Gallery Joe
302 Arch Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106

Samantha Simpson and Rachel Perry Welty at Gallery Joe

Philadelphia, PA. Gallery Joe is pleased to present a two-person show with artists Rachel Perry Welty and Samantha Simpson. The exhibition opens in the Front Gallery on First Friday, May 2 and runs through June 28, 2008.

Contemporary culture is a motivating force for both Simpson and Welty. The detritus of modern life provides Welty with a rich source of inspiration. In her first show with Gallery Joe Welty will show drawings, sculpture, and video, created from the wealth of materials that come into her life uninvited including fruit stickers, email spam, discarded packaging, and telephone messages.

Simpson constructs her drawings with language and verbal cliché. Rendered in ballpoint pen they conjure up turn of the century carnival posters, ads, and political broadsides. Closer inspection reveals Simpson’s concerns with identity and personal revelation in a world where the macabre takes its place gracefully alongside flowers, birds and bugs.

Simpson’s work is included in the collections of The Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete & Visual Poetry in Miami and the Rene & Veronica DiRosa Foundation, Napa, CA. among others. She lives and works in Philadelphia.

Welty lives and works in Boston, MA. Her work is included in the collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. She is a winner of Boston’s prestigious Foster Prize and is represented in Boston by the Barbara Krakow Gallery.