Marguerita Hagan
Marguerita Hagan is a ceramic sculptor based in Philadelphia. She is an advocate for the thriving of all life in mutually sustainable community and environments. The concept of interdependence plays throughout her sculpture, as well as her teaching and community arts. La Mer, from her current Wildlife work shines light on the unseen life of the sea and the single cell organisms that are the basis of the ecosystem providing over half of our planet’s oxygen. Hagan has exhibited nationally and internationally throughout her career. She received her BFA in Ceramics from James Madison University and her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Statement
La Mer explores life of the ocean from the bioluminescent creatures of the abyss to the exquisite and mighty microscopic beauties in the sunlit zone. These single cells photosynthesize most of earth’s oxygen sustaining all life as the base of our food chain and ecosystem. The intricate ceramic forms shine light on the wonder as well as the delicate, diverse and mostly unseen sea with which our lives are intrinsically linked.
People protect what they love. – Jacques Yves Cousteau
Fall in love.
Elena Bouvier
Elena Bouvier is a Philadelphia-based creative working with artist books, photography, drawing, non-silver and intaglio printmaking. She received a BFA in photography from Moore College of Art and Design, an MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking from the University of the Arts. She is also a Fulbright Fellowship recipient to Germany.
Elena has been published in Down Beat, Jazz Times, The Wall Street Journal and numerous other local and national publications. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and her work is held in the collections of The Newark Public Library, University of Pennsylvania Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, Print and Picture Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and Chemical Heritage Foundation.
Statement
I am a documentarian and storyteller, an editorialist and voyeur. Photography is the constant that ties my past to my future. It is an action; a way of being and thinking that informs, distracts, consumes and enriches my experience of this life. It is a habit, a process so familiar that it sometimes feels like muscle memory. I push the shutter to document, to express, to collect with clarity the moments and things that will be transformed by time, memory and sentimentality.
I make self-portraits for all of the ubiquitous and psychological reasons that humans have rendered their own image for centuries. I can still hear each photo professor from undergrad asking, probing, trying to get me to say exactly why I use myself as a model. And I can hear myself answering in every way but the most obvious; because I'm trying to figure out who I am and who I want to be when I grow up.
Stella Untalan
Stella Untalan is an artist living and working in Philadelphia. Born in Guam, educated in NYC, settled in Philadelphia. Stella studied drawing and printmaking at the Art Students League and School of Visual Arts in New York City. She studied communication design at Parsons in New York City and has been a creative professional for more than 30 years. The disciplined and intuitive aspects of being a designer and artist, the work and the play, the seeing and the telling, are totally integrated expressions.
Statement
My drawings focus on measurement and probing. Each series of marks is made by filling a tool then making marks until the liquid is gone. The repetition allows me to be caught up in a rhythm; the proximity of the marks create rest and action. I touch the surface, make the mark, and then move away. In this work the process defines the outcome. It is minimalist, repetitive, and iterative.
As the artist and viewer step back a topology of process is revealed.
Sounding refers to a mechanism of probing the environment by sending out some kind of stimulus. The term comes from the ancient practice of determining the depth of water (making a sounding) by feeding out a line with a weight at the end.