A concurrent exhibition, Bill Scott: Drypoints, Etchings, and Aquatints

Will be on display in McCabe Library. Both exhibitions are organized in cooperation with Hollis Taggart Galleries, NY.

This exhibition brings together approximately 16 oil paintings by Bill Scott, a Philadelphia artist who creates color-based abstract paintings and prints.Scott sometimes teasingly refers to himself as a "nearsighted realist" because his abstract works are full of references to the real world, with rectangles and squares suggesting buildings and windows and jagged lines echoing the tree branches visible from his studio.

In 1999, he began making etchings, drypoints and aquatints with Philadelphia master printer, Cindi R. Ettinger. Since that time he has made an extended body of prints, which have grown increasingly complex, with dense sinuous markings and bold colors. His McCabe Library exhibition will include various states of prints, a series of working proofs, and color trial proofs of different prints, giving the viewer a step-by-step tour of the artist's working methods.

In 2004, he was the recipient of an Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts. He has also received the Adolph & Clara Obrig Prize (2004) and the Benjamin Altman Prize (2008) from the National Academy Museum, New York. His works are in the collections of the Delaware Art Museum, The State Museum of Pennsylvania, and Woodmere Art Museum. Two of his etchings have recently been acquired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Scott is represented by Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, and his work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in London, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. This will be Scott's first solo show of paintings in more than six years to be held in the Philadelphia area.

Nationally and internationally recognized for both his draftsmanship and inventive imagery, Paone's portraits of poets and musicians explore traditional themes with an experimental sensibility. Drawing lessons from the unexpected juxtapositions and textures of collage aesthetics, his figures have a hybrid and visionary quality. Whether responding to the Katrina disaster, or portraying the lyricism of a musical trio, the artist investigates the way varied arts—poetry, music, dance, theater, and painting—find their creative wellsprings in the human condition. Paone has received numerous grants and awards including two Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grants and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. His work has been exhibited internationally and is in distinguished collections including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.

The graceful curves and intimate scale of Hiroyuki Hamada’s sculptures and reliefs belie the intensity of their obsessively worked surfaces. The contrast between his quiet, self-contained structures and their highly agitated and almost ritualistically embellished surfaces suggest the duality of his vision and process. Hamada begins his works with wooden forms, which he overlays with burlap and plaster before sculpting and embellishing them further, with wax, resin, paint, and other materials. Taking as long as two years to complete, his works paradoxically appear rough-hewn and time worn and yet exquisitely crafted and harmonious.

Although many of his forms suggest weathered buoys and other nautical forms, this 40- year-old artist, who now resides in East Hampton, NY, takes more inspiration from music than literal sources in the everyday world. Hamada moved from his native Tokyo to West Virginia at the age of 18, when his father took a job in the steel industry. Entering college, his struggle to communicate in English and to comprehend his newfound minority status catalyzed his profound response to the abstract fundamentals of drawing and sculpture—the universal language of geometry and design. He went on to receive his MFA from the University of Maryland and was subsequently awarded two residencies from the Edward Albee Foundation. His work has been exhibited at Page Bond Gallery, Richmond Va and Randall Scott Gallery, Washington D.C. We are delighted to present his work for the first time in the Greater Philadelphia region.

Michael Olszewski's recent fiber constructions and paintings spring from deeply personal responses to issues of intimacy, fate and life's passing. Integrating influences as diverse as Pre-Columbian textiles and Russian Constructivism, his original constructions reveal an emotionally expressive range of materials and traditions including Japanese shibori resist dyeing, appliqué, embroidery, and crochet as well as traditional drawing and painting techniques. Olszewski's deeply moving works plumb the poignancy of human yearning and loss, yet attune viewers to the subtle harmonies of shared experience.

Winner of numerous awards, including fellowships from the PEW Charitable Trust, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Polish Ministry of Culture and The Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Olszewski's work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in major collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Sonya Clark listens to the stories held in objects and, lately, unbreakable, fine-toothed, pocket combs have her ear. Each turn in plot, brings questions and an urge to respond with a piece. As cultural critic, Bill Gaskins, said in a review of her work, "Hairdressing is the primordial fiber art." And so it is that the reed on a loom and the pocket comb are siblings.Clark uses combs the way a weaver manipulates threads in a tapestry: multiplicity in service of the whole. There is a resonance between an artwork made of combs, a hairstyle piled high, and a woven cloth.

Clark is Chair of Craft /Material Studies in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Previously, a Baldwin-Bascom Professor of Creative Arts atUW-Madison, she received an M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art, a B.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago), and a B.A. from Amherst College. Her honors include a Pollock-Krasner Award and a Rockefeller Residency. Her work has been exhibited in over 150 venues in the United Kingdom, Brazil, South Africa, Canada, Taiwan, Austria, Australia, France, Switzerland, andthe United States.