About the exhibition:

Questioning Carbon by Andrea Krupp with accompanying artists, Cynthia Baublitz and Becky Flax, documents an ongoing process of creative inquiry and learning. The exhibition maps the investigative pathways that began in 2019 when Andrea started to research Pennsylvania Anthracite coal. Themes that emerged from curating Seeing Coal, an historical-visual culture exhibition that was on view at the Library Company of Philadelphia from May-August, 2021 (If you missed it, see the immersive online exhibition www.seeingcoal.librarycompany.org).

Through this research, Andrea found that the process of Anthracite coal is circular, disjointed, full of detours, dead-ends and surprises. Who knew that the glassy brilliant surface of anthracite would have such a hold on her imagination? It is a richly poetic and aesthetic material - ancient life matter transformed through time, heat and pressure into almost pure carbon. Carbon in the atmosphere has reached code-red levels. There are many reasons to give anthracite (and carbon) our attention, and Questioning Coal takes a closer look as to why.

Questioning Carbon open at Da Vinci Art Alliance in Gallery 2 on October 10th. The exhibition will be on view in the gallery by appointment, and as a recorded video tour on the Da Vinci Art Alliance website.

About the Artists:

Andrea Krupp is a visual artist whose practice traces ongoing experiential, emotional and intellectual engagement with Earth, the indispensable site of human existence; and Nature, both as a framework for how we experience reality and as the material site of human knowledge and culture. Introspective and articulate, her works employ simple materials and graphic language to open new ways of connecting with nature - a necessary first step to addressing climate change.

She graduated from University of the Arts in Philadelphia and holds a BFA with honors in Printmaking. Her position as rare book Conservator and her expertise in material culture brings historical grounding to her creative practice. In 2017 she was awarded the Independence Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship. In 2018 she was a Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellow in Ireland, and an Arctic Circle Residency participant. Her works have been exhibited nationally and abroad and have been acquired by Ballinglen Museum of Contemporary Art, Woodmere Art Museum, the Free Library of Philadelphia and several University collections.

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