Atmospheric at Main Line Art Center

Atmospheric at Main Line Art Center curated by Amie Potsic

Amie Potsic, formerly the Director of Career Development at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists, is now the Executive Director of Main Line Art Center, 746 Panmure Road, Haverford, PA 19041. For her debut exhibit as the new director she has curated the first installation show in the gallery in ten years titled Atmospheric featuring three member artists of InLiquid, the artist representation website based in the Crane Arts Center in Fishtown. The featured artists are Dianne Koppisch Hricko, an artist utilizing fabrics and dye, Delainey Barclay, who makes large scale installations out of ordinary objects, and Maureen Ciaccio, an artist creating work from found and recycled material like phone books and maps.

The galleries at the Main Line Art Center are transformed into a dreamscape of floating bubble clouds made of string, silken panels with dripped dye resembling trees, old books transformed into alien origami shapes and extra-terrestrial maps of our world with a stream of newsprint reprinted on fabric. Indeed, the space is Atmospheric with ordinary information sources redesigned to enlighten and intrigue visitors to the 75 year old art space with 21st Century information design.

 

DoNArTNeWs chatted with Amie Potsic about the landmark art installation at the crowded opening night. “I’m so excited about it!”, said Amie Potsic, “Actually it’s interesting, when I started, before I started the position here Judy Herman, who was my predecessor, said she had been talking about having a joint collaboration with InLiquid. I thought that was wonderful because I’ve worked with them a lot. And the idea was to create a show that was installation works. And to select artists from InLiquid to do the show. So, I went through looking at all their work and started to see the dialogs and conversations between peoples work. And I really saw such a beautiful, elegant and compelling conversation happening with all of these artists work. And I thought how beautiful our venue is and how we have three separate galleries really, so that essentially each artist could have a solo show within a larger group show.”

DoN commented how as one moves from room to room the art blends together. Amie Potsic replied, “Exactly, that was the idea. The themes really works with nature and atmospheric phenomenon, it’s also very human and very tactile. And so I think that those connections, even though they’re dealing with somewhat disparate and different materials, it really pulls it all together in a really interesting way. And I I think it looks so absolutely beautiful, too. I am so drawn in by the aesthetics of it.”

“What I thought was so interesting was Delainey Barclay‘s books are cultural objects and Maureen Ciaccio‘s works which is actually all text, pages taken out of a phone book, then printed creating a river sculpture out of it. So they both were taking interesting yet totally pedestrian texts, books and creating these incredibly aesthetic and beautiful objects. I thought that was such an interesting conversation. And then also with the maps, maps are very much, sort of, a human created idea and physical object but then having the leaf over it really brings a sort of humanity and nature into our relationship with it. I thought that was also a great relationship with Dianne Koppisch Hricko‘s work where she’s working with trees and leaves and the changing seasons and it’s silk, a totally natural fiber that she paints on herself, you can just see the gesture. Isn’t it wonderful”

Yes, Amie, it’s wonderful!

 

Dianne Koppisch Hricko explained to DoNArTNeWs, “This opportunity happened rather suddenly. Because Amie is new in this position, so she invited me when it was almost September. She knew it was very little time but I thought, ‘Well, why yes I would!’, and so the ghosts occurred when I came out and saw this space and I knew this space would work, the previous space was a long hallway in the Crane Arts Center.” Explaining the process, the artist said, “The very first one occurred several years ago because I had taken a workshop with Dorothy Caldwell and she had us do these drawings with ball point pens for almost an hour keeping and repeating the same mark. And that afternoon we went outside and there were these big pieces of paper and she gave us a brush and ink and we flung. And I was thrilled with the flinging. So, I thought,’When I get back to the studio, I’m all about the flinging!’ My studio has high ceilings, so I climbed a ladder and attached silk to my air conditioning system and then just let the dye drip down because that way I only had to put plastic under it.”

