Cover: left to right (detail) Julianna Foster, Geographical Lore, Sandstone Garden; Megan Biddle, Folded Drawing; Rick Salafia, Instrument #20
108
PA
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Following page:
Exhibition view, InLiquid Gallery
(left to right)
Rick Salafia
Pinbowl, 2016
Stainless steel t-pins
7 x 5 x 5˝
$5,000
Julianna Foster
Geographical Lore, Tidal Pool, 2021
Archival digital print
30 x 20˝
$750
Rick Salafia Instrument #34
Hand-engraved aluminum and ink
6 x 9.75 x .25˝
$1,200
Julianna Foster
Geographical Lore, Moon Phases I, 2020
Hand-engraved aluminum and ink
16 x 20˝
$400
Julianna Foster
Geographical Lore, Moon Phases II, 2020
Hand-engraved aluminum and ink
16 x 20˝
$400
Julianna Foster
Geographical Lore, Greenland IV, 2022
Archival digital print on aluminum
9 x 12˝
$200
Continued:
Rick Salafia Instrument #20
Hand-engraved aluminum and ink
5.75 x 5.75 x .25˝
$800
Rick Salafia Instrument #45
Hand-engraved aluminum and ink
10.5 x 10.5 x .25˝
$1,400
Julianna Foster
Geographical Lore, Greenland III, 2022
Archival digital print on aluminum
9 x 12˝
$200
Julianna Foster
Geographical Lore, Sandstone Garden 2023
Backlit film in lightbox, vinyl
36 x 36˝
$1,000
Megan Biddle
The Shape of Absence, 2017
Fused and slumped glass
16 x 16 x 12˝
$3,800
Rick Salafia
(Detail) Instruments
Hand-engraved aluminum and ink
No Matter What a Tool Is Meant For It Can Always Be Used As A Hammer.
The radio is on. The television is on. The blender is on. The grass clipper is on.
The tape recorder is on. The guitar is on. The light is on. The saw is on.
The camera is on. The coffee is on. The sink is on. The pool is on.
The clock is on. The sign is on. The water is on. The iron is on.
The hose is on. The exer-cycle is on. The food processor is on.
The refrigerator is on. The fountain is on. The intercom is on.
The speaker is on. The crock-pot is on. The sander is on.
The scale is on. The vacuum is on. The hair dryer is on.
The computer is on. The heat is on. The phone is on.
The air is on. The knife is on. The toothbrush is on.
The meter is on. The alarm is on. The skillet is on.
The piano is on. The movie is on. The song is on.
The hot water heater is on. The kettle is on.
The blanket is on. The lighter is on.
The dryer is on. The washer is on.
The timer is on. The toaster is on.
The fence is on. The razor is on.
The pencil sharpener is on.
The cash register is on.
The can opener is on.
The humidifier is on. The dehumidifier is on. The pressure is on.
Capturing Moments and Memories
Between Us Is A Namelessness at Inliquid Gallery
by Meghan Ealanora
What is a measurement? A means of quantifying an event or object that can also be used to understand other events and objects. How can individual experience and memory be used as a means of measurement, as a tool for recording to express something that goes beyond words? Between Us Is A Namelessness brings together the work
of Megan Biddle, Julianna Foster and Rick Salafia in an exploration of measuring and capturing the intangible through sculpture, photography and drawing at the InLiquid Gallery.
Stepping into the gallery space, we encounter an otherworldly archive of unknown landscapes, forms and tools that express the capturing of the unknown.
Exhibition View, InLiquid Gallery
Megan Biddle
The Shape of Absence, 2017
16 x 16 x 12˝
Fused and slumped glass
$3,800
Each work presents a glimpse into subjective perspectives and desires to capture the ephemeral and immeasurable. The sensation of time as experience and memory is conceptualized into events through objects, and plays to the Anne Carson poem Between Us And that the show takes its name from. In the act of viewing each artist's expression of captured and measured memory, these works connect with the viewer through a desire to express the inexpressible to bring a name to the namelessness of experience.
Geographical Lore, Sandstone Gardens I 2023
Digital print on vinyl, orange tape, red gel, wooden shelf 17 x 13˝
$400
Julianna Foster
A wall is dedicated to Rick Salafia’s Instruments, each thoughtfully placed to create a puzzle of whimsical and geometric forms. While some seem like they could measure tangible things like complex angles, a window bloom of a flower for one person, and another could see it as a means of measuring the shape of a light beam. Among these instruments, etched with marks of measurement, one bears the words “MAKE THINGS DO THINGS MAKE THINGS”. This text speaks directly to the repetitive process of crafting each form as a kind of compulsion and desire to capture what cannot be quantified.
On a wall adjacent to Salafia’s Instruments Meghan Biddle’s fused glass works Further For Now play with repetition and time through layering and the accentuation of splintering cracks and bubbles trapped below the surface. This focus on process and organic presentation is also shown in her pate de verre sculpture on the same wall, Ripple. Ripple carries a fluidity in its form and subtle gradient that captures a moment of surface tension, accentuating the liquid qualities of glass. Biddle’s sculptural forms express a sense of time passed that has been preserved
while mirroring processes of nature. In these sculptural forms, there is a tactile engagement with the viewer through the capturing of time through texture and materiality. An archway in the back of the gallery is adorned with a vinyl print of collaged mountains, an inversion of the arch’s shape. Mounted in front of the vinyl is a lightbox with backlit film, illuminating another set of mountains
with warm light. This installation, Geographical Lore: Sandstone Garden, creates a portal to an imagined world that beckons the viewer to step into it. In the act of creating imagined landscapes through photographic collage and assemblage, Julianna Foster’s series Geographical Lore presents ethereal images that evoke ideas of exploration and discovery.
