upcoming grant deadline: 05/15/2024

upcoming grant deadline: 05/15/2024

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Between Seeing and Knowing Collaborative Installation

Between Seeing and Knowing Collaborative Installation

Between Seeing and Knowing
Philadelphia International Airport, Terminal E
Ticketed Passengers

In 2012, artists Anna Boothe (WOO '99) and Nancy Cohen began working on a large-scale glass installation during a residency program at Corning Museum of Glass. Both work independently as glass artists with collectively more than 55 years of experience.

Boothe, who lives and works in the Greater Philadelphia area, and Cohen, from northeastern New Jersey, share a similar interest in Tibetan Buddhist Thangka painting. This traditional art form has been described as "a sort of road map" that aids Buddhist meditation as the art focuses their spiritual practice and guides them "to the original insight of the master" or depicted deity. Using hundreds of 3-dimensional hand-made glass elements, Boothe and Cohen have conceptually "reinterpreted the symbolism" of Thangka paintings. This on-going project, titled Between Seeing and Knowing, "expresses the idea of the intermediate stage between perception and true understanding, a concept central to Buddhism," explained writer Stella Porter for UrbanGlass. 

Like the Thangka road map, Boothe said that the installation can be viewed as a "journey with many pathways" that wind their way throughout the overall composition. Cohen noted that the process and the installation embrace "unexpectedness and discovery with strands of ideas" that required "being open to where things would go."

The artists continue this open approach as each reiteration of Between Seeing and Knowing is different given the location. Always poetically composed on the wall, this magical floating landscape comprised of quasi-abstract and semi-recognizable elements envelopes the viewer in its tranquil beauty.

Visit annaboothe.com or nancymcohen.com

Installation will be on view for approx. 6 months.

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