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Speaking From the Core

Opening Reception:
Thursday, September 12th from 6-9pm


Gallery Hours:

Saturdays 12-5pm and by appointment

September 7, 2024 - September 28, 2024

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The grinding of time, the ceaseless collision of the earth's crust, and human-driven displacement of natural resources all sculpt the shifting grounds we inhabit. Tectonic wounds and arteries of minerals and waterways formed by Earth’s core have defined the movement of human civilizations for millennia. And now, modern structures of industrial extraction have granted humans the capability to rearrange landscapes for themselves. Rapid exploration and extraction have forced materials and bodies across continents, reshaping landscapes and in turn, influencing cultures and psyches worldwide.


In Speaking from the Core, artworks by Andrea Krupp, Anna Rotty, and Kara Springer explore the influence of material extraction and abstraction on our worldview by illuminating structural, mythical, material, and bodily significance of these processes. Within their explorations of coal, clay, and water is a lineage of all life that connects current and past civilizations, industries, and landscapes.


Curated by Danielle Degon Rhodes

Andrea Krupp graduated from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia with a BFA in Printmaking in 1985. Her part-time position as Conservator of Rare Books at the Library Company of Philadelphia enabled her to consistently create visual art for more than thirty years. Andrea has been a resident artist in Iceland annually since 2013 which transformed her understanding of landscape as she embarked upon interdisciplinary research projects exploring nature informed by historical visual culture and field research. She was awarded the Independence Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship in 2016, the Visual Arts Fellowship at Ballinglen in Ireland in 2018, a Fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia in 2022, and the Arctic Circle Residency twice. Her current project, Seeing Coal, began in 2019 with historical and field research in Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region. In 2021 she curated an interdisciplinary exhibition called Seeing Coal: Time, Material, Scale, part of the Codex Foundation’s nationwide ExtractionArt project and catalog. Andrea currently has a solo exhibition on view at Lafayette College Art Gallery entitled The New Carboniferous Age.


Anna Rotty lives on Tiwa land in Albuquerque. She earned her MFA in 2024, and currently teaches, at the University of New Mexico. Anna received a BFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2011. Her work investigates water, light and infrastructure, informing her understanding of orientation and place. Her work has been published by Southwest Contemporary, Humble Arts Foundation, and Lenscratch, where she earned 3rd place in the Student Portfolio Prize in 2023. Anna is a recipient of the Silver Eye Center for Photography Fellowship 24 and has recently exhibited at Chung 24 Gallery in San Francisco and Strata Gallery in Santa Fe. Her work is in collections such as The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Library of Congress and SFMOMA Special Collection.


Kara Springer is particularly concerned with armature—the underlying structure that holds the flesh of a body in place. She works with photography, sculpture, and site-specific interventions to explore systems of structural support through engagement with architecture, urban infrastructure, and systems of institutional and political power. Springer holds degrees from the University of Toronto, ENSCI les Ateliers in Paris, and the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Artists Space in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art and Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia, the National Gallery of the Bahamas and the National Gallery of Jamaica. She currently holds a Chalmers Fellowship with the Ontario Arts Council and is an alum of the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston Core Program.

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