Holiday Art sale! no piece is over $25! Dec. 12 and 13!

benefiting People's Emergency Center.

People’s Emergency Center (PEC) nurtures families, strengthens neighborhoods, and drives change. We are committed to increasing equity and opportunity throughout our entire community. We provide comprehensive supportive services to homeless women and their children, revitalize our West Philadelphia neighborhood, and advocate for social justice.

Open Gallery Hours

Come check out the exhibition currently in AIR's gallery:

Positive Form Found in Negative Spaces

Open gallery hours:
Thursdays, 6:00pm to 9:00pm
4007 Chestnut, 1st Floor

Outreach Project - Joanna

FREE (IMPROV) MOVEMENT CLASSES!

@ The Rotunda - Monday Nights
4014 Walnut Street

6-7 PM 15-18 yrs (Starting Oct. 5th)
7-9 PM Adults (18+) (Starting Sept. 21st)

Learn modern, jazz, and ballet technique! Use improvisational movement to create dances! Learn to choreograph!

For those with a lot, little or no dance experience.
ALL ARE WELCOME!
Please dress appropriately - ready to dance.

Class dates for 2009: 9/21 (adults only), 10/5, 10/19, 10/26, 11/16, 11/23, 11/30, 12/7, 12/14, 12/21, 12/28

Please contact kingsley.quigley@gmail.com with any questions.

Come Visit the Artist in Residence Program During POST!

Studio Tours on October 10-11, 2009
This October, The Center for Emerging Visual Artists is pleased to bring you the 10th Annual Philadelphia Open Studio Tours. Join over 300 professional visual artists, local businesses, arts organizations and galleries to celebrate 10 years of studio art! Artists and event partners in every neighborhood from Chestnut Hill to South Philly will open their doors free to the public in the largest event of its kind in Philadelphia.

This year, the Open Studio Tours is happy to feature the following artists in West Philly:
Maria Anasazi, Katie Baldwin, Sibylla Benatova, Dana Bernard, Richard Boutwell, Anne Canfield, Salvatore Cerceo, Genevieve Coutroubis, Vinson Houston, John Karpinski, Jill Katz, Kara LaFleur, Claudia Mills, Brenna K. Murphy, Amy Orr, PennDesign, Philadelphia Traction Co., Joanna S Quigley, Glen Sacks, Rai del Noce Senior, Kim Senior, Tremain Smith, Jacques-Jean Tiziou, Jacqueline Unanue, John Woodin

Visit philaopenstudios.org for detailed information about participating artists, community partners, and a schedule of events.

Current Residents (August 2009 - August 2010)

Vinson Houston: My interest in the arts has led me from personal expression to creative education. A goal of mine is to communicate to others the need of community’s creativity for constructive advancement. Fleisher Art Memorial is where my artist career began in August 2000. With this grounding, I began my studies at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PafA) in the fall of 2002. I was awarded the Stimson Award for figurative sculpture in 2004. I began independent studio work in 2005. Though PafA's emphasis was on traditional art practices, I was exposed to post-modern concepts. The influx of post-modern ideas and media informed new ways of working with my environment. Through drawing and recounting of past memories I assembled an artist group performance. This became an award winning theatre presentation, as I was granted the convened Cresson Travel Scholarship from PafA.
My work continued in theatre when I joined the Spring School of the Arts in September of 2006. As an art and science teacher, I encouraged children to constructively use their imaginations. Spring School of the Arts has complimented my contributions with the Jay-Loft Lyn Award for visionary art and ideas. My goal is to lead artistically the enlightened minds in society to express freely through theatre. Creative expression is essential for advancement of individuals. Teaching children to begin this artistic journey of experience and presentation is a key to finding the artist, engineers and architects within ourselves. My artistic experience culminates in an active performance of communicating the joy of memories, and my work for others.

















