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The University City Arts League celebrates March (Women's Month) with Personal/Universal, a group show featuring the distinctive works of six women photographers who share a passion for exploration and concern for social change. One of the exhibitors, photojournalist Genevieve Coutroubis asked the group (Julia Blaukopf, Jill Katz, Amie Potsic, Beth Uzwiak, and Elysa Voshell) to come together for Personal/Universal. The exhibition opens Friday, March 13 with a reception from 6pm-8pm and closes Sunday, April 5.
Personal/Universal includes 28 artworks featuring photographs presented in various forms: fabric panels, books, prints and scrolls. The collective statement reads, "With every image, each photographer has a different story, yet there is a shared vision and desire to create a common dialogue through photographic language." Each artist has a strong exhibition history and their work reflects images from where they have lived and explored as destinations for change.
Genevieve Coutroubis, a dual-citizen of Greece and United States, will show seven photographs ranging in size from 10 inches to 33 inches. Elysa Voshell has five 20-inch archival pigment print photographs and a 22-page book (archival pigment print, screenprint, and letterpress) created with Coutroubis. Voshell has exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Seoul International Artist's Book Fair, and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Netherlands. Amie Potsic work includes six archival pigment prints 24 by 50 inches reflecting her travels abroad. Her work has been exhibited in in Los Angeles, California and Philadelphia. Jill Katz who lives and works in Philadelphia, will exhibit six black and white archival pigment prints. Julia Blaukopf who traveled to Ghana to photograph for Women in Progress has four 4 feet by 4 feet photographs on sheer fabric. Visual anthropologist Beth Uzwiak's art practice explores the human body and what shapes our embodied experiences. She will exhibit a book.
About the Artists
Julia Blaukopf received a BFA in photography from University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She has studied painting, batik and photography in Boston, Italy and throughout the Philadelphia area. In October, 2006 Blaukopf traveled to Ghana to photograph for Women in Progress, a non-profit group that empowers women of the community through a sustainable business of clothing manufacturing. Her images of intimate moments between families, strangers in the city and local workers are aimed at creating an alternative documentary. The photographs have been exhibited in Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore. Blaukopf has been honored with the New Courtland Fellowship, the First Person Arts Fellowship, The Center for Emerging Artists Fellowship, The Camera Club of New York Resident Artist Award and the Oregon College of Art & Craft Resident Photographer's Award.Genevieve Coutroubis is a bi-lingual, dual-citizen of Greece and the United States. She received her BS in Photojournalism from Boston University and a MS in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. Through her work as a documentary photographer and during her graduate studies, Genevieve has focused on and pursued social change through art. Genevieve has extensively exhibited her photography nationally and internationally. She has also worked with various non-profit organizations to help bring art to underserved communities in the city of Philadelphia. In addition to exhibiting her own photographs, Genevieve currently works with emerging artists and the community through her position as the Director of The Regional Community Arts Program at The Center for Emerging Visual Artists.
Jill Katz is a photographer living and working in Philadelphia. She received her MA in Art Education from New York University and is currently the Director of Marketing and Communications at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to her studies at NYU, Katz earned her BA in Art and English Literature from Syracuse University and she has also studied at the International Center for Photography in New York. The subject of much of her work is based on international travels to Asia, Eastern Europe and Cuba. She has taught art in the New York City public schools and has worked with blind and visually impaired adults at the Jewish Guild for the Blind and through Art Education for the Blind, a program of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Prior to ICA she served as the Marketing Manager at the Jewish Museum in New York. Her work was selected as a finalist for "PhotoImaging," part of the Philadelphia Center for the Photographic Image, and was included in "Destination, The World" (A UNESCO Project).
Amie Potsic received her MFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and is currently the Director of the Career Development Program at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists in Philadelphia. She is an established photographic artist who does much of her work abroad in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, South America, and Mexico. Prior to her studies at the Art Institute, Potsic earned BA's in Photojournalism and English Literature from Indiana University. She also studied at the University of Arts in Philadelphia and the Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC, where she taught and coordinated photography programs for Shooting Back. She has held faculty appointments at the University of California at Berkeley, Ohlone College, and the San Francisco Art Institute. Potsic has exhibited her work internationally with solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Curatorial projects include exhibitions at Maryland Art Place, Icebox Project Space, Pomegranate Gallery, and The Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Beth Uzwiak is a visual anthropologist currently finishing her PhD at Temple University. Her dissertation examines human rights claims in Belize, Central America, specifically how an indigenous organization represents cultural heritage to secure communal legal protections. Part of this work documents how women narrate and visualize memories of violence. Beth has a professional background in counseling and advocacy, and has used art in therapeutic and social justice capacities. She now teaches art history and anthropology classes at local universities. Her art practice often explores the human body and what shapes our embodied experiences-such as violence, memory, ritual, migration, or travel. Along with photography, Beth creates works-on-paper that incorporate collage, sewing, drawing, printmaking, painting, and text.
Elysa Voshell holds an MA in Book Arts from Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, and a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She has exhibited her work internationally at such venues as the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, the Seoul International Artist's Book Fair, and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Netherlands. Voshell is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including a Special Opportunity Stipend from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a Window of Opportunity Award from the Leeway Foundation, a Residency Fellowship from the Collins Foundation, and the Stein Family Scholarship for Advanced Studies in Book Arts from the Center for Book Arts, New York. She is the Staff Writer at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania and currently serves as the Exhibitions and Events Chair of the Philadelphia Center for the Book.