Turning the Page

Theresa Antonellis - Heather Cavalieri - Michele Foyer - Jo Margolis

VIEW THE EXHIBITION Ι 1/10 - 2/24.2022

SYKES GALLERY ι BREIDENSTINE HALL (1st Floor)

There are two opportunities to participate in this exhibition. You are welcome to take advantage of one or both opportunities.  

• Live Reception ι  1/24.2022 from 5:30 - 7:00 pm 
  Artist Talk ι 6:00 pm 
• Webinar Zoom Event ι 2/16.2022 @ 7:00 pm 
  Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Turning The Page Artist's Talk. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.
  Click here to register for the WEBINAR

Gallery Hours ι  Standard business hours for Swift Gallery are Monday - Friday from 8:00 am - 4:00 pm. Hours are subject to vary in accordance with University established holidays (below) and the reception, gallery talk/s or awards ceremony.

About the Exhibition ...

Turning the Page presents the work of Theresa Antonellis, Heather Cavalieri, Michele Foyer, and Jo Margolis, four artists working with a shared contemporary approach to paper. Here, paper is its own territory.

The artists respond to paper’s fibrous qualities of curl, cut, tendril, and texture with distinct vocabularies of media and approach. Each artist departs from an expected use of paper whose long history is either a preliminary record of observation or a preparatory drawing often obscured under layers of paint.

Antonellis creates large-scale scrolls of paper. Cavalieri both sews and cuts into it. Margolis uses a fine-tipped pen to make marks on paper as would a sculptor. Foyer gathers and cuts many pieces of boxed cardstock.

For Antonellis, the meditative act of recording breath produces a still point where “a quiet victory is won, if only temporary, over time, over the body, over death.” Margolis’ many carefully sculpted marks recall patterns of calligraphy and architectural motifs. Cavalieri follows a “meditative path of repetition” forming recurring lines and shapes, creating “a new structure reflective of the energy in the making.” On the other hand, Foyer is content to hold “a tension of accruing sensations which are never quite the same.” 

A simple medium, paper, brings humility and grace. The artists invite us to take another look at what paper can do.

About the Artist ...

Theresa Antonellis works as a visual artist whose favorite medium is ink on paper. Antonellis’ artworks are inspired by continued practices of yoga and breathwork. The “One Breath One Line” is an ongoing series of breath-generated marks using body-centered meditations that culminate in drawings marking the shifting boundaries between body and mind. “One Breath One Line” versions were accepted to the 105th, 106th, and 107th Annual Exhibitions of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh. Antonellis is an active member of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and Group A of Pittsburgh. 

Currently the Director of Martha Gault Art Gallery and instructor of art history and art studios in the Art Department of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. Antonellis earned her MFA from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst after graduating from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. There, she earned a dual degree in studio arts and art history with high honors and served as the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Assistant at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. 

Antonellis attended artist’s residencies for several years consecutively with Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. In summer 2019, Ms. Antonellis attended the Lucid Arts Foundation Residency, shaped by a lineage of artists devoted to abstraction. Her artworks have been exhibited with The Lucid Art Foundation virtual exhibitions and nationally at universities, colleges, and art galleries.  

Michele Foyer is a visual artist whose thoughtful abstractions address the movement intrinsic to color and its non-linear qualities of relation, resonance, and rhyme. Her paintings explore how we see and know, and how objects and people gather disparate times, places, and modes of ordering experience in an often-tenuous aggregate that at first glance appears to be unified. 

Foyer has exhibited throughout the United States and the Bay Area where she lives and works. Her sculptural paintings are included in the White Columns Artist Registry, New York, curated by Matthew Higgs. Recently, she mounted a solo exhibition at Fourth Wall Gallery in Oakland and exhibited a large paper installation at Root Division in San Francisco. She holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BA from UC Berkeley, honors + departmental honors. Lucid Arts Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Moulin a Nef in Auvillar, France (forthcoming) have awarded her residencies. Lucid Arts Foundation will feature her work in a book about its past residents to be published this winter. Art Practical, SOMArts, and SF Artful Living have covered her work. She has curated 10 exhibitions of contemporary art.  

Heather Cavalieri is a contemporary artist known for her subtle, often monochromatic, works on paper in which she utilizes paper elements or thread as a mark-making medium. Maintaining a studio practice with curiosity, trust, and commitment as a basis for making is an important part of her process. Cutting paper, pasting down repeating shapes, and sewing with thread has, for Cavalieri, a meditative connection in works that reflect an interest in a visual language of repetition and slowness of pace.  

Cavalieri has a degree in psychology from La Roche College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Craft with a concentration in fibers from Oregon College of Art & Craft (OCAC) in Portland, Oregon. At OCAC, studies in fiber arts, drawing, and book arts influenced her approach to making art. She was the recipient of the 2002 Jean Vollum Fibers Scholarship as well as the 2003 Boekelheide and Brannon Award. 

Cavalieri’s work has been included in group exhibitions as well as a solo show at Ampersand Gallery and Fine Books in Portland, Oregon. Most recently, she was included in the 2019 Regional Juried Spring Open Exhibition at Wayne Art Center in Wayne, Pennsylvania, and Art of the State 2018 at The State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Her work also resides in many private collections. 

Living in Emmaus, PA along with her husband and their 11-year-old son, Cavalieri also assistant teaches in an autistic support classroom with middle-school-age children.  

Jo Margolis earned an MFA from the School of Design, University of Pennsylvania (1976) in sculpture and a BFA in 1972. Her earlier studio practice involved carving wood or stone or creating images in wax, that were later cast in bronze. Eventually, drawings done originally to prepare for sculpture became the focus of her work. 

Her emphasis is on making every mark matter, the way every cell in a tree grows, with purpose, nothing random, and nothing extraneous. She uses pencil and ink and to have as much control as possible she uses the finest nibs available. The choice of papers is an essential part of her limited palette. 

Inspiration has come from religious texts, calligraphy, and architectural forms, and from nature. Travel has provided her with many opportunities for visual research. 

Her work has been shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Perlman Annex) and the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University, State College PA, and largely, non-profit college galleries and art centers. A more complete list is on her website, www.jomargolis.com

Margolis is represented in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Artworks on paper, in the Art Institute of Chicago works on paper, and the Palmer Museum of Art, Penn StateUniversity, and in numerous private collections. She has been awarded three residencies: Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Lucid Art Foundation in Inverness, California.