Courtyard by Marriott Philadelphia South at The Navy Yard
Massuch & Tassiou
Influenced heavily by the architecture of her surroundings, Roberta Massuch, based in Philadelphia, creates functional pottery, sculptural vessels and installations with evident reflection on construction techniques and the presence of hand. Utilizing the dichotomy of varied surface colors and their interactions, she establishes a comparison to individuals and human interaction; her incorporation of the step motif serves as a metaphor for change. Leaving seams exposed as evidence of construction, her work allow the viewer opportunity to ascertain the interaction of individual components and reference to their structural influence.
Born and raised in Greece, Demetra Tassiou received her Bachelor Arts Degree at University of Athens and made her way to the Philadelphia region after receiving her Masters in print making at University of Pennsylvania. The themes of her artwork surround reconnecting with nature, the sea, and the colorful environments that she has yearned for after moving to a large, urban, American city from the Mediterranean landscapes. As a painter and printmaker, she starts her pieces by collecting her thoughts and inspirations. She experiments by assembling etched-papers and collagraphs as collages. During this process, a dialogue develops between two different methods (acrylic / oil painting and print-making) which will eventually show a complexity of multi-layered artwork on surfaces like wood panels, canvases and installations.
Both artists' works relate in color scheme, the abstraction of subject matter, but more importantly by their use of rich texture.
Feature image: I have a dream, Demetra Tassiou
Inspired by the poem, "The Dream," written by Lola Ridge (1873-1941)
I have a dream to fill the golden sheath of a remembered day…. (Air heavy and massed and blue as the vapor of opium… domes fired in sulphurous mist… sea quiescent as a gray seal… and the emerging sun spurting up gold over Sydney, smoke-pale, rising out of the bay….) But the day is an up-turned cup and its sun a junk of red iron guttering in sluggish-green water – where shall I pour my dream? <div class="yj6qo ajU"> </div>
