Pandemic Flowers: A Bicoastal Conversation
A two-person exhibition by Pia de girolamo and Laurel Nevarte Termini
Exhibition Runs: May 3rd - may 21st
About the exhibition:
Pandemic Flowers: A Bicoastal Conversation is a two-person exhibition which features the botanical paintings of Pia De Girolamo and the photographs of Laurel Termini. De Girolamo’s paintings were inspired by Termini’s photographs of plants in the Huntington Gardens in Los Angeles near her home during the pandemic. Termini took these photographs with an iPhone and originally posted them to Instagram. Her photographic prints retain the same square format typical of that social media site. De Girolamo’s interpretations were created thousands of miles away in her studio just outside Philadelphia. They range from small paintings of a few specimens to large, colorful groupings of plants and flowers rendered on a variety of square and rectangular canvases and panels.
Though living on opposite coasts, the two artists found a creative and collaborative way of coping with the stresses and losses of the pandemic. Termini, a dentist, continued working during the lockdown and being on the front lines of health care was taking its toll. To de-stress, she made weekly trips to the Huntington Gardens to enjoy and photograph the plants and flowers, which she then analyzed and edited in photoshop. In each photograph she emphasizes a particular aspect of a subject. It could be the sculptural feeling of a flower or plant emphasized by the play of light and shadow, or it could be the interplay of lines, or the contrast of colors. Some subjects have an air of mystery, others are playful.
De Girolamo noticed her friend’s photographs while scrolling through Instagram during the pandemic lockdown. Finding them soothing, and intriguing she asked Termini if she could use them as a jumping off point for her own work. So began a back-and-forth exchange of images and ideas. De Girolamo’s paintings echo some of the same themes in the photographs. For example, there is a sculptural quality seen in 'The Calla Lily is in Bloom Again' with a bright pink trumpet-like flower popping out from a dark landscape and there is a playfulness to the leopard peeking out of spiky Encephalartos leaves in the large painting 'In the Jungle'. There is also a poignancy to the small, quiet paintings of lotus leaves and pods that echo the sadness of the pandemic.
The botanical subject matter of this joint exhibition of paintings and photographs will be a source of well-being to viewers. It will bring joy and a sense of uplift but also a comforting sense of losses shared. In addition, the aspect of collaboration between these two artists is in itself an inspiration for people to reach out to others in times of stress to create something beautiful. The artists may have been locked in but they still reached out to each other not merely via a screen but through the creative process.
Pandemic Flowers: A Bicoastal Conversation by Pia De Girolamo and Laurel Nevarte Termini will be on view in Gallery 2 at Da Vinci Art Alliance starting May 3rd until May 21st. The opening reception will take place on Thursday May 4th, 4-7pm.
About the artists:
Pia De Girolamo is a painter whose primary medium is acrylic on canvas. She lives in the Greater Philadelphia area. Her most recent work up to the Covid 19 pandemic was based on the landscape both natural and urban in places as varied as Patagonia, Iceland, Rome, Italy and the Arctic. Confined to home given the ban on travel during the pandemic lockdown, she completed a series of botanical paintings based on the photographs of the plants in the Huntington Gardens taken by a friend who lives near Los Angeles. De Girolamo has had 14 solo exhibitions, most recently at Cerulean Gallery in Philadelphia in April 2022, and notably, at the Museo Mastroianni of the Musei di San Salvatore in Lauro, Rome in October 2018. She has exhibited extensively in juried group exhibitions regionally. In 2022, she was the first Artist in Residence at Park Towne Place, a program organized by Inliquid, the Philadelphia Arts Advocacy organization. At PTP she researched the history of this mid century modern apartment complex and created site specific works on paper in a variety of media including, charcoal, oil stick, and linocut block print. In 2017, her work was selected by Ross Lance Mitchell, Director of the Barnes-de Mazia Education and Outreach Programs at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA for inclusion in an exhibition at Main Line Art Center in Haverford, PA. De Girolamo's work has been selected for film set design most recently by Creed ll Productions. Awards include Best in Show at the Wayne Art Center Regional Juried Spring Open Exhibition 2019 (Juror: Stuart Shils, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts), 2nd place in Alfa Art Gallery 's New Brunswick Art Salon 2015-2016 Juried Exhibition Series, Honorable Mention (Juror: Richard Rosenfeld, Rosenfeld Gallery) in the 2011 Montgomery County Guild of Professional Artists Spring Juried Show, Honorable Mention in 2010 in the Main Line Art Center's 72nd Anniversary Members' Exhibition, Haverford, PA, and in 2008, a Juror's Choice Award in Montgomery County Guild of Professional Artists, "World of the Professional Artist" Exhibition. In 2007 and 2009 Victoria Donohoe reviewed De Girolamo's work in the Philadelphia Inquirer. In February 2017, her paintings were featured in the Marathon Literary Review, the biannual literary magazine of Arcadia University's MFA in Creative Writing. De Girolamo's paintings are in a museum collection in the Musei Di San Salvatore in Lauro, Rome, Italy and in corporate collections including those of PNC Bank Tower Headquarters, Pittsburgh, PNC Bank Corporate Office, Berwyn, PA, PNC Wealth Management, Bluebell PA, and Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA. Pia De Girolamo has a BA in Art History from Barnard College, Columbia University and an MD degree from the University of Rochester. She lectures on the nexus between Art and Medicine and the interrelationship of Art, Nature and Health.
Laurel Nevarte Termini has always been drawn to handmade objects and was raised in a household where gifts and greeting cards were treasured creations. “My mom is a Pratt art school grad who would help with grade school craft projects and my maternal grandfather hand painted original poetry filled floral notecards to commemorate family milestones. I spent hours watching my dad painstakingly carve and cast waxed dental restorations for his patients. I also chose to pursue a dental career as well with the somewhat misguided idea that I was embracing a practical yet artistic endeavor. Over the years, I found balance as a mom and clinician and was compelled to fashion projects to enhance our surroundings. I would sew curtains and pillow covers and baby bedding. Doorways were dressed with silk flower wreaths and matte boards were cut to frame and display travel photos and vintage thrift postcards. Eventually I launched my ETSY handmade Bead after dark jewelry shop in an attempt to fill the void felt once my son left home for college. My husband and I then invested in cultivating a drought tolerant landscape where weekly pilgrimages to the Huntington gardens served as our inspiration. I routinely used my phone camera to chronicle plant growth and catalogue a wish list for reference. Prior to the convenience of the iPhone technology, photography never had much of an appeal for me with its complex and cumbersome equipment. I now welcome the instant gratification minus the unwieldy armamentarium and manipulating the images to post on my Instagram site are a daily obsession.”