Tracing an Outline Around a Man’s Shadow:
Atticus Adams, Aaronel deRoy Gruber, Michael Morrill, Ed Panar, La Vispera

August 1 - September 13, 2024

Tracing an Outline Around a Man’s Shadow is a group exhibition of works that explore shadows, cast light, color, and negative space. Six artists working across entirely different mediums and thematic concepts come together, playfully casting shadows, capturing darkness, and employing materials that diffuse light in unique cascades and hues. 

The exhibition’s title is in reference to the myth of the Corinthian Maid, who, in an effort to capture the likeness of her lover before he went off to war, drew an outline of his shadow on the wall behind him as he slept. The myth, recounted by numerous philosophers throughout history, is often referenced as the birth of painting, and as humanity’s primary foray into the depiction of the self. When considering the shadow’s mythical place in history to bring us out of the proverbial darkness, one discovers that is has also been associated with the soul, evil, and the self’s own doppleganger. A shadow’s many associations serve as a psychological mirror to our existential fear and wonder and is explored here by the containment and diffusion of light and darkness within the gallery setting. 

Simultaneously highlighting the psychological impacts of shadows and darkness, Tracing an Outline Around a Man’s Shadow explores materiality through the various mediums employed by each artist. In focusing on the presence of each work, how can viewers contend with the underlying nothingness that gives a shadow its unique significance? In approaching each work, viewers will find that the fleeting intangibility, which is a central element of both shadows and light, acts as a unifying force throughout the exhibition.

This exhibition is curated by Nina Friedman, Director at the Tomayko Foundation.



About the artists:

Atticus Adams grew up steeped in traditional folk art. Several members of his family were self-taught artists, deeply involved in such crafts as wood carving and quilting. His formal art training includes stints at Yale School of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, and Harvard School of Architecture. Adams’ art has been exhibited in national institutions like the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Mattress Factory, and the Westmoreland Muesum of American Art. He is the recipient of many awards including the Artist of the Year Award from the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in 2018. His sculptures can be found in public and private collections in the US, Great Britain, Spain, Australia, Saudia Arabia, China, and the Philippines. 

Aaronel deRoy Gruber (1918-2011) was a prolific, pioneering female artist whose vibrant Plexiglas sculptures, compact wearable forms, and striking screen-prints and canvases brought her significant recognition as a multifaceted modern visionary throughout the 1960s and 1970s - as did photography later in her career. Following a formative period in the early 1950s of exploring her language of abstraction on canvas and through metal assemblage, deRoy Gruber’s compositions adopted the bold volume and materiality to which she would dedicate her creative practice. In 1968 she was included in the landmark exhibition: Made of Plastic at the Flint Institute of Arts, and continued to exhibit internationally and across the US. 

Establishing her studio practice in Pittsburgh after completing a Bachelor of Science in Costume Economics from Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1940, deRoy Gruber often closely collaborated with the machinists, technicians, engineers, and fabricators commonplace in the city’s industrial setting. 

deRoy Gruber’s work has been included in many exhibitions including A Woman’s Place: How Women Shaped Pittsburgh, Senator John Heinz History Center, Pittsburgh (2024), Think Pinker curated by Beth Rudin deWoody, GAVLAK, Los Angeles (2023), Modernism Week, Palm Springs, California (2023 and 2022), Plastic Heart: Surface All the Way Through, curated by Synthetic Collective at Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris (2022) and Art Museum at the University of Toronto (2021), and Moving Vision: Op and Kinetic Art of the Sixties and Seventies at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art (2021). deRoy Gruber’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, and the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, Japan, amongst others. 

Trained as a sculptor, Michael Morrill works primarily in painting and mixed media. He is interested in the history and influences of abstraction and digital technologies in drawing, painting, printmaking, and multi-media collaborations. His work has been exhibited in the United States and Europe and is represented in private and corporate collections. 

Ed Panar is a Pittsburgh based photographer and bookmaker whose interest in photography started in high school as an amateur, photographing his everyday surroundings, friends, and acquaintances. Meditating on the contrast between reality and photography has been a source of fascination ever since. Being a non-driver, his work is largely focused on exploring the places he’s lived and their immediate surroundings by walking, bicycling, and public transportation. He has published several photobooks including: Winter Nights, Walking (2023), In the Vicinity (2018), Animals That Saw Me Volume One and Two (2011 and 2016), Salad Days (2012), Same Difference (2010), and Golden Palms (2007). His photographs and books have been exhibited at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and at Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco. Ed has received the Heinz Endowments Creative Development Award in 2022 and is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. 

La Vispera is an art collective created by Colombian immigrants Kelly Jimenez and Alejandro Franco. Their creative journey began in Florida in 2018 and has taken them on a path of artistic exploration. Alejandro excels as a multidisciplinary artist, working primarily in the arrangement of found object assemblages and paintings, while Kelly brings her expertise as an art director to life, specializing in spatial interventions for visual concepts in set design and editorial publishing. 

In 2019, while residing in St. Louis, Missouri, they united to form La Vispera, embarking on a journey of consistent collaboration. Their presence in St. Louis was marked by exhibitions at renowned venues such as G-CADD, Lambert International Airport, Angad Arts Hotel, and Duane Reed Gallery, among others. Their artistic process was recognized and commissioned by the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Washington, the Sheldon Art Galleries, they were entrusted with crafting a work of art for the master suite of 21C Museum Hotel. They participated as artists in residence at the Laumeier Sculpture Park, and they also proudly serve as environmental artists at Bernjeim Arboretum and Research Forest in Kentucky. 

For the last two year, La Vispera has called Pittsburgh home, where they are gaining visibility through their participation in the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, the Office of Public Art Creative Corps, and the recent acquisition of one of their works by CCAC through the Art Supply Co. for their new North Campus building. They were also the Tough Artist in Residence at the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum, and they eagerly hope to deepen their connections and expand their artistic horizons in the city. 





Installation images by Chris Uhren
Aaronel deRoy Gruber’s sculptures are courtesy of the Irving and Aaronel deRoy Gruber Foundation and the collection of Jill Greenwald and Gregory Adams