Piecing it Together Exhibition, Meet The Maker

An exploration of Philadelphia through art, Piecing it Together explores two distinct areas of Philadelphia through assemblage. The Wissahickon Valley Park and Kensington District share a similar history: both are ancestral homes of the indigenous tribe, the Lenni Lenape, and both were part of the 18th- and 19th-century industrial boom, with mills and manufacturing dominating. What sets them apart is how these areas fared after deindustrialization.

The Wissahickon Valley Park was acquired by the city to protect the city’s drinking water, eventually transforming it into a protected, forested natural landmark. While much of the industrial past was torn down, remnants of the structures remain. Through Joseph Opshinsky’s detailed cut-paper collages, he captures the trails along the valley, the reclamation of nature, and the scars of its industrial past. Beginning with traditional sketches, Opshinsky’s use of vibrant papers brings the idyllic scenes of the Wissahickon trails to life.

The Kensington District, once known as the “Workshop of the World”, took a different path in the mid-20th century, as manufacturing went overseas, leading to job losses and suburban flight. The area was left with abandoned factories and scattered buildings. Through the rubble of his neighborhood, Michael Morgan unearthed the shards that would become his Kensington Apotheosis series. Systematically digging up the alley behind his property, which was the site of a dump from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries, he found old ceramic pipes and dolls, mostly fragments. Morgan gives these discarded, broken, long-forgotten, buried ceramic pieces a new life inspired by the Japanese practice of kintsugi, celebrating their broken past.