Mirror Mirror by Amy Boone-McCreesh and Libby Rosa | Closing Reception + Artist Talk

Mirror Mirror

Current Space is proud to present “Mirror Mirror,” an exhibition of works by Amy Boone-McCreesh and Libby Rosa.

Opening Reception: Saturday, June 6 from 6-9pm
Exhibit Runs: June 6 – July 19, 2026
Closing Reception & Artist Talk: Sunday, July 19 from 4-6pm
Gallery Hours: Saturdays from 1-5pm, during public events, or by appointment

“Mirror Mirror” features Baltimore-based artist Amy Boone-McCreesh and Philadelphia-based artist Libby Rosa in a mixed-media exploration of how domestic traditions and decorative arts shape female identity. The exhibition engages themes of vanity, class aspiration, and the shifting power dynamics between human-built environments and the natural world. Central to this narrative is the history of self-portraiture as a radical act of agency. Historically excluded from formal training and the study of the figure, women artists often turned to the mirror as their primary subject. In this exhibition, reclaiming the self as subject becomes a source of empowerment. Working across painting and sculpture, the artists treat the gallery as a mutable site for intervention, using painted theatrical curtains and engaged architectural sculpture to suggest hidden sectors existing beyond the physical walls.

The installation transforms the gallery into a site of distorted domesticity where the tools of sewing and craft become surreal. Rosa and Boone-McCreesh take turns adorning and framing each other’s works, creating a collaborative environment in which beauty serves as a mechanism for both control and survival. Throughout the space, Rosa’s oversized sewing pins pierce the walls, while Boone-McCreesh’s painted theatrical curtains function as viewing windows for the works on display. Rosa’s appliquéd curtain, Pinning Stars, featuring a motif of stars bleeding where they are pinned, frames McCreesh’s piece-work paper curtain. In turn, Boone-McCreesh’s garlands feature laser and hand-cut symbols, including the artist’s own traced hands,mirrors, and specimen tags; creating a stage for Rosa’s Handheld Mirror I and II.

Drawing on mythology surrounding mirrors and beauty rituals, Mirror Mirror explores how femininity is shaped by systems of display and domestic labor. Rosa’s large handheld mirrors, held by green sculpted hands, engage the viewer in self-surveillance and reference the historical importance of mirrors for women seeking control over their environment. Reflection becomes both literal and psychological as viewers see themselves within fragmented spaces that symbolize environmental destruction for human benefit. In this context, Rosa’s sculpted pupae of the invasive Box Tree Moth alter the power dynamic by using a piercing sewing pin as a structural support for its cocoons, transforming tools of labor into symbols of nature’s resilience. Boone-McCreesh’s works on paper draw from an abstract visual language while circling ideas around what is hidden and what is revealed, controlling visual access as a form of camouflage and narrative.

At the heart of this practice is a deep reverence for craftsmanship and stewardship, returning to the domestic sphere as a site of both exclusion and intentional creation. By making the mundane monumental, Boone-McCreesh and Rosa transform the mirror from a tool of vanity into a site of empowerment.

Amy Boone-McCreesh (b. 1985, Caribou, ME) is a multidisciplinary artist whose vibrant and maximalist works explore themes of decoration, material culture, and constructed environments. She has exhibited widely across the United States, with recent solo presentations at Morgan Lehman (New York), Penn State University, the Academy Art Museum (MD), and Pentimenti Gallery (Philadelphia). Her work has also been shown at the Kreeger Museum, the Walters Art Museum, Asya Geisberg Gallery, and David B. Smith Gallery, among others. Boone-McCreesh was a finalist for the 2024 Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize and a 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellowship nominee. She is the founder and editor of INERTIA, an online studio visit series, and has contributed writing to BmoreArt. Her work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Artnet, Artblog, New American Paintings, and Beautiful Decay, and is included in collections such as Facebook, Capital One, and the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies program. Boone-McCreesh holds an MFA from Towson University and a BFA from the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design. She is currently an adjunct faculty member at Maryland Institute College of Art. She has held visiting professorships at Dickinson College and Franklin & Marshall, and regularly lectures as a visiting artist and critic. Her residencies include Loghaven, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a two-year Hamiltonian Fellowship in Washington, DC. She lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.

Libby Rosa (b. 1993, Pittsburgh, PA) is an artist, curator, and teacher working in Philadelphia, PA. Rosa creates paintings, sculptures, and site-specific installations featuring shape-shifting and embedded imagery that challenge the limitations of walls and framing devices, pushing the boundaries of built environments. She received her BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2015) and her MFA from Cornell University (2019). She’s been featured in Whitehot Magazine, Canvas Rebel, Artblog, David Zwirner’s Platform Interview: One Day, New American Paintings, Maake Magazine, and Inertia. She’s had recent solo exhibitions at Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NY) and Blah Blah (Philadelphia, PA). She participated in recent group shows at SPRING/BREAK Art Show (New York, NY), J, Mother-In-Law + Field Projects for Upstate Art Weekend (Germantown, NY), Hide and Seek (Portland, OR), MASS Gallery (Austin, TX), and Hexum (Montpelier, VT). Rosa has attended residencies at Tongue River Residency (Dayton, WY), Trestle Art Space (NYC, NY), ASMBLY Session #1 (NYC, NY), and VCU SSP (Richmond, VA). She curates for Peep Projects, a nomadic gallery space in Philadelphia, PA, and for the Philadelphia waterfront. She founded Peep Project in 2020, a nomadic gallery in Philadelphia, curates public art along the Philadelphia Waterfront with DRWC and teaches at Fordham University.