Though Philadelphia has been widely recognized for its artistic community and cultural offerings, the city's major art institutions are often slow to appreciate homegrown contemporary talent. Instead, individual artists and small galleries have taken up this burden of representation.
Lifelong Philadelphian, artist and mentor Shelley Spector has always made a point to seek out and provide a platform for fellow artists. Spector studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the University of the Arts, where she now teaches. In 1999, Spector opened an intimate, eponymous gallery to provide local emerging artists with a home for their work.
"There wasn’t a lot of places that really celebrated Philadelphia art, especially less experienced people just kind of getting started. I started seeing a lot of stuff that I thought was really wonderful and important and there wasn’t too many homes for it, so that was kind of the impetus to open up the gallery, to give that whole generation of artists a place to show their work."
Though the physical SPECTOR gallery closed in 2006, its legacy of mentorship has continued as an online hub for local artists called SPECTOR Projects. The site includes a gallery, a printed portfolio of artists' work, a selection of for-sale artworks and Artjaw, an online anthology of first-person stories from Philly's art world.
Now that Philly has stepped out from New York's shadow, it has become a boon to artists who are hungry for studio space but don't actually want to go hungry. The art scene has refocused and the city is looking to its own for inspiration. Case in point: Spector herself opened "Keep the Home Fires Burning" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on March 7. It is her first solo museum exhibit. Held in the PMA's Perelman Building, the show is a rarity for an institution that seldom features contemporary local artists.
"Keep the Home Fires Burning" features all-new, site-specific sculpture work made from found objects and materials. Ranging from ceiling-high installations to small sculptures, the largely fabric-and-wood pieces are colorful and evoke a sense of personal craftsmanship.
Shelley Spector's "From Seed to Seeds," 2014. (Constance Mensh/Philadelphia Museum of Art.)
It took Spector a full year to create the pieces that now populate her exhibit, but senior curator of costume and textiles Dilys Blum first approached her two and a half years ago. Enamored by her work, Blum and exhibitions assistant Laura Camerlengo asked Spector if she'd like to exhibit with them and suggested she explore the museum's collection of textiles -- which Spector describes as "massive" -- for inspiration.
After months of digging through the collections, Spector came across a Pennsylvania German "show towel," a large tapestry-like swath of fabric stitched with symbolic designs. It was designed by Frances Lichten, a Philadelphia artist, and stitched by her octogenarian mother in 1943. It was donated to the PMA by Lichten's partner, Katherine Milhous.
While researching the piece, Spector dug through documents about the pair donated to the Free Library of Philadelphia and constructed a story of their lives. Her discovery of their relationship greatly influenced her work; in fact, two pieces in the exhibit are dedicated to the couple. The title of the exhibit even comes from a love letter between the two.
"Everything that I do is fairly personal in a lot of ways; it’s fairly personal though aiming to be universal, aiming to be ideas and thoughts and themes that run through my life and I hope that I’m reaching out in lots of different directions and reaching other people’s lives," Spector said at a preview of the exhibit.
Three sculptures from "Keep the Home Fires Burning." (Constance Mensh/Philadelphia Museum of Art)
"The [embroidery piece] that I was responding to is a particular person in a particular time in history with a particular life story, so it had three points instead of two. Instead of being about me and everybody else, it was about me and someone else and everyone else."
Spector weaves the stories of others into her work by using recycled materials, which range from yarn made from old T-shirts to children's chairs upholstered to look like the Lions of Judah. As she noted during a recent tour of the exhibit, used objects inject their own histories into those already present in the exhibit: Lichten's, Milhous' and her own.
Elements of universality and personal details are at tension throughout the show. Spector used symbols common to Pennsylvania German, Jewish and Indian folk art -- like trees, lions and birds -- that also stand in for details of her own life. For instance, she often uses birds as symbols of her family and thus created a "family portrait" of four bird sculptures. Spector also enlisted her own mother to help her with fabric-based tasks, in homage to how Litchen and her mother worked together.
Using fabric in her work was a newer experience for Spector, and she said she thoroughly enjoyed it. Of wood, the material she most often uses, Spector said, "we're really good friends." Visitors to the exhibit will recognize their close relationship; the artist managed to turn rattan wicker chairs into abstract trees and thick, solid discs of wood into a bird bath.
Spector's vibrant spirit is evident in "Keep the Home Fires Burning," from its bright hues to its warm, whimsical shapes. As she toured the exhibit explaining the many stories behind each work, seeing it for the first time without installation tools and builders, she beamed with pride. Emerging artists are lucky to have such a role model.
Keep the Home Fires Burning
Now through Sunday, September 27Tuesday-Sunday: 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
$14-$20
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Perelman Building
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Perelman Building
2525 Pennsylvania Ave.
(215) 763-8100