The City Arts Salon opens its doors for “Memory Made Visible” on Saturday, September 12, a two-artist exhibition exploring what we carry with us — the memories, cultures, and visions that shape who we become. The opening reception runs 2 to 6 p.m., with the show on view through Saturday, October 24.
Two Artists, Two Distinct Visual Languages
Gloria Gammage-Davis brings decades of craft into the show, combining painting, sculpting, quilting, and printmaking with found objects, much of her work centered on individuals who shaped Black history. A Cheyney University BFA graduate, she’s taught at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Fleisher Art Memorial, and her quilting has been featured in two books by master quilter Carolyn Mazloomi.
Vulon, pronounced Vuh-Lone, works in almost the opposite direction — acrylic, mixed media, digital imaging, AI, VR, 3D modeling and 3D printing, even noise and industrial rap, all in service of the same questions about memory and inheritance. He’s described his own influences as ranging from H.R. Giger to Parliament/Funkadelic to the cryptoart movement, treating every medium as an open door rather than a limitation.
Together, the two artists offer a genuine dialogue rather than a simple pairing — one rooted in inherited craft traditions, the other in tools that barely existed a decade ago, both asking what it means to give form to what we carry inside us.
The Gallery Behind the Pairing
The two-artist format itself is no accident. City Arts Salon was founded in March 2011 by photographer Kenny White as an alternative exhibition space for artists at every stage of their careers, including those without exclusive gallery relationships. Originally based in Fishtown/West Kensington, the salon now operates out of White’s own spacious Germantown studio.
Two-person exhibitions have become a specialty of the gallery, offering more room for each artist’s work than a typical group show allows. City Arts Salon describes these pairings as “visual dialogues” — an intimate setting built specifically for the kind of contrast Gammage-Davis and Vulon bring to Memory Made Visible.
One longtime patron has described the atmosphere more simply: “It’s like going to a really great party at your friend’s house where you can buy the art off the walls.”
Beyond visual art, City Arts Salon regularly hosts musicians, poets, vocalists, and dancers, reinforcing the gallery’s broader mission of bringing artists, collectors, and the surrounding community into the same room, on equal footing.
Opening receptions like this one are always worth carving out an afternoon for — a chance to walk through the work itself, hear directly from the artists, and see two genuinely different creative languages sitting comfortably in the same room. “Memory Made Visible” runs through October 24, giving plenty of time to make the trip up Germantown Avenue even for those who can’t make opening day.
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