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Germantown Neighbors: Meet Karen Singer, the artist quietly building stories from tile and ceramic

Karen Singer working in her Germantown art studio. (Photo: Maleka Fruean for Germantown Info Hub)

Karen Singer is an artist who likes the story behind the story. She likes the meaning behind what matters. Whether she’s working for clients on art for donor recognition, creating address signs, or teaching workshops, Singer uses her work to share whole stories and build connections. 

Singer has been in Germantown for decades, moving into her current studio at Church Lane in January 2000. She went to the University of Pennsylvania for graduate school to study sculpture but realized quickly that Penn’s program didn’t speak to her full sensibility as an artist. 

Instead of what she saw as an obsession with three-dimensional form in sculpture, she realized she loved how two-dimensional images transform into three-dimensional art. She loved bas-relief, a French term for raised art on flat surfaces. Her love for this kind of transformation led her in the direction of tile-making.

She first moved to Germantown in the 1980s, and it was around that time that she took her first tilemaking class. She fell in love with the art, which combined everything she loved in her artistic practice–printmaking, sculpture, and painting. She could make multiples of pieces. And she could tell stories in different textures. 

As her practice in tilemaking grew, it started shaping into what would become her business. She and her good friend Lisa Longo, her current general manager, created Karen Singer Tileworks, which specializes in working with non-profit organizations for commissioned artwork as part of their fundraising and donor recognition. 

Singer knew she needed a way to sustain herself as an artist, and the idea of donor recognition through fine art was something no one was really exploring. Her business takes the history of how an organization started, where they are now, and where they are going and creates pieces of art that tell that story. 

Singer says she researches her clients thoroughly, but not just by diving into their website and press materials. She wants to know the meaning behind why people care about places and the services they provide. Why do people care? What matters? It’s why she tries to take the time to interview folks from all over the organization as she begins to create the art.

“I love meeting people who are part of an organization, whether they’re the janitor or a former student or somebody that works in maintenance or a big donor because they all know this place, and they see it through different lenses. You know, it’s like a kaleidoscope,” she said. 

Her donor walls each tell a specific story of an organization, and many of them have brought in even more money for the organization as major donors have seen the final designs and wanted to be a part of it. 

Karen Singer working in her Germantown art studio. (Photo: Maleka Fruean for Germantown Info Hub)

But as Longo says, it’s not all about the money these artworks bring in. Singer’s art is meaningful to the stories of her clients. 

“Karen’s whole goal is to make something that has meaning for anyone. Even if someone comes in for just a tiny little award or a little tile for their bathroom or something. She asks a million questions and finds a motif that has meaning for these people, you know, by just, like, what’s your favorite flower,” Longo said 

Personal meaning comes through in her custom-tiled street address signs that you can see throughout Northwest Philly. Households can give her designs, colors, and motifs that have meaning to their residencies, and she creates street number signs specifically for them. Her sign-making is part of her business, but it’s also part of her love of buildings and place-making, especially in Germantown.

“I just have very strong feelings about how important it is for buildings to tell stories,” says Singer. 

She has had ideas of hosting workshops and collaborating with other organizations for households in the neighborhood to create address signs and also record stories about the history of their house or building alongside it. She wants the signs to be part of a collection of stories documenting folks’ connection to Germantown.

“I’ve really invested in being able to do things that go outside because I’m really passionate about places. I’m really passionate about Germantown. I love it. I’ve lived in this neighborhood since, you know, the eighties, and it’s home. And there’s all these, to me, hidden treasures all around, including my studio, which I think of as a hidden treasure,” Singer said.

Kate Gaffney, who runs the longtime staple Gaffney Fabricsin the neighborhood, first saw Singer’s work as part of an award from Germantown United CDC. She loved how Singer incorporated the Cunningham Piano Company building into a tile and asked to stay in touch with her. Gaffney’s now has a beautiful inlaid tilework piece at the entrance of their store, created by Singer, that says “Gaffney’s–fabric of the community since 1970.” It looks like it has always been there, and Gaffney wanted it to be a permanent piece. 

“I love that she’s around the corner, that I had somebody local do it who was already a customer. It just felt like a really nice collaboration and something that is going to stick around for a while. It wasn’t like something hanging on the wall,” said Gaffney. 

Gaffney had just brought her staff over to Singer’s studio for a team-building gathering the night before. She says they had so much fun making art right down the street from them. 

Through recessions, personal transitions, and a pandemic, Singer has sustained the studio. And she’s proud of that and happy to be a part of the neighborhood she loves so much. 

She remembers when her block was threatened by a huge developer trying to build a large building in the residential area, and outsiders thought of the blocks as part of a “slum” and how it needed to be beautified. 

“It’s not a slum–it’s a historic district, which just came in recently. And it’s a neighborhood, and it’s got history, and people love it here. And they live here. And some of them have the money to fix up their places, and some of them don’t. But they live here, and they have a stake in this neighborhood,” said Singer. 

Singer has loved the richness of the community here, including the artist community, the families, and the multiple generations of history from the Revolutionary War to the Civil Rights Movement. She wants it to be respected and celebrated. 

She celebrates being able to work as a full-time artist, creating artwork that has meaning for her clients, and exploring new ways to tell stories visually every day. 

As for the future, she’s always dreamed of creating a subway station in tile. At 70 years old, she hopes to keep the studio running even after she steps away, possibly through a non-profit. Ultimately, her true passion lies in creating more public art beyond building walls. She finds joy in helping tell the stories of neighborhoods through her work.

You can tour Karen Singer’s art studio this weekend as part of the Philadelphia Open Studio Tour (POST). The POST tours have been happening throughout the city for years and are hosted by the Center for Emerging Visual Artists(CEFVA), and Singer tries to do it yearly. This year, she’s also incorporating her student’s work into it. 

Singer’s studio (90 E. Church Lane) will be open to tour on Saturday, October 19, 2024, and Sunday, October 20, 2024, from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.