Professors and students at Artists' House

Here's an interesting concept: Nine faculty members at the Pennsylvania Academy each select three of their students to be exhibited. Sometimes the works seem related. At other times, they don't.

The current show at Artists' House does offer the casual viewer the chance to see work by some of Philadelphia's leading artists, among them Renee Foulks, Scott Noel, Douglas Martenson, Jeffrey Carr and Al Gury. With such a talented group of artists on display, their students need to be good to hold their own.

Kate Brockman sculpts in a classic style; her work would be at home in any century. The students whose work she selected, by contrast, are far more modern in outlook and in style.

Shane Stratton's Horse and Boy is done in a sort of modern style that reminds me of Leonard Baskin's sculpture. Julia Stratton creates little dramas in bronze, almost like watching a shadow play unfold. Stephen Layne is represented by a work that recalls the sort of monumental style that sculptors of the Art Deco period aimed at.

Almost brutal

Jeffrey Carr, dean of the Academy's School of Fine Arts, selected only two students, and their styles are quite different. David Campbell paints in a strong, almost brutal style. We gaze up at his menacing figures as through we've just been knocked down by them. Clarity Haynes, on the other hand, paints with a careful realism that reminded me more of Scott Noel's work.

I've admired the perfection of Renee Foulks's draftsmanship for ages. I suspect she's an exacting teacher, and each of her students does her proud.

Noah Buchanan's figure studies share a certain family resemblance to those of Foulks, but perhaps not so delicately toned. Ted Walsh contributed a bleak rural landscape and a haunting study of a woman standing alone in a barren space.

Gury's audacious choice

The show includes several works by Laura Adams— beautifully rendered studies of fabric patterns, which might seem an odd inclusion, except that I seem to recall that some of the earliest Foulks paintings that I encountered were immaculately-rendered studies of brightly-wrapped candies.

Al Gury's selections don't seem to match up with his own style of art at all. Gury's student Joseph Lozano does pure abstracts; David Campbell Wilson does a mix of figurative and abstract; while Gury's most audacious choice, Reza Ghanad, is represented by a large four-foot-square work entitled The Madness of Don Quixote, whose razor-sharp imagery and bright colors call to mind a surreal stained-glass window.

The works by Douglas Martenson that I've seen have been primary landscape paintings, and he is represented by a landscape in this show, yet here he chose a figurative study by Sterling Shaw and a "manipulated" landscape by Todd Keyser.

Hindemith and Hardy

I don't believe I've ever reviewed Dan Miller's work before. His At Shoreham is a color woodcut that embeds an image of Samuel Palmer into one of his typical Shoreham landscapes.

I found other pieces by Miller in the "overflow" back room exhibit space, and these consisted of color woodcuts of such culture heroes as the poet Tennyson, the composer Paul Hindemith and my own hero, Thomas Hardy. I personally like this sort of tribute art.

Miller's students— Julie Zahn, Matthew Colaizzo and Jeffrey Dentz— pursue their own interests. It's hard to say where they're going by looking at one or two works, but it seems to me that Zahn is experimenting with color, Colaizzo seems attracted to form and Dentz is using the woodcut as a narrative.

Nude in the back

Scott Noel's Danae II, the work chosen to illustrate the catalogue, holds court in the rear gallery—perhaps because it's a nude?— and another of his works, depicting a workroom at the Academy, hangs in the front gallery, visible from the street.

Noel's students—Mike East, Paul Metrinko and Elise Schweitzer— all work in oils. Schweitzer's piece is called Parachute Deposition and is anecdotal in nature. Metrinko's cryptically titled GJ MED-GB P-H NYC is an elaborately composed double-portrait.

Mike East's Looking West is a classic urban scene: the side wall of a house that has seen better days in a neighborhood that has perhaps seen better days. A dreamlike stillness hangs over it all, enhanced by bright colors and careful composition.

Osborne's abstracts

Elizabeth Osborne and her students seem to be drawn to abstract art. Joan Becker's Cat Girl is an odd sort of figure rendered in a pleasantly fantastical manner. Michael Bartmann's Canvas and Easel Profile is a canvas on an easel seen in profile. Apparently the shapes themselves inspire him. Anne Seidman and Ruslan Khais seem to follow Osborne's lead, painting in a purely abstract style.

Bruce Samuelson's three choices are the most eclectic. Patricia Barrera's Hidden Memories is a mixed media piece done in the form of a triptych in which the colors and the physicality of the work itself— its array of surfaces— fascinates the eye. Paula Everitt and Arcenio Martin Campos work with figurative art but in symbolic and disturbing ways.

All told, this is an interesting exercise. For those who are new to the city, or new to looking at art, it's a nice introduction to what the Academy is all about and the caliber of work produced by its faculty and alumni.