RAINFAINT WINDTHIN: Emily Elliott, Joy Feasley, and Paul Swenbeck

Runs / January 10 – February 23, 2025

Reception / Friday, January 10, 6-9 PM

Hours: Sat-Sun from 2-6 PM

This winter, Grizzly Grizzly presents Rainfaint Windthin, a three-person collaborative exhibition that brings together artists Emily Elliott, Joy Feasley, and Paul Swenbeck to explore perceptual experience and constructed realities.

In 2019, Emily, Joy, and Paul were on a walk in Philadelphia’s John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge when they experienced a unique weather phenomenon. They witnessed a waterspout approaching across the wetland landscape. As it neared, the waterspout created a microclimate of wind, sound, and cold air before it dissipated into the woods behind the trail. The invisible force that plowed through the rushes felt to all an otherworldly entity, charging like a ghostly freight train filled with mysterious energies.  This exhibition attempts to describe this happening through multiple viewpoints shaped by time, accentuating the difference between individual memories within a shared experience.

To tell this story, the trio divides the space of Grizzly Grizzly into two distinct zones: one that recalls the watery marsh of Tinicum, and one that represents the viewing areas that dot the park. The marsh is populated by the ephemeral waterspout and its magical power. The viewing area is a place to slow down and take in the imagined landscape from a place of quiet contemplation and curious exploration. 

To express the vision of this specter, the artists use light and sound to convey the individual thoughts of these artists. Acrylic reflections of colored mirrors which fill the white void of the gallery are activated by turning lights, creating a silvery, dream-like environment. The space is brimming with the live sound of raspy bells and the gentle buzzing and hissing of devices invented by the trio to set a mood of an agitated drone. Emily, Joy, and Paul each display individual artworks that describe the entity in shorthand riffs. Whether each sees a magnetic field, spirit, or monster, the three artists in Rainfaint Windthin have a single objective: to make the invisible visible.