Their combinations and relationships activate pure white fields and, while remaining completely abstract, evoke references to natural and man-made forms and objects.
“All of the artists included in [A Closer Look] have exhibited frequently in the Philadelphia area at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of the Arts, the S.S. White Building, Vox Populi and various commercial spaces, as well as in venues outside the city. Morris and Seidman are represented by Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Healy and Macfeat are currently independent agents although both have formerly been affiliated with area galleries.
“[A Closer Look] has been funded by The Arcadia Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Friends of Beaver College Art Gallery. The roundtable discussion has been funded by The Montgomery County Foundation.
“Beaver College is a co-educational, independent, comprehensive college in suburban Philadelphia, offering undergraduate and graduate study to more than 2.400 students annually. The Beaver College Center for Education Abroad, one of the largest campus-based study abroad programs in the country, serves an additional 1,200 students each year from nearly 300 American colleges and universities.”