Cecilia Paredes was born in Lima, Peru and currently lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. Recent works include:
Solo Exhibitions:
2009 “Unbounded” Johnson Gallery, Jacksonville, US
PINTA solo show New York, NY
“Of Natural Subject” IILA Rome, Italy
“Animal of my Time” Humboldt State University, California
2008 Treviso Michela Rizzo. Italy
FIA, Caracas international guest artist Galleria Michela Rizzo Venice, Italy
2007 Costa Rica Museum of Art
2006 University of Indiana, Indiana, US
Collective Exhibitions:
2009 Off the Beaten Path
Itinerant show starting Oslo Museum, Norway.
Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Seville, Spain
Second Skin curated by Valerio Deho Treviso, Italy
2008 Getxophoto, Bilbao, Spain
Unlearning Intolerance Series United Nations
and Natural World Museum, New York, US
Royal Museum, Monaco
Contemporary Museum, Santiago, Chile
2007 “Animalistica” Central Bank Museum, Costa Rica
‘Change” Nobel Peace Center, Oslo, Norway
Cultural Center Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2006 Art and Architecture Biennial Canary Islands
Beyond Lilith, Frascati, Italy
Chemin D’Art, Salle des Jacobins St Flour, France
2005 Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
Contemporary Art Center, Canary Islands
Open Maps, Photography of the Americas, Madrid
Awards and residencies:
2010 GOZO Contemporary, Malta
2008 International guest artist: Ibero American Art Fair
FIA Caracas, 2008
2006 Chemin D Art, invited artist St Flour, France.


















Joanna S. Quigley received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art and studied modern dance at Slippery Rock University and the University of the Arts. She has exhibited work and performed at Rooms Gallery (Chicago), ! Gallery (Philadelphia), Little Berlin (Philadelphia), The Community Education Center (CEC) and in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Quigley focuses on using video, sound, drawing and performance to create environments. Using installation, she influences the viewer to use their past experiences as a storyline for her creation. Quigley has lended her artistic vision to the Mural Arts Program at P.H. Sheridan Elementary School in Philadelphia and to Indigenous Pitch's summer camp in New Orleans and North Philadelphia. Currently residing in Philadelphia, she is the choreographer for Out-Going Dance Theater, a member of Club Lyfestile dance troupe and the creator of the Mail Art Collective.


Glen Sacks


































Beth Uzwiak is a visual anthropologist currently finishing her PhD at Temple University. Her academic pursuits are in direct response to ongoing experiences working locally and internationally with survivors of domestic violence. Beth has a professional background in community counseling and advocacy, and has used art in therapeutic and social justice capacities. Beth writes, designs, and prints artist books and works-on-paper under her press name, Pierce Imprint. Her work is often ethnographic in practice and integrates collage, sewing, drawing, printmaking, painting, text, and installation. She is interested in the differences between “official” or historical representations of human experiences and how people actually process these same experiences. A recent collaborative installation, for example, combines photography, ceramics, court documents and narratives to explore community responses to eminent domain practices in Philadelphia. More recent work deals with the painful tensions between biomedical explanations for disease, internal bodily functions, and our human responses to death and dying.

Congratulations to the 2009-2010 Residents!

We are proud to present our upcoming artists in residence:

Vinson Houston
Cecilia Paredes
Joanna Quigley
Glen Sacks
Beth Uzwiak

Check back in the fall for updates about their exciting projects.

Applications are no longed being accepted

Thanks to the dozens of talented artists who submitted applications for the 2009-2010 round.
Please watch this blog for info on the next application cycle, as well as the various projects of the artists in the program.

2009 Application

Applications are now available for Residency 2009-2010!

The program is intended mainly for emerging artists who live in neighborhoods west of the Schuylkill River. All applications are due by April 17, 2009, and residents will be selected by an advisory board comprised of artists, former AIR residents, educators, and community organizations. A more detailed description of the application process can be found here and the application itself here. Please contact 40th.air.app@gmail.com with any questions.

Outreach Project Exhibition - Beth

Check out images of the students' work, currently being exhibited in the storefront of 130 South 36th Street.

Outreach Project Exhibition - Francesca

Check out the work of Francesca Pfister's Penn Alexander School middle school students at Metropolitan Bakery Cafe. It will run until mid March.

Outreach Projects undertaken by Current Residents

Community Outreach/Educational Activities undertaken by current resident artists:

Current residents are undertaking the following projects in the community:

* Francesca Pfister has just finished teaching a photography elective to middle school students at Penn Alexander School. The class explored identity in a school that includes multiple races, ethnicities and backgrounds.

* Gabriele Tiberno is teaching life drawing to students in Vanessa Marshall’s art class at West Philadelphia High School. The lessons will culminate in a mural project at the school.

* Sarah Stefana Smith is working with teacher Pam Toller on a photography project with students from Shaw Middle School.

* Maria Anasazi collaborated with the Spiral Q Puppet Theater for a project that involved creating puppets and large handmade books.

* Beth Pulcinella ran a free screen-printing workshop that addressed issues of identity and used screen-printing as an agent towards social change.

