Mike Hale

Patricia Ingersoll

Artist Reception: February 4, 5 – 7 pm
First Friday: February 3, 6 – 8:30 pm

LGTripp Gallery is pleased to present recent works by Patricia Ingersoll and Mike Hale in their first solo exhibitions at the gallery.

It starts with a blank surface. From there, colors and lines take form as they are added to the surface. Whether applied in a calculated progression or in a way as to let outside forces take control, the resulting images differ in control and balance. The visual energy in Patricia Ingersoll’s paintings is most vivid at their core, while Mike Hale’s lean horizontal canvases are unlikely and fortuitous impasses to propelling forces.

Patricia Ingersoll engages in a process of mapping and diagramming organic elements, later deconstructing the image through spontaneously adding and removing parts. Grid lines define a three dimensional space within which the subject exists. Emanating from a central focus, static explosions reveal the underlying structure and details of the elements. Even though the image has outward momentum, the viewer’s eye is drawn into the ‘’nucleus.” In her work, Ingersoll explores the complexity of the individual discordant aspects and yet achieves a balance in which you are seemingly at the center.

For the past 35 years, Patricia Ingersoll has exhibited her work from Maine to Pennsylvania. A former member of the Nexus Gallery and the Charles More Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, she was a 2009 Fellowship recipient from the VA Center for the Creative Arts in Auvillar, France and received an individual artist Fellowship from the Independence Foundation in Philadelphia. She was just awarded an Honorable Mention for Works on Paper at the Art of the State in Harrisburg, PA. From 1992-2004 she was a lead muralist for the internationally famous City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. She currently works at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts as the manager of the PAFA Alumni Sales Gallery.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Mike Hale embraces the unpredictable. He begins his work without a pre-conceived plan; letting go of any and all traditional conventions. Hale invents different techniques of paint application. He then builds and expands upon the unforeseen results of his new techniques, such as seen in the painting “Then.” The centrifugal force, in addition to gravity and roller techniques, moves the paint across the surface and Hale captures this movement on a secondary surface. His paintings actively and quickly move the viewer’s eyes across the image. This movement emulates the speed and energy that delivers the paint to the surface. It is dynamic and cannot be contained within the defined space of the work’s surface.

Mike Hale has exhibited his work locally and internationally. He has been the recipient of awards as a member of Philadelphia/Tri-State Artists Equity in 2011, 2010, 2004, 2001 and 1999. His artwork is in numerous private, corporate and university collections. He also has shared his art with local non-profit organizations close to his heart, including the Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College and The Pottstown Symphony Orchestra. Currently he resides in Gilbertsville, PA, where he is a full-time artist.

Photography may be the most familiar artistic discipline—everyday we see photographs in newspaper, on Facebook, on billboards along the highway.

Although most photography aims to document, not all photos are so explicit.  Some photography provides us with a view of everyday objects and scenes so abstracted that we may not even recognize them.  This month, LGTripp Gallery explores photography’s multiples perspectives with “Focus,” its fourth annual Abstract Photography exhibition.

“Abstract photography is fueled by the desire to take an object and remove it from its original form,” said Luella Tripp, gallery owner and curator.  Think of close-up detail shots that hide an object’s identity, or distorted photographs of things in motion that de-emphasize the subject in favor of the action.  This is, of course, not picture-postcard photography, nor is it what you’ll find in most galleries.  “We bring a very particular focus on abstract to nonobjective work,” Tripp said of this exhibition.  “It’s rare to see a pure abstract photography show.”

Each of the seven artists on display in this year’s exhibit is new to the gallery.  The show includes work by Chris Forelli that focuses on instruments, Alyssha Csuk’s photos of slate from mines, and views of light from Jenny Lynn and Paul Rider.  Visitors can expect to see familiar objects such as drum cymbals or swaying branches, although what they are isn’t always apparent.  But deciphering these photos isn’t the point.  Instead, it’s an opportunity to see the world from a different perspective.

