New Now IX opened July 17 at InLiquid Gallery in the Crane Arts building, South Kensington — the largest new member showcase in the organization’s 27-year history, bringing together 42 Philadelphia-area artists working across painting, sculpture, photography, collage, jewelry, and mixed media.

The Largest New Now Showcase in InLiquid’s History

InLiquid has been connecting artists and audiences across Philadelphia since 1999, and New Now IX genuinely lives up to its scale. The 42 artist-members’ stories stretch from Kensington to Argentina, Nigeria, Turkey, the Caribbean, and beyond, with work touching on neighborhood identity, immigrant experience, diasporic heritage, Slavic folklore, spirituality, and cultural tradition. It also marks a genuine first for the series: New Now IX is the first edition ever to include jewelry, expanding the range of disciplines represented in the show. It’s a meaningful curatorial choice, too — jewelry as a wearable, everyday art form sits in genuine conversation with the painting and sculpture surrounding it, rather than feeling like an afterthought tacked onto a more traditional lineup.

Clockwise from top left:
“Silver and Turquoise Collar” by Rudy Lewis
“Kolobok With Nails” by Alana Bograd
“Still Life with White Orchid” by Gay Walling

Four Artists Worth Knowing

Among the 42, a handful of artists offer a real window into the show’s range. Seher Erdoğan, a Turkish-born artist, architect, and educator now based in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood, makes sculptural wall pieces that pair clay and wool — materials she connects directly to the material culture of her native Istanbul. She holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture from Yale, practiced architecture in New Haven and New York, and now teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, only shifting her focus fully to visual art in 2019. Her own description of the work captures the tension at its center: a push and pull between following rules and breaking free from them.

Kara Hetz, a jewelry artist working out of her own Philadelphia studio, earned her BFA from West Virginia University and her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago, both in studio arts, later training in metalsmithing at Chicago’s Lillstreet Art Center. Her work explores the sensuality of metal — how something static can become fluid — aiming, in her own words, to create wearable pieces that function as external reminders of the things we carry. As the show’s first-ever jewelry inclusion, Hetz’s work is worth seeking out specifically.

Jeremy “Lupien” LaMountain, a self-taught, Philadelphia-based artist born in New Haven in 1997, works primarily in acrylic paint, collage, and mixed media, drawing on cartoons, advertisements, and urban life. His influences run from street artists like Rammellzee and OSGEMEOS to commercial advertising and graphic design, and his time living and creating alongside graffiti artists in Baltimore shaped an approach that embraces both traditional and nontraditional materials. Jake Dombroski works in a similarly collage-driven space, navigating the territory between Dadaism and commercialism through collage, assemblage, and painting built from vintage magazines, discarded packaging, and found objects — a practice explicitly concerned with the power of imagery and material itself.

Clockwise from top left:
“Thinking” by Jake Dombroski
“Poppies” by Lupien LaMountain
“Devotions No. 63″ by Seher Erdogan
“Juicy Gem Ring 2″ by Kara Hetz

What to See at the Opening Reception

New Now IX remains on view through August 29, Wednesday through Saturday, noon to 6 pm, with an opening reception Thursday, August 13, from 6 to 9 pm at 1400 N. American Street, inside Crane Arts. RSVP is recommended for the reception, and given the scale of this year’s showcase, the opening is genuinely the best single night to take in the full range of what InLiquid has put together.

More information is available at inliquid.org. Forty-two artists, this many countries and mediums, one gallery — New Now IX is worth sitting with beyond a single walk-through, and worth wondering what InLiquid does with an even bigger tenth edition next year.

About Post Author

Allan Lane

Philadelphia born and bred, Allan Lane is the Publisher and Editor in Chief of digital magazines. He launched his first publication, SportBikes Inc Magazine in 2010, followed by dosage MAGAZINE in 2019. Recently, Allan launched his third online publication, Club For Man. As a journalist, Allan covers fashion, lifestyle, culture, art, and motorcycles.

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