Nursery Rhymes for Questionable Times

Matthew Courtney | E. Sherman Hayman Tommy Mavra | Phoebe Murer | Stephanie Rogers

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Cover: (Detail) Procession, Stephanie Rogers Opposite: Exhibition view, InLiquid Gallery

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Additional support comes from The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Friends of InLiquid, and generous donors like you.

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Gallery 108 1400 N. American Street Philadelphia, PA 19122 InLiquid.org Open: Wednesday - Saturdays Noon - 6 & By Appointment For Inquiries and Appointments, Contact (215) 235-3405

Exhibition View, InLiquid Gallery (Center rear) Forces of Gentleness Stephanie Rogers 36 x 36" Acrylic on canvas

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Exhibition View, InLiquid Gallery (From left to right) No Need for Reservations, Stephanie Rogers, RE: PRODUCTION # 1- Firefly, E. Sherman Hayman, Dinosaurs on the Table Staging, Tommy Mavra, RE:PRODUCTION #10- Red-Sided Garter Snake, RE:PRODUCTION #18- Argonaut , E. Sherman Hayman

When you’re young it’s often fun To play at make believe.

A beetle, a dino, maybe even a camel— There are no limits to what you conceive!

Yet as you grow up, You are instructed “No more!”

You’ve had enough fun, Your games are done for!

Suck it up, buy a house, Pay the bills, find a spouse.

Even if inside, you feel like a louse.

Then slowly you come to believe, Now that you are fully-grown, That all the advice you received, Was maybe a tad over-blown.

You might start to feel like you're stuck in the muck And think to yourself what the… fudge?

You might even possibly start to surmise, That when you were younger, You were a tad bit more wise.

So please go ahead and play at make believe.

Enjoy again, those inner worlds you conceive!

Imagination can be the escape, From the rules, bad lovers, And workplaces’ red tape.

So with this we’d like to invite you To Nursery Rhymes For Questionable Times

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Exhibition View, InLiquid Gallery Opposite (Top, top to bottom): Toy Story Ride, Disneyland, My Favorite Childhood Toys, Phoebe Murer Opposite (Bottom, foreground): Mirth, Stephanie Rogers Above (top to bottom): Triceratops in the 8th District, Budapest, Velociraptors in Bay Ridge, BK, Tommy Mavra

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Nursery Rhymes for Questionable Times @ The InLiquid Gallery

by A.P. Ferrell Nursery rhymes appear, on their surface, silly, merry chants handed down from one generation to the next. Their appeal resides in their uncomplicated melodies, simplistic verses, and mundane subject matter: bridges, spiders, walls. Yet, beneath their veneer of light-hearted whimsy, nursery rhymes are often haunted by difficulty if not distress: the bridge collapses, the spider’s climb proves Sisyphean, Humpty Dumpty falls and remains irreparably damaged. Nursery Rhymes for Questionable Times (NR4QT) draws out this coexistence of play and plight, inviting us to explore how childlike imagination can offer a reprieve from “reality” and yet, at the same time, also reveal some of today’s most difficult truths.

The five artists featured in NR4QT inspire in us the joys of youthful naivety while also gently urging us to look just a bit deeper. From Stephanie Rogers’s intuitively uncharted paintings to E. Sherman Hayman’s meticulously detailed constructions of home(s), and including Tommy Mavra’s dinosaur dreamscapes, Matthew Courtney’s haptically dynamic beasts, and Phoebe Murer’s repurposing of the all-too-familiar, these artists capture senses of moments, fragments of memories, and glimpses of maturation. When viewed together, temporality emerges as a central theme across this work, though each artist grapples with time and its passage—the insights we gain and the insulation we give up as we evolve—in distinctive registers. This conceptually fantastical and aesthetically arresting work serves as a timely reminder that we might revel in past experiences of innocence while also refusing the alluring cover of ignorance at present.

Then Material objects and cultural imagery help to spur personal and collective memories, enabling us to access what was and what has been. Working across a range of mediums, Phoebe Murer and E. Sherman Hayman direct our attention to how familiar forms contain and conjure the past.

Hayman’s RE:PRODUCTION series plays with a formality of presentation that one might easily find in a museum of natural history. Each aspect of 10

every portrait—from patterned frame to incorporated plaque—intricately details the history and the habits of the creature it captures, frozen in time. Similarly, Hayman’s work in HOME seizes an intensely sentimental concept and ossifies its affective valences in the form of sgraffito, balsa wood, and mixed media on museum board. The resulting array of cleanly detailed structures hold, hide, and also hint at traces of the messiness and memories that can accompany “home.”

While Murer incorporates images whose familiarity from our youth might invite us to feel “at home,” her paintings and screenprints simultaneously raise questions about how the past reverberates across time. The faces of Bert and Ernie, staples of U.S. public television programming for children, glower at us from a dimly lit psych ward and the confines of a straight jacket. Edging on the absurd, Murer’s renderings remain grounded by encouraging us to reflect on the child that once watched these characters—used those crayons, enjoyed that theme park ride— alongside with the person viewing this art at present.

