Assembled Abstractions Opens

On Friday, March 13th AxD Gallery’s exhibition, Assembled Abstractions, opened. Artists Barbara Klein and Michael Smith got a chance to meet each other for the first time. It was good to see many new and familiar faces in the gallery after what seemed to have been far too long of a Winter. Our window display featured artworks from both Michael and Barbara, hung on cable-suspended panels painted in Spring-like shades of green. The colorful window and lively crowd inside attracted people into the gallery as they walked along 10^th Street that night. Friday the 13^th turned out to be a perfect day to have an art opening.

At first glance it isn’t obvious that the exhibition Assembled Abstractions features the paintings by two Philadelphia area artists who had never previously met. The gestalt of these two bodies of work is a shared one — the visceral delight of abstract tales told through highly chromatic painted collages. An unabashed joy of color and pattern transmutes the personal reminders of marked time and life experiences of Barbara Klein and Michael Smith into paintings of pure gold.

Beyond the initial impression of a shared language, a closer probing of the nearly three dozen small paintings featured in Assembled Abstractions reveals a great diversity of technique, inspirations and motifs. Michael Smith, a Tyler graduate, applies his training as a printmaker to his work which draws him toward lines and patterns he sees in everyday life. Land forms as seen from airplanes, such as the lines of a plowed field, the arrangement of a golf course, playing fields, suburban housing developments, and snaking rivers have found their place in Michael’s painted imagery. His work betrays a cubistic sensibility while often evoking the density of an Eastern Indian miniature.

The works of Barbara Klein, a graduate from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, are more spare by contrast. Her colors, equally bold, ranging from fuscia, yellow, and aqua, are deployed alongside black and greys to form hard-edge patterns and ambiguous poetic objects. Stripes, dots, amoebic and calligraphic forms all pervade her work. Her works frequently seem as color field miniatures, but are often composed as diptychs or triptychs. Barbara puts an idea down to see where it goes. Her work represents the end result of editing down of ideas that, at the onset, have gone nowhere. Sanding, scraping, and painting-over ideas help her resolve the piece, incrementally, without preconception.

“Nothing to Fear” Facade

Recently we were commissioned to do a design-build facade installation for Peter G.-Ray’s 2009 ‘Nothing to Fear’ painting exhibition at the Bridge Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Two years earlier we debuted his work in the U.S. at AxD Gallery with a solo show entitled ‘CUT’. For that exhibition we built rolled aluminum panels on the exterior of our gallery, creating the appearance of their being cut and peeled away.

Views of finished window at Bridge Gallery, and the painting "Cut" by Peter G.-Ray, displaying similarly hand-rolled aluminum panels.

The designs for both gallery fronts flowed as fairly direct extensions of the artist’s interests in concealing, cutting, peeling and revealing. In his work, openings, whether rendered physically in cut materials or graphically with painted surfaces, are invitations for engagement. Simply put, Peter’s work invites curiosity. As art critic Ken Moffett has noted: “G.-Ray has combined the hallucinatory surrealism of Dali with the vigor and freedom of Jackson Pollock, metamorphosing these into something startlingly new. He hungers to unite extremes: Precision and free improvisation, the intensely graphic and beautifully painted, exquisite refinement of detail and pictorial force.” All in all, there is plenty in Peter G.-Ray’s work to sustain interest and wonder.

Our design-build exercises to date have all been conducted as “charrettes” of a week or less. In the case of the Bridge Gallery façade installation we had the added constraint of performing all of the work in a single day, including round trip transportation from Philadelphia, with materials and equipment fitting inside a mid-sized sedan.

Fortunately working conditions were absolutely perfect. The weather was very mild for late February. The trickiest part of the project was securing our work to the Bridge Gallery without permanently altering the existing marble façade. We accomplished this by working the head and a jamb of our frame into existing security gate hardware and bolting the base into the concrete sidewalk. Interest in our installation piece increased dramatically as the first aluminum panels were screwed onto the frame. (See “before” and installation photos below.)

Neighboring shop owners, tourists and random passersby stopped to ask us what was going on. We handed out quite a few postcards for Nothing to Fear during that Spring-like afternoon. As we finished up at dusk, Peter G.-Ray was quite pleased with results … the debut for both of us in NYC. Two days later, it snowed at the March 1st opening reception!

www.bridgegalleryny.com

Our Second Art Staging at the Economy League

The Economy League's office at Broad & Locust streets

Earlier this month we made our second installation of artwork at the offices of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia as part of an on-going art staging program for them. The Economy League is a non-profit think tank offering expert analysis of the regions resources and economic policies. Our initial art staging at the Economy League was in August. We would like to thank Christopher Scoville at the Economy League for coordinating both stagings.