Opposite Page: (detail)
Rick Salafia Instruments
Hand-engraved aluminum and ink
Megan Biddle Ripple, 2019
16 x 11˝
Pate de verre
$3,800
This synthesization between photography and sculptural form is elevated through the selective use of color and thoughtful lighting. Foster’s work speaks to ideas of memory and history through the act of creating landscapes from photographic processes of reconstruction and augmentation.
In Moon Phases I and II dream-like landscapes are created, utilizing acts of repetition, which give a sense of movement through astrological imagery. In these works, there are intimate expressions of memory and a desire to represent the idea, or recollection of a space.
Opposite Page:
Julianna Foster
Geographical Lore, Sandstone Garden, 2023
Backlit film in lightbox, vinyl
36 x 36˝
$1,000
Julianna Foster
Geographical Lore, Moon Phases I, 2020
Archival digital print
16 x 20˝
$400
Geographical Lore, Moon Phases II, 2020
Archival digital print
16 x 20˝
$400
In the center of the gallery a typewriter with a long spool of paper sits on a table. A small placard sits next to it, prompting visitors to turn it on and answer four questions:
“What is a di s ta n c e that you want to measure?
What kind of tool would you need to ___measure___ it?
What is something which you long for but are distant from?
What is the shape of the space between you and it?”
These questions capture the expressions of time, space and memory each artist presents. In each expression of the intangible, Biddle, Foster and Salafia create flowing conversation through their works and their processes of creation.
Megan Biddle Double Down, 2020
Concrete
20 x 12 x 2.5˝
$2,200
Glass cast into rippling forms and layered cracks, drawings of repetition through line, aluminum sculpted into rulers to measure the unknown, and time marked through photographic collage assemblages. Through these processes, each artist takes explorations of the unobservable, or noumena, and shifts into phenomena, giving the ability to view something personal that is otherwise unseen or immeasurable.
About the Author
Meghan Ealanora is a Canadian-American artist that lives in the Philadelphia region. She graduated with a BFA in painting from Tyler School of Art and Architecture in the Fall of 2021. Her practice explores everyday scenes as a reflection of people, places, and their history. Environments are a constant inspiration to her, furthered by her interest in regionalist, surrealist and expressionist ideas regarding location, personal experience, and color use. She places emphasis upon time and place in her art, which is grounded in contemporary conversations regarding religion, technology and the contrasts of urban, suburban, and pastoral experiences.
Megan Biddle has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including The Islip Art Museum and the Everson Art Museum in New York; the Reynolds Gallery Richmond, VA.; Space 1026 and the Philadelphia Art Alliance in Philadelphia, PA.; Galerie VSUP in the Czech Republic; and the 700IS Experimental Film Festival in Iceland, and Shau Fenster and National Museum in Berlin. Biddle’s work was acquired into the American Embassy’s permanent collection in Riga, Latvia.
She has attended residencies at Macdowell, The Jentel Foundation, The Creative Glass Center of America, Sculpture Space, The Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Pilchuck Glass School, Northlands Creative Glass in Scotland, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and Mass MOCA. Biddle has taught at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Pilchuck Glass School, and Oxbow School of Art. She currently teaches in the Glass Program at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture. She is a Co-Director and a member of Tiger Strikes Asteroid Gallery in Philadelphia, PA where she lives and works.
Folded Drawings, 2019
Ink on vellum
24 x 36˝
$1,100
Further for Now II, 2012
Fused glass and steel frame
12 x 12˝
$3,800
Julianna Foster is an Associate Professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. She holds a BFA in Design from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NJ, and an MFA in Book Arts + Printmaking from the University of the Arts, PA.
Foster has exhibited her work internationally, had her work included in private collections nationally, and had her photographs, essays, and interviews included in numerous publications. Her award-winning project, Geographical Lore, is a selection of photographic works considering how the natural world can be represented. Combining photographic images of the natural world and hand-made, assembled environments, a blend of the fabricated and the “real” image plays with ideas of memory and representation.
As an educator, Foster has taught in various departments, including Photography, Fine Arts, Book Arts + Printmaking, and Studio Art, as well as Continuing Education and Pre-College programs. In addition to the courses taught, her academic service includes mentoring in the graduate thesis committees, serving on the Faculty Council, School of Art photo program and Dean search committees, Provost search committee, and numerous curricula and advisory committees.
Geographical Lore, Portal Break I, 2023
Archival digital print
20 x 20˝
$500
Geographical Lore, Greenland IV, 2022
Archival digital print on aluminum
9 x 12˝
$200
Left to right: Cubicle
Steel T-pins
8 x 8 x 8˝
$5,000 (Detail) Instruments Hand-engraved aluminum and ink
Solder Box, 2015
Solder
4 x 4 x 4˝
$5,000
Rick Salafia received his BFA from the University of Rhode Island and his MFA from Rutgers. He has taught at Lehigh University, Carleton College, Bucknell University and Kutztown University. He is a sculptor, photographer, video artist, performance artist and writer and his work has been exhibited widely and is in the collection of The Yale University Art Gallery and The Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego. He has received a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship.
InLiquid
InLiquid is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to creating opportunities and exposure for visual artists and works with more than 300 artists and designers. It serves as a free, online public hub for arts information in the Philadelphia area. Find out more at www.inliquid.org.
All rotational artworks are available for purchase. Inquiries for purchases can be directed to Clare Finin at clare@inliquid.org.
Opposite Page: Rick Salafia, Cubicle, Steel T-pins, 8 x 8 x 8˝
Following page: Exhibition view, InLiquid Gallery
