Join the Conversation with Phillips' Mill ArtTalk

Alexander Shanks is a classically trained artist in the tradition of his parents, Nelson Shanks and Leona Shanks. He fuses classical methods with contemporary ideas. We’ll talk with him about what that means and how trends in technique affect what we see. Alexander is just back from Italy, where he absorbed inspiration from the classical masters. We’ll find out how he is applying this experience to his work in our modern context.

Art museums are often academic institutions, presenting art from a Euro-American canonical perspective. But we know that art is personal. What you see in a piece of art is influenced by what you’ve already seen, what you’ve experienced.

Art institutions that have traditionally displayed art and authoritative analysis for our edification are now asking curators from different backgrounds to design exhibits. And they’re asking visitors what they think about the works on display. Rather than a lesson in art history, it’s a conversation.

Our own Michener Art Museum has recently mounted such a show called (re)Frame: Community Perspectives on the Michener’s Art Collection. Curators with multiple social and environmental viewpoints have selected familiar works and shared their personal interpretations.

But what does this mean for the role of the museum as educator? And how will it affect our experience as art lovers?

Join our conversation about the exhibit with Dr. Laura Igoe, Chief Curator, and Joshua Lessard, Director of Exhibitions, as well as hear from some of the guest curators.

Phillips’ Mill is synonymous with the Pennsylvania Impressionists. We were their home base, even as they showed nationally. But our 93 year history includes many other artists and artistic styles. One artist who was integral to our arts community was Katharine Steele Renninger. In contrast to the Impressionists who documented the beautiful landscape, Renninger was a realist who focused on the everyday objects of Bucks County life, things like baby carriages… or Windsor chairs… or even the details of a staircase. Katharine’s work is spare and elegant. She saw the patterns of line and light in the quotidian. Her paintings are as much of a paean to Bucks County living as any of our painters’.

Katharine’s work has been compared to important American Modernists, such as Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth and Edward Hopper. She was highly decorated, winning prizes at the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Woodmere Art Museum. In 1975, she  was named Distinguished Pennsylvania Artist. She was also instrumental in founding the Michener Art Museum.

Jane Ramsey’s life and work are steeped in Bucks County. She grew up in Lumberville along the Delaware River, where she carried a sketchbook from an early age. Her family went on Sunday drives to visit her father’s favorite barns. Jane is still visiting farms, but she stops to paint them now.

Jane’s watercolors of our rural landscape are informed by a lifetime of observation and sketching — what she calls “memory banking.” Now she can compose a swirling field of winterized grass or a cloudy expanse of sky from memory. Still, she’s frequently to be found en plein air, lovingly detailing the places where generations of farmers have tended the land. We’ll look at her work and hear about the people and places she’s encountered making it.

Jane Ramsey lives and paints on the Ulrich Farm, in Bedminster Township, Bucks County. She owns Simons Fine Art Framing & Gallery in Dublin, Pa. She also teaches art privately. She earned a BFA in graphic design (emphasis illustration) from Cornish College in Seattle.

Jane is Vice President of the Arts & Cultural Council of Bucks County.

Prominent Gallerist Paul Gratz of Gratz Gallery and Conservation Studio in Doylestown has rediscovered the works of painter Peter Miller, an American Modernist. Miller was a wealthy heiress (born Henrietta Myers) and a spiritualist who painted for the love of art rather than ambition. Even so she had notable success, her colorful works having showed at the prestigious Julien Levy Gallery in New York. Her influences were Joan Miro, whom she knew and collected, and Arthur Carles, with whom she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. She traveled widely and knew the most prominent artists of her time, including Picasso, Matisse, Calder and Ernst. Miller divided her time between Pennsylvania and New Mexico, where she was influenced by friends on the Tewa Pueblo.

We’ll talk about Miller’s fascinating life and works with Paul Gratz. Miller’s work was mostly forgotten until Gratz had the opportunity to buy the paintings remaining in her estate. The work needed extensive conservation, some of it having been stored in a barn. Gratz is a professional conservator. He was able to do the work during the pandemic. There’s now a book and an exhibition opening at the Gratz Gallery on April 23.

Paul Gratz is the owner and head conservator of Gratz Gallery and Conservation Studio. His formal training began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Paul continued to hone his ability through apprenticeships with a number of the nation’s most revered conservators, including Gustav Berger, a recognized art conservation pioneer. Gratz is an authority on work by the New Hope Circle of painters. Today, he leads a staff of skilled conservators at the Gratz Conservation Studio, which is housed next to the gallery and is open for private tours.

Chef’s will tell you that technique can only do so much; you need good ingredients to make good food. And materials make a difference in fine art as well. Knowing your tools can help you get the results you intend and it can certainly save you some aggravation. Nationally renowned plein air instructor Joe Gyurcsak takes us to the Utrecht Paint Factory in Brooklyn, New York to see how paint is milled.

Janine Dunn Wade is known for her beautiful still lifes of flowers. One critic described her free brushstrokes as “confident.” They look effortless. But there’s more behind the works than meets the eye. These beauties don’t just happen. Wade puts a lot of thought into the still life composition. She makes color studies and has palettes she’s developed over time. She studies other artists. And of course she’s worked for many years on her art. All of that go into the making of those seemingly improvised floral still lifes that are so joyful.

Artist Chee Bravo exactingly builds up layers of color to create energetic, motion-filled prints of musicians playing. Her carefully planned work nevertheless conveys a sense of carefree action. You can almost hear the music. Chee will show us her process for creating her many-layered screen prints.

But the layers aren’t just in Chee’s printing process. Her’s is a very personal body of work that stems from her life experiences. The people who populate her prints are friends from her favorite jazz club in Trenton. We’ll take a look at Chee’s paintings of the people she met on a trip to her husband’s native Cuba, paintings filled with all the character, color and energy of her screen-prints.

Join us as we explore the layers of Chee Bravo’s work.