August 24, 2010

Putting-Out! Practices in Cottage Industry and Urban Guilding focuses on the home studio as an early entrepreneurial and artistic engine of the 19th century in our latest exhibition at the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery. This mixed media installation by Philadelphia artist Candy Depew is on view now through September 10th and was curated by Filiz O’Brien, the Pearlstein Gallery Graduate Assistant and a student in our Arts Administration program.  The exhibit, which is outfitted with a functional silk-screen printing set-up, includes silk-screen textiles, prints and decorative home goods created by Candy in her cottage-style home studios, as well as a painted wall mural of a "cottage-like" architectural form, layered prints, delicate framed paper collages and paintings.

According to artist Candy Depew, “Cottage Industry” and the “Putting-Out” system mirrors the decorative art and domestic goods that were produced by women in their own cottage-style home studios. Skills were practiced, honed, and passed down for generations, laying the groundwork for the Industrial Revolution. Although large industry absorbed production of many cottage industries, thousands of people still produce arts and crafts at home and this form of creative production has flourished in recent years.