The other life
Fall faculty art show

“There are few, if any, things more powerful and political than language,” says local artist Dawn Kramlich. We are pleased to announce the Barbara Crawford Gallery spring Art Show: Mark My Words, which features Kramlich’s work using various 2-D and 3-D media, including encaustic paintings (a technique in which pigments are mixed with hot liquid wax), and laser-cut matboard installations. 

What happens when artwork is both a painting and a poem? Or, when a poem is also an occupant of three-dimensional space? Kramlich, fascinated with the text+image relationship, centers her work on these questions due to “our existence in a society that barrages individuals with memes, ads, and digital conversations.” As a member of the millennial generation, she is keenly aware of—and influenced by—societal interpersonal shifts due to computer-mediated communication, and through her lens as a LGBTQ+ American woman, she often uses common phrases in her work to challenge or analyze power dynamics in society.

On View at SCH: February 9 - March 24, 2023

Jessie Jane Lewis (1947 - 2011) was an artist and disability rights activist who graduated from Springside School in 1965. Growing up she loved surfing, skateboarding, and adventure. After receiving degrees from the former Philadelphia College of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts she worked in painting, printmaking, and performance art.  She created profound video work focusing on artists with disabilities, the challenges they live with, and how they persevere to maintain their practice. She was a member of the board of trustees at the Woodmere Art Museum and worked as an art therapist for more than 20 years. She’s most well known for her work as an activist for people with disabilities. In the late 1990s, Ms. Lewis created the Voter Accessibility Reform Initiative. After many years of work, she convinced the city to honor the rights of disabled Philadelphians to vote at accessible polling places on machines that can accommodate those in wheelchairs, people who are blind or with low vision, and people who are deaf or hearing impaired.

On View at SCH: October 13, 2022 - January 26, 2023

Run Dates: 2020-2021

Sam Feinstein: The Early Years was an exhibition at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy that was on display from September 26, 2020 to Spring 2021 in conjunction with Group ’55, Midcentury Abstraction in Philadelphia, and Sam Feinstein: Immersive Abstraction at the Woodmere Art Museum. 

Painter, illustrator, filmmaker, and writer, Sam Feinstein was the Director of the Arts and taught at Chestnut Hill Academy from 1938-1942. The exhibition will feature his watercolors, oil paintings, and illustrations from the 1930s until the mid-1950s, showing his journey towards abstract expressionism—including the movie, Hans Hofmann, where Sam clearly explains Hofmann's artistic philosophy by capturing the artist immersed in the act of painting The Window, 1950. Weekend art classes and opportunities to view both exhibits will be available.

This exhibition was made possible through the Samuel L. Feinstein Trust.