Nothing but Net: Eleanor Anderson, Amie Cunat, Regina Durante Jestrow, Jody Joyner, Meg Lipke, Evan Nesbit, Gelah Penn, Lauren Rice, and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung
Kensington, MD.
PFA is pleased to announce Nothing but Net, a group exhibition curated by Alex Ebstein and Amy Boone-McCreesh, presenting nine contemporary artists: Eleanor Anderson, Meg Lipke, Regina Durante Jestrow, Jody Joyner, Lauren Rice, Evan Nesbit, Gelah Penn, Amie Cunat, and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung. The exhibition brings together artists who subvert, recompose, and bend the limits of the line through abstraction, with the works that invoke or challenge contemporary questions towards notions of the grid, material and medium.
Nothing but Net will be on view at PFA–Kensington., located at 4228 Howard Ave, Kensington MD 20895, from September 19 through November 28, 2026. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, September 19, from 5:00 to 8:00 PM.
Nothing but Net presents practices that expand the application of the grid across spatial dimensions, incorporating both wall and floor, and extend material explorations from paper to nylon, ribbon, and additional flexible media. Nets are traditionally used to hold or to capture - in basketball, the phrase nothing but net celebrates a clean score, suggestive of skill or precision, one that comes from hard work and practice. The artists in the exhibition painstakingly repeat processes that they have created for the purpose of art making - looping, weaving, cutting - the associations of labor and work are embedded in the pieces. Nets have an undeniable visual presence and yet are not solid. The amount of negative space, color, and overall scale work together to aid in how a viewer's body could interact with the work and ultimately, its function. Through a consideration of repetition, the artists engage themes of presence, labour and tactility. While the grid has long served as a foundational tool in abstraction, here, its historical modes of organising space offers precedent, as an armature for experimentation and re-thinking. Though grounded in physical grid-like patterning in each piece, notions of the net function as a conceptual system that invites viewers to examine structural interactions across the gallery.
Assertively contemporary while echoing historical strategies, the artists confront, query and destabilize logic, transforming quotidian materials and conceptions of space through playful, tactile, and process-driven interventions. Evan Nesbitt manipulates acrylic paint as it hardens, while Gelah Penn constructs composite assemblages from industrial substrates. Both artists challenge histories of tactility in painting and uses of conventional material in unexpected ways. Notions of suspension are called into focus through Jody Joyner’s remixing of recognizable textures to reorganizable perceptions of transport, access, and consumerism, resonating against Amie Cunat’s vibrant works that snap the organic into a geometric precision.
Multiple materials work together across the gallery, invoking what Rosalind Krauss established as ‘the expanded field’. Meg Lipke’s dimensional sewn canvases lean and slouch, blurring lines between painting, sculpture, and support. Lauren Rice manipulates paper through practices of folding and cutting as intervention, to create reconstituted visual compressions. Eleanor Anderson’s woven, adorned, net-like installation is echoed in Regina Durante Jestrow’s patterned fabric installations which hang, situating triangular quilting techniques that call to the webs of personal narratives. Family traditions and abstract historic practices in craft that invite gathering and sharing networks are also referenced. Concurrently, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung’s mark-making through acts of cutting, twisting, and dyeing canvases splices the picture plane, viewing the canvas an active, attentive and occupied space.
This group exhibition focuses on artists who rework the grid and its network of associations through art history and the contemporary: as material and methodology for abstraction. With hanging assemblages, optical puzzles and soft sculptures, the works provoke, surprise and halt, encouraging contemplation of artistic practice through the notion of a net. Bringing nine practices together, a web of formal and conceptual intersections is established, where the net is conceptualised to explore systemic boundaries and what slips through.
Eleanor Anderson (b. 1988) is a Portland, Maine-based interdisciplinary artist whose vibrant, material-led practice explores the bounds of craft through play. Working across textiles, ceramics, glass, and collage, Anderson utilizes deep-seated craft traditions as flexible constraints, collaborating with color and form to introduce deliberate imperfections that subvert fixed technical expectations. Anderson received a BA from Colorado College and an MFA from the Fibers Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has held a Core Fellowship at the Penland School of Craft and residencies at the Textile Arts Center, Vermont Studio Center, Tides Institute, and Pilchuck Glass School. She has presented solo exhibitions at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond and Abattoir Gallery.