Exhibition View, InLiquid Gallery Penguin, Matthew Courtney 21 × 7 × 14" Ceramic

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Exhibition View, InLiquid Gallery (Detail) RE: PRODUCTION # 1- Firefly, E. Sherman Hayman 11 × 14" Sgraffito and mixed media on ragboard and wood panel

Now If what we know and what we’ve come to expect is in part rooted in our past, Matthew Courtney and Tommy Mavra ask us to suspend our disbelief and, for just this moment, be right here and now in an otherworldly and unforeseen present. Courtney’s sculptures offer the tactile possibilities of imagination, suturing figments of the mind and fractions of animals in ways unanticipated and perhaps even unsettling. Through the repeatedly imprecise and roughly hewn adherence of limbs to torsos—the hoof of a horse, the curved neck of a camel, the crown of a duck—these pieces carry the traces of juvenile-like exertion in conversation with the evident labor of their maker.

Mavra’s paintings take us from these experimental corporeal combinations to scenic city- and table-scapes that similarly center incongruous and surprising pairings. His work reaches back and brings the prehistoric into the present to make the all-too-familiar strange: velociraptors move about Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge neighborhood and a triceratops lumbers through Budapest’s 8th District undaunted.

Dinosaurs also appear amid the quotidian of a set dining table, with 12

their stature and the texture of their portrayal indistinguishable from cutlery, empty wine glasses, and a fleshy roast. Throughout his paintings, Mavra foregrounds nature alongside the evident imprints of humanity, encouraging us to reflect on our expectations, question our everyday actions, and consider their enduring effects—on the environment and perhaps even on each other—as they extend well into the future.

Next Navigating the now requires, in part, an eye towards what comes next.

Considering the future—amid the breadth of pleasures and precarities that characterize the present—can be daunting. However, Stephanie Rogers’s paintings seem to collapse time entirely, moving us beyond the easy rhythms of recognition and pressures to “progress.” Bold brushes of purple, sweeps of translucent pink, and speckles of cadmium red inch us away from expectation and urge us to linger in the sensory. Her work requests that we follow what and how we’re feeling with a childlike freedom from the strictures of knowing too much or anticipating any one outcome. Rogers hopefully gestures toward what could be and what is yet to come, though she offers few restrictions on its shape. Here, finally, the dualities of play and plight surface through our potential to collaboratively imagine an emergent reality alongside the artist while also bearing the responsibility of the form that this future might take.

Though history may not repeat itself, it could very well rhyme. These artists inspire us to engage with the energy, the excitement, and the possibilities of play across time. Reflecting the Janus like qualities of nursery rhymes, the work in NR4QT warns us of the dark underbelly of nostalgia while harnessing creativity and invention to reflect, to be present, and to envision what might come next.•

About The Author Ashley P. Ferrell is a writer, researcher, and maker currently residing in Philadelphia, PA. They use an array of mediums—from academic scholarship to video and textiles—to explore rhetorics of reconciliation and race, and the retelling of institutional histories. Their current projects broadly focus on intimacy, institutional inheritance, and the U.S. university as a site of and for racial redress.

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Exhibition views, Nursery Rhymes for Questionable Times, InLiquid Gallery 14

(Top to bottom) Exhibition view, InLiquid Gallery (Detail) Haggle 2 Duck Horse, Kicking Camel 2, Matthew Courtney Dimensions variable, Ceramic

Matthew Courtney Matthew Courtney’s sculpture humorously mixes his love of sports and popular culture with a deep knowledge of the history of art and ceramics. He applies his training as an industrial designer to a playfully transgressive approach to the medium of clay. His current sculpture is heavily influenced by his three artist residencies in Lanzhou China, where he was invited to explore the material and visual culture of Gansu province.

Matthew Courtney was born in Washington D.C. and raised in Springfield, PA. He received his bachelors from the Philadelphia College of Art, and his MFA from Kent State University. Since 1995 he has continually served as an adjunct instructor at many of Philadelphia's most prestigious art programs, including Tyler School of Art, University of Pennsylvania, and The University of the Arts.

Courtney’s work has been exhibited locally, as well as nationally and internationally.

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E. Sherman Hayman RE:PRODUCTION — Portraits This series of mixed-media pieces on wood panels displays a selection of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and sea creatures, all presented in somewhat formal portraits that play off the silhouette genre of drawing.

These 20 representatives of the animal kingdom were chosen not only because their mating habits were so intrinsically fascinating, but also because, in so many cases, their behavior highlights our own.

Rather than try to illustrate the behavior itself, each critter is offered as iconic portrait – elegantly ‘framed’ with a plaque showing latin name and a bit of explanatory text.

HOME Series — What does the concept of HOME mean?

