Miss Viguers and Mr. Powel

Philly's First Friday of November offered up some more satisfying artwork if one was adventurous enough to abandon Old City in favor of more institutional venues for art viewing than a hipster gallery with a keg.

The second year MFA Book Arts/Printmaking candidates at The University of the Arts opened their second Works-In-Progress show, "Miss Viguers' Home for Wayward Youth," Friday night in the Hamilton/Arronson galleries on Broad & Pine. As with many University gallery openings, the turn out was padded by some kind of trustee/ alumni/ development function unrelated to the opening itself. Nonetheless, the MFA candidates put together a diverse and rather professional looking show that drew folks into the gallery and demanded their attention.

Consisting of the work of nine different artists, the show was presented and hung in a practical and appealing fashion. No piece seemed to interfere or detract with any other, and while some pieces by the same artist were displayed on opposite sides of the space, most of the individuals progressing bodies of work could be grouped together and distinguished from the other eight.

While the show was heavy on letterpress and paper, there was some interesting and less "book"ish art. Sandra C. Davis hung a number of large pieces of silk from the ceiling, each containing an image from a book she is making about the drive to her family's summer home in New Jersey. Printed with Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown non-silver processes, these pieces effectively showed the experimentation that goes into a final work of art.

In a similar vein, Phoebe Esmon's study for her thesis project entitled "This Will Kill That," an antiqued wooden box filled with strips of paper and beeswax, pushes our understanding of what a book can be in its structure and meaning. Far from a traditional codex, this piece and Davis's are informed by the narrative and exploration demanded by a book and desired by a book artist.

The group showed off their increasing talent in traditional letterpress. Devout fans of handset type (versus Polymer Plates), Regan Gradet and Bill Hanscom created brilliantly humorous and traditional broadsides that show modern viewers the merit of this classic technique. Hanscom creates fictitious stories full of fictitious characters and situations whose credibility is only reinforced by the conviction and care with which he sets and prints each word on his classic graphite colored broadsides. Gradet, on the other hand, created a fantastical pallet of rose, chocolate and chartreuse that would make any woman with good taste long for one of these prints in her kitchen or sitting room. Her color and font choices are so seductive one almost doesn't notice the nasty quote that yells off the page ("What's the matter little boy? Can't even grow a mustache yet? Why don't you get a broomstick and learn to fly!"), making the piece that much more effective.

The MFA Book Arts program churns out batch after batch of new artists to keep an eye out for, and that same evening a recent graduate of the program, Michelle Wilson, actively transformed her UArts experience into her first solo show. A mere 5 months after graduation, Wilson created the installation "Aftermath" at the Powel House Museum at 244 South Third Street. During her time in the MFA program, Wilson and her husband Robert Wuilfe moonlighted as caretakers of the historic Powel House, living in the staff quarters of the home that once belonged to the first Mayor of Philadelphia. Wilson spent two years wandering around the dining room and ballroom that was once used to entertain the most influential men and women of the American Revolution. In response to not only this experience, but the experience of a modern day American citizen at odds with the actions of this same government bred inside the walls of her home, Wilson created a quiet yet powerful piece that permeates the entirety of the house while simultaneously maintaining an almost invisible presence.

Given the myriad of activity that took place in that house in the late eighteenth century, Wilson acknowledges all the plans and ideas that never came to fruition and were kept from the public by filling the four main fireplaces with shredded and burnt books. They are as elegant and lovely as the light fixtures and the display China, perfectly integrating themselves visually into the interior of the home as if they have been there all along and Wilson has just pointed them out to us.

I had made my way through three of the four rooms before noticing the round burn holes in each and every curtain that hung heavily from the windows of the house. Centered at eye level, Wilson set the curtains on fire and extinguished them just in time to create a pristinely round and controlled opening. This very act of burning seemed to allude to the sense of revolution in America itself, a controlled outrage, a passion extinguished for the sake of keeping the curtains nice. The holes invited the viewer to look through, and as one gazes outside the windows of the historic home, they see visions of modern American Terrorism from around the globe.

Wilson's work has always seduced with subtlety and questioned the actions of governments and the trickle down responsibility of common citizens. This current body of work seamlessly integrates itself into the Powel House museum, perhaps because these secrets of our past, burned from history and forever lost, are seamlessly integrated into our everyday lives. Wilson effortlessly and quietly points out the skeletons in the closets of our nation's homes and asks the viewer if they would have been the kind to start the fires or extinguish the flames.