On Saturday, Amazon Fresh unveiled a one-of-a-kind holiday art installation by Philadelphia artist Jonathan Mandell at the Amazon Fresh store in Oxford Valley as part of their seasonal Joy is Shared program.
The event featured a $25,000 donation to Art Goes to School of Delaware Valley (AGTS), a local nonprofit that brings fine art to elementary schools. I’m sharing photos (HERE), including behind-the-scenes footage of Mandell creating the mural, Mandell discussing the inspiration behind the piece, and AGTS president Jeana Mastrangeli talking about the impact of the donation from Amazon Fresh.
The event also marked the kickoff of Amazon Fresh’s Holiday Palooza, an in-store event for customers featuring holiday treats, hosting inspiration demos, and a complimentary photo with Santa, and offers a perfect opportunity to capture the intersection of art, community, and holiday spirit.
Amazon Fresh AGTS _ Scott Spitzer Photography 2
Amazon Fresh Art Unveil _ Scott Spitzer Photography
Artist bio: Jonathan Mandell (Instagram, website) is a fine art artist living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mandell’s talent lies in the implementation of fundamental fine art concerns, such as perspective, color composition, and drawing into the medium of mosaic. Utilizing such materials as glass shards, ceramic tile, semiprecious stones, minerals, mirror, and marbles, Mandell creates wall-mounted panels, which evolve into what he calls, “tactile paintings”. His grout lines act as drawing lines, bringing his imagery to life. The glass shards are not flat, but rather are convex and concave pieces. This allows for a study of the surface topography of the mosaic. Mandell’s fine art mosaics can be seen on permanent display at the National Constitution Center, The National Liberty Museum, The University of Pennsylvania, Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the McGraw Hill Company in New York, Delaware Valley College in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, Illinois, among other sites throughout the United States. His latest public project is a 5 ft. x 30 ft. mosaic created for the lobby of Pennswood Village, a senior living community in Newtown, Pa. The mosaic features the Pennswood campus nestled in the Bucks County landscape with various activities being featured. In addition to Mandell’s studio practice, he has also taught at Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts. His mosaics have been featured in The Bel Aire Hotel Magazine, Glass Art Magazine, and The Penn Gazette.