November 29th 2024 - January 18th 2025
Gallery Hours: 24/7
miniMAC (miniature Mount Airy Contemporary)
25 West Mt. Airy Avenue, Philadelphia PA 19119
www.mountairycontemporary.com
miniMAC is pleased to announce Cadence, an exhibition of artworks by Elyce Abrams and Anne Schaefer. Abrams and Schaefer both work from a process-based perspective where color, pattern and iteration play a part, much in the way music operates in a structured framework, each passage building on and informed by the sounds that came before. These works can be contemplative, calming or experimental and self-referential, sampling and resampling from previous iterations.
Elyce Abrams says of her work: “I started these works on paper when I was mourning the loss of my mom. I needed to work in a way that was repetitive, focused and calm. Painting has always been a stabilizing force in my life, and working in this ordered way was what got me through those first hard months. Sitting at my desk, drawing line after line, allowed me to process my loss. At times, I was completely immersed in the work and the decisions of where I wanted it to go and at other times the rhythm of the lines became automatic, allowing my mind to wander and grieve. These drawings brought me immense comfort and I fell in love with the way the paint from the markers flow into the paper, their precision, and the ability, because of their opacity, to quickly fix mistakes and create layers. As the work has developed, and time has passed, my love of color, pattern, structure and repetition remains central to these pieces. They feel filled with light and joy.”
Anne Shaefer says of her work: “I am dedicated to exploring materials, processes, and substrates to create a layered dialogue of experiential abstraction. My conceptual goals are aligned with the non-hierarchical modes of making - where I invite and resolve fresh visual challenges through rigorous studio practice. I employ painting, screen-printing and digital printed surface treatments interchangeably, mining meaning from the tactile act of making.
I am interested in the unique qualities of each material, setting up a series of prompts and experiments and then paying careful attention to the results. The approach is both responsive and disciplined, an intensive open-ended investigation. The end goal is never known at the beginning of a piece; it is realized in dialog with its creation. The solutions to each abstraction are internal and non-objective, yet they are discovered externally - sometimes through a direct action (a squeegee of ink, another pass of a screen) and sometimes culled from the image bank of prints and stencils I have amassed. The goal is to discover a non-prescriptive, psychic space that vibrates with the unknown. The process is asynchronous and tactile; cerebral and physical.”
Elyce Abrams is an abstract artist based in Philadelphia. Her work, in the last few years, has explored the relationship between happiness and deep concern; fear and acceptance; compliance and resistance; isolation and connection. Abrams received her MFA in 2004 from the University of the Arts and her BA/BFA from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her work has been included in many solo and group shows - a selection of which are: Spectral, Blank Space Gallery, NYC; Blaze Stochastic, Shenandoah Museum of Contemporary Art, Woodstock, VA; Connection-Isolation, Blank Space Gallery, NYC; Hybrid, Bertrand Productions, Philadelphia, PA; We're All Here, Philadelphia International Airport; Something New Every Day, NoBA Projectspace, Bala Cynwyd, PA; Les Chic, James Oliver Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; Lost in the Funhouse, Spring Break Art Fair, New York. Her work is included in public and private collections throughout the US and abroad, including the Microsoft Art Collection; Fox School of Business, Temple University; Royal Caribbean Cruise Line; Charles Library, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA; Wuhan Heartland 66 Development, Wuhan, China; Lankenau Medical Center, Wynnewood, PA. Recently she collaborated on a rug collection with Ruggism, a company based in India.
More about Abrams’ work can be found at https://elyceabrams.com.
Anne Schaefer's work has been featured in group and solo exhibitions throughout the United States. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Washington University and a Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Schaefer is a former print fellow at the Fabric Workshop and Museum and has been a college-level art educator for the last 15 years. She has been a member of a number of artist collectives such as Vox Populi as well as Tiger Strikes Asteroid, where she served as director from 2011-2013. She lives and works in upstate New York.
Schaefer's work comprises painting, print and large-scale installation in which color and pattern are paramount to creating optically challenging and perceptually immersive experiences for the viewer.
More about Schaefer’s work can be found at https://www.anneschaeferstudio.com.
miniMAC is a project of MAC (Mount Airy Contemporary). MAC has been curating shows in northwest Philadelphia since 2009.
