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Friday, May 09, 2003

Memorial service for Ella King Torrey

 
A memorial service for former Pew Fellowships in the Arts Director Ella King Torrey, 45, is scheduled for Wednesday, May 14, 4 to 6 p.m., at the meeting house at Germantown Friends School, 47 Coulter St. Torrey died April 30 at her home in San Francisco. An obituary by Ed Sozanski ran Saturday, May 3, in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

permanent link  roberta 2:33 PM
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Lift up your eyes

 


Polly Apfelbaum’s great floor pieces at the ICA keep you looking down, but you’ll never look floorward at the Fabric Workshop and Museum ’s new wallpaper exhibit. From Warhol’s cows to Virgil Marti’s bullies, the wonders of repeat patterns pasted to the plaster will be yours. (Image is Marti's black-light wallpaper installation at PAFA, summer 2001.) Tonight’s opening lecture at 6 pm. by former ICA curator, Judith Tannenbaum (now, Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art at the RISDI Museum) will help elucidate why wallpaper in some hands is so darned subversive.
permanent link  roberta 8:10 AM
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Thursday, May 08, 2003

Fresh fish

 
In case you missed the story in the Inky, Magdalena Abakanovicz's fish are installed at Penn's Landing. The fish themselves are pretty swell, not as flat as they look in the picture. They catch the sun and each fish has its own, rough-hewn personality. The poles that hold them up are a bit of a distraction.
permanent link  libby 12:10 PM
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Stopping by the woods on a sunny morning

 

I stumbled on muralist David Guinn's piece in the Window on Broad at the University of the Arts while on my way to the fabulous "A Happening Place" show of top-of-the-line '60s pop art--which, by the way, is still funny, still fresh--at the Borowsky Gallery. Guinn's curved backdrop (detail right) with its receding image, the close-up 3-D animal peering into the painting, threw me back to times in my childhood that I spent in front of museum dioramas. The awful reflections in that window, always an impediment to viewing the art inside, forced me to put my nose right up to the glass to see. I stood there absorbed by the stand-off between 2-D and 3-D creatures. The situation was rendered even more mysterious by the raging campfire in the midst of undisturbed snow in a clearing. And the silhouetted trees, flat up on the window, raised the 2-D versus 3-D stakes while helping to draw me in past the glare. To view that wintery, forest scene from outside, on a hot city street, is worth a few moments' pause.
permanent link  libby 11:28 AM
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Adam Sandler's source?

 


"Plotz" is pretty funny--at least it is if you're Jewish. Barbara Kligman Rushkoff's semi-annual zine, which ran from 1995 to 2002, has a sweet and funny mix of corny Yiddish expressions and early rap and punk slang peppering its wry and often informative tidbits on life as Jew. The images, lifted straight from old magazines and text books photoshopped to include Stars of David and other Jewish symbols, reflect the tone of the whole enterprise. Issues are available for $1 or $2, and the poster's only $15. Such a deal, you won't believe.
permanent link  libby 11:04 AM
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Monday, May 05, 2003

A follow-up on Philadelphia Opens Studio Tours

 

A note from Ed Bronstein, a POST organizer:

Libby - ... The fee [editors' note: $70, see post below at 4/21/03] is higher than we'd like it to be, too, but we are putting this together as volunteers and we need that just to cover expenses. The artists who do sign up, however, get lots back, (we think) - press and pr, brochures, post cards to send out, posters, a kick-off party, and this year a curated exhibition. It's not just about selling, although, if my experience is typical (I sold a few pieces since to people who came to my studio by way of introduction to my work) I would assume that most artist/participants do think it was worth it. I have loved participating myself - I have met lots of other local artists [not this one, but here's an image of Thomas Eakins and his buddies at his studio--editors] and had over 50 visitors each day, who are now on my mailing list.
permanent link  libby 12:36 PM
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Sunday, May 04, 2003

Ink on paper

 


I was thinking about how art is like letter writing (letter by John Adams to Abagail Adams, 1774) -- a quaint activity practiced by few but irrelevant to most -- when several things happened. First, I got a check in the mail! Then, while hunting around on the Web, I accidentally Googled up an essay by Suzi Gablik that insists that artists can take charge of their own destiny, and possibly, just possibly become relevant to the way things are. Next day's mail offered up the invitation to Manna's 13th Annual "A Show of Hands' benefit auction on Friday, May 30 (silent auction at 5 pm; live auction at 7:30, Moore College of Art and Design). It reminded me that Philadelphia is full of artists working for change -- not only with charities but by participating in communities and by making art that's approachable (see Libby's First Friday posts). Maybe, I thought, Philadelphia's art is becoming more and not less relevant to life. The Show of Hands auction has brought in more than $100,000 a year over the last five years. That's relevant. Meanwhile, think I'll try to write a letter this week.




permanent link  roberta 7:25 AM
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