2024-25 Exhibitions

This exhibition opens the door to Brian Lutz’s art studio with never-before-seen thumbnails, sketches, and final original drawings along with prints of his works in context. Full Circle offers an in-depth look at his process of creating print-ready illustrations under the pressure of deadlines. Lutz combines traditional graphite drawing techniques with digital tools to create his works. While he has been drawing his entire life, the illustrations and drawings found in this exhibition were created between 2018 - 2024. Some were created for clients and others for personal practice, yet all helped build his career as a commercial illustrator.

Brian Lutz grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Coming of age in the 1990s, he was obsessed with art, television, film, music, books, magazines, and skateboarding, influences that would follow him throughout his career. Lutz earned an associate degree in advertising art from Penn College, a BA in studio art from Tyler School of Art at Temple University, and an MFA in illustration from the University of Hartford, where he has since joined the faculty as an adjunct professor. After completing graduate school, Lutz began working as a freelance editorial illustrator. His work has been recognized by American Illustration, Communication Arts, Applied Arts, 3x3 Magazine, Creative Quarterly, and Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles. He has created art for wonderful clients including Coastal Living Magazine, Toy Machine Skateboards, ProPublica, TIME, POLITICO, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine/Vulture, and more.

Mary Michael Shelley documents her life in wood and paint. Her artistic vision is inspired by the everyday world around her and includes portraits of her family, image metaphors for life lessons and feelings, and scenes of local diners, bars, shops, and farms in upstate New York. The works in this exhibition represent the evolution of Shelley’s carved and painted picture stories from 1973 to the present.

Shelley grew up on a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in an area rich in tradition, antiques, history, and craft. After graduating from Cornell, Shelley was inspired to carve wood when her father made a painted woodcarving of her. She has spent over 50 years of her life making objects that will survive, tell stories, and bring pleasure. Her work is in numerous collections including the American Folk Art Museum, High Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Arkell Museum, Fenimore Art Museum, The Absolut Art Collection at the Spritmuseum, and the American Museum and Gardens in Bath, England.

During the reception on November 7, Mary Shelley will demonstrate her low-relief wood carving process. Remarks at 5:30 p.m.

In the last 40 years, street art has evolved dramatically from the aerosol and painted mural graffiti that peppered subway stations and train yards, which was typically seen as vandalism. Today, new forms of visual communication are created in public spaces, often attracting viewers in more contemplative or interactive ways. Street art stickers have emerged as a provocative vehicle for self-expression and an effective way to engage passersby. 

Stickers may be used to “tag” a space, to sell products or services, to publicize social media sites, or to offer social commentary. As one of the most democratic art forms, stickers can be hand-drawn or printed, and are distributed quickly, cheaply, and widely. 

Stickers are “hidden in plain sight.” In urban settings dominated by commercial advertising, publicly placed stickers, by their very presence, re-write the streets and produce what curator Nato Thompson calls elsewhere “creative disruptions of everyday life.” Representing a diverse array of voices and perspectives, stickers offer an alternative to commercial advertising and corporate logos. And although ephemeral by nature, stickers capture the creative, cultural, and political pulse of time and place.

Incorporating the finest examples from two collectors, Oliver Baudach in Germany and Catherine Tedford in the United States, the exhibition includes over 900 original, unused stickers grouped by artists, themes, dates, and geographic locations. Oliver Baudach is the founder and director of Hatch Kingdom, the world’s first museum devoted to sticker art, and is a leading expert in the field. His international collection numbers over 30,000 stickers spanning genres from character design to skateboarding, streetwear, and music. Catherine Tedford, gallery director at St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, has been collecting stickers since 2003, and her collection numbers over 18,000 stickers from around the world. She writes about contemporary and historical political stickers on her research blog Stickerkitty.

Courtesy of St. Lawrence University (Canton, New York) and Hatch Kingdom Sticker Museum (Berlin, Germany).

Co-curated by Catherine Tedford and Oliver Baudach

Lecture: Sticker Shock

Tuesday, February 4, 3:30 p.m.
Penn's Inn, 2nd Floor, Bush Campus Center
In this information and lively lecture, Penn College Graphic Design Instructor Nicholas Stephenson will discuss the sticker as a pop culture medium. 
Following the lecture, a reception will be held in The Gallery at Penn College (3rd Floor, Madigan Library). 

Mayuko Ono Gray’s exhibition, 諸行無常_This too, shall pass, features the artist’s monumental graphite drawings that juxtapose Japanese calligraphic forms with depictions of the people, animals, and still lifes captured in her daily experiences. Reflecting on her life, which is culturally both Japanese and American, Ono Gray’s graphite drawings hybridize influences from traditional Japanese calligraphy combined with Western drawing practices and aesthetics. Each drawing is titled with a Japanese proverb spelled out with hiragana and kanji characters intertwined to create a single line from the top right to the lower left of the pictorial space, following traditional Japanese writing format. The line serves as a metaphor for life and the path taken from birth to death. Through this work Ono Gray navigates her position living between two cultures and languages.

Mayuko Ono Gray is an artist based in Houston, Texas, whose primary medium is graphite drawing. Born in Japan, she was trained in traditional Japanese calligraphy in her youth and later studied classical Western drawing. Ono Gray moved to the United States following high school and went on to receive an MFA in painting from the University of Houston in 2007. Her work has been exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad, including exhibitions in Japan, Mexico, Germany, Italy, UK, and Greece. Her works are represented by Hooks-Epstein Galleries in Houston and Galeria 910 in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Graphic Design 2025 is an annual exhibition displaying the best design, illustration, and web design work of graphic design majors in their final semester of study at Penn College. For the exhibition, design faculty select the top works developed by each student within their time at Penn College. The exhibition gives students a chance to present their work in marketing, branding, packaging, advertising, and design to industry professionals and the community.

Penn College graphic design students have consistently earned recognition through their submissions to regional, national, and international advertising design competitions, particularly in the student category of the American Advertising Federation’s American Advertising Awards and AIGA’s Flux Student Design Competition.

Special Hours:
Friday, May 16: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Monday, May 19: 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Closed Saturday & Sunday

Architecture & Sustainable Design features the projects of students’ architectural design work in their final year of study at Penn College. Each graduating senior was tasked with the design and development of a significant building in a location of their choice. Students will present design process and synthesis drawings, 3D models, technical building elements, and computer renderings depicting their comprehensive individual solutions.

The Penn College architecture program has a long history and a strong reputation. Associate and bachelor's degree graduates have gone on to pursue graduate studies at prestigious universities as well as attain employment in architecture, engineering, and construction companies across the United States. These graduates are well-versed in sustainability, design, and technical knowledge and make significant contributions to the built environment and the field of architecture. 

A new Bachelor of Architecture degree, adding a fifth year to the current bachelor’s degree framework and dramatically shortening graduates’ path to professional licensure, started in Fall 2022. To learn more about architecture and sustainable design majors at Penn College, visit the School of Engineering Technology at www.pct.edu/et

Summer Hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Sunday 1 – 4 p.m. 
Closed July 3 – 7 

5 Artists: Explorations and Conversations presents the work of Meredith Eachus Armstrong, Elizabeth Z. Bennett, Jean E. Downing, Peggy Blei Hracho, and Cecilia J. Rusnak. For nearly a decade, these artists have been committed to meeting monthly to support one another and critique work in process. They ask questions, give feedback, and discuss possible resolutions of both artistic and technical problems with the intention of helping each artist move their work forward. Critique encourages the artists to explore options, extend boundaries, and take risks. A productive and exciting give and take on thoughts and ideas transpires. Over the years, the artists have built trust and respect. The feedback shared is invaluable. 

Their collective work has a range of themes and styles: representational, abstract, landscape, imaginary and remembered places, ancient scripts, creatures, portraits, and more. The artists share a commitment to using textiles as an essential element of their work and employ a variety of techniques including hand and machine stitching, photographic processes, upcycling, painting, dyeing, printing, surface design, collage, assemblage, and embellishment. All of the members are Pennsylvania-based artists who have shown their work in juried and invitational exhibitions.