First Friday & Harry Anderson Artist Talk

This is a First Friday reception for two exhibitions currently on display at Gravers Lane Gallery, described below. There will be light fare, wine, and live music. Harry Anderson will be giving an artist talk at 6:30. All are welcome, we’d love to see you there!

Gravers Lane Gallery, is pleased to debut two concurrent exhibitions; Harry Anderson (Philadelphia) & Judith Hoyt: “Conversation with Oxidation” (New York).

Harry Anderson: For many decades Harry Anderson has been one of Philadelphia’s most beloved artists. As an early member of the renowned “Dumpster-Divers”, Anderson has collected functional objects primarily manufactured during the 1930’s spanning through the 1950’s. Anderson is most recognized for his assemblages, which are in fact functional, as chandeliers, floor and table top lamps. Anderson’s brilliance is intuitive design sense when combining found objects, old machine parts, piping and hoses, parts from clocks, radios, and old tools, any form that is unique in design, scale, shape and color. Anderson rarely adds painted color as it is important that the patina of age and time remains. There is magic in how Anderson combines materials. Rocket ships, dancing and walking figures, spiraling whirligigs, all executed and constructed seamlessly as if the elements were always intended to be connected. Anderson’s work expresses his love for mid century objects and design. For many years Anderson would work with local glass artists, crafting globes to his specification. Harry Anderson’s work can be found in public, private and corporate collections throughout the United States including the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is a National Endowment for the Arts recipient as well as the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts.

JUDITH HOYT: “Conversation with Oxidation” – Judith Hoyt has spent her entire life in upstate New York. Born in Hunter, which is one of two villages comprising Greene County, population just above 3000. The Catskill Mountains and Hudson River Valley have served as her inspiration and Mother Nature is her muse. Hoyt studied at the State University of New York, New Paltz under the tutelage of Robert Ebendorf, an internationally recognized artist known for transforming discarded found materials into coveted objects and body adornment. For several decades Hoyt has been rummaging and gathered old patinated metal, wood, damaged books, roadside debris. Materials that resonate with her revealing lines and scars of age: markers of time. Hoyt lyrically collages textured and patinated shapes and through her creative eye constructs a new narrative. By piecing the past with the present, Hoyt speaks a new personal narrative, a visual storyteller. One could compare her patterned and puzzled shapes and surface to the weather scarred, patch worked landscape of New York State. Judith Hoyt’s aesthetic is grounded in her love of nature and unlike Anderson, she seeks out refuse on country roads, floating in streams, old abandoned barns. Her work can be found in the Guggenheim, N.Y., The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and the Racine Art Museum, WI. “Conversation with Oxidation” is Judith Hoyt’s first exhibition with Gravers Lane Gallery.