“Soft Light”: A Rittenhouse night that feels like a reset
Part of the Hyatt Centric Center City Philadelphia’s ongoing Maker Series, “Soft Light” is curated by Philadelphia-based curator and visual artist Chelsey Luster. Built around a concept that’s instantly relatable: light as both a visual language and an emotional force—something that can reveal identity, protect intimacy, and quietly strengthen resilience.
The show pulls together painting, mixed media, and figurative work that explores illumination in the fullest sense—how light lands on skin, how color carries mood, how memory and reflection live inside a composition, and how softness can be its own kind of power. Even the setting plays into that intention. A hotel lobby and public-facing space can sometimes feel transient, but in this case, it’s a smart match: a place where locals and visitors naturally cross paths, where the artwork can meet people in motion, and where “Soft Light” can do what it’s clearly designed to do—invite you to pause, look closer, and leave with a different internal weather than you arrived with.
The opening is set for Thursday, January 15, from 6 pm to 8 pm, with a Meet the Makers opening reception that’s free and open to the public. The exhibit itself is also free, and “Soft Light” will remain on view through February 27. The vibe is welcoming and community-forward—exactly what the Maker Series is meant to do: celebrate local culture, spotlight Philadelphia-based creators, and make room for conversation without putting art behind velvet ropes.
Curator Chelsey Luster brings a collaborative, care-driven approach to the “Soft Light” exhibition, shaped by years of work with leading cultural institutions across the region. She’s also the founder and director of Luster Gallery + Studio in Olde Kensington, and she currently serves as Exhibition Manager at Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, where she oversees exhibitions and leads the Julia Zagar Residency for Women Artists. That background matters here, because “Soft Light” doesn’t present like a random grouping of names—it reads like a thoughtful conversation across styles and materials, with each artist offering a distinct way of seeing, shaping, and holding light.
“Soft Light”: Four artists, four worlds of illumination
The focus of “Soft Light” is four Black women artists whose practices move in different directions while staying connected through a shared sensitivity to emotion, presence, and visual impact. Brittany Baum, an American painter and illustrator born in Camden, New Jersey, and based in the Philadelphia region, brings bold, imaginative portraits of Black women that draw from vintage editorial imagery and Afrocentric elements. Her material vocabulary—oil paint, pastels, markers, and colored pencil—matches her subject matter beautifully, because it lets her build faces and gestures with both precision and play.
Baum’s momentum is real: she was a 2024 Mural Arts Philadelphia Fellow, and she’s exhibited at Rutgers University–Camden and Art at the Atrium in Morristown, New Jersey, a résumé that reads like an artist steadily expanding the radius of her reach.
Devyn Dais, a Philadelphia-based figurative abstract painter, leans into intuition and emotion, using color as a kind of internal compass. A graduate of the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, she’s currently pursuing a master’s degree in Art Education at Moore College of Art & Design, and you can feel that educator’s impulse in the way her work aims to create space for grounding and reflection. Working with acrylic, pastels, and mixed media, Dais builds layered compositions that don’t just depict feeling—they invite it, the way certain music does when it catches you at exactly the right moment.
Michele Pierson, a Philadelphia-based contemporary surrealist painter, turns “Soft Light” toward the metaphysical, examining the overlap between physical reality and something more atmospheric. Her work explores space, light, and form, and her academic foundation—a BA in Studio Art and Art History from Spelman College—shows up in the way her paintings feel researched without ever becoming stiff.
Pierson has exhibited nationally, including at Abington Art Center, Ubuntu Gallery, and Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, and she’s a recipient of multiple fellowships, including the 2024 Black Artist Fellowship from Mural Arts Philadelphia. In a show centered on illumination, Pierson’s perspective is the one that makes you think about light as architecture—how it shapes rooms, bodies, and even beliefs.
Susan Ragland, also Philadelphia-based, brings the depth of a 30-year career largely developed outside traditional gallery systems—an origin story that matters, because it speaks to resilience and self-definition in a city where the art world can sometimes feel gatekept. Her work is held in major public and private collections nationwide, and her institutional exhibition history includes The Colored Girls Museum, the Montclair Art Museum, and the Woodmere Art Museum, where she received the Hugh and Marian Scott Prize. Ragland was also a 2024–2025 Black Artist Fellow with Mural Arts Philadelphia, and in “Soft Light”, her presence feels like a cornerstone—an artist who has quietly built a durable legacy and continues to evolve with intention.
The opening reception on Thursday, January 15, from 6 pm to 8 pm, is the best way to experience “Soft Light” if you want the full social texture. Guests are invited to meet the artists and curator, explore the work in real time, and enjoy complimentary light bites courtesy of Patchwork Restaurant, plus featured pay-as-you-go craft cocktails from the adjacent bar.
It’s the kind of event that makes art feel less like an assignment and more like a night out with meaning—one that honors Black History Month while also celebrating the living, current brilliance of Philadelphia’s Black artistic community. And because “Soft Light” stays on view through February 27, you can also return on a quieter day and let the work speak without the buzz of a crowd.
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