Arcadia Exhibitions is pleased to present Out of the Heart: The Life and Art of David Ellinger. Featuring a selection of 60 works and related documentation and ephemera, this survey explores the creative production of Pennsylvania native, self-taught artist, and antiques dealer David Y. Ellinger (19132003), who helped popularize Pennsylvania German culture in the mid-1900s. Curated by Lisa Minardi, executive director of Historic Trappe, the show was developed in conjunction with Polly Apfelbaum: For the Love of Una Hale, a concurrent exhibition of new ceramic works and site-specific wallpapers referencing the influence of Pennsylvania German craft traditions on Apfelbaums hybrid sensibility. Out of the Heart features nearly two dozen paintings as well as prints, drawings, theorems (paintings on velvet), and examples of fraktur, cut paper, and painted wood (a chest and boxes). The range of media and diversity of approachesfrom impressionistic landscapes to interpretations of the more graphic idioms of Pennsylvania German folk artdemonstrate Ellingers evolution as an artist as well as his other career as a successful antiques dealer. Divided into three sections: early life, focusing on Ellingers earliest known artworks and his involvement with the Works Progress Administration; farm life, which explores his paintings of Pennsylvania German farmsteads and barns; and home life, delving into Ellingers paintings of household interiors, Amish quilts, and flower gardens. Highlights of the exhibition include silkscreen prints made in collaboration with Frances Lichten taken from Ellingers experience drawing objects in museum collections during the 1930s while working for the WPA, a sketchbook containing nearly 400 drawings, and wallpaper designs made in 1927 when Ellinger was 14 years old. The exhibit is in the Harrison Gallery, University Commons at Arcadia University until Sunday, April 17. About the Artist A Pennsylvania native and self-taught artist, Ellinger helped popularize Pennsylvania German culture in the mid-20th century. He drew on his personal experience growing up in the vicinity of Trappe, in Montgomery County, where he worked on a dairy farm as a teenager. He also incorporated antique furniture, quilts, chalkware, and other objects into his paintings, taken from his experience drawing objects in museum collections during the 1930s while working for the WPA, first as part of the Federal Art Project and then for the Index of American Design. Ellinger was also an antiques dealer, buying and selling antiques to major collectors such as Albert Barnes, Titus Geesey, and Donald Shelley. He also revived the 19th-century art of theorem painting and made hundreds of examples, mostly still lifes depicting baskets of fruit, that are still highly prized today by collectors. Ellinger worked in a wide variety of media, including oil, casein, watercolor, and crayon. Earlier in his life, Ellinger was also a drag performer known as Una Hale. About the Curator Lisa Minardi is a noted scholar of Pennsylvania German art and the executive director of Historic Trappe, home to the Center for Pennsylvania German Studies. Her previous exhibitions include A Colorful Folk: Pennsylvania Germans and the Art of Everyday Life (Winterthur, 2015); Quill & Brush: Pennsylvania German Fraktur and Material Culture (Free Library of Philadelphia, 2015); and Pastor & Patriots: The Muhlenberg Family of Pennsylvania (Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, 2011). She is the author of numerous books, articles, and essays on Pennsylvania German art and culture including Drawn with Spirit: Pennsylvania German Fraktur from the Joan and Victor Johnson Collection (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2015). At this time, Arcadia University is requiring masks to be worn in indoor spaces. Advance registration is required. Arcadia University is located at 450 S. Easton Road in Glenside, Pa. Major support for Polly Apfelbaum: For the Love of Una Hale and Out of the Heart: The Life and Art of David Ellinger has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage with additional support from Creative Capital. To learn more, call 215-572-2131.