Discover South MountainGallery Archives

Artist Dr. Debra Ambush focuses on creating legacy as she shares her personal journey through her own family stories. She explores the literary author Toni Morrison’s idea of the “site of memory,” particularly in reflecting on and living with one’s own ancestral memory through a variety of visual art forms. Her presentation is in conjunction with her exhibition When We Can Say for Ourselves: Embodying Letters from Farmville, 1867–1964 at the Delaplaine.

Mark Johnson can be found roaming the streets of downtown Frederick, MD with his Nikon on weekends, about every 4-6 weeks or so, searching for new Faces Of Frederick. While Mark loves the “Faces” project, this exhibition is all about color – the full spectrum, from monochromatic grays to deep magentas, and everything in between.

The exhibition runs from January 31 through February 25 and is free and open to the public. A reception will be held from 5-7 PM on February 10. Visit https://www.districtarts.com/mark-johnson for more information including gallery hours.

Italian artist, archaeologist, and architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) combined his multi-disciplinary interests to produce dramatic depictions of Roman temples, aqueducts, monuments, and ruins. In the eighteenth century, Piranesi’s prints often inspired travelers to embark on the Grand Tour through Europe. Some tourists then brought home an engraving by Piranesi to commemorate their experiences among these newly excavated sites. Other travelers, such as Commodore Jesse Duncan Elliott (1782-1845), a former Dickinson College Trustee and resident of Carlisle, acquired eclectic collections of antique fragments during their Mediterranean travels.

Curated by Dickinson student Emily Angelucci ’24, this exhibition features a wide selection of Piranesi’s romanticized perspectives of Roman ruins alongside Elliot’s artifacts, which include pieces of the Parthenon, sarcophagi, and statuary. Seen in dialogue with Elliot’s antiquities, Piranesi’s prints demonstrate the Grand Tourists’ shared desire for tangible connections to the ancient world.

Lunch and Learn Gallery Talk with student curator Emily Angelucci ‘24: November 16, 12 pm to 1:15 pm

A festive display by local artists, including both large and small artworks, Deck the Walls will include paintings, assemblages, and sculptures to enhance your home and surroundings.

Cynthia Scott-Johnson
BUBBLES: Awareness is the First Step
Watercolor and mixed-media paintings
Nov 4–Dec 31, 2023
Artist Cynthia Scott-Johnson’s work in this series looks at how belief, memory, imagination, and visual sensory input effect levels of perception.

Isabel Manalo is an Artist’s Artist. She is a pro who not only maintains her own studio practice and exhibition schedule, but also guides countless other artists with aesthetic and academic counsel. Manalo’s paintings possess an uncommon transcendence and mysticism.

Yet they are essentially simple and familiar in their subject matter, often with her two young daughters engaged in exploration and wonder amid the natural world. The jewel-like glances of vivid translucent color so musically applied to the picture plane provide a sense of hopeful providence
and even joy. Manalo has been exhibiting her work internationally since 1999. Her art works are included in several public and private collections.

A glyph is any kind of purposeful mark. A glyph is “the specific shape, design, or representation of a character.

For the purpose of our show we are using Glyphs to mean any shape, design or symbol to convey meaning. Throughout Richard Schellenberg’s career of art making he’s developed a language of reoccurring shapes that frequently pop into his work sometimes unconsciously, a sort of ingrained shorthand for expressing whatever. Lately he’s pulled out some of these shapes and made them into stand-alone pieces instead of parts of a larger whole, when there are a number of symbols in one piece the Glyphs offer a kind of narrative. The isolated stand-alone shapes offer a different order of communication.

Watson’s work has evolved from representative form into works of pure form and color. The work is non-representational, but has a familiarity of glyph-like forms. The imagery retains the hard edges, bold colors, and black outlines of his earlier pop-infused creations. The perception of motion and energy still flow through each painted line and curve.

Together the work of these artists create the iconography of an unknown language that invites the viewer to decipher and explore the story.