After winning William Way LGBT Community Center’s annual juried-art exhibition, three local artists are now enjoying having their work showcased at the center.
The “Hall, Kalinay & Reed” exhibition features the works of Ed Hall, Glynnis Reed and Aaron Kalinay through Feb. 26. Hall and Reed are displaying works that are digital in origin, while Hall specializes in fantastical illustrations and Reed uses photographic elements to create mixed-media compositions. Kalinay’s work combines paint on canvas with mixed-media elements.
Reed said her contributions to the exhibition are from a photo series titled “Ascending Beauty.”
“It’s an expanding collection of portraits of women and queer-identified individuals who have touched my life in their own way and have had an impact on me,” Reed said. “The photos are meant to honor and uplift these individuals, and show their strength and beauty and uniqueness.”
Reed said she strives for each work to have multiple interpretations.
“It’s not that I have one direct message,” she said. “It’s the culmination of multiple layers of ideas that I express, and the way that I create my art reinforces that idea because I work with photography and digital manipulations that have multiple images collaged together, [which] creates a sense of multiplicity. You get through the layers and take the work in and my hope is the viewer will also explore the layers in the meanings as well.”
“I don’t always have the deepest meaning behind my artwork,” Hall noted. “But the particular pieces in this exhibition are varied in the way I approached them, emotionally, not style-wise.”
Hall added that, even though he works as a freelance graphic designer, he hadn’t initially thought of submitting artwork for the competition that won him a spot on this exhibition.
“I’ve done volunteer work for the William Way Center and they are a client of mine as a graphic designer,” he said. “They have this juried-arts show every year and I’ve always wanted to enter it but I never had the confidence to do it. This past one I got one piece in and it ended up winning.”
Both Hall and Reed said the support of William Way is important to them as out artists.
“I don’t know too many art galleries that focus primarily on the LGBT community,” Hall said. “So I think it’s nice that William Way, instead of just displaying any kind of art, is really focused on the community and the artwork that the community produces. It’s a great showcase for people who would not often get the same attention from another gallery. A lot of work I see at the William Way is very unique in its approach and I think some of the bigger galleries would reject that.”
Said Reed: “I feel like to get that kind of recognition for the specific work that I created was very validating because the image that I submitted was a portrait of a gender-queer friend of mine. I think it’s nice to have William Way as a space that feels welcoming and will embrace representations of that sort.”
The William Way LGBT Community Center presents “Hall, Kalinay & Reed” through Feb. 26 at 1315 Spruce St. For more information, call 215-732-2220. For more information on Ed Hall, visit www.eddidit.com. For more information about Glynnis Reed, visit www.glynnisreed.com.