Invisible Strings
Pentimenti Gallery
145 N 2nd St.
Philadelphia
May 23 - July 19, 2025
Seen June 10
When I think of meditation, I think of loving-kindness — not of football.
Visual artist Brandon Donahue-Shipp successfully forges a cultural connection between love and war by sculpting mandalas, symbols of spiritual centeredness, out of found footballs. They're part of a holy-inspired sculpture series by Donahue-Shipp titled "Football Bloom." One piece from that project — a circular quilt of discarded footballs and basketballs called "Vapor One" — is currently on display at Pentimenti Art as part of a six-person exhibit called "Invisible Strings."
The broader show is motivated by “invisible string theory,” the concept that all humans are connected by unseen bonds. It’s hard to think of a more suitable metaphor for the intangible ties that bind Philadelphia than pigskins.
For "Football Bloom," Donahue-Shipp cuts up scavenged sports balls into bedraggled petals that he then arranges into floral shapes. Old shoelaces are used to stitch together the slashed peels of rubber. The gritty symmetry is more reminiscent of a deep-fried blooming onion from Chili’s than a real rose. But through the true texture of human touch and war-torn use, the artist shows the expansive meaning of collective memories tightly bound.
The balls, once defined by their durability and grip, are delicately hand stitched together. The skins are far from pure; their artistic value seems to be determined by the amount of human use they endured through their respective life spans. The balls are dead and damaged. They are also blossoming into the new afterlife that Donahue-Shipp crafted for them.
The works could be interpreted as homages to the religiosity of sport. Or they could be considered ironic commentary on the deflated spirit of an out-of-control entertainment industry. Maybe they’re a testament to the idea that such realities are not mutually exclusive — and that culture, like good art, is never just black and white.
While NFL games carry art and culture across the country, especially in the “Go Birds” cult of Philadelphia, they’re also tied to a pervasive custom of public and private violence. There are plenty of people who identify the sport as little more than an ever-growing, revenue-generating system of domestic abuse, brain damage and bounty hunting.
But in a world where people are increasingly shrinking behind screens, the tactility of tossing a football or throwing back beers at a bar is hauntingly sacred. And while team sports can seem arbitrarily divisive, they also facilitate place-specific unity in times of ideological polarization.
The mandalic structure of Donahue-Shipp’s compositions hit on the mesmerizing interconnectedness that’s grown out of the arguably tragic interplay of scrappy players and wealthy profiteers. The game really is more onion than flower; there are layers of interdependence between trade organizations, fans, mascots, athletes, and advertisers that have made the sports universe so unilaterally stinky and tear-inducing.
Football, in particular, is like a loaded baked potato. It’s a microcosm of the wealth and race disparities that plague our country. Given how vast the big picture is, it’s striking how one artist’s rearrangement of mass-manufactured and abandoned rubber balls reveals the minute power of individual fingerprints.
