Artwork From Montco College Professors On Display In Philadelphia

ABINGTON, PA — Two faculty members from the art department at Penn State's Abington campus have works on display this fall at two exhibitions in the City of Philadelphia.

The piece titled "Resistance/Persistence (It Takes Us To Make You), by Dawn Kramlich, a lecturer in art and art history at the college, was recently selected for the yearlong "Jawn 6: It's a Philly Thing" exhibit at Philadelphia International Airport.

The display is part of an arts initiative inside the airport's terminals.

"It's an amazing opportunity for thousands and thousands of people to view my work, which they might not otherwise see," Kramlich said in a statement.

Kramlich said that her generation is the only one to grow up both with and without the Internet, "so it's imperative for those who have that experience to share it."

"What happens when we translate ourselves through a screen and then add meme culture to the mix? I feel the need to dig into it and how culture has shifted over the last two decades," she stated.

Kramlich calls herself a "logophile," noting how she is able to connect both with art majors and those students studying more left-brain course subject matter, such as engineering.

"I think differently and consistently about what text and images signify, and it assists my ability to explain things to students," Kramlich said in her statement.

Her work was done using charcoal, permanent marker and encaustic on panel. It measures 18 inches by 53 inches and was scanned and printed to seven-and-a-half feet by 22 feet.

The other work, "La Trahison des Signes (The Treachery of Signs), is a multimedia piece created by fellow Penn State Abington associate art professor William Cromar.

Cromar's work will be on display through May at the National Liberty Museum's exhibit titled "truth*".

Cromar's contribution is a video installation comprised of 42 individual projections of his wife's mouth speaking 100 different phrases that some would consider to be controversial or whose meanings can vary depending upon the speaker, according to a news release from Penn State Abington.

"Overall, the exhibit explores the slippery nuances of truth as it appears in public discourse," Cromar said in a statement. "The notion was for me what does truth mean in a post-truth world? I was ruminating about it and landed on the idea that it becomes dangerous territory when two different people say the same words, and they mean opposite things."

Cromar instructs courses that focus on new media at Penn State Abington.