Amie Cunat (b. 1986) is a New York-based artist whose paintings use decorative and organic elements to move between abstraction and perception. Chromatically charged and optically insistent, her compositions draw upon pop art, graphic design, and fabric prints to occupy intermediate, phenomenal spaces. Cunat earned an MFA from Cornell University, a Post-Baccalaureate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BA from Fordham University. She has exhibited at the ICA Philadelphia, Vitra Design Museum, Dinner Gallery, and DC Moore Gallery, and received a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship.
Regina Durante Jestrow (b. 1978) is a Miami, Florida-based textile artist working at the intersection of contemporary geometric abstraction and traditional American quilt-making. Filtered through historical feminist narratives, domestic labor, and communal traditions, Jestrow's process-driven practice situates fiber arts within a contemporary formal context. Jestrow was awarded the South Florida Cultural Consortium Grant and residencies at the Golden Foundation, Jentel Foundation, and AIRIE. Her work is held in the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection and the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs Public Art Collection.
Jody Joyner (b. 1988) is an interdisciplinary artist based between Los Angeles, California, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, whose practice spans sculpture, site-responsive installations, and video. Her spatial work investigates structural form, materiality, and casting methods, frequently engaging environmental elements to navigate how physical structures interact with human habit. Joyner received her BA from Colorado College and her MFA from Yale University. She is the recipient of the Al Held Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome and the Josef Albers Traveling Fellowship, and has exhibited at Galerie Timonier, as-is.la, and Pentimenti Gallery.
Meg Lipke (b. 1969) is a Hudson Valley, New York-based artist who creates sculptural sewn canvases and paintings that challenge the conventional relationship between painting and wall. Engaging the body, the frame, and the grid, her soft works often rest on the floor or lean against architectural surfaces to subvert their traditional role as paintings. Lipke received her MFA from Cornell University and has been awarded residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Golden Foundation. She is represented by Broadway in New York City, and her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Brooklyn Rail, and Art in America.
Evan Nesbitt (b. 1985) is a Nevada City, California-based painter whose process-oriented abstractions examine the boundaries of material perception and optical psychology. Nesbitt is widely recognized for his tactile technique of pushing acrylic paint directly through the weave of hand-dyed burlap substrates, creating a highly sculptural, porous surface where performance and chance coalesce. Nesbitt earned his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Yale University. He has held solo exhibitions at Van Doren Waxter, Roberts Projects, James Harris Gallery, and Weiss Berlin.
Gelah Penn (b. 1951) is a Connecticut-based visual artist known for her site-responsive installations and three-dimensional constructed drawings. Penn’s practice rejects traditional narrative in favor of formal modernist abstraction, building improvisational, panoramic structures out of industrial netting, fishing line, vinyl tubing, and plastic bags. Penn received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been exhibited at the National Academy Museum, SculptureCenter, and Smack Mellon, and she has received grants from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism and the Tree of Life Foundation.
Lauren Rice (b. 1979) is a Richmond, Virginia-based visual artist whose experimental practice materializes on and with paper through the combined modalities of collage, painting, drawing, and sculpture. Rice manipulates paper through folds, cuts, and fragments to generate visual compressions that index tensions between digital code, ancient mythology, and high consumerism. Rice holds a BA from Knox College and an MFA from American University. She has exhibited at Cuchifritos Gallery, Vox Populi, 1708 Gallery, Transformer, and Spring/Break Art Show. She is a Professor of Art at Longwood University.
Molly Zuckerman-Hartung (b. 1975) is a Connecticut-based painter, writer, and educator whose process-based assemblages expand paint beyond the canvas into sculptural form. Formatively influenced by the Pacific Northwest’s Riot Grrrl movement, Zuckerman-Hartung cuts, twists, pulls, and dyes her materials to deconstruct painting's conceptual framework. She earned her BA from The Evergreen State College and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work was featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and a mid-career survey at the Blaffer Art Museum. She is represented by Corbett vs. Dempsey and serves as Associate Professor of Painting at UCLA.
Curated by Alex Ebstein and Amy Boone-McCreesh
September 19 – November 28, 2026
Opening reception: Saturday, September 19th, 5:00 – 8:00 PM
PFA - Kensington, MD
4228 Howard Ave LL, Kensington, MD 20895
Open by appointment Saturday