Join us in NIAD’s Galleries for our new June exhibitions! Artists and exhibition organizers will be on hand for a lively discussion in the galleries, and light refreshments will be served. Come browse the exhibitions and check out NIAD’s art-filled studios. Read More …
This show is all about comfort text: resilience in everyday words, writing and reading. Expression can also be wordless, the use of line and color as new vocabulary, pushing a thought out onto a surface, making marks and continuously trying to communicate with the world.
We tell stories to sustain ourselves and find each other. These messages embedded in art become an emotional telegram– a signal flare with a flame of memory trailing behind it. “Feeling Language” is about books, lists, slogans, language, gesture, touch and the trust given in sharing. Read More …
These pieces are just a few from NIAD’s current cohort, that helps me embody the possibility of the tangible space I occupy each day as well as the infinite spaces just out of my reach or yet to be imagined. Read More …
About the exhibition It’s not a superbloom year. It’s not one of those years where the rain fall gives us an explosion of colorful flowers in the desert. But it is spring. There are still median strips full of poppies and untended lots full of lupines and purple vetch. There are bright yellow dandelions growing despite everything. There are the plum trees blossoming then letting loose their purple leaves and then the cherry trees blooming and letting loose their green leaves. These moments of color, of unexpected brightness, bring me so much happiness and ground me to the earth. I Read More …
About the exhibition Being brought up in a culture oriented towards consumption, self-gratification, and self-fulfillment, one learns not only what to desire but how to desire, where to situate one’s desire in relation to the self, all desire’s dimensions. The goal of this hegemonic cultural project is to eventually make one lose the sense of self beyond that desire, and be left with nothing but desire. “What I want” and “who I am” become one, and the cultural program, determining what these desires are, can control our sense of ourselves. There are many ways of dealing with this predicament, from Read More …
About the exhibition Henri Matisse painted Luxe, calme, et volupté more than a hundred years ago. Today, the vibrantly coloured Fauvist painting keeps instilling a sense of warmth and repose. Luxury, peace and pleasure indeed. At the moment, many of us may not be feeling at ease. To state the obvious, there’s an unfinished pandemic and a war raging once again in Europe. These are difficult times and many futures seem possible. Times are trying. Change and anxiety cannot be avoided. Very often, the extra toiling accumulates upon the female and/or racialized body. Labor and care, both physical and emotional, are often Read More …
About the exhibition A murmuration is a flock of thousands moving together, a pattern through the sky, each bird attuned to its nearest neighbors. Made up of individual parts, the whole becomes greater and more powerful than when it stands alone. In the works presented here, individual parts are visible: pieced, gridded, grouped, and arranged with lines, letters, and fields of color. And from the thousands of works that fly together at NIAD, here is only a sample of pieces that somehow talk and listen to their nearest neighbors. A murmuration of applause to all. About the selector Alisa Golden writes, Read More …
About the exhibition The exhibition windows of NIAD on 23rd street are wildly overstuffed this holiday season. Amongst a backdrop of drawings that are doodled and dotted emerge a collection of creatures that are striped and spotted. This menagerie includes an assortment of tickles and roars from the furriest felines to amphibians galore. At daybreak, dapper penguins appear as mischievous musketeers, parading their way through showers of shapes. Marsupials, with pocketfuls of petunias, patiently postpone their leaping while snails slowly scribe a chalk hopscotch design. By midday, squirrels engage in patterns of play by using their tails as paintbrushes to carry Read More …
About “The Color of Happiness” collection “It was hard picking out [the collection] because there’s so many different styles and mediums. The happiness feeling is what they all have in common. People should buy art because it will make them feel happy!” About Rebecca Jantzen, the collector “I describe myself as visually impaired and learning disabled. I am a socially engaged artist who loves her art work. I love holidays and I like to make cards for special occasions. I like to draw things that brighten up my spirit and the day; images of peace, love and happiness. One of the reasons Read More …
About the exhibition Viewers can learn much from the work of NIAD artists. Their work offers the viewer a recognition that life is often a jumble of color and form. Things arise, and often not in a linear or scientific manner. In reviewing the NIAD catalog, a religious/spiritual theme emerges. Based on the conception of the beginning of the world found in the Old Testament book of Genesis, out of a chaos a world is born. Let there be light. About the organizer Jay Youngdahl is an artist, writer, and activist. For the past few decades he has made his Read More …
About the exhibition Ravel is an exhibition of two and three dimensional work that attracts with loose references leaving the mind to give up meaning in the pursuit of possibility. Recommended listening to accompany the viewing of the exhibition: Maurice Ravel’s Boléro. About the organizer Danny Volk received a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art from the University of Chicago (Chicago, IL) and a Bachelor of Arts in Theater Studies from Kent State University (Kent, OH). His recent exhibitions, screenings and performances include Mrs. Lincoln, What Did You Think of the Play at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (Milwaukee, WI), The News Gallery at SPACES (Cleveland, OH), The Read More …
