Pia De Girolamo: Mountain Series and Carol Wisker: Accumulators Two Curated Exhibitions at 3rd Street Gallery

Pia De Girolamo: Mountain Series and Carol Wisker: Accumulators. Two Curated Exhibitions at 3rd Street Gallery November 1-26, 2017

The 3rd Street Gallery, Philadelphia, PA presents solo exhibitions by Pia De Girolamo and Carol Wisker, November 1-26. For Mountain Series, curator Christine Stoughton, Instructor of Aesthetics at the Barnes Foundation has selected a group of abstract landscape paintings for De Girolamo's 3rd Street Gallery debut solo exhibition. Acting as a pictorial element across the series, the mountain is also a potent symbol of challenge, risk and refuge.

Long time 3SG member, Carol Wisker presents Accumulators, an exhibition of sculptural assemblages, selected by curator Barbara Bassett, the Constance Williams Curator of Education for School and Teacher Programs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In Wisker’s recent exhibition Left Behind, the Accumulatorsbrought together textiles and findings from a variety of cultures left behind due to migration. In this new exhibition Wisker extends her definition of the Accumulators to also include aggregations of “created natural growth” in her fiber, wood and textile sculptures.

Highlights:

Artist Reception and Talks: Saturday November 11, 5-8PM.

Artist Talk by Pia De Girolamo: A Wild Peace: Art, Nature and Wellbeing. Saturday November 11, 6 PM

Artist Talk by Carol Wisker: Accumulator...I Am! Saturday November 11, 6:30 PM

First Friday: November 3, 5-9PM

Pia De Girolamo: Mountain Series

Curator Christine Stoughton says of De Girolamo's landscape series:

"She strips away the details to capture the vibration of colors, the geometric structure of the forms and the ambient space. While the viewer recognizes these abstracted works as a landscape we are given the opportunity to see this environment in a whole new way, which is what art is all about".

Pia enjoys being out in nature, especially in the mountains. She finds that the key word in that sentence is "being". She states, "All the senses are engaged as I pocket smooth stones, sketch, smell the thyme and clover, taste the tartness of wild plants and listen to the sounds of nature as well as its silence. Then back in the studio, I explore what makes these landscapes beautiful and mysterious to me, letting the natural forms, the surrounding emptiness, and the sense of gravity influence how I use color and shape. As I work, the paintings evolve, and while some of them refer to real places, others spring from composite memories of shapes or vistas. All are a record of what is for me of the essence in these landscapes, whether they are in Iceland, Hawaii, the Canadian Rockies, or the American Southwest".

In her artist talk, A Wild Peace: Nature, Art and Well-being De Girolamo will talk about her work and also link it to recently elucidated scientific thinking affirming the importance of exposure to nature and art to maintaining the individual's physical and psychological health.

Pia De Girolamo grew up in New York City and lives in the Philadelphia area. She has had sequential careers, first as an Infectious Diseases physician and since 2003, as a visual artist. Recent exhibitions include the Professional Artist Members Exhibition at Main Line Art Center, Haverford, PA and a solo show curated by Inliquid at the Courtyard Mariott at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in 2017. Her work is in corporate and individual collections including those of PNC Bank Headquarters in Pittsburgh and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. A full member of 3rd Street Gallery, she is also a member of the Cerulean Gallery Collective, Main Line Art Center, Inliquid.com. Her website is www.piadegirolamo.com

Curator Christine Stoughton is an art educator, sculptor, printmaker and formerly a practicing psychologist. She is an Instructor in Art Aesthetics at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA and at West Chester University, West Chester, PA. She is also a printmaking instructor at Main Line Art Center, Haverford, PA. She has exhibited her work, including public art installations, in Philadelphia and the surrounding region, in New York City, Toronto and in Washington, DC.

Carol Wisker: Accumulators

Curator Barbara Bassett says of Wisker’s installation:

“Carol's work takes what the world leaves behind: hinges, gears, fabric and fibers, furniture and antiques, bones and cocoons... and imbues them with new stories and purpose. In each, we find the familiar transformed, compelling us to look deep within ourselves.”

The works in the abstract Accumulator series are fashioned using the domestic art techniques of crochet, wrapping and braiding to form surface textures on a variety of shapes and forms that will be ceiling, floor and wall-hung. In this exhibition Wisker also presents painting-like fiber works created through her hand and finger manipulation of painted wool roving in its basic combed state, depicting multi-colored flora, hills and valleys on round and square fields of dense off-white cotton.

Carol Wisker is a sculptor, painter and installation artist, born in Brooklyn, NY and who now resides in the Philadelphia area. Carol studied textile arts and received a BA in psychology at Mansfield University and her Masters of Education from University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Her artistic practice included a fifteen-year tenure at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the Division of Education and she also instructed art history and studio art in maximum-security men’s Correctional Facilities for twenty years. Wisker’s work is in corporate collections and has been shown in museum exhibitions, most recently at the Delaware Art Museum. She is a member of Philadelphia Sculptors, Assemblage Artists Collective and the da Vinci Art Alliance, and has also participated in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2016 and 2017. She is a member of Inliquid.com and her website is www.carolwisker.com

Curator Barbara Bassett is The Constance Williams Curator of Education for School and Teacher Programs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She has spent over 30 years leading programs and developing resources that encourage children and adults to have rich personal experiences with art.