Fifteen local artists in Shifting Ecologies at Saint Joseph’s University, South Street Fest returns, e-flux journal fellowships, plus partnership opportunity with sacred spaces
Hi, this week there’s news of new group exhibitions opening in May. Saint Josephs University’s Shifting Ecologies gathers fifteen local artists making work celebrating and questioning our interactions with nature. Crafting Nature presented by InLiquid Gallery focuses on human interaction with nature. South Street Fest returns Saturday May 6th with plenty of festivities and ongoing events for everyone. The Museum for Art in Wood holds a guided tour of The Mashrabiya Project having dancers fill the exhibition space responding to and expanding upon the works' meaning. Opportunities present themselves through e-flux journal’s annual applications for journal fellowships. Hoping you’ll find something valuable and fun to do.
Notable Exhibitions
Saint Joseph’s University presents Shifting Ecologies
May 6 – Jun 25, 2023
Frances M. Maguire Art Museum
50 Lapsley Ln, Merion Station, PA 19066
Shifting Ecologies brings together fifteen artists whose work engages with the natural environment and how humans interact with it. Photographs, drawings, and paintings, as well as three-dimensional works made of materials ranging from clay and steel to recycled bottles celebrate the Earth’s beauty and abundance. They also highlight its fragility and prompt action on issues related to pollution, preservation, ownership, and access as the environment and our relationships with it continue to shift. The following artists’ works will be on view: Bebonkwe Brown, Emily Brown, Syd Carpenter, Rachel Eng, Juliana Foster, Tai Hwa Goh, Caroline Lathan-Stiefel, Ann LePore, Sarah McEneaney, Lauren McManus, Alison McNulty, Steve Rossi, Chanell Stone, Ron Tarver, and Julia Way. The exhibition is being co-curated by Steve Rossi, with curatorial contributions from Jeanne Brasile, Martha Easton, and Krista Svalbonas.
Karen Hunter McLaughlin, “Symbiotic Colony,” multimedia, 40 x 30″ Image Courtesy of InLiquid Gallery.
Opening reception Thursday May 11, 2023 On view April 20 – June 3, 2023
InLiquid Gallery
1400 N. American St. Philadelphia, PA 19122
The artists in Crafting Nature all depict the various ways humans interact with the natural world, whether collaborating, admiring, and pondering, or designing, shaping, and constraining nature. The artists ask us, what is our impact on the earth? Or perhaps more significantly, how does the earth shape and change our own permeable selves?
South Street Fest returns with new experiences and festivities
South Street Fest Poster. Image Courtesy of South Street Headhouse District
Saturday May 6, 2023 from 11AM – 7 PM
The South Street Headhouse District will host their annual South Street Fest. Enjoy international food and drinks, handmade crafts, and eclectic vendors that you know and love, plus several city blocks filled with new experiences and festivities, including Brauhaus Schmitz’s 10th Annual Maifest, Free Comic Book Day at Atomic City Comics, and South Street Fest’s Artist Row.
This family-friendly festival spans South Street from 2nd to 8th Streets. The east entry point is at the Headhouse Plaza and the west entry point is at 800 South Street.
Museum for Art in Wood 141 N 3rd St. Philadelphia, PA 19106
Join the Museum for Art in Wood for an evening with Usiloquy Dance Designs for a magical tour of The Mashrabiya Project: Seeing Through Space. During the tour, dancers will take over the exhibition gallery with creative agency, responding to individual works while expanding on the direct and implied interpretations of the exhibition through the South Asian dance style Bharatantyam. Usiloquy applies this Indian classical dance as a choreographic language to tell universal stories and explore lesser-known cultural aspects of diasporas and communities. The choreography for this event, developed by Shaily Dadiala, ranges from pieces in praise of a lotus-eyed goddess to 15th-century poet Kabir’s call to seek the divine within, culminating in a joyful and exuberantly rhythmic finale.
Nazariyā will be performed exclusively at the Museum for Art in Wood. Don’t miss this one-of-a-kind opportunity to view an interactive, choreographed response to The Mashrabiya Project: Seeing through Space, offered one night only!
Chester County Library 450 Exton Square Parkway Exton, PA 19341
And
Henrietta Hankin Library 215 Windgate Dr Chester Springs, PA 19425
Maker in Residence, Megan Raab Greenholt, invites you to learn about natural dyes and observe her current work in progress using naturally dyed materials. In this hands-on maker experience, you will create your own embroidered textile collage. On Saturday Greenholt presents indigo workshops celebrating Chester County Libraries’ Juneteenth theme “Journeying Towards Freedom” through learning the history of indigo in the United States and its use by contemporary African American artists.
For more information on dates and registrations see here.
For more about Megan Raab Greenholt see here.
Opportunities
Partners for Sacred Places announces Arts in Sacred Places
This year, with the support of the Penn Treaty Special Services District, we are providing a free space sharing program combining our Arts in Sacred Places and New Dollars New Partners training for Philadelphia congregations located in Northern Liberties, Fishtown, Kensington South, and Olde Richmond.
Partners’ experience and research has shown that many urban congregations are overwhelmed with the burden of caring for surplus space. At the same time, artists who are struggling to find adequate and affordable space in which to work, may not know that the former Sunday school wing of a local church, for example, could be available for office, performance, or studio space. This program was designed to capitalize on these challenges by facilitating mutually beneficial space-sharing relationships between arts organizations without a home and the city’s houses of worship with space to spare.
E-flux journal announces annual call for fellowship applications
Application deadline: May 1, 2023
e-flux
172 Classon Ave Brooklyn, NY 11205
e-flux is pleased to announce the annual call for applications for our six-month e-flux journal fellowship.
The fellowship is an opportunity for a period of focused reading, research, and study with the journal’s contents as a starting point. One goal of this fellowship is to identify thematic drifts, latencies, and tendencies within the journal that could be further explored. It can also provide space to expand on conversations, contradictions, and other forms of discourse between and beyond the existing contributions. The fellowship will begin July 1, 2023, and offers a monthly stipend of 500 USD. Scholars, writers, and researchers are invited to apply. Applicants should submit a 500-word research proposal and CV to journal@e-flux.com by May 1.