Ryan McMenamin

www.economyleague.org

Annette Cords’ Latest Artwork

To borrow a phrase from Robert Venturi, Annette Cords’ most recent artworks belong to the world of “Both-And”; they are hybrids. The 14 pieces on view in her current solo exhibition at AxD Gallery are both paintings and monoprints. They are paintings in the sense that they employ paint (hand-mixed acrylics). The are prints in the sense that the paint is not applied with a brush, but rather in the manner of block printing – with the paint being applied to a variety of found objects that in turn are used to “stamp” the paint into the canvas or panel surface. Occasionally paint is also dripped, either as individual drops or in threadlike skeins.

Selected works by Annette Cords at AxD Gallery

Ms. Cords’ work is also “Both-And” in its simultaneously inhabiting the worlds of order and chaos, the controlled and the serendipitous. Seen from a distance or as a small reproduction, Ms. Cords’ work appears to be digital – evoking the pulsing instrumentation of oscilloscopes or thermal imaging machines. Seen in person, up close, the works are very sensual and diverse. While patterning exists on a macro level, intimacy with the work reveals no exact repeats. It is as though we are looking through a microscope with one eye, admiring the crystalline uniqueness of each snowflake, while also taking in the beauty of a whole glittering winter landscape simultaneously.

Ed Barnhart, AIA

Diversity in Practice

One of the touchstones at Always by Design (AxD) has been seeking diversity as a means of nurturing inquiry and growth, both personally and professionally. This flies in the face of “standard practice” which encourages market focus and specialization. Indeed, as we’re discovering, diversity certainly isn’t an easy concept to “brand”. Maybe it’s just luck, but on the architectural practice side, our practice has achieved a diversity of clients and project types beyond anything we had anticipated. In this past year alone we have worked on restaurants, a library, an auditorium, government offices, a church, a boutique salon, industrial infrastructure, and several residences.

While, on the art gallery side of AxD, the ability to select artists and artwork is wholly within our control, it’s still gratifying to look back and see the range of artists represented and artwork we’ve shown thus far. Media has included various forms of drawing, printmaking, painting, photography, collage, and sculpture. Subject matter has encompassed non-representational imagery, abstractions, landscapes, portraiture, details of nature, sci-fi and fantasy imagery, and gay erotica.

A selection of art exhibited at AxD

We’re confident that the lineup of artists we’ve scheduled for 2009 will continue our commitment to artistic diversity. Similarly, with our architectural practice on the verge of signing an agreement with a major hotelier, we’re looking to welcoming in the new year further diversifying our clientele as well.

Ed Barnhart, AIA

Unlikely Friends

We have a visitor to our courtyard. Over the past week an adolescent opossum has been spotted poking around the vegetation surrounding the cedar deck in the studio courtyard. We took a photo as it climbed the tree against the back wall. After doing a little research it turns out opossums are surprisingly resistant to rabies due to their metabolism, so we aren’t particularly concerned about safety. This little guy seemed pretty relaxed as we gawked at him and took pictures from a few feet away. Of course we decided not to give him any food, as AxD does not need a mascot!

opossum at AxD courtyard

Ryan McMenamin

The Materiality of Light

Rarely does one see light as a material. Most often lighting plays the role of supporting actor, highlighting the materiality or decoration of surfaces it illuminates, rather than holding the starring role itself. That changed for us this year as we had the opportunity to design the renovation and expansion of an abandoned 14,000 s.f. two-story building in Center City Philadelphia into a restaurant + nightclub. The client sought spaces that could transform from being a romantic dinner venue to pulsing dance nightclub with little effort. We turned to lighting to make such transitions easy and dramatic.

