On display in Shipley's Speer Gallery from January 27 - April 4, 2025

Shipley's Speer Gallery presents an exhibition of paintings and sculptures addressing the urban landscape of Philadelphia. Drew Leshkow, Sophie White, and Nasir Young have been studying the buildings and landscape of Philadelphia investigating things like memory, gentrification, history, preservation, alienation, and the mundane. While the subjects are similar, each artist's approach is unique. White’s paintings capture an urgency to document places before they disappear, while Young depicts places that speak to his memory or feelings of a place. Leshko makes wood and paper sculptures on a 1:12 scale examining gentrification, history, and preservation. Speer is looking forward to engaging students in discussions around the topics present in the work through classroom visits and working with the artists themselves.

In response to an extreme wave of development and displacement occurring in my Fishtown/Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, I made over 100 plein-air gouache paintings of my local surroundings between 2019-2022. I’ve been painting cityscapes in this manner for over fifteen years, ever since I learned to paint while experiencing similar feelings of alienation from my surroundings, growing up in Lower Manhattan at the turn of the Millennium.

By making paintings of places on the verge of becoming unrecognizable, I am able to spend time with and mourn the neighborhood as I once knew it, while anticipating what is to come. Each painting is made in the exact time and place in which the place depicted existed, with me in it, and it is sort of an artifact of that moment as experienced by me. Painting the image by hand with only my natural vision to guide me, allows me to decide exactly what information before my eyes needs to be included in the image, and enables the particularities of my senses and movements to determine formal characteristics.

Drew Leshko is a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based artist. By carving, cutting, and layering varieties of paper and wood, Leshko creates documentary studies of architecture from his neighborhood in an attempt to create a three-dimensional archive of buildings that are in transitional periods. The work examines gentrification and history, how historical relevance is determined, and most importantly, what is worth preserving. Working from observation and photographs, the artist painstakingly recreates building facades from his neighborhood at a 1:12 scale. The scale is familiar to some viewers as standard dollhouse spec; the treatment of the buildings is widely different. The minute detail of his work includes city detritus such as dumpsters and pallets, which are commentary of the same ideas of what is worth preserving. Highlighting quick fixes and simple solutions, Leshko’s work begs the viewer to build their own ideas of why and when these changes had been made. Accumulations of typically overlooked details and minutiae like acid rain deposits and rust become beautiful adornments.

The landscape that draws me in is one of familiarity; spaces, memories, and stories can be joined and exited. The work comes from a place of my hyper-awareness of my surroundings. I am a person who walks down the street looking at the brick and mortar, the markings on the wall, and the trash on the ground wondering about its story. My practice starts with the world around me; guided by the happenstance moments that you would miss if you blink just once. I document the small wonders. These range from shadows dancing around objects, to visual clutter that tells a story. These may sit in my sketchbooks for months or years before it is time to use them. Every page of these books evokes memories of moments capturing a story that viewers often can relate to. I have to sit with this imagery and discover why it emotionally stirred me. When I go to bring these creations to life I use observation, studying the tiniest details of information that could be easily overlooked. My landscapes and buildings are my characters with figures as supporting props, often depicting a drama and story with no figure ever being present.