Explaining the materials used in the flowing silk and silk charmeuse panels Dianne Koppisch Hricko said, “This one uses just dye but because of the grain of the fabric, it wicks out, and dye, well, there is no black dye. It’s combinations of colors and so as I got further along, I expanded the color. Although the ghosts, are more red and blue, because a lot of times it’s very hard to get a black on silk and you frequently get a red but then I wasn’t getting that. And I wanted it. So I added red. The dye I use is Procion fiber reactive dye. it’s a cold water dye that was developed in the 1950s and it’s never been improved upon.”

For the fabric draping the window,  Dianne Koppisch Hricko, used a wax resist and when it’s steamed to release the wax, the coloration on the surface then crackles. She said, “This was just wax brushed onto the fabric and when it sets up, then it was crunched, and I just thought that mark was fabulous. To remove the wax you can iron it out but I have a big steamer that I wrapped it up in and that took care of it and then I washed it.”

The effect of a birch forest is uncanny and the colors match the exterior of the Main Line Art Center creating a dynamic synchronicity of art and architecture.

 

Delainey Barclay transforms books into abstract origami-style shapes, each hand folded and held with a single nail. As a collector, you can choose which pieces you desire and the artist will install them in your home. One collector had ten of them installed on her mantle on a brick wall in a row house and it just looks stunning. You can really play with the installation and help curate it with Delainey Barclay. The source of the books is indeterminate but they are not cut, every page is folded with precision like an origami meditation. Since this is a new chapter at the Main Line Art Center art made from books is a wonderful metaphor for a new age of information and ideas.

During a conversation with one of the patrons visiting the show named Bea, she made a wonderful observation, “I’m fascinated, somebody, apparently she’s a very young artist, she found a purpose in books. Which we won’t be reading anymore. So in the 21st Century and the end of the 22nd Century, children will come and look at this and say, ‘You know? At one point that was a book which you read.’ Now, you know, it’s Kindle and all that, it’s really using other resources to enrich our lives. It’s not like, you know, it’s recycled, but it’s for anyone to enjoy and you can have life come from it with intelligence.”

 

Into the Fold, folded books by Delainey Barclay.

 

Into the Fold, folded books by Delainey Barclay.

 

Tubes of rolled magazine print assembled into a wall hanging by Delainey Barclay titled Spaces in Between.

 

Spaces in Between by Delainey Barclay

 

“When imagining this series I wanted to explore how space functioned within a body of work. Not just the optically perceived space of the canvas, but also the area between the two dimensional panel and the three dimensional sculptural component and finally, the spaces within the three dimensional elements. Although the physical work itself is important, the existing space in and around the piece is of equal importance. Honoring this, shadow, light and moving air can be properly showcased. This is where the idea of humidity comes in to play. Humidity is something that we can both see and feel. The thought of air having weight and presence becomes more tangible once water vapor is added. The moving spheres represent gas phase particles (atoms, molecules or ions) moving freely as if they escaped from the painting.  As the viewer walks into the space the spheres will envelope them, then the viewer becomes part of the space.” excerpt from Delainey Barclay‘s website.

 

Maureen Ciaccio overlay’s a wireframe leaf form on map-like shapes mounted to the wall of the gallery. The conversation created between the fractal like shapes of the coast lines and the leaf veins is poetic and ominous. The shades of gray and shadows of the black wire describe the delicacy of our home planet and how like a leaf loses it’s cellular structure our world could just as simply lose it’s efficacy. Hanging in the center of the room is a piece called We Are A River using information from a phone book, a practically obsolete form of information design repurposed here to demonstrate the fragility of all that we know to be true.

 

We are a River, “Utilizing the entire 2007 Wilmington, DE White Pages, is a snapshot of an ever changing population that fills the “permanent” structure of the city of Wilmington — just like the Christina River that flows through the city.” excerpted from Maureen Ciaccio‘s website.

 

We Are A River, Maureen Ciaccio.

Atmospheric, curated by Amie Potsic, at Main Line Art Center through November 11th, 2012.

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer except where noted. Thank you to Spike Howard and Jeff Stroud for their contributions to this blog post, without your help and support this story would not be possible.

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