We invite you to With or Without, a unique exhibit with multimedia art that invites artists to explore the tension or relationship between presence and absence—whether that’s through material choices, visual contrasts, emotional weight, or conceptual frameworks. It’s open to interpretation, allowing artists to reflect on what's added, what's removed, or what remains when something is withheld.
Opening Reception April 25th 6pm - 9pm (hours to see the show at the bottom of the page)
Please meet the artists below
Adina Segal
Color, circular shapes, and layers are elemental to my abstract nature-inspired paintings. I work with multiple transparent layers of watercolor and gouache, along with crayon and colored pencil, shaping the piece as I go. Guided by my intuition, I aim to capture a feeling rather than a concrete reality. Transformation is at the core of my work as I seek a world beyond my reasoned experience.
These visceral spaces exist outside the flow of my daily life, for when painting, I enter a meditative state. My process is dynamic, and I invite spontaneity by pouring liquid paint on paper. Following my intuition and trusting when to stop and when to work back into the painting, is contrary to how I often exist in other areas of my life. I am a planner, a list-maker, someone who likes to know what to expect. Therefore, making work in this intuitive way stands in sharp contrast to other parts of myself. It’s the letting go that allows this work to come forward. I am enthralled by the not knowing, the seeking, the discovery. It’s exciting to work in this tactile way, embracing the tension between my need for control and my desire to uncover the unknown.
Anh Ly
Anh Ly is a Philadelphia-based multidisciplinary artist that makes art to make sense of the worlds around her and inside her. Often concept-driven and inspired by Vietnamese heritage, motherhood, and social justice issues, her works have been selected as winner and runner-up for the international journal Creative Quarterly (issue 75) and included in numerous exhibitions such as at the former University of the Arts (UArts), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Hall, Space 1026 and Da Vinci Art Alliance. Since June 2024 when UArts suddenly closed, Anh has decided to chart her own creative path, currently assisting in mural projects with Mural Arts Philadelphia, designing for commercial clients, and maintaining her studio practice, while working on child safety escalations for Niantic Labs in tandem. Prior to UArts, for almost eight years combined, Anh worked at Facebook and Upwork, in various Trust and Safety teams primarily to address online child sexual exploitation.
Christine Petty
An array of ideas tempts every maker. My works on paper gravitate toward molecular images and color, whereas actual remnants of the past or objects trouvée are crucial to the scale and composition of each assemblage I construct.
My assemblages incorporate collected and saved objects & ephemera. The elements are attached to a backing and when complete, the entire piece is enveloped with a clear plastic which physically manipulates and can transform objects through heat and pressure. Piercing the two-dimensional, some pieces include objects subsequently fastened to the work after the polymer drapes the initial work. Always experimenting, a forthcoming polyptych utilizes screen printed images on the composition.
Analysis of my work by others includes the terms “readymades,” reminiscent, clinical. In reality my art practice synthesizes in equal measure the instinctive and the analytical, inspiration of the new versus recollection, attraction to beauty and the off-kilter.
Debbie “Silver Pixie” Rich
Debbie “Silver Pixie” Rich explores the sensual relationship of trees and women by capturing their grace and evolution with oil paint, word poetry and mixed media.
My exploration of With or Without is rooted in the trees. The silver-haired pixies are self-portraits of a mature female whose connection with a tree reflects her emotion. A pixie might sit within the long twisting roots, or embrace the tree’s trunk, or kneel below the branches of a forest. Each pixie is self-reflective as her gaze is turned inward, without a direct look at the viewer but with full awareness of your gaze.
I paint with oils and pastels in a personal style of thick patterns, golden spirals and sacred swirls. Surfaces include hand-stretched canvas, watercolor paper and discarded wood. Recently I’ve collaged objects such as tree branches, pounded copper, cardboard boxes, and cut-up art supplies. My professional career in technology writing informs my paintings, as I weave in text to tell these visual stories.
Francesca Decker
Francesca is a tattooer in Philadelphia at Houndstooth Tattoo. Her artwork incorporates elements of design for tattooing and is informed largely by the same collective pool of influence that many other tattooers draw from, including but not limited to vintage commercial art, comic books and counter cultural magazines, religious art, Japanese woodblocks and cartoons. She is a fan of lowbrow and folk art of all varieties.
Jenn Hartt
is a Philadelphia oil and acrylic painter who reaches for other media when they add to her visual language. She fully engages in both realism and abstraction to communicate, while weaving callbacks, metaphors and motifs as threads throughout her work. She often depicts or channels the human experience and our relationship to technology, political moments, places and time - but with a nod to our earliest comprehension of the vivid and discoverable visual world, as children, with its safe corners, worrying traps and runnable big expanses. Her art does not deny that some of its earliest passive influences are album art, product packaging, children’s books, street art and graphic novels.
Jenn’s early career in art, before a shift into the STEM field, was firmly in illustration, mostly in ink and graphite, largely for advertisements and scientific purposes. Her recent launch into an independent, expressive and colorful art practice in 2023 came after having diverted significant time into a career in life sciences leadership. She had spent those intervening years with an active mind’s eye as a canvas and creating a large photography source material library while otherwise reflecting on life’s collective moral injuries and 12-14 hours a day of work-related screen time. Dedication to really painting, re-entering art from a new type of practive and to a full time studio was spurred by night dreams during the pandemic, of working with the new media. Her new studio opens in spring of 2025.
