Jedediah Morfit discusses his piece “The Price of Doing Business” at the opening reception of Far Away from the Beginning: A Departure from Childhood Idealism. Photo: Alysson Cwyk
Check out Drexel’s latest exhibit, Far Away from the Beginning: A Departure from Childhood Idealism, at the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery located in Nesbitt Hall (33rd & Market St). Tara Caton, an Entertainment and Arts Management major, curated this exhibition as her Senior Project using works from artists she worked alongside with during her first co-op.
We met with Caton to discuss Far Away at the opening reception on August 6.
The Triangle: How did the idea for this exhibit come about?
Tara Caton: Basically, this is my senior project so I was trying to think of it being able to correlate with me somehow personally and reflect on the artist. For me, this is a whole “you’re leaving college—your’re ending your childhood, leaving behind everything you knew and finally going into the adult world.” I started to look at all of the imagery from the artists that I was selecting from and a lot of it had to do with this youth and fairytale thing, with a little darker twist—with adult issues and then looking back. To sum it up, it’s a fairytale with a darker twist that parallels with childhood and adulthood.
TT: How did you go about choosing the works and the artists?
TC: The artists all came from an organization that was my first co-op, the Center for Emerging Visual Artists. They have a fellowship program that takes in local, emerging artists and helps them develop their careers, get them into shows, and helps them market and manage themselves. So I had to a pool and then from that, I took what I personally wanted to go after and what imagery matched. I picked and chose. Some people created new works for me and it just went from there.
TT: How long did the process take to put together your first show?
TC: It’s hard to say. It started off a year ago doing an independent study on collection management and we got the idea “wouldn’t it be cool for you to help out with a show” and it turned into “you need a senior project—why don’t you just take this whole thing on yourself.” So, it’s been a year but I think the bulk of it has happened in the last four months. And the last three weeks have been insane.
TT: Any plans to continue on with curating future exhibits after college?
TC: I would like to continue to curate, but it’s a very difficult position to find right away. There are not a lot of places that are going to hire an undergrad curator. I have to work my way up. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about grad school—or what I’m to go for. So I’m kind of going on a whim. If I can work on events, I will. I work at the Mutter Museum and they let me help with a bunch of the exhibits and curating those. I’ll see where it takes me.
TT: Were there any issues that you encountered while putting together this show? And how did you get over them?
TC: So many! I’ve never done this before. A lot of things came up: the director of the gallery changed about a month ago, so that was chaotic. It’s the summer, so no one’s around. And it’s really difficult to coordinate eleven artists—let me tell you. So that was always a challenge. I had artists not be able to complete their work for me. I had one artist have to drop out—they couldn’t produce their work. It was a lot of back and forth and having to depend on so many different people to help you. It’s definitely been a struggle. But it came together.
I’m finally relaxed. I think it looks great, personally. I’ve never hung a show—and I hung this whole thing.
Far Away from the Beginning: A Departure from Childhood Idealism will be on display from now until September 5 in the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery located in Nesbitt Hall at 33rd & Market St.
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