Art Gallery

The Study at University City is please to partner with the Visual Studies Program in the Art and Art History Dept, Westphal College of Media Arts and Design of Drexel University. A series of solo exhibitions by their faculty members will be on display on a rotating basis.

Hotel guests are invited to tour the Art Gallery and learn more about how these working artists use their research, professional art practices and collaborative spirit to inform their pedagogy.

Jacob Lunderby

Limette
July - August 2022

Jacob Lunderby is an artist and educator based in Philadelphia; he earned a BFA in Painting from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Jacob teaches in the Drawing Area of the Art & Art History Department, Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design. He has an active record of exhibiting his work regionally, nationally, and internationally, including exhibitions in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Miami, Hawaii, Italy, Greece, South Korea and Japan, respectively.

Below is information on his current exhibit:

Prism, inkjet on archival polyester film and enamel on panel, 32.5 x 25.5 in., 2022

Good night, Day, inkjet on archival polyester film and enamel on panel, 25.5 x 32.5 in., 2022

Simulacra 1, inkjet on archival polyester film and enamel on panel, 32.5 x 25.5 in., 2022

Jacob’s work can be seen on his website: https://jacoblunderby.com.

Meghan Cox

Collected Page
May – June 2022

Meghan Cox is a Philadelphia-based artist and educator; she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a double major in Painting and Art History from Indiana University, Bloomington in 2003, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005. Meghan has taught drawing and painting at Brooklyn College, Temple University, Kutztown University, University of the Arts, Community College of Philadelphia, Penn State Altoona, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Drexel University. She has been awarded several grants including the George Sugarman Foundation Grant and an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, her work was included in the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery, London. She has exhibited work regionally and internationally; her most recent solo exhibition, hours and hours, was exhibited at Undercurrent NYC in Brooklyn, NY.

Meghan Cox paints highly realized compositions of imaginary landscapes and figurative elements from direct observation of still lives and cut paper environments in her
studio. During the past two years, Cox has developed a format for her oil paintings on paper that references the reproduction of bookplates in artist’s monographs. Within this bookplate format, Cox’s compositional elements create a trompe l’oeil effect in which the still life can be interpreted both as a painting and as the depiction of a reproduction of a painting. Meghan leaves the borders of the ‘page’ open in some paintings while other pages are infused with margin notes in the way of decorative border interventions. By courting a friction between real space and imaginary shadows, of presence and absence in her work, Cox invokes a meditation on time and reality.

Danielle Morris

Larchwood
April 2022

Danielle Morris (°1993, Philadelphia) is a self-taught photographer who mainly works in street and self-portraiture. With a conceptual approach, Morris absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice. Her works are often about the relativity of perception and its direct contrast with the absolution of existence. Morris focuses on the psychosocial effects life's mundane and extraordinary experiences have on people in the ‘public space’ or more specifically, on spaces where anyone can do anything at any given moment: the non-private space, the non-privately owned space, and space that is expressed through proximity to her subjects and their otherness to her sense of self. Her method of visual storytelling invokes contemplation and encourages self-reflection, while taking care not to re-traumatize viewers.

Larchwood takes place in a space where time doesn't exist as we know it. Memories manifest themselves and play in an infinite loop... The people and feelings that generated - and were generated by - these happenings, thus, live forever.

This anthology is rooted in Black memory. The inheritance of worldly, emotional, and intellectual possessions have shaped my life. Familiar scenes from a Black childhood have become ritual, home decor turned into shrine worthy altars of the everyday. Nostalgia serves as a spiritual connection to another plane of existence.

The household, and the walls that contain it, have produced and protected my sense of self. Larchwood is a portrait of my home, and by extension – a portrait of myself. These images are the backdrop of my childhood and the roots of my existence in the present. The series is an acknowledgment and a profession of gratitude to the hands that raised and continue to raise me, reflecting all that was poured into me by generations of strength fuelled by the will to survive.

Rashidah Salam

Moon Garden
February – March 2022

Born and raised in Malaysia, Rashidah Salam currently teaches at Drexel University and Jefferson (Philadelphia University + Thomas Jefferson University). She dedicates her success in her art career to her roots, upbringing, culture, tradition, and the influence of her surroundings.

Salam has received many awards for her artistry, including the Emerging Artist award for the Young Contemporary Artist Award in Malaysia and the Emerging Artist - Richard Nixon Memorial Award, 77th Annual CCA Members Show at Cheltenham Center for the Arts. Salam was most notably comissioned to paint a large mural project by the Mural Art Program of Philadelphia, the Interfaith Chapter of Philadelphia, and the National Endowment of the Arts entitled “Dare to Understand” at the St. Thomas Aquinas Community Philadelphia.

Her exhibit is centered around the notions a garden, a traveler's space, a garden of memories. The work is a relatively abstract painting style on single, diptych (two panels), and triptych (three panels) series of paintings. The constant characters in this work are the vibrant colors, the layering of shapes and the glaring outlines, embracing the edges and vividness.