Jill Cucci
Jill Cucci is a mixed media artist working with encaustic, collage, and text to create intricate, layered compositions. Birds often appear in her work as symbols of autonomy, release, and freedom—ideas she continually searches for in life and art. Many elements hold deeper meaning, from text as a fragmented narrative to circular forms that echo a quilt-like structure, piecing together energy, memory, and connection. Through texture, translucency, and mark-making, she builds surfaces that invite both close examination and personal interpretation. Jill exhibits throughout the tri-state area and is passionate about making art more accessible through her work and mentorship. Please visit her website www.jillcucci.com and follow her on Instagram @jillcucci for more information and contact details.
Kathleen Studebaker
Sometimes the pieces I create tell a story, more often they exist inside the context of one. I make objects that belong somewhere else, and have a story of their own. I consume narrative fantasy voraciously and have always been fascinated by the idea of a post-paradigm shift future, and what it may hold. I am also interested in (amateur) astronomy; our seemingly infinite universe and all its mysteries. Learning about the life-cycle of stars, or looking at the incredible new images produced by orbiting satellites, reminds me of how small I am: how narrow my view, how finite my nature. I know that I can’t hope to ever truly understand my place in the wider scheme of things. This fact might seem frightening or disheartening, but I use it as inspiration. There are infinite possible stories out there, and as much as I am able, I will use my time here to consume and create as many of them as I can.
The AstroObjects are fantastical gadgets aimed at sparking the viewer’s imagination; they are machines of unknown purpose. Aesthetically, they are inspired by antique celestial navigation tools and laboratory equipment; formally, they echo the building blocks of the universe: from atomic structure to solar systems. They are also an exploration of the interplay between fine art, craft, and science. The natural color of each type of metal is utilized with purpose; the sculptures gradating from copper, through bronze or red brass, yellow brass, and finally to aluminum and steel. The title of each piece is dictated by a key I created, and each digit within the brackets refers to physical characteristics: [size, form, arrangement of elements, order of metals used].
Kelly Lawler
I am a seeker, a healer and a maker, contemplating the energy that connects us. With a love of both process and color, my practice is one of repetition and long expanses of color, which is a gift to myself of a meditative experience and a deep flow state.
We are all made of energy. Known through many cultures as chi, prana, and source, to name just a few, but all with a common understanding that these vibrations come from the same origin.
With an interest in socially engaged art, I seek collaboration and conversation from my work that drives the sharing of positive energy and nurtures healing. Looking to educate and influence so that our society can move away from “I” and “me” and evolve into “we” and “us.”
Monica Mathieu
a Haitian American multidisciplinary Philadelphia based artist.
“I am passionate about creating beautiful public art through collaboration with organizations and artists. I have years of experience assisting with murals, teaching, and co-designing mosaic murals.”
Hannah Bickert
My exploration into my artistic endeavors started early on in my childhood. Art has always been my outlet and a way to express my emotions without saying a single word. I like my art to often have a deeper meaning or message, but I also just love to play with the way colors complement each other. Art has always been my passion and I have been blessed to be able to create the things inside of my mind and turn them into actual pieces. Art is an extension of myself, so I hope you are able to appreciate it as much as I do. Wishing you many blessings and prosperity in abundance!
As an artist, I like to create pieces that make my soul feel good.
This kind of creating is meaningful to me because it gives me a purpose beyond working a normal job, the only limit in art is yourself, and through my art I always try to push my limits and exceed my own expectations for what a piece should be. @Hannmade4u._
Tysean Moore
GodBodyArtist
During my Exploration of the subject With or Without I came to see that not everything is as it seems. As a 24 year old aspiring artist I believe that Love, Peace and Health are important aspects of life. I love to create abstract and free art. Making art is recreation, it's Love and beautification. It makes things bright and expresses so many feelings. We all have our own sense of spirituality and I believe that the creativeness that makes us unique can elevate us to who we are supposed to be. I'm from North Philly PA, I go by GodBodyArtist but my name Is Tysean Moore. Down the line I would like to Uplift and Elevate my community through art. I hope to educate others on how loving yourself, being at peace and being physically, spiritually and mentally healthy can align yourself with your higher being.
Shawn Alleyne aka Pyro
"I was once asked this question by an ex-partner: “Do you always have thoughts?”
At the time it was meant to be an insult and a dismissive statement to a question I had asked her regarding her opinion of a song. As ridiculous as that may seem, the answer to her question was a very rapid, angry and incredulous, “Yes!! I always have thoughts! Constantly!!” I might be even labeled as an over-thinker actually. And art allows me to share these many thoughts with the world. Not out of hubris, but in the hopes that by sharing my thoughts and ideas, the viewer can step into my worlds and perhaps understand me a little more, or tap into ideas of their own, which could open windows into themselves and their own worlds, which in turn gives birth to new universes. Thus, a symbiotic relationship is born."
Shawn Alleyne, aka Pyro, is a full-time Creator who specializes in Visual Art and Afrofiction, but he is also a Writer, Inker, Instructor and Spoken Word performer. Philly based, Barbadian born, he fuses his Caribbean roots, Nubian appreciation, hip-hop influence, erotic perspective, passion for sci-fi, and love of all things geek culture to create unique pieces of art in various forms.
Welcome to the worlds of Pyroglyphics Studio.
Pyroglyphics Studio
“Combustible Skillastrations”
IG: @Pyroglyphics1
Hours to view the show:
April 26th 10am - 5pm,
April 28th to May 2nd 10am -5pm,
May 3rd 10am - 3pm,
May 5th to May 9th 10am - 5pm,
May 12th - May 17th 10am - 5pm,
May 19th - May 23rd 10am - 5pm.