One of the most stunning art exhibits in Northwest Philadelphia in years is “Affinities,” currently at Mount Airy Contemporary, 25 W. Mt. Airy Ave. It opened on May 22 and continues until July 2.

The exhibit showcases the work of Nancy Agati, Nathan Pankratz and Kate VanVliet.

All three artists have expansive practices that include teaching, curating and community building. Mt. Airy resident Agati has engaged in artist collaborations and curatorial projects. Pankratz is a co-founder of Tiger Strikes Asteroid Gallery in Olde Kensington, and VanVliet is a founder and co-director of BYO Printmaking Collaborative in Old City.

Agati works in several disciplines including sculpture, paper and art installation. She is preparing for an upcoming artist residence on Long Beach Peninsula in Washington.

“My work often focuses on the things that I presume go unnoticed in the world,” Agati, a cancer survivor, told the Local. “The tiny veins of a decaying leaf, the pattern of light bouncing off a flowing stream, the millions of cracks and slivers in a broken piece of glass. In the process of making art, I attempt to expose and redefine those unnoticed fragments from life.”

Her artwork evolves as she has new life experiences, Agati said. But when she’s unsure about what ’s next artistically, she takes what she calls “not the best advice” she’s ever received — “when in doubt sweep the studio” and clear your head.

VanVliet grew up mostly in Northeast Pennsylvania, with a pit stop in rural Maryland. She moved to Philadelphia for college, attending Moore College of Art & Design where she studied sculpture and printmaking. She graduated in 2007.

VanVliet lived in Fishtown for almost 15 years, moving there in college during that first wave of artists in the mid-2000s. About eight years ago, she moved to Elkins Park with her partner. “We were seeking more trees, less construction and a home with extra space for artists’ studios,” VanVliet said.

“I look to feminism, surrealism, and contemporary sculpture for inspiration, and especially artists whose practice focuses on process and performance or use materials in profound ways. Artists’ whose work ‘changed me’ include Eva Hesse, Tim Hawkinson, Kiki Smith, Leonardo Drew, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, among others.”

Nathan Pankratz, who is on the faculty at The Haverford School, has work in numerous private and corporate collections through the region. A native of Grand Island, N.Y., Pankratz settled near Philadelphia over 20 years ago. He earned a BFA at Penn State University, which included studying painting in Rome.

“I later met Nancy Agati while completing my MFA at the University of the Arts in 2008, and I have greatly admired her work ever since,” he told the Local. “My personal artistic mantra stems from some of the best advice I’ve ever received, shared by my friend and artist Rob Matthews: ‘Ultimately, I try to make work about something bigger than the work itself.’”

Mount Airy Contemporary gallery co-owners Andrea Wohl Keefe and Colleen Keefe, who have presented more than 170 artists in two-person and group exhibitions, say they are just “a couple who show work we love in the carriage house behind our home, below our studios. It’s a labor of love. Period.”

They have an interesting modus operandi for creating an exhibit. In their first exhibit 17 years ago, “And So On and So Forth,” they chose one or two artists as a seed, then picked another artist, and that artist then picked someone else, and so on. A show arose from this selection process.

Ten years later, they repeated this model with “Your Plus One,” a show to commemorate 10 years of exhibiting artwork. They invited every artist who ever showed at MAC to send them a work no bigger than 10 inches in any dimension and to invite another artist to be included in the show. Somehow they managed to install over 120 works in their 300-square-foot carriage house.

According to Andrea Wohl Keefe, who also teaches art at Central High School, “We like this model and return to it because it flattens the idea of curation, makes it less hierarchical and empowers artists ... We designed the exhibition to model how social connections between artists are forged and how these are driven by friendship, creative affinity, chemistry and respect for each other’s work.

“We have always loved fellow artists and have wanted to surround ourselves with an art community,” she continued. “Both of us had done different kinds of curation separately before we met in 2001. When we moved here from Brooklyn in 2007 with our then-18-month old son, we very much had in mind as part of our move to begin an art project together.

“Our son is almost 20 now. We’re older too, and still we want to have the artists we love around us; communion with other artists continues to give us so much joy.”

For more information, visit mountairycontemporary.com or call 267-270-2787. Visits are by appointment. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.