Satellite Events

‍Jennifer Manzella

She/ Her

Bio

Jennifer Manzella is an artist and printmaker whose print-work is mainly created through relief and etching processes. She’s been an art educator for about 20 years and received an MFA in printmaking at The University of Georgia. Manzella has been in numerous juried national and international exhibitions including two with the International Print Center NY. She has also exhibited with the Manhattan Graphic Center, Atlanta Printmakers Studio and had a solo exhibition at Arcadia University in 2019. Manzella has been involved in several public art projects in New York City and Philadelphia, has been a recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Grant, and has done several artist residencies including the fully funded Haystack Open Studio Residency at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine along with two National Park Service Residencies. She served as an Art-in-Resident for the National Park Service at Shenandoah National Park in 2020 and Isle Royale National Park in the summer of 2024.

Born in Wilmington, Delaware but raised in Connecticut, she has lived in many different places on the east coast. Manzella relocated back to Philadelphia in the summer of 2016 after living in Athens, GA for 12 years. She currently teaches printmaking courses at Arcadia University, is a member of BYO Print, a printmaking cooperative in Philadelphia and is an active participant in the Philadelphia Print Consortium.

Statement

“The images I create are the result of my observations and discoveries within an environment or a place. I’m an artist who works mainly with printmaking; drawing and photography are often a large part of that process. Landscape, land use and the intersection of natural and urban areas are concepts that I’m exploring. My interest in the idea of place, home and habitat is a result of my experiences living in many different types of environments; I’ve lived in or near a few major cities in the northeast and southeast United States, but I also thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2003 which involved six months of continuous walking through the woods. I think and reflect about my surroundings constantly, considering how humans have transformed the landscape through property claims, displacement, development and industry.  What is physically observed when moving through a region whether that is a busy city, river corridor, woodland trail, or neighborhood is important for me, and I make images based on that experience. I find that traveling on foot or cycling through a new place is a visceral experience, one that allows an individual to observe things that you don’t notice when traveling in a vehicle.

This series of small copper etchings titled “City Blocks” features small, isolated landscapes that depict empty building lots throughout the city of Philadelphia. This is a two- and half-year project that was initiated in the fall of 2016 when I moved back to the city of Philadelphia after 12 years in Athens, GA. I started photographing and creating sketches of these wild urban spaces that exist in forgotten lots and old structures; tiny ecosystems filled with weeds, feral cats, trash and occasionally a community garden. Some of these lots had been cared for and become green spaces within these marginal neighborhoods while other lots are representative of years of neglect.  At this time, I noticed that these empty green spaces were disappearing quickly as real estate prices were skyrocketing and developers were filling the spaces with high priced townhouses and commercial properties. This is a result of the rapid rate of gentrification in North and South Philadelphia neighborhoods.  This series of prints forms a portrait of the transitioning city landscape.”

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‍Fran Lightman Gibson 

She/ Her

Bio

Fran Lightman Gibson is a Philadelphia-based painter who specializes in working with oil on canvas. Her artwork has been featured in several regional venues, including The Henry Gallery at Penn State Great Valley, Powell Lane Arts, Cerulean Arts Gallery, The Chester County Art Association, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, the Cosmopolitan Club, CityWorks, the Cheltenham Art Center, and the Morgan Gallery in New Mexico. In 2015, her artistic achievements were recognized when one of her paintings was selected for the cover of Ernest Yates’ En Route from the Capital, Poems of Philadelphia, published by Xlibris Corporation. In addition to her painting career, Fran has contributed to the academic community for many years as a lecturer in European and American Art History.Fran Lightman Gibson is a graduate of the University of the Arts—BFA, receiving the Bocour Prize, and Tyler School of Art—MA, Tyler Grant Recipient. Early in my career, around 1970, I was drawn to painting ice flows in response to what then felt like the looming prospect of a coming ice age. But recent experiences have profoundly reshaped my artistic focus.

Statement

“Last year, while hiking through the Canadian Rockies, I encountered the great glaciers up close. The journey held a deeper resonance: it followed my third battle with breast cancer and a near-fatal reaction to immunotherapy. Each step of that seven-mile hike felt like a victory—an affirmation of resilience, presence, and the preciousness of life. Standing before those immense formations, I felt both humbled and ignited. My recent series of paintings reflects on the fragile equilibrium between beauty and danger in our environment, with particular attention to the rapidly melting glaciers. Once symbols of permanence, they now stand as urgent emblems of climate change and human impact. I work with a palette that carries the darkness of millennial ice, the luminous blues of ice in transformation, and the ash-grey tones of moraine and glacial till.

Each brushstroke bears the emotional weight of these precarious, shifting landscapes—inviting viewers to look closely, to understand deeply, to rise up, and to engage in preserving our planet. This work extends beyond personal survival and the metaphors nature offers; it is a call to awareness. By exploring the intersection of natural beauty and human endurance, I hope to spark conversations and inspire new ways of seeing—and protecting—our fragile world. There is a quiet fury beneath the peace of it all. You can trace it in the direction of my strokes.”