Outsiders and Art Reign at Second Saturday

A pair of local artists quietly impressed at Collingswood’s Second Saturday event this weekend—on the side of Haddon Avenue more distant from the center of town.

Collingswood resident Clayton Thomas, whose work will be on display at throughout August, takes a reclaimationist’s approach to the canvas. His framed pieces are painted directly over salvaged corporate art prints. Beneath the pseudo-cubist abstract portraits lurk the kinds of things you’d likely see on the walls of hotels and doctor’s lobbies, if he allowed you to.

“There’s all that texture because you can see where the matting used to be,” Thomas said. “I busted out the glass, tore out the prints, and tore the matting off."

Thomas also paints on old wallpaper and with recycled house paint, material which a friend who works for a restoration and recovery service donated to his studio. Thomas jokes that with 55 gallons at his disposal, he’ll never have to buy white paint again. But he also says the abundance of materials frees him from the fear of making a mistake.

“In some of my paintings, there’s two or three paintings underneath them,” Thomas said. “Hopefully people connect with my paintings on some level other than matching the curtains and the couch.

"Or maybe I saved them from polluting a landfill so I could pollute your walls instead,” he quipped.

Across the street, at the , hung the contemporary landscapes of Lancaster, Pennsylvania resident Bill Mammarella.

Mammarella, who says his style has its roots in the early American tradition of scene painting, describes his art as depicting, “What’s really there.”

“While I’m a realist, I would never say I’m a photorealist,” Mammarella said. “In some ways, I think of myself as an abstract artist."

Particularly when Mammarella describes a series of suburban houses painted from memories of his childhood in Cherry Hill.

“It does take a little bit of sentimentality and cynicism to do a realistic painting from memory,” he said. “It’s a way of painting nostalgia back in something that happened naturally; they sort of became pastiches.”

At , metalsmith Allison Hunt displayed original, limited-run jewelry from tri-state artists.

Hunt, who is on Collingswood's Second Saturday Committee, says the townwide arts movement encapsulates what’s going on in the independent craft-making scene at large.

“It’s handmade things that are pushing the boundaries of traditional art and finding the humor in them,” Hunt said.

In addition to featuring the work of Jeweler Shannon Nutt this month, Zuzu Gallery’s nod to local artists included the Tolouse Lautrec-style mixed-media portraiture of Philadelphia artist Diane Fike, whose style merges provocative fashion and hand-made wallpaper.

“People love seeing things made,” Hunt said. “I think it’s rare that [the variety of artwork on display at Second Saturday] exists in one concentrated area. It’s free for the artists to exhibit their work. It’s free for the business owners. It’s free for the public.

“It’s an honest-to-goodness community event,” she said.