NEXUSselects is our annual juried exhibition of graduating art school seniors from the many art schools and programs in the greater Philadelphia region. Every year we are amazed at the sheer quality and talent of art students that apply for this exhibiton, making the task of whittling down our selection of 7 - 9 artists extremely challenging. The 8 artists selected this year represent a tremendous cross section of mediums and practices and further emphasizes the dedication, hard work and leadership of their educators.
June 11 - July 3, 2009   Opening Thursday June 11, 6 to 9 PM

NEXUSselects 2009 | Anni Altshuler, Elizabeth Briggs-Fandek, Matthew Cianfrani, Alicia Crosby, Debora Dias, Maxwell Hartley, Molly Morlock, Melissa Zetts

Anni Altshuler/University of the Arts, Printmaking/Book arts

Over time I’ve gathered a vocabulary of images that I use in my visual narratives to invent new of realities. Through examining subtle aspects of life that are normally overlooked and using pieces of my symbolic language, the events are reinvented into studies of how people deal with living life that are humorous yet sincere.

My interest in the narrative repeat patterns creates the foundation of my work, which combines traditional processes and materials of fabric printing with stories told by way of objects pulled from the contemporary world.  Each piece suggests a passing of time as well as daily routine. Throughout the repeat patterns, figures move and change, and just as they do in life, each event affects the next.

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Elizabeth Briggs-Fandek/Tyler School of Art, Glass

Art has encouraged me for as long as I can remember.   I make art because it is essential to my life style and me.  My art reflects memories or ideas, past and present, which I have experienced. 
I remember as a child traveling to my Grandmothers house and she collected porcelain dolls, but we were never allowed to touch them.  They were items that were collected and cherished, not to be played with.  I believe the reason why I make glass dolls is because of this memory.  But there memories, so there is room for distortion.  They consist of a mixture of glass, wire, fabric and stuffing.  The bodies are made out of fabric that I design or store brought. I am interested in combining glass and fabric together because there properties are opposites.  They are hard and soft, transparent and opaque.  But they both can be manipulated to change the appearances. 
I have many learning difficulties so it lends its self to constantly try new materials. I am drawn to my surroundings, color, pattern, forms, stacks, piles, polka dots, stripes and people watching.  I feel that I create item/objects that have little purpose.

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Matthew Cianfrani/University of Pennsylvania, Fine Arts (Photography)

Matthew combines contemporary studio practice with traditional photography technique to address issues of power, history, segregation, ideology, economics and the human condition in the 21st century post-industrial world. Though mankind continues to manipulate the landscape around him and develop the tools he uses and the languages he speaks, Matthew believes no progress has been made since the first semblance of human civilization. Territorial behavior permeates human society. The resources of survival are as rationed as resources of luxury such as technology, education, equality, and self-awareness, all of which are dispensed amongst glorified tribes. These tribes have been grouped into abstract constructs such as nationality, religion, ideology, race, and class. It is beneath these superficial masks that Matthew explores, looking for the true engine that drives human society. 

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Alicia Crosby/Tyler School of Art, Ceramics

There is a stigma in this culture to be perfect at all times. To look, act and be happy and beautiful is what is expected. But when one fails to do so comments are instantly blurted out like, “Smile honey it’s not all that bad.” These comments are so weighted and pressuring that I often find myself feeling I must be happier and smile for the sake of others. I have caught myself in many situations where I have put on a façade just to please those around me. But for how long can you really hold that mask before it becomes too much?
My own intrigue is really in the response of the viewer and what they can take away from the experience. I am interested in having people enter an environment where their emotions and thoughts are put under pressure and anxiety. Clay, video and performance have been great tools in my work and have allowed me to evoke this sort of nervous intimacy from the viewer. 

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Debora Dias/University of the Arts, Painting & Drawing

Obsessive, superficial, superimposed mark making sessions for the purpose of lavishing the total surface of the object; a rotation of elaborate decorative systems appearing within the body; quenched with hypercritic/ hysterically centered motives. This figurative work is a portraiture of eroticism. It is characterized by fantasies of physically palpating the internal body. This yearning is most revealed through the deprivation of sexual pleasure.
I thrive off of perverted thoughts. In my work, I am attempting to establish a hybrid between the psychosocial norms and the anomalies of sexuality, morals and ethics. All of which are being explored in the subtleties of human suffering and turmoil. The goal I am essentially working towards is to better make sense of that of which is assumed to be savage and uncivilized in me.

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Maxwell Hartley/University of the Arts, Sculpture

In my sculpture I try to communicate experiences of constriction, futile efforts, or loss of control. I search introspectively for the roots of a discomforting memory from which to generate my work. Viewers may often find themselves in the company of an object that may potentially pose a threat to their well being, or a situation in which they can offer no help. Confounded by this position, they may be reminded of basic survival instincts, or their own closeted memories.
I choose materials and processes that are of high touch and illicit intuitive emotional reactions. I feel a great tendency to push the limits of my physical capacity while building my structures. Dualities in texture, weight and visual space contribute to a sensibility that confronts the discomforting and embraces shuttered realities of the human condition.

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Molly Morlock/Tyler School of Art, Photography

I am interested in pursuing the inherent drama that photography as a medium can so naturally express.  I find it fascinating that photographs, as objects, can act as a two dimensional stage.  Photography allows spectators to voyeuristically gaze into a scene that never took place in reality.
The modern world is manifested in a spectacle.  The spectacle is where I find a common thread between theatrical melodrama and a gargantuan cake.  Personally, food evokes both an attraction and repulsion.  It is the realm of photography that intensifies the duality of appeal and distaste and creates tension.  Food, much like photographs, is an escape. To get in touch with our society’s desires and escapes, construct a spectacle.

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Melissa Zetts/University of the Arts, Painting & Drawing

 I am interested in documenting the human experience based on interactions, first impressions and intuition. This work is a record of those moments, the points of impact that occur while investigating other people’s histories.
Larry Rivers said, “You don’t just move into the future, you drag a past.” This is a principal focus. By regarding the common man and the candidness of his interaction with himself and others, much can be discovered. I have paid close attention to the gesture of hands, the inclination of a voice, the way arms bend, the coldness of a face, and the moisture in someone’s eyes. I am changed by these moments, left different by the exchange that has taken place between us during a sitting.
The portraits are made in an intimate setting through an impulsive, intuitive sensitivity to the ordinary. These are personal moments that are not about likeness or visual accuracy, but about the subtext. I am not interested in achieving a literal interpretation of the person, but by honing in on the barely audible utterances, I hope to attain what I would describe as a “journalism of the unseen.” In feeling connections with my sitters and being moved by what I see, I have come to realize the depth of my own brokenness. In studying their posture I have begun to recognize the wringing of my own hands, my own posture, and through this work, I have become more aware that in documenting their identities, I am speaking of my own. 

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