Heavy Merge: An Installtion by Carolyn Healy and John Philips
Tuesday, August 19, 2025
12:00 PM-6:00 PM
The Pearlstein is pleased to announce our summer exhibitions coming to the gallery August 18th - October 10th.
Heavy Merge is a new multimedia installation by sculptor Carolyn Healy and audio-video artist John Phillips. Inspired by a three-pound blob of warm, wet, living matter networked by billions of synapses, the artists take a personal look at the matrix that mysteriously gives rise to consciousness. For Healy and Philips, the brain is a wonderland of feedback and freewheeling interconnection that melds sensory perception and stored experiences into unique inner landscapes. They are fascinated by our powers of awareness, imagination and abstraction and by the sometimes unruly mental functions that seem to operate without us. Their site-specific installation juxtaposes sculptures and shadows with video feedback projections and soundscape to approximate the boundless creative activity in our brains that allows us to feel human.
Carolyn Healy is an installation artist who began her career exhibiting small, abstract assemblages of found objects in 1979 at the Marian Locks Gallery, Philadelphia. Since 1987, she has created numerous large site-specific installation pieces, many in collaboration with audio-video artist John Phillips. These have been seen nationally and internationally in museums, university galleries, theaters, as well as rough industrial and alternative sites. Carolyn has received five individual Artist Fellowships in Interdisciplinary Art from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and grants from the Leeway Foundation, the Dietrich Foundation and the Pollock Krasner Foundation.
John Phillips is a sound and video artist. His work has included interactive sound installations and audio-visual performances in museums, art galleries, and non-traditional spaces in this country and abroad. Since 1987, he has collaborated extensively with sculptor Carolyn Healy on site-based installations. His musical compositions have been presented at dance and theater venues, on the nationally syndicated radio program New American Radio, and at national and international electronic art festivals. His composing has been supported by American Composers Forum (collaboration with Pauline Oliveros) and the Millay Colony (composer in residence). To pursue his video work, he has enjoyed residencies at the Experimental Television Center and at Signal Culture, both in Owego, New York. Grants include a fellowship in Sound Art from the National Endowment for the Arts and several in Media Arts from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
Contact Information
Pearlstein Gallery
gallery@drexel.edu