Current Residents (April 2008 - April 2009)

Maria Anasazi is a native of Greece who has lived in the United States since 1980. She is an active member of the arts community in the Mid-Atlantic region and has been teaching since 1993, in schools and various institutions including detention centers and prisons.

Anasazi studied art in the San Francisco Bay area where she started exhibiting her sculptural and installation work in 1990. She has had solo exhibitions at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Arlington Arts Place (VA), and Montpelier Cultural Arts Center (MD). Her work has been featured in many group exhibitions , including South/Center, Miami, Florida; Frumkin/Duval Gallery, Los Angeles, California; The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; and School 33 and Maryland Art Place, both in Baltimore, Maryland.

She has received numerous awards from the Maryland State Arts Council for her work with the Artists-in-Education Program, and she was the recipient of an Individual Artist’s Award in 2001. Recently she received an Art and Community Visual Arts Residency Grant from the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art. Her work has been reviewed in Art Papers, The Washington Post, Fiberarts magazine, and Surface Design.

Anasazi holds a BFA in Graphic Design from California College of the Arts and an MA from the Creative Arts Department of San Francisco State University, California. She also received a certificate in Expressive Arts Therapy from JFK School of Psychology, in Orinda, California.


Francesca Pfister’s photos and videos are an archeological exploration of the everyday. These visual records, of permanent marks or ephemeral traces found on the physical world around her, examine human presence. Struggling between embrace and rejection, awe and disgust, her work investigates personal points of reference within the shifting formulations of cultural identity and an increasingly nomadic condition of contemporary society.

Ms. Pfister has an Art History degree from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, as well as a professional certificate in Museum Studies from NYU in New York. After working for several years as a curatorial researcher and educator for museums and other nonprofit organizations in New York, she moved to Philadelphia and shifted her involvement in the arts. Pfister has studied photography at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, as well as at the Centre Iris in Paris. She recently earned an MFA in Photography from The University of Pennsylvania, where she is a lecturer. Ms. Pfister’s work has received numerous positive reviews. Her MFA project work, exhibited at Icebox Project Space in Philadelphia, was reviewed by Libby Rosof in artblog; fallonandrosof.blogspot. her triptych Pink Stacks was noted by Benjamin Genocchio as a part of his review for the New York Times of the Perkins Center for the Arts Pink at Perkins show. Her photography has also appeared in several architecture publications, including the third edition of Deborah Gans’s The Le Corbusier Guide and the upcoming Penn publication, VIA: Occupations.


Beth Pulcinella is currently an art instructor and program coordinator at the Southwest Community Enrichment Center and a workshop artist at Spiral Q Puppet Theater. She was also a co-founder and collective member of Paint the Town House Painters, an art teacher at the Academy of Fine Art Summer Youth Camp, and a lead artist at Spiral Q Puppet Theater. Her numerous art exhibitions and performances over the decade include recent anti-war wheat paste installations in Philadelphia and puppet shows at the Puppet Uprising and Philadelphia Fringe.

Pulcinella volunteers as a program coordinator and fundraiser for the Pentridge Children’s Garden, a community garden that provides a safe space for neighborhood youth to learn about gardening and explore their creative selves. She previously served as a board member for Puppet Uprising, a collective that hosts quarterly puppet cabarets in West Philadelphia. She earned her BFA in Crafts with a concentration in Fibers from the Philadelphia College of Art and Design, for which she received the 1998 Fibers Award. She is currently in her third year of an apprenticeship with master gardener Blanche Epps.


Sarah Stefana Smith is a photographer whose creative work is influenced by her political work. Educated at Spelman College (BA) and Goddard College (MFA) she is a member of the Anti-Displacement Support Committee, working to support groups fighting gentrification in South, North, and West Philadelphia. Since 2006, she has also been a part of the Media Mobilizing Project (www.mediamobilizing.org), a group that engages in collaborative media making with organizations and individuals whose issues and experiences are purposely submerged from view. The media that they create is designed to clarify the issues at stake, document lived human realities, and act as a tool to inspire and unite those who have a vested interest in change.

Smith has been a recipient of the Leeway Art & Change Grant (2006, 2007) and has exhibited her work in a variety of venues including Spelman College and the High Museum of art (Atlanta), and the African American Museum (Philadelphia).


