Full Circle:
A group exhibition celebrating circularity
October 2025 marked The Resource Exchange’s 16th year, and as part of our annual Revel•re fundraiser celebration, the reCreate Gallery showcased a special “Full Circle” exhibition in honor of environmental circularity. To represent this theme, we put out a call for all things CIRCLES! and our talented community of local artists answered!
Aaron Kalinay
Aaron Kalinay is a painter and mixed media artist and an Art Educator in Philadelphia. His work expresses the calm and chaos of life as we experience it intimately and observe it globally. These feelings are experienced deeply in the present moment, through reflection on the past, and contemplation of the future. The work uses abstraction and non-objectivity in organic mark-making and exaggerated color to express the cyclical nature of life and feelings through instinctual circular mark-making. Found materials, canvas, and objects are often participants in the formal dance to relish the timeless and universal qualities of the abstract and non-representational.
Alex Bell
Alex Spencer Bell has been living and working in Philadelphia since 2021, with deep connections to craft practices. Recently, they have been exploring fiber arts, one of the first craft mediums they learned from the elder women of their childhood community of southern New Hampshire. Seeking out both color and softness through art practices has become a re-awakening for creating art for themselves after working in ceramics production for three years. In a way, working with fiber is a full circle moment – relearning why they like creating objects to fill space and time with.
Anna Kapustina
Anna Kapustina is an independent artist based in Philadelphia. This series of textured works departs from her usual practice but forms a thoughtful exploration. Using recycled materials—cardboard, jute, hemp rope, resin, polymer clay, and paper—she emulates natural surfaces: earth, bark, mineral deposits, salt crusts, and water-like forms.
The circle appears throughout—sometimes as a core, sometimes as a frame—echoing continuity and quiet return.
What began as material play evolved into a meditation on transformation. Each piece stands alone yet together forms a resonant system honoring reclaimed matter and invites reflection on presence and possibility in the overlooked.
D’vorah Horn
I am a life-long studio artist and writer. My methods and media tend to cross genres. The work I have submitted is from a series I call my Circle Series. I have worked with found objects, both natural and human made, for years. I wish to draw attention to the beauty I see in these objects, to wake up the viewer to the discarded or the easily passed by. I began embedding the objects in cast circles of local beeswax to preserve, venerate and seal them. I use beeswax in consideration of the essential role bees play in holding the natural world together. As a medium the beeswax calls on all the senses, inviting the viewer to become a participant in the story I am sharing with them.
Deanna Black
Deanna Black is a multidisciplinary artist and designer who works in collage, paint, and graphic design. Deanna pursued her passion for art and design at Kutztown University, where she studied Communication Design to develop her skills in illustration and graphic design. Her collages are fueled by a profound love of collecting ephemera and combining the scraps into compelling visuals. She finds inspiration from nature, music, and traveling. Currently, she channels her creativity as a surface/product designer in the tabletop industry, using her illustration skills to create prints that adorn homes with a touch of her distinctive artistic flair.
Dennis Madigan
Dennis Madigan is the drummer for the band Single Bullet Theory and works in local film productions. This piece is a collection of memorabilia that he’s kept and cherished from his touring years.
Diane Bressler
Diane creates meticulously crafted cut paper artworks and realistic color pencil pet portraits, largely using reclaimed papers and materials found at The Resource Exchange!
Emily Burtner
Comprised of fabric scraps and fixed to remnant yardage, these works reimagine the forgotten bits cut away to create other bodies of work. They are a summary of my studio, my wardrobe, and a reflection on the weight of the materials I require to create my work.
Emma Ryan
Emma’s main focuses are in PaperMaking, Collage, and BooksArts where she explores connections that we as humans have with each-other, our emotions, and our communities.
George Dixon
Now retired, George has returned to his roots in the arts, exploring diverse mediums such as photography, metals, and most recently, paper and found materials. His current body of work focuses on social and political commentary, utilizing layered textures and repurposed materials to provoke thought and dialogue. Through his work, George continues to examine the intersections between structure, care, and the human condition, bridging his technical expertise with his artistic vision.
