About the Exhibit:

Three very different artists have come together in their shared exploration of the concept of wildness/wilderness. A painter explores the geologic past and our shaky present; a multimedia artist seeks cross species communication with the plant world; a photographer surveys her body as verdant landscape. The artists seek to tap into their wilder constitution and connect, but our modern world demands further segregation, consumption, and exploitation of that which we used to live in balance with.  We stand outside of Nature, looking in, bewildered.

How do we negotiate this widening gap between our true nature, as wild beings, and the relentless pressures to be a functional individual in a capitalist society? How do we, as Joanna Macy has asked in the central question surrounding her life’s work, be fully present in the world? To stay in awe of its daily miracles and gifts, its communion and interconnectedness? All while being fully aware of our species' powerful current destruction of the only living planet we know of? Phyllis Anderson, Sarah Bloom and Sadie Francis attempt to answer these questions through their exhibit, BeWILDerment.

“The web of life both cradles us and calls us to weave it further“ – Joanna Macy

BeWILDerment will be on view in Gallery 2 at Da Vinci Art Alliance beginning July 27th, and will be available as a video walkthrough shortly after. Join us for the opening reception of the exhibit on July 28th, from 4-7pm. 

About the Artists:

Phyllis Anderson is an award-winning artist who divides her time between Colorado and New Jersey. She received a BFA at the University of Texas, and later studied at the Art Students League in New York. Her current multi-media paintings are landscapes which invoke dreams and memory, where a threatened wilderness has become an idea, mythic, legendary, unreal. Fantastic color, image fragmentation, and scribbled lines create romantic, mysterious works. Phyllis’s paintingas are shown regularly in Philadelphia, and at RGallery in Boulder, CO. Her work is available at Framewerx Gallery in Winter Park, CO, and is in several private & corporate collections.

Sarah R. Bloom is an artist and photographer working in the Philadelphia region. Her photos have been featured in The Daily Mail, Philadelphia Magazine and The Huffington Post. Philadelphia Magazine named her Best Visual Artist in their 2015 Best of Philly Issue. Bloom's work has been exhibited in the State Museum of Pennsylvania, The Perkins Center for the Arts, The Woodmere Museum and the Biggs Museum. Sarah is a current member of the Women’s Caucus for Art, Da Vinci Art Alliance, and Hidden City Philadelphia.

Sadie Francis is a multi-media artist, activist, and creative biophilic consultant based in the Wissahickon Watershed on the ancestral lands of the Lenape people – or what is now known as Philadelphia, PA. Her work mostly focuses on the exploration of ecofeminist themes, natural cycles, and eco-anxiety and grief. Her inspiration is sourced from her awe, deep respect, and gratitude for the seemingly unlimited healing and bio remedial powers of the natural realm, which currently is being stretched to the brink. Over the last few years, Francis’s work has primarily focused around found and foraged both wild and cultivated botanical specimens, insects, and animal remains, and she uses to different media, including epoxy resin and cyanotype, to re-contextualize these specimens, enabling a “re-seeing” of their ephemeral and often underrepresented forms. She has studied photography under Vik Muniz, Barbara Ess, and An-My Le. She has also studied Environmental Science and Policy at Columbia University, experience studying climatology, hydrology, environmental chemistry, and environmental ethics, which continues to inform her artistic work. For several years, she has served on the board of bioPhilly, an organization that seeks to raise the awareness of a new paradigm, biophilic urbanism, that marries the understanding of robust scientific evidence about urban stressors and nature-based solutions, with a recognition that humans are emotional beings with the need for meaningful and daily engagement with Nature. She has completed professional science communication and collaborative management work for two UN Consultancies, the US Department of Energy, and American Forests. Her work has been featured in several galleries and arboreta, including InLiquid Art Gallery, Morris Arboretum, and Woodmere Museum.

Press: