The Brooklyn Rail

At Haverford College’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, the current exhibition begins with an instruction: look here. Delivered via the show’s title, such a command implies different curatorial goals. Perhaps the artworks on view contain minute details and require close viewing. Perhaps the artists themselves are overlooked, and the show aims to prove that they are deserving of attention. Before visiting, I assumed the directive was to solve the latter and encourage due recognition of the artists, all six of whom have practices with the Center for Creative Works (CCW) in Philadelphia, a progressive studio supporting neurodiverse artists. But I realized there was something completely different on hand in the first room in LOOK HERE, which was full of graphite and marker drawings by Allen Yu. The colorful works on paper catalogue everyday objects with repeated images detailing nuances of crispy chicken sandwiches or pineapples, for example, each piece displaying an almost encyclopedic visual index of the chosen subject. With Yu, it was clear that there is no need for LOOK HERE to argue that the artists merit attention; their work proves that was never in question.

To be fair, these artists—Kelly Brown, Cindy Gosselin, Clyde Henry, Tim Quinn, and Brandon Spicer-Crawley, along with Yu—might not be household names, but that they are lesser known is not the premise of the show. Rather, LOOK HERE celebrates creativity and tenacity, highlighting each person’s devotion to their crafts, which range from ceramics and mixed media sculptures to works on paper. The artists’ personalities come through in their work—the things that fascinate them and make them want to continue to create. Yu’s favorite subject, it seems, is public transportation, like the trains of Seoul that he repeats in orderly rows set in solid backgrounds. Each train includes remarkable details, such as the car name and number, the appearance of the conductor, and the route map.

Other artworks reveal spaces and imagery familiar to the artists, including things associated with comfort and home. Working across disciplines including drawing and sculpture, Henry depicts his friends and family. During COVID-19 when CCW had to switch to online learning, Henry became fascinated with videos of animals and began making playful ceramic heads of subjects like cows and elephants. In his own work, Quinn reimagines architectural spaces into grid-like and geometric paintings. Some are titled after their inspiration, such as Untitled (Garage) (2016) and Untitled (Dad’s Basement) (2015), offering insight into how he distills these rooms, flattening the three dimensional into linear planes. Also working in a range of disciplines, including painting, ceramics, and murals, Spicer-Crawley depicts abstract shapes and text that reveal glimpses of recognizable imagery like police officers. He often paints over reproductions of famous artworks, seen with Me, You (2019), in which circular shapes form suggestions of bodies on top of Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 (1912) by Marcel Duchamp, perhaps reimagining this Cubist painting in his own cascade of shapes.

The show’s organizers, curator Jennifer Gilbert and CCW artists Paige Donovan and Mary T. Bevlock (who also created portraits of the artists on view), considered accessibility as a guiding principle rather than an afterthought. Bringing a multisensory element to the show are scratch-and-sniff postcards of Yu’s Ice Cream Cones and Bars (2022) that visitors can take home. Additionally, several works with textural elements are accompanied by small samples that visitors can touch to enhance the sensory experience and for people with blindness or low vision to engage. For me, these inclusions were particularly important for the works by Brown and Gosselin. Both artists are blind and create hand-made textile-based pieces—Brown crocheting and weaving colorful, columnar tapestries and Gosselin wrapping found objects with thread as if mummifying them, sometimes turning everyday items into totem-like assemblages. Including tactile elements allowed visitors to interact with these pieces in the same way the artists do through physical touch. For Brown, who is also unable to speak or hear, physical engagement is even more important to understand her experience with the weavings.

While these decisions were made to engage senses beyond sight, some curatorial choices in the name of accessibility had the added effect of subtly critiquing institutional norms. In the wall text for each piece, the curators made sure the analyses were in line with the artists’ visions rather than use art historical jargon. Additional booklets include texts from the artists themselves, featuring refreshingly straightforward and personal descriptions. Perhaps all curators can learn a thing or two from this approach that aims to clarify rather than obfuscate. In another welcome shift in convention, a bench for visitors to sit and watch a video of the artists working is positioned at an angle and to the side, rather than directly in front of the video, allowing those using wheelchairs to have prime seating. It’s a simple decision, but one that had a great impact on the viewing experience.

With these choices, the beauty of the show extends beyond its message. LOOK HERE doesn’t just tell the story of the artists’ experiences with the world, it briefly lets the viewer into these experiences, hyper-focusing on serial images to see what it means for Yu to chronicle trains or for Gosselin to wrap the contours of the objects she is drawn to. Centering the artists’ work and not their disabilities or their positions as “insider” or “outsider,” the show presents an invitation to reframe how we think about what it means to engage with the world when one person’s experience of “looking” is not the same as another’s.