About the exhibition To yield is to submit to pressure, to give way to an external force. It is also to produce or create something, the yield, from one’s own labor. The artworks brought together in this exhibition reflect the multiple ways matter can yield: Clay is molded and punctured by the sharp tip of the stylus, fabric gathers at the pull of the embroidery thread, and brushstrokes accumulate to reveal an overflowing mass of delineated forms on the page. While some of the artworks here physically represent how yielding is embedded in the very processes of their making, others Read More …
About the exhibition 20 continuous linesCommunicationConnectionsRelationshipsModel MakingCirclesFriendsFamilyGrounding StonesVacationsFinding BalanceSeeing things throughColors open up our perspectivesFinding peace and harmonyEVEN through hard shiftsBREATHE WORKPRAYER WORKPERSPECTIVE WORKlaying in a fieldFeeling connected to your purposeHaving your inner light turned on from within About the selector Veronica DeJesus is a visual artist currently living and working in Los Angeles. She was raised in Miami, LA, Oakland and on the open road along Highway 10. Veronica has had numerous solo shows at galleries in New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco, including her remarkable exhibition of Memorial drawings at The Berkeley Art Museum. Her work has been featured Read More …
About the exhibition Serotonin Ping is a collection of images that aspire to elicit feelings of well-being, stability, and happiness. Pets, food, inside jokes, oddities, simple statements – these are the things that cheer me up. Hopefully this show makes someone else crack a smile. About the selector Zoë Taleporos is a curator, arts administrator, and writer based in Oakland. She currently works as a Public Art Project Manager at the San Francisco Arts Commission where she is involved in commissioning a wide range of artworks for public spaces.
About the exhibition “Our relationship with reality and life is that same relationship that exists between the satellite image and the actual earth.” – Luigi Ghirri “Our engagement with the picture, our questioning of it, shapes and defines the ways we draw meanings from it. Pictures tell stories only to the extent that we ask them to; and as our questions change, those stories do as well.” – Martha A. Sandweiss About the selector Justin Clifford Rhody is an artist working in photography, filmmaking and sound. He currently lives in New Mexico with his partner and frequent collaborator Abigail Read More …
About the exhibition These ten artists imbue spirit into everyday objects. Facets of daily life become abstract through their methods; quilts, photographs, clay and paper become magical things through the power of repetition. The rituals of home and comfort are elevated through spiritual fulfillment. The love bestowed upon these items reveals itself. Not merely beauty, these things serve a purpose. They emanate joy, a sense of peace, and a hope of understanding one another. About the selector Max Kauffman Meet the selector (virtually) at Thirsty Thursday, June 10, 6-7pm PT. View the exhibition.View Untitled (S0912), Samantha Kershnar.
About the exhibition Bookend (plural bookends) A heavy object or moveable support placed at one or both ends of a row of books for the purpose of keeping them upright. … one of two things occurring or located at either end of something else. For this exhibition the ceramic works of Ann Meade and Saul Alegria are the supports holding together a shelf full of treasures by NIAD artists. About the selector Ellen Lake is an interdisciplinary artist living in Oakland, California. Her work experiments with technology, explores archives and collections, returns time and again to painting and process, and ranges Read More …
About the Exhibition The works in this exhibition move fluidly between letters, lines, texts, figures, signs, symbols, and a multitude of other forms both abstract and representational. I was drawn to these works primarily for the artists’ use of line, space, and color. Upon sustained viewing of the works (alone and together), I was struck by the echoing forms and energies that emerged within and between the works in the exhibition. About the Selector Richard Zimmerman is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans various media, including sculpture, photography, sound, and drawing. His work explores the intersection of subjectivity and the Read More …
About the exhibition Warming A selection of works that embrace imperfect elements and subtle beauty found in nature. We can envision the artists admiring the natural world and what they love about it. Each work is met with a delicate thoughtful touch that can transcend beyond the page. The same mindset can be found in making sustainable choices that better people and the planet. About the selector Good Buy Supply is Philadelphia’s first retail store dedicated to plastic-free alternatives for everyday life. Located in the grand, independent business community of East Passyunk Avenue, Good Buy Supply boasts a large selection Read More …
About the exhibition After a year of shared, global trauma, in the multiple forms of a pandemic, systemic racism, economic and environmental disaster, and political turmoil, there is a small light at the end of the tunnel. While the future remains precarious and unknown, the works in this exhibition embrace the colors of the rainbow, conveying a sense of hope and optimism. Bright and expressive, these pieces are an antidote to the losses we have endured both individually and together. Their sunniness and cheerfulness raise one’s spirits and anticipates the promise of a better tomorrow. About the selector Stephanie Hanor is Read More …