James Snyder
Drinking glasses made from broken 1850s-60s Philadelphia beer and soda bottles. These bottles are dug up out of pre-civil war era privies (outhouses) and trash pits. When bottles are missing the top but otherwise have no cracks or major damage, I cut them off, bevel the lips and polish them creating these unique drinking glasses.
Juicebox Workshop
Using salvaged textiles, found objects, pigments and thread, I create impressionistic landscapes, multimedia installations, functional sculptures, and wearable pieces that convey my passion for nature, memory, and creative reuse. My visual work incorporates elements of collage, applique, embroidery, botanical dyeing, painting, printmaking, and sculpture. These mixed media pieces create a visual vernacular that is often quilted together with original music and interactive installation. Every piece has a story. Every material is repurposed with purpose.
k.g.
Karyn Gerred is the founder and Executive Director of The Resource Exchange, and a mixed media artist that works with reclaimed materials.
This piece was specially made for the Full Circle exhibition.
Kerry Miley
Kerry creates freeform woven tapestries using her loved ones’ collections of leftover yarn scraps. Her weavings depict parks and sacred lands we have the honor of visiting and the responsibility of protecting. Kerry lives in Philadelphia where she works as a scientific editor.
Kim Knauer
Kim Knauer is a sculptor and textile artist who takes great joy in repurposing the rusty, the found, and the broken. She explores false histories and visual relationships in objects from different origins.
I have always been intrigued by circles and seem to find them everywhere. They are both a beautiful symbol and also strong design. They can represent completion like coming full circle. They’re also the cousin of spirals which exist throughout nature as well as nearly all human cultures. They appear to be both contracting and expanding at the same time. A glorious metaphor for the human experience.
Kira Barnett Carleton
Kira is an artist, researcher, and activist whose work focuses on the environmental and labor impacts of clothing, and repair as a radical alternative to throwaway culture. Along with their artistic work, they write grants for art and sustainability non-profits, and research solutions to the over-consumption of clothing.
This project uses linens from Kira’s grandparents house. The linens were found after her grandparents died, so the family is unsure of who made and used them, and what their significance might have been. Kira has cut holes and mended them using incomplete concentric circles inspired by darning, highlighting the missing pieces but also the adornment of these beautiful linens.
Kristina Denzel Bickford
Kristina is a multimedia artist who explores themes of gender identity, domesticity, and feminism. She is interested in materials from women’s craft and labor, particularly vintage sewing kits passed down with objects imbued with generational gender expectations, combining these found materials with artisan, or traditionally masculine, practices in her sculptures. Kristina holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and a BS in Biology and Art from Colby College. Her work is in permanent collections including The Woodmere Art Museum and The Linda Lee Alter Collection of Art by Women, the Free Library of Philadelphia Print and Book Collection, as well as private collections.
Kristof Znyk
My artwork invites reflection upon the topic of body as a fragile and finite phenomenon. I question the cultural stereotypes by presenting the body in metamorphosis, in acceptance and in suffering, in reality politics, in gender roles, in dysphoria, in abuse and in desire. To support my vision I use poor ephemeral materials such as old handmade embroidery, aged fabrics, feathers, lace, and knitting needles in order to signal the power of their inherited history. I use rather monochromatic palette to also suggest the past and its marks.
Lauren Fiasconaro
I wanted to explore the waste stream of my practice by reworking unsuccessful cyanotypes from my “discard” box.
The resulting collage pieces bring new life to the scrap prints, reveling in shape, texture and color.
They are composed on paper hand made by Dottie Baumgarten from recycled mail.
Lee Bird
I am a soft queer disabled trans human who taught myself to draw, paint, and transform fibers into portals of wonder to connect to love, care and hope in their absence due to isolation as a victim-survivor of violence. I work in circular forms as expressions of my need to feel part of a larger whole. My work explores collective joy, grief, care and hope as resistance to dominant cultural systems that devalue life and serves as medicine for broken hearts. This piece asks: what if love, connection and care didn’t feel for so many a scarcity? What if we could make them more abundant? Created with love, pen ink, indigenous-made watercolors, colored pencil, and reclaimed fibers, mostly from RE.
