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Saturday, August 14, 2004

The search for Courage in London

 
Post and photos by Rob Matthews, our man in London, July 25 to July 31

Sunday July 25th, 2004


Tracy and I left Philadelphia by way of British Airways. Our plane was scheduled to leave at 9PM but it was delayed by an hour. At approximately 9:30, the plane we were to leave on finally arrived at the airport and upon docking was greeted by 6 Philadelphia police officers, 3 US Customs agents, and a team of paramedics. 5 minutes later, the customs agents left. 5 minutes after that most of the police officers left. 5 minutes later the paramedics and a police officer emerged pushing a stretcher with a body bag strapped to it. Long story short, someone died on the flight over from London. It was explained to us as a “medical problem”. My seat didn’t feel like death so I assumed the person did not expire where I sat. (image, Tom Friedman mystery piece with a nose-diving airplane, so it seemed like a good match for this paragraph. More on Friedman in another post--editors)


Monday July 26, 2004



We arrived in London mid-morning and then had about an hour long subway ride to the Covent Garden section to check into our hotel. As they say in Fargo, “It’s the Radisson, so you know it’s good.” We were conveniently located directly across the circle from the Jerry Springer Opera. (photo) Tracy’s company footed the hotel bill for the first four days we were there in exchange for locking Tracy up in a conference room for three days and forcing her to listen to speech after speech about mission statements, customer training, etc. Sounded fun, but I chose not to participate.




Before she was imprisoned, we were able to sneak across the river to ride the London Eye (the millennium ferris wheel, see picture) and then took in about an hour at the National Gallery (image below) which I used as a reconnaissance mission for a future solo attack the next day.




An hour was enough for Tracy. She saw the van Eycks, the Holbein and the Leonardo cartoon. Good enough for her.

That night we ate, what else, fish and chips. The restaurant was out of Courage beer. Something I wanted to track down merely for its relation to the second season of the Office. I settled for a Peroni.




Tracy and I watched 101 Most Embarassing Sexual Accidents on the Beeb (image, boring BBC lady). Almost all of these accidents involved a man shoving a foreign object into his penis, except for the guy that tried to hump the water pump in a hotel swimming pool.

--Rob Matthews is a Philadelphia artist whose work can be seen at Gallery Joe and most recently at the Art Alliance. Look here for his works in the upcoming MatCh-Art Sunday Afternoon Show, on line only.


permanent link  roberta 7:06 AM
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Friday, August 13, 2004

List-eria

 
List from Doug Witmer

One of our contributors, Doug Witmer, responded to our list of art-world dislikes (see post) with a list of his own with a positive spin. Modern Art Notes' Tyler Green infected us with list-eria, and we're hoping some of you catch the fever and send us your own art world list of 10 best or worst with a one or two-word description.

Here's Witmer's top 10:

Piet Mondrian. Utopia. (looking better and better to me...I especially like the way the work has aged physically)

Thomas Nozkowski. Gut. (From where and with what he paints. Great interview in "The Brooklyn Rail" back in January. http://www.brooklynrail.org/arts/jan04/nozkowski.html)



Anne Truitt. Unity. (I'm totally beguiled by her seemingly effortless work)

Wes Mills. Quiet. (I imagine him sitting at a small wooden table, the landscape of Montana visible through the window. So far from...)

Fra Angelico. Devotion. (see also, Utopia. I think it's hard for artists who posess this type of yearning to exist today and be taken seriously)

Pierre Bonnard. Seamless. (...can't take those surfaces apart...)

Peter Halley. Wattage. (His recent Mary Boone show was pretty eye-popping and pretty fresh, too, not to mention rad)

Agnes Martin. Silent. (She's a kind of standard-bearer. Though I must admit I felt disappointed when I saw her recent set of paintings in real life.) (Left, "Praise")

Henri Matisse. Relax. (It doesn't have to be so hard. Go with what makes you feel good visually)

Ellsworth Kelly. Clear. (See also, Relax. But just be beautifully concise about it.)

