Public Opening Reception:

January 31st, 2021 - 2pm

About the exhibition:

Forms for a Continued Life is an exhibition of ink drawings by Cheryl Levin shown alongside sculptures and fragments by her late husband, metal worker Robert Phillips (1962-2012), and their son, Electrical Engineer and Generative Artist Aidan Phillips. This visual art exhibition contrasts weight and form to investigate impermanence, collective grief, and emergence of life from loss. Forms for a Continued Life will be on view physically by-appointment January 28th - February 14th 2021 at Da Vinci Art Alliance and as a recorded video tour on the Da Vinci Art Alliance website.

Cheryl Levin and Aidan Phillips’ minimal works on paper contrast with Robert Phillips’ metal work to tell a story of art intertwined and connected by its forms. Cheryl Levin uses salvaged metal pieces from the studio of her late husband to inspire the shapes for her ink drawings. Since Bob’s death in 2012, Cheryl’s work has become eulogistic in nature. She writes, “I have a desire to form an identity, like a fingerprint of a shape connected by the repetitive line. I call these my Grief Journeys. Whether using Bob's ‘cut-offs’ or the entire page as its own shape, the sentiment of a Grief Journey remains the same.” Her appropriation of form represents a rebounding through loss and provides formal evidence for a continued life.

Cheryl Levin and Robert Phillips worked together during their 20 year marriage on fine art and commissioned metalwork from their Fishtown studio. Levin’s works presented in Forms for a Continued Life demonstrate an intimate and subtle view into her explorative practice and art making’s mediating nature.

About the Artists:

Cheryl Levin was born in 1962 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and is a painter working primarily on paper. She is a member of The National Association of Women Artists, New York City, NY and In Liquid Gallery, Philadelphia, PA and is invited to be represented by the new upcoming Abstracta Gallery in Philadelphia. She holds a BFA from Tyler School of Art, Elkins Park and Rome, Italy campuses. She has shown in many group and two-person shows in the Philadelphia region and across the country and is part of many private collections. While partnered with her late husband, blacksmith Robert Phillips, Levin has worked on public art projects in Philadelphia and other public projects around the country.

Robert Phillips, (1962-2012), Philadelphia - based artist, sculptor and blacksmith, produced many notable works by forge and anvil that can be found in and around Philadelphia’s neighborhoods, including intricate signs, artistic railings, fencing, gates and sculptures. His public, private and commercial metalwork commissions feature the natural world with flora and fauna dominating his designs. Plant forms such as flowers, leaves, vines, tree limbs and roots and also animals and insects such as fish, birds, butterflies and dragonflies are recurrent motifs in his metalwork objects. Phillips' commissions demonstrate his contributions to fine art metal working and its rich traditions in Philadelphia. Read More -->

Aidan Phillips: “If I trust the very kernel of a visual thought, the thing that exists before the thinking, then there is some prodding at my fundamental inner aesthetic. Generative art gave me the tools to surrender any feedback that drifts from that kernel, that hallucination of an idea. I describe the idea in often simple rules – where lines can go and where they cannot and how to get there. The rules turn into computer code and the code into instructions for a motor driven pen-plotter built to operate on large wall surfaces. The robotic workings are unimportant. What matters is the commitment to the idea, the pen cannot change course despite my new thoughts. The forms in the drawings have been discovered by the process, they aligned with me more than I aligned with them: geometries, shapes, and marks that have slightly buckled. Structures that have identity and pattern and weight but make no effort to hide tired angles and wavering rigidity. The idea is trusted but does not take precedent as is the case in conceptual works. The generative art world is flooded by pieces that live on LCD screens. I want to bring a care for texture, color, and scale through the inks and papers used in my drawings. I believe in the truth of a simple abstract form, and I plan to look for the ones I carry.”