November, 2009 Exhibit

Melissa Maddonni Haims,
Rochelle Dinkin & Rachel Isaac:

Heaven, Hell & Original Sin

(l-r: Melissa Maddonni Haims, Rochelle Dinkin & Rachel Isaac)

Press Release

Melissa Maddonni Haims has been working feverishly for 2 years, knitting, crocheting, and stitching together a personal version of what heaven and hell might look like, constructed of yarn. This vision takes form at Highwire Gallery, in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia, in November, 2009.

As you enter into this alternate cosmos, convoluted, cloud-like sculptures, stuffed with recycled fibers, hang from the ceiling in the front room, bathed in light from the storefront windows. In this version of heaven, many of the sculptures are formed and named for those who have passed from this world to the next, including the artist’s mother, the catalyst for this project. Others have been commissioned to memorialize loved ones. These sculptures are organic and unconventional, not at all the predetermined forms associated and derived from faded stitchery pattern-books. Here we have rambling rows curling around into sensuous newness.

As you depart from heaven’s high-ceilinged, light filled, ambience, you move into the gallery’s center room, a purgatory of sorts, where a selection of paintings by The Grimm Sisters, Rochelle Marcus Dinkin and Rachel Isaac, are on display. "Original Sin" is an artistic collaboration of the imagery of the collective conscious expressed through the eerie and playful mythology of fairy tales. Their efforts combine whimsy and trepidation to produce works born from the shadows of their psyches.

Deeper within the space, in the compact backroom, is the culmination of 2 years worth of knitting and crocheting. The room is filled with plush, stalagmitic sculptures that invoke Dante’s journey through hell, with knitting needles. These sculptural interpretations of hellacious inhabitants range in size from 12 inches to 6 feet. Again, the forms are beyond imagination, infused with improvisation, as the artist explores form-building unique to the controlled entanglement of strings and strands. Who do you think inspired these damned souls?

Melissa Maddonni Haims is a mixed media artist based in Philadelphia. She explores alternative materials, mostly recycled, reclaimed or rescued, with knitted elements and found objects. Her career in the arts began in New York City in the 1990’s, and life led her back home to Philadelphia in 2004, where she lives with her family in Chestnut Hill. Ms. Haims currently maintains membership in the Highwire Artists Co-operative and the Northwest Artists Collective, and teaches children and young adults traditional handwork methods, such as knit and crochet, for the Handwork Studio of Narberth, Pa.

The Grimm Sisters are the culmination of the ongoing dialogue between Rachel Isaac and Rochelle Marcus Dinkin, spanning a period of seventeen years. Their collaboration seems most authentically a 'duet' - two individual instruments hearing and responding to a particular groove. The narratives in their individual work 'play' with many parallel concepts, issues and preoccupations. Identity and boundaries, both psychological and aesthetic are explored. Visual language used archetypically in the fairy tale, resonates in both of their works and are meant to intone responses in our deepest primordial consciousness.

For more information and photographs, please visit their websites www.melissamaddonnihaims.com and www.grimmsistersart.com.