Our inspiration for using light as the subject came from artist James Turrell’s light installations, such as “Red Around” installed at ARC, Musee National d’Art Moderne, Paris (shown above). While Mr. Turrell’s works from that period (1980’s) were static installations, they certainly rendered colored light as an exciting and palpable substance. By using current LED (light emitting diode) lighting technology (instead of fluorescent lamps as Turrell used in the above piece) we were able to plan a dynamic range of effects and mood environments. Use of mixed lamp sources (red, amber, green and/or blue) enables virtually any color to be achieved. Shifts in coloration and intensity can be digitally controlled as slow fades, rapid pulses or anything in between. On the exterior, the two street facades were designed as “tunable” instruments of light. Along the long façade, LED edge-lit translucent vertical “light fins” are used to create both static and animated colored light effects.

The project received a 2008 Award of Design Excellence from the Society of American Registered Architects (SARA). The jury commended our transformation of a derelict building into an urban oasis.

[23 Oct. ’08 SARA awards program – Ed Barnhart, AIA]

American Philosophical Society: Design-Build

Earlier this year our American Philosophical Society renovations received the Best Design-Build Project Award from the General Building Contractors Association (GBCA). Always by Design (AxD) provided the architectural design leadership while J.S. Cornell & Son (JSC) served as the project lead and construction manager for the four phases of this $6.15M project. This marks the second time that I’ve received a GBCA award working in a design-build relationship with JSC. (The Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Ullyot conference center addition received the Best Institutional Project Award the year it was entered.)

In my experience, the strength of the design-build process has been in fostering teamwork and shared responsibility among Builder, Designer and Owner. In contrast to the myopic, mine-versus-yours provincialism and frequently adversarial environment engendered by a conventional low-bid process, design-build encourages thinking in terms of achieving the best shared outcome. Particularly when working with a non-profit institution relying on receiving grants for a phased renovation involving multiple existing buildings, the ability to accommodate incremental funding and concealed or unforeseen conditions is invaluable. The design-build methodology represents a very useful project delivery option, facilitating the shift toward greater teamwork. The evolution of holistic, “sustainable” thinking and availability of new tools (such as object-based Building Information Modeling (BIM) software) is allowing an even more fluid, integrated, and productive approach to design and construction.

[3 Nov. ’08 GBCA awards program – Ed Barnhart, AIA]

Mentoring in the Arts: Anne d’Harnoncourt’s example

The autumn season this year has proven bountiful for AxD, culminating last week in our receiving our first state-level design award and sixth award overall. The 2008 awards program for the Pennsylvania American Institute of Architects gave recognition, not only to exemplary projects, but exceptional individuals as well. Anne d’Harnoncourt, the late director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, was posthumously given the award for Contribution to the Profession by a Non-Architect. She was clearly a beloved and dedicated leader in the field of art. Among the many exemplary qualities for which she was cited, three stood out to me: Passion, Intellect, and Mentoring of others to seek their personal best. Certainly anyone engaged in a form of art, be it painting or architecture, expects and indeed needs to bring passion and intelligence to their craft if it is to be vital, to themselves and their audience. In a culture that so readily embraces the exaltation of the individual as hero, or genius, leadership through mentoring and collaboration is frequently overlooked.

While it may have been completely serendipitous that in the same awards program where Anne d’Harnoncourt’s leadership in the arts was recognized, our art gallery & studio received a citation of design merit, I believe there was a shared thread. In conferring the design award for the art gallery & studio, the jury noted the role that mentoring played in the project. They wrote that they were “…impressed with the hands-on nature of the project, using it as part of the educational process; it made the end product better”. While our entire staff served as their own client, user and contractor for this particular project, I believe that the process of architecture is intrinsically a social art. As architects we must strive to exert leadership, not so much through individual authorship but rather in fostering an environment of shared mentoring, growth and ownership.

[18 Nov ’08 PA AIA awards program – Ed Barnhart, AIA]

Slippages: Bart O’Reilly

I had the pleasure of being invited by fellow Baltimore artist Sheldon Drake to participate in Slippages at AxD Gallery in Philadelphia. Having shown in Ireland in the early part of the 2000’s and Baltimore since my move to the United States in 2003, I was delighted to show in another American city. This weekend was my first time in Philadelphia and it being a new city I was pleasantly surprised by the great turnout to our opening reception on Friday. It was nice to have so many new people introduced to my work. Working with the Gallery has been a very rewarding experience. I have dealt with many galleries since graduating art college and AxD has been among the most helpful and courteous so far. I hope to have the opportunity to show in Philadelphia again soon.

Opening reception on Friday, November 14th 2008.

[17 Nov. '08 - Bart O'Reilly, artist]