—Mary Sydnor

December 2, 2011 – January 28, 2012
Artist Reception, December 10, 5 – 7 pm
First Friday, December 2, 6-8:30 pm
First Friday, January 6, 6-8:30 pm

FOCUS: 4th Annual Abstract Photography Exhibition presents works by seven artists in their first exhibition at LGTripp Gallery. This collection of photographs, a diverse body of works, approaches and subject matter, offers a bird‘s eye glimpse of themes realized through this medium.

Photographers have employed the camera as a source to explore abstraction since the early 1900’s. The discovery of an instinctual art form that captures other aspects of reality, not representing an object in a literal fashion, seizing the subject in a unique and fleeting moment, allowing experimentation with abstract compositions of light, color and texture, the yielding to a new way of seeing, are some of the reasons emerging challenges and freedoms exist in the art of photography. It is seemingly limitless in exploration.

John Szarkowski, photographer and revered director of MOMA’s Department of Photography (1962-1991), writes in his book, The Photographer’s Eye: A Way of Seeing:

“Photographers found an inexhaustible subject in the isolation of a single segment of time. [The photographer] discovered that there was a pleasure and a beauty in this fragmenting of time that had little to do with what was happening. It had to do rather with seeing momentary patterning of lines and shapes that had been previously concealed within the flux of movement…in that moment the flux of changing forms and patterns achieved balance, clarity and order — because the image became, for an instant, a picture.”

Nik S. Clements
“Angulus documents my journey towards revealing the mathematical properties that subsist in our everyday environs. Architecture, and angles in particular, are pure mathematical brilliance, and this body of work is my ode to that often-overlooked brilliance.”

Alyssha Eve Csuk
“The patterns caused by the flaking, fracturing and cleavage of slate, caught my eye on my first visit to a slate quarry in the Slate Belt of Pennsylvania. I aspire to go beyond creating compelling story-like images that elicit raw subconscious impressions…bringing forth what resides below the surface of perception, its many layers and meaning.”

Chip Forelli
“After receiving an assignment to photograph musical instruments for a friend, I was intrigued by the shapes, surfaces and finishes on the various orchestral instruments. I enjoyed setting up the thoroughly analog equipment, watching the light reflect on the instrument as I turned it under the light to determine the best shooting angle. Musical instruments seem infinite in what they have to offer me as a photographer.”

Mallary Johnson
“This body of work addresses the subjective perception of time. The emerging decontextualized patterns of light and line suggest intimate connections between human activity and the biotic world that contrast with the highly mediated environmental narratives sensationalized by dominant culture.”

Jenny Lynn
“Working with design, pattern, shape, and cropping, my intent was to create arresting compositions that are at once bold, simple, and elegant. The subtle sepia tones lend an element of warmth and sensuality to the images.”

Paul Rider
“The images in this series…represent the arid desert landscape of the Middle East. The atmospheric quality in my imagery, created by the use of one main light source, represents the beckoning warmth of a future that we are drawn to even as we are still surrounded by the immense darkness of an ongoing conflict.”

Rachel Zimmerman
“I first photographed this monument dedicated to the 6-day war in the Negev desert when my father was on sabbatical in Israel when I was in high school. I lost the negatives in my move to NY to attend NYU. Many years later we took a family trip back to Israel. We drove for hours so that I can photograph again. Now neglected, it’s still a beautiful site of simple yet complex forms in the middle of the desert.”

Gallery hours: Tuesday by appointment, Wednesday 12- 5pm, Thursday – Saturday 11-6pm

The Philadelphia Inquirer

By Edith Newhall

At least three galleries in Old City are currently home to solo shows of young artists whose works they have not previously exhibited in one-person exhibitions.

The front room at LGTripp Gallery, which is showing two newcomers, is dominated by Matthew Stemler’s monumental, handsome painted wood construction Flotsam, which suggests a pier and bulwarks and indestructability more than the destruction and chaos its title would seem to imply. Stemler’s small abstract drawings are more evocative of the overwhelming power of nature.

In the rear gallery, “John Doe Puzzles,” Raphael Fenton-Spaid’s series of candy-colored, multipanel portraits based on photographs of victims of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, suggests the prettifying of war for public consumption. By mounting his panels with spaces between them, Spaid has abstracted his images almost beyond recognition, though a nose or a mouth can suddenly, and disturbingly, come into focus.