"Home" at the University City Arts League Gallery
The University City Arts League Gallery is proud to present the three-person exhibition “Home” featuring work by artists Kay Healy (ACG '08), Brenna K. Murphy, and Emily Manalo Ruiz. The opening reception will be May 16 from 6:00pm-8:00pm at the University City Arts League (4226 Spruce Street.) The exhibition will be on view from May 16 until June 20.
“Home” is Murphy’s first curatorial project and explores the concepts of home, memory, and nostalgia through a variety of media including hair-embroidery, screen-printing, and soft sculpture. Murphy uses her hair as her primary medium to reflect on the objects found in domestic spaces. She says, “By the age of eighteen, I had moved eight times and lived in six states throughout the U.S. This nomadic upbringing had a profound impact on me, and has been a source of artistic inspiration for over a decade.”
Kay Healy's life-sized screen-printed installations of furniture and household rooms address similar aspects of home and domesticity. She writes, “I am very interested in how an object as mundane as a plastic salad spinner can embody vivid memories of people, events, and periods of someone’s life.”
Emily Manalo Ruiz explores memory and nostalgia in her work. She prints text on found embroidered textiles such as handkerchiefs, doilies, and napkins. She writes, “My work embodies a romantic sense of history, at once intensely personal yet identifiably universal.”
The University City Arts League is a community not-for profit organization that has been serving the community for 45 years through some 60 different classes throughout the year for adults and children, including an active pottery studio, an art gallery, and outreach in the community. Its most successful program is its arts after school program which serves close to 200 children each week.
