Meet the Machine
AUTOMAT
Members
Danielle Degon Rhodes
is a multimedia artist and curator. She graduated with a BFA in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art and Architecture in 2017. Since, she has completed residencies at the Salzburg International Academy of Fine Art in Austria and at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong.
Through her studio and curatorial practices, she explores her interest in labor and material extraction in search of artist-made alternatives.
Tessa Haas
is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at Bryn Mawr College, an Archivist at Fleisher Art Memorial, and freelance curator. She has organized and assisted with exhibitions in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Virginia. Her research and curatorial interests engage with screen-based media and net art particularly through queer studies and material culture methodologies. She is originally from Virginia, and currently lives in South Philadelphia.
Mari Elaine Lamp
Mari Elaine Lamp is a painter and installation artist living in Philadelphia. Her nomadic past includes time spent in Germany, upstate New York, Colorado, and Chicago. She graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts MFA program in 2017, and from Houghton College with a BA in Art and Writing in 2007. She lives and works in the Germantown neighborhood of northwest Philly, where she enjoys hiking and taking naps. Her painting practice addresses the intersection of mental health, gender, and domestic spaces.
marielainelamp.com
Addison Namnoum
is a multimedia artist living in Philadelphia. She received her BA in Human Ecology at College of the Atlantic in 2014 and her MFA at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2019. In her work she studies our relationship with place at the scales of the every-day and the monumental, frequently using narrative structures in the production of art books, videos, and photo series to examine pattern as well as to explore the ways we understand experience as it relates to landscape and place. She integrates textile, sculpture, projection, and sound to emphasize the sensorial and shifting nature of the material world we inhabit. Her recent body of work, titled "Watching Someone Watching the River," follows the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers over the course of a year.
Kimi Pryor
is a Los Angeles-born painter living and working in Germantown, Philadelphia. She received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, founded the Philadelphia-based studio visit blog phillypeer, moderates a Philly-based crit group, and has exhibited in New York and locally, with recent exhibitions including “The Buried Life”, a two-person show with Robert at Da Vinci Art Alliance’s Gallery 2, and “Inner Currents”, a two-person show with Matt Allyn Chapman at Curio Gallery & Creative Supply in Lancaster, PA. “I am interested in the imaginal, the inner, and the mysterious. My work explores how thought, the search for meaning, and creation/destruction cycles shape and form worlds over time.”
Lou Serna
is a Latinx/Native American curator and artist. He is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with a current curatorial practice focused on diverse voices and visions. He lives and works in South Philly.
louserna.com
Lydia Smith
(she/her) was born in Chicago, Illinois and currently lives and works in Columbus, Ohio. She received her BA in Anthropology and Studio Art from Rice University, where she directed the student exhibition space, Matchbox Gallery. In 2015 she was awarded a Watson Fellowship to spend a year traveling outside of the United States researching how the landscape of burial sites can reflect varying cultural attitudes towards death. She has completed residencies at Columbus Printed Arts Center, the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, and Denmark Arts Center in Maine. She was awarded a Global Arts + Humanities Graduate Team Fellowship at The Ohio State University where she received her MFA in 2022.
lydiasmith.studio
Kate Testa
is a curator, educator and mixed media artist whose work explores themes of the metaphysical and the occult while investigating how the art making process can transcend into a spiritual practice. Her background is based in the crafts. She received her BFA from The Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2008 where she studied glass and then worked professionally in the glass industry for the next 8 years in Seattle, WA. In 2016 she relocated to pursue her master’s degree and received her MFA concentrating in sculpture from the University of Delaware in 2018. She was the 2018-19 Curatorial Fellow at The Delaware Contemporary and has taught at Delaware College of Art and Design in Wilmington, DE and West Chester University in West Chester, PA. For more information visit her website follow her on Instagram @therealkatetesta
therealkatetesta.com
Jacqueline Yvonne Tull
is a Baltimore-based artist investigating the connection between people and the objects they collect and cherish. She is the Interdisciplinary Sculpture Studio Manager for the Maryland Institute College of Art. Jacqueline grew up in Greenbelt, Maryland, and completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design in Lancaster, Pennsylvania while spending summers studying plein air painting and figure drawing at the Mount Gretna School of Art in Mount Gretna, Pennsylvania, and the Rome Art Program in Rome, Italy. She completed her Master of Fine Art degree at the University of Delaware, where she specialized in Sculpture and Material Culture studies. She has taught sculpture and other fine art courses at multiple universities in the Philadelphia region, and has exhibited works in the Mid-Atlantic region, New York, and Berlin, Germany.
Tess Wei
is a Philadelphia native who is interested in lingering as an act of resistance in a time defined by speed and efficiency. Their work is meant to offer space for contemplation, (day)dreaming and rest. Tess received a BA from Swarthmore College and MFA from PAFA. They are currently the Assistant to the Director of the List Gallery, Swarthmore College and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at the college as well. Their only other important pieces of information are David Bowie forever and their favorite movie is Harold and Maude (they are always in search of other enthusiasts).