Gabriele Tiberino was born in 1983 in Philadelphia, PA. He grew up in a family of artists in the West Philadelphia area. Gabriele has been encouraged to draw and paint since age three. When he was seven years old, he had his first one-man art show in a portrait gallery on South Street. Throughout grade school, high school, and college Gabriele has placed work in art shows in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. At age 16 he attended the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for Art and subsequently began volunteering with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.

Gabriele graduated from the Creative and Performing Arts High School in 2001. In 2005, he earned a degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and received the best figure painter award in the ASE. Over the years Gabriele has collaborated with many notable artists including Salvodor Gonzalez, Paris Stancell, Don Gensler, Anne Northrop, and most recently, Marcus Akilana. Gabriele currently has work available for viewing at the Sande Webster Gallery.

Gabriele believes that art functions in a society best when it serves to uplift the community. As an artist, Gabriele tries to apply this belief to canvas when translating the everyday lives of Philadelphians into portraits. His numerous cityscapes tell the story of Philadelphia, a city caught between transition and traditionalism. Gabriele plans to continue as a working artist in Philadelphia by creating art that inspires and uplifts the people.

Past Residents and Community Outreach Projects

Past Residents include:

Frances Bradly
Louise Barteau Chodoff
Zoe Cohen
Jessica Doyle
Pheralyn Dove
Edward M. Epstein
Jennifer Ferrell
Laureen Griffin
Linda Goss
Jerushia Graham
Theodore A. Harris
Christopher Hartshorne
Jacqueline Holloway
Grace Hyunyung Jung
Delia King
Betty Leacraft
Sinae Lee
Jill Maio
Wil Medearis
Philip Ofili
Alex Paik
Jonathan Prull
Michael B. Schwartz
Gretchen Shannon
Kate Stewart
Mary Tasillo
Lee Tusman
Jeremy C Vaughn
Elysa Voshell
Shira Walinsky
Scott White

Residents from the Fall 2007 round completed the following projects:

Frances Bradley taught an illustration class to youth and adults at the Southwest Community Enrichment Center. The class focused on using art to counter negative media images of African Americans.

Pheralyn Dove taught language skills to students at Shaw Middle School as part of the Sonia Sanchez Literacy Program.

Laureen Griffin’s project, entitled “Gender Portraiture,” invited various members of the community to pose for photographs wearing costumes that challenged gender norms. Laureen also facilitated discussions of gender issues as part of her Trans-gression group and held a forum with University of Pennsylvania professor Heather Love on the same topic.

Michael B. Schwartz facilitated the creation of a community mural at The Rotunda. Various groups in West Philadelphia participated in the design and execution of this very colorful work, called “Collective Imprints,” which now adorns the balconies of The Rotunda’s performance space.


Past residents' outreach efforts include:

a curriculum on printmaker Dox Thrash taught by Christopher Hartshorne in collaboration with Shaw Middle School teacher Pam Toller

an art class taught by Sinae Lee for clients of Drexel Community Health Services

a puppet-making workshop for clients at a drug rehabilitation facility offered by Jonathan Prull in conjunction with Spiral Q Puppet Theater

a book arts workshop at the Southwest Community Enrichment Center offered by Mary Tasillo

Zoë Cohen’s interactive public art work, “Listening Station,” conducted at various sites in West Philadelphia including the International House

drawing and painting workshops conducted at Jennifer Ferrell’s studio with elementary-grade students from Dolores Gmitter’s class at Powel School

an African-based textile dyeing project conducted by Betty Leacraft in collaboration with Shaw Middle School teacher Pam Toller

a computer animation curriculum taught by Scott White in conjunction with Sadie Alexander/Penn partnership school teacher Cara Crosby

a book-making workshop taught by Elysa Voshell at the Sadie Alexander/Penn partnership school

a mural project at the Pearl Street Walkway (55th and Vine Streets) designed by Alex Paik and Kate Stewart

a tapestry project at Cliveden Convalescent Center led by Linda Goss and Gretchen Shannon

a found-object sculpture project led by Jill Maio in Dolores Gmitter’s class at Powel School

a mural created by Delia King at Vare Recreation Center, 26th and Morris Streets; a reverse glass project created by youth at Safe Haven, 57th and Race Streets, with assistance from Delia King

classes taught by Lee Tusman at the Red Cross House at 40th Street and Powelton Avenue

bookmaking classes by Jerushia Graham at the People’s Emergency Center (PEC)

a Mural project by Grace Jung at the Police Athletic League (PAL)

comic book illustration classes by Jeremy Vaughn at Bryant School