Biography of our Founder:
Emily A. Branch resides in West Reading, PA. She received her M.F.A. from Visual Studies Workshop, (NY) studying under Nathan Lyons. During her multi-decade career, she has traveled internationally and worked for non-profit art + education spaces in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Virginia, and New York. Cage Free Design was established in 2004 in Washington, Connecticut and licensed in Pennsylvania in 2005.
Early Curatorial Career:
After returning to Pennsylvania from ten years in the arts, education + hospitality sector in Connecticut, Emily was accepted as an inaugural artist in the newly created Goggleworks Center for the Arts, a community, block-wide initiative founded by leading philanthropists and retailers in the Central PA region. She was selected as the first of two Artist Representatives to the Board of Directors. She worked as a studio artist in addition to other community-minded positions through 2010.
Ms. Branch began curating solo and group shows as the Gallery Director at the Outsider Folk Art Gallery, Reading, PA in 2011. Emily also curated exhibitions for the gallery at SOFAExpo Air Fair, Chicago and the Outsider Art Fair, NYC. She published a featured article in Antiques & Fine Art Magazine in 2011 about the importance of the late African-American Folk Artist Purvis Young. The Outsider Folk Art Gallery later was honored by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as it received the key image from this article into its permanent collection.
She was selected as Curator a four person exhibition “Intertwined” at Albright College’s Freedman Gallery in 2012. The exhibition was noted as one of the “Top 10 Visual Art Events in Reading, PA for 2012”by Ron Schira, art critic for the Reading Eagle.
Ms. Branch continued to work with artists and collaborated with Chutima “Nok” Kerdpitak, a rising London Curator, to bring Circus Terminal Worldwide, a traveling exhibition of works of 76 artists from 18 countries, both “outsiders and insiders” to Studio B, Boyertown, PA in February 2013, with two weeks of accompanying workshops and presentations by participating artists. Local organizations, Reading Theater Project and Berks Bards contributed events during the exhibition. She traveled to Amsterdam in Fall of 2013 and New Zealand in Spring of 2014 as a guest Curator for the traveling exhibition.
In mid 2013, she led the acquisition and cataloguing of 1000+ works by the Philadelphia artist Jim Bloom at Material Culture, Philadelphia, PA. She concluded her role curating an exhibition by Jim Bloom, Serbian artist Vladan Gradistanac, Philadelphia artist Maryann Matlock Hinkle (1941-2008), African Artist Prince Twins Seven Seven (1944-2011) and Gregory Warmack “Mr. Imagination” (1948-2012) whose works grace The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, The American Visionary Museum in Baltimore, MD, the Museum of American Folk Art, New York, NY, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA, and other institutions.
In the Spring of 2014, Emily was selected to represent regional artists in the 2014 Reading/Reutlingen Exchange for 17 days in Germany and Switzerland.
Evolution of Cage Free Design:
Once her cataloguing and exhibition was complete in Philadelphia, Emily pivoted her company from Curating + Art-Making to working as a full-time Consultant with a focus on Marketing + Public Relations in 2013.
Ms. Branch currently consults with multiple clients in Central + South Eastern Pennsylvania. She is a certified Facebook™ Community Manager.
She is proud to donate volunteer time to New Arts Program, Kutztown and the Central PA Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).
Contact Emily: studio@cagefreedesign.com