It’s our shelter, our investment, our asylum, our nest, the repository of all of our stuff....

It can be a prison, literally or figuratively. It’s an archive of our history, or perhaps just a temporary space, someplace we had no say in choosing...

After many decades, my partner and I found ourselves (almost accidentally) downsizing from a four-story townhouse in Philadelphia into a condo in a modern high-rise. Adjustments did not come easily, but were tempered by having enormous windows overlooking the city - East, South, and Southwest. The sky! The lights! The clouds!

Is this home?

E. Sherman Hayman was born in Newport News, VA. She studied literature at Hollins University and art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Hayman’s long running studio practice has focused mainly on social issues such as gun violence, politics, and death customs.

Hayman has exhibited widely locally and nationally.

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(Clockwise from top) Exhibition view, InLiquid Gallery RE:PRODUCTION #10- Red-Sided Garter Snake, HOME- House of Murth E. Sherman Hayman Dimensions variable Mixed media

(Clockwise from top left) Velociraptors in Bay Ridge, BK, Sunken Jeep Exhibition view, InLiquid Gallery (Detail) Stegosaurus in Memphis Tommy Mavra Dimensions variable Acrylic on canvas

Tommy Mavra "I am interested in how we negotiate our place in nature.

Technology, medicine, housing, farming, etc. are thought of as being artificial, yet they support the survival of our species. If survival is what motivates the actions of all living things, our “artificial” creations are also part of nature. However, no other animal has had the same impact on the eco system that we do. In the long term it seems that our inventions, intended to insure our success, could usher in the end of most life on Earth.

My work examines the paradoxical relationship mankind has with the natural world; it’s beauty and repulsiveness. Through painting, drawing, and sculpture I focus on narratives of daily life — our everyday interactions with animals, the food we eat and the things we buy — to reassess situations overlooked due to their banality. I dramatize these ordinary moments to encourage an investigation of our expectations and assumptions.

Writing fiction has become an increasingly significant component of my studio practice. Much of the visual work I make is contextualized by these fictions. Building out a world in which my work can exist allows for multiple points of entry for the viewer and provides myself references outside of the dominant art cannon."

Tommy Mavra is an artist based in Philadelphia, PA. His work explores narratives relating to our relationship with the natural world through painting, drawing and sculpture. He is interested in the contrast of being taught to have a reverence for nature while living in urban and suburban environments. Each work questions agreed upon notions of morality and explores the magic and the mischief of life.

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(Clockwise from top left) Bert in Straight Jacket, My Favorite Childhood Toys Exhibition view, InLiquid Gallery (Detail) Bert and Ernie in the Psych Ward Phoebe Murer Dimensions variable

Phoebe Murer "I am a free spirited sensory oriented artist. What attracts me to art is the use of colors and texture. The first thing I saved my money on, as a child was a pack of Caran Doch’e watercolor pencils with 80 different colors. When I find bright color glitter pens with fruity odors, I cannot resist.

The topics of my prints, sculptures, and drawings are usually psychological and deal with dark themes such as social problems, trauma, despair, conflict, and afflictions with a twist of sarcastic and dark humor. I am either making eye pleasing fun pieces, humorous pieces with people breaking the code of conduct or satires from entertainment, or am making dark images. Those were my topics in my drawings since I was a child."

Phoebe Murer is an artist, and writer born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. She received her Certificate of Fine Arts at Pennsylvania Academy of Arts in Painting, a bachelor's in Psychology/ Pre-Art Therapy at Arcadia University, and a Masters in English with an emphasis in creative writing at Arcadia University. Murer’s professional career has focused on working with people, like herself, who are on the spectrum.

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Stephanie Rogers "My work is an expression of my compassion for nature – a celebration of the good earth, the sun and everything in between. The largest and the smallest things are all beautiful to me. I begin a painting with a gesture and end as a contemplation on composition, form and color – a meditation of optimistic colorful motion. I hope to impart the joy I feel surrendering to playfulness and intuition as it leads to the discovery of the finished piece. What develops remains open to the imagination."

Stephanie Rogers was born in South Philadelphia and grew up in Cherry Hill, N.J. She studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She served as Assistant Director of a large New Jersey Art Center and has organized many juried art exhibitions in the Philadelphia area. Stephanie’s work is the product of her effort to share the healing powers of joy, playfulness an

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(Clockwise from top left) No Need for Reservations, Freshly Opened Exhibition view, InLiquid Gallery (Detail) Powdered Contours

Stephanie Rogers Dimensions variable Acrylic on canvas

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Exhibition view, Nursery Rhymes for Questionable Times, InLiquid Gallery 27

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: (Detail) Pink, Matthew Courtney Back Cover: (Detail) HOME- Home Sweet...., E. Sherman Hayman 28

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When you’re young it’s of

ten fun To play at make believe A beetle, a dino, maybe even a camel— There are no limits to w hat you conceive...