Public Opening Reception:

Friday, June 21st 2019, 6-8pm

About the exhibition:

“Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours. or to the question it asks you, forcing you to answer…” Italo Calvino Invisible Cities

The city can be viewed simultaneously as a detailed layered creation or abstracted idea of unseen or surreal relationships, the city can be utilized to create and inspire the imaginary, the fantastic. As the author Italo Calvino created a dual image of the city, reading both the real and imaginary in his book Invisible Cities – this exhibit Visible Cities will posit two artist/architects to bring their sketchbooks, their lens for seeing the city to face each other revisiting and re-presenting their views of the city one an fantastic reality, the other rigorous imaginary - both showcasing their observations and delineations of the visible city.

About the Curators:

Ben Leech is an architectural illustrator and historic preservation consultant and based in Philadelphia and Lancaster. From 2010 to 2015, he was advocacy director for the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia. He is a regular contributor to Extant Magazine and Hidden City Daily. He has taught architectural history, archival research, and building documentation at Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, Franklin & Marshall College, Philadelphia University, and Rutgers University Camden. In 2017, he founded Archivolt Press and published two postcard books of his sketches, 36 Views of Philadelphia and 36 Views of Lancaster PA.

Andrew Hart is an artist and DVAA member. He was a curator of Visible Cities.

Participating Artists:

Andrew Hart, Ben Leech, Betty Bluvshtein, Iken Cheng, Alyssa Moyer and other collaborating artist exhibitors.