Neighbor News
Community Art Engagement Project
Crowd-sourced artwork to be auctioned for Centennial Scholarship Fund.
Bryn Mawr, PA – July 15, 2015– Abstract riots of color and painstakingly intricate decoration with paint, tiles, and buttons characterize submissions to a crowd-sourced art engagement project marking Harcum College’s centennial called “Bears & Squares.”
A preview party displaying all Bears & Squares is slated for Thursday, September 10, from 4 to 8 p.m. in the Kevin D. Marlo Little Theatre on the Bryn Mawr Campus of Harcum College. The show will feature 75 decorated canvas squares that the college distributed to any volunteer artists, and 20 plaster bear statues, which were awarded to area artists. The preview party is free and open to the public. “Bears & Squares” posters will also be sold at the event.
Harcum’s Centennial bear was commissioned from Melvina Quillen, a retired Philadelphia art teacher. Twenty-two bears were then molded and poured by Bridget Goldhahn and Rory Middleton.
“The ‘Bears & Squares’” project has touched a number of artists outside of the Harcum community, too,” said committee chair Gale Martin. “Substantial contributions have been made by art students at Lower Merion High School and residents of the Dunwoody Village retirement community.”
An online auction of Bears & Squares opens on September 10 and continues through October 17, 2015 at Harcum.afrogs.org. The online auction will also include fragrances and candles from Harcum’s own Scentennial collection, handmade by Dr. Alexandra Hilosky and her General Chemistry class. All proceeds benefit the Centennial Scholarship fund.
FInished bears represent a range of techniques, themes, and styles, everything from a bear with artificial foliage and a working light embedded in its stomach, to a bear covered from head to toe in pieces of an actual beehive. Artists of the canvas squares have taken the prompt of showing “possibilities” and expressed the idea in a dazzling number of ways, including three-dimensional textile collages, representative acrylic paintings, and more.
For more information, call 610-525-4100 or visit Harcum.edu/bearsandsquares.