Louis Gribaudo
Louis is a Philadelphia, PA based visual artist and musician. In 1978 he was awarded a full scholarship to The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts In 1990, he made the decision to concentrate solely on painting watercolor landscapes, and did so until 2006. Through that period, his paintings became more abstract and these ideas set the precedent for his current work.
In his current work, Louis explores what he calls “The Boundaries of Impulse’, mainly using music, sound, the observation of urban decay and recycled materials as the basis of his work.
Gribaudo has been in many exhibitions, is represented in world wide collections, and has prints of his work in commercial facilities.
New + Wesley Images
I started as a photographer many years ago. Then I wanted to do something with my photographs. I began digitally adding images from vintage photos to make collages. Now I focus more on have made collages largely surreal or abstract. I still try to use mostly my own images either photos or art work or graphic design. And I combine it with epherema I collect from around the city. Mystery goal is to create art that is bold and positive. I like art that draws you in even if you don’t understand it right away. And I think that is what my art has developed into.
Philly Girl Cartel
I am a new artist in the area and enjoy to use mixed media/recycled materials in my work. I get inspired by people and the world around me. I also like to use a limited amount of recycled material as I believe it pushes me to be more creative.
Rust & Wreck Creation
My niche, in the ecosystem of sculptural artists, is best described as Industrial-Organic.
The components are of industrial origin – fabricated, machined, or hand-wrought. I combine South-Philly-Old-Lady-Lamp-Parts (lamp cores and tubes, gems & jewels, etc.) and Rusty-Stuff-from-your-Grandfather’s-Garage-and-Workshop (brake rotors, coils & springs, tools, wire, pipefittings & nipples, hardware, etc.) to create evening lamps, tables, and other sculptural confections.
Simply put, the components are products of industrial production; the making process is organic.
Schrodinger’s Bitch
Flotsam/Jetsam
Detritus is a montage of other people’s lives. I forage city sidewalks and decommissioned landfills. An object here, a piece of paper there. Sometimes I take them, sometimes I take photos of them. When the mood suits me I “give back” by leaving a little bit of myself behind: a sticker here, an object or remark there.
Some of the material I collect goes in jars. Other times they are assembled into some previously nonexistent thing. The best of the best require nothing more than their own pedestal.
In a world driven by things made to be used once and discarded, I choose trash. Even a pigeon understands French fries make a delicious nest.
Sean Cote
The ouroboros is a depiction of a snake or a dragon eating its own tail. It is a symbol of life death and rebirth and relates to early thoughts about what happens to the universe and all the things it contains. I made the piece in dedication to the Full Circle show which is all about sustainability. What happens at the end of somethings life? It is a question we have been thinking about since the beginning of our existence and I find the ouroboros to be a reminder that we will always be thinking about where things go when we are done with them.
Sharon Bloomfield Hicks
Sharon Bloomfield Hicks is a Philadelphia-based artist who intuitively integrates recycled paintings and fiber techniques with up-cycled materials while channeling the felt experience of her Jamaican heritage into dynamic compositions radiating with vibrant colors.
With a BFA in painting from Tyler School of Art and an MS in occupational therapy from Philadelphia University, she blends visual art with healing practices to create uplifting works reflecting her quest for harmony.
Stephanie O’Brien
As a designer, Stephanie creates jewelry and other work that is focused on the details and the process. She looks to textiles, patterns, and textures in fashion, fibers arts, and other crafts for inspiration. Stephanie strives to use as much reused and recycled materials as she can. Stephanie O’Brien studied at Savannah College of Art and Design and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Jewelry and Objects. Stephanie is originally from Bergenfield, New Jersey and now lives and creates in Brooklyn, New York.
Squeebaby Toyshop
This piece is titled “ time to take cover”. It can fit in the palm of your hand at 4” diameter – super tiny bun buns! I made this piece special for the Full Circle exhibition at The Resource Exchange’s reCreate Gallery.