319 AIR – Exhibition Series / Fall 2021

Gateways and Habitats: Rachel Grobstein and Jayne Struble

November 5 – December 5

Opening Reception: First Friday, November 5, 6-9 PM

Grizzly Grizzly is pleased to announce our third artist-in-residence exhibit this season which features the work of Philadelphia-based artists Rachel Grobstein and Jayne Struble. In Gateways and Habitats Grobstein and Struble reveal their propensity toward process and research. Both artists are gleaners: they gather objects and detritus from their surroundings as a way to understand the character of a place and/or person. This tactile searching opens gateways to new ways of being in the world and demonstrates the wonder and appreciation both artists have of seeing habitats, walkways, personal effects and cityscapes as sites for deep investigation into the unknowable.

Earlier this year Grobstein used the gallery as a research studio in order to consider how and why humans imbue objects with meaning. Referencing what she gleaned from writings on ufology, religion, and personal rituals, she created a series of miniature paper sculptures and paintings based on sightings of unidentified flying objects, relics from the religious movement Heaven's Gate, and photos of friends' personal items hanging from rearview mirrors in automobiles. By playing with scale, Grobstein transforms artifacts from speculative sources into “window(s) through which we might view other worlds.” (Pasulka, American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology).

While Grobstein reinterprets objects that are highly valued in particular contexts, Struble is preoccupied with the accumulations of human detritus, both manufactured building materials and discarded objects easily found in urban spaces. Using the camera to collect images during her walks between her home and studio, Struble contemplates the ordinary physical reality in which we live through the lens of animism. During her residency, she used her recorded observations as source material to inform her videos and large-scale graphite drawings. In Gateways and Habitats, Struble exhibits her new video collages which are poetic and layered, and focus on the relationship between the human world and the physical world. Seeing herself as part of the environment, her work gives the castoff objects and spaces new life and emotional value, activating the agency of material phenomena.  

About 319 AIR: Since January 2021, the five artist-run galleries on the 319 Building’s 2nd floor are hosting artists-in-residence in their spaces. The pandemic has made it difficult to safely present exhibitions in our spaces, and, at the same time, many artists have been displaced from their studios due to the pandemic’s economic effects. In a time of isolation, we hope that making these spaces available offers inspiration and opportunity to realize new work, ideas, and (virtual) connections. 

2020/21 Grizzly Grizzly programming and residencies are supported by Added Velocity which is administered by Temple Contemporary at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University and funded by the William Penn Foundation.

Artist Bios

Rachel Grobstein is a painter and sculptor who creates miniatures which employ a radical scale shift and handmade detail to explore themes around memory, routine, and mortality. She is the recipient of awards and residencies including a Museum of Arts and Design Artist Studios residency, a Roswell Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, a Jentel Foundation fellowship, a Hammersley Foundation Grant, a Studios of Key West residency, and a Vermont Studio Center Full Fellowship and Residency supported by the Joan Mitchell Foundation. She has exhibited her work widely. Solo exhibitions include Galleri Urbane (Dallas, TX 2020), Andrew Rafacz Gallery (Chicago, IL 2018), Next to Nothing Gallery (New York, NY, 2018), and the Roswell Museum and Art Center (Roswell, NM, 2017). Grobstein received her MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and her BA in Philosophy and Visual Arts from Bowdoin College.

Jayne Struble is a drawing-focused artist whose work incorporates sculpture and video into site-specific works that investigate the way visual artifacts, such as video or images, are tangible yet vulnerable signifiers for our memories. Her work has been exhibited across the United States from the Cultural Arts Center in Columbus, Ohio to the Charles A. Hartman Gallery in Portland, Oregon and 4Most Gallery in Gainesville, Florida. Struble has attended multiple artist residencies including the Vermont Studio Center, Signal Fire Arts, and The Jentel Foundation. In St. Augustine, Florida Struble co-founded Southern Exposure Project Space, an artist-run exhibition space devoted to providing artists with a space which exists outside of commodification to take risks with their work. Struble received her MFA from Columbus College of Art & Design in 2014 and, currently, she is an Assistant Professor at Kutztown University in Kutztown, Pennsylvania.