--Witmer, a Philadelphia artist, expects his Web site to be up and running soon.

permanent link  libby 8:17 PM
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Friday this and that

 
This photo by Raymond Holman is up at Sande Webster Gallery now, as are a host of other black and white photos in a lovely big show "Day and Night in Black and White." Lots of humanist shots -- Holman's and Arlene Love's are stand-outs -- and some beautiful landscapes by Ron Tarver, Michael Froio and others. Highly recommend the show. Go and think about the viability of black and white vis a vis color photography. There's sometheing otherworldly and seductive about b&w that tells me it will always appeal and thus always be with us.

Don't forget the gallery's now on Walnut St. between 20th and 21st.

My review will be in the Weekly next Wednesday.

The importance of phoning ahead

I tried to see the summer show at Fleisher-Ollman the other day (Libby's post for more) and to my surprise (because I checked the website and thought it represented true information) the gallery's really not open this month. The show's down.

When I found them shut, I called, and a gracious William Pym, who was there preparing the walls for the upcoming fall exhibit, said they were open by appointment only and told me to come on by so I did. He gave me a private viewing of what had been up and a peek at what's next (more on that another day). So be forwarned. Gallery websites can be unreliable sources of information. Call first.
permanent link  roberta 6:57 AM
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Thursday, August 12, 2004

From the artist's mouth

 
I dropped by Vox Populi yesterday evening for one of their regular gallery talks, in which the artists tell what they're doing and why.

I'd never stopped by before, but the small crowd, mostly a core of regulars and Voxers was welcoming.

First I looked at the show, to which I had given only a cursory look on First Friday. I was surprised by the number of people using silkscreens and stencils and airbrushes.

In addition to the Samantha Simpson, Amy Adams and Eva Wylie pieces, which I admired last time (see First Friday post), this time I visited everything else.

Just when I had declared to Roberta two days earlier that sculpture was dead (I was dead sure I was right, too, so maybe it was my brain that was dead), here was sculpture that was quite alive. Three of the pieces involved reflections of color on walls--a tactic that brought to mind some Kevin Strickland pieces I had seen at the Project Room.

Yun's pieces were chock full of other references. "Oh, C'mon" (left) were several pairs of particle boards edged in orange tape from Home Depot resting against the wall on a low, ceremonial pedestal, looking like tablets or scrolls or screens. The tape cast an orange aura on the wall behind, suggesting something almost religious or supernatural, or at least the idea of slowing down and taking in the magic of the world around us.

"Get Your History Straight," (right) half the advertising slogan Philadelphia used to market itself to gays (the other half is And Your Night Life Gay) is a sort of deck of cards structure made from paint chips (also from Home Depot), the colors reflected on the wall. The pipe-like shape blends right in with the real pipes in the room, and the little gray (floor color) pedestal, just a box, really, elevates it again above the reality of the pipes, and again requires a slowing down to take in the magic.





Yun again makes you notice in "Ooops" (top) and "Come to Philadelphia" (left). In "Ooops," she's also thinking about the way that old plaster walls look in the deteriorating old city where next-door buildings have been razed, and how what's old sifts down and casts is spell over what's below. In "Come to Philadelphia," scented markers are barely visible through a slit on the side of a carefully finished box mounted at face level. The scent as just loud enough if you get close enough to notice it. The box makes me think of the three wise men carry frankinsence and myrrh in what I imagine were sandalwood boxes. But inside, here, are children's markers, the experience of them something to be enshrined.

I was also struck by the materiality and sculptural implications of Anne Schaefer's "Per Square Foot," (right below) its individual squares implying objects rather than paintings.

I stayed long enough for the talk and here's some of what I heard, in the order I heard it:

From Anne Schaefer

Schaefer comes from a fabric and silkscreening background, working with imagery that falls somewhere between commodity and fine art. By using modules, which work like tiles and have a commercial connotation, she is taking some of the personality out of the work. The owner can arrange the modules to taste. The imagery in this particular piece came from a 1930s decorative dishtowel. She was surprised at how, by putting together so many of the modules, the work dominated the space (right, "Per Square Foot").

Schaefer is putting chance in the hand of whoever shows her pieces, but not in their manufacture.

Eva Wylie was absent, but Anne represented her:

Wylie's work, was silkscreened directly on to the wall, and she referred to it as a landscape. The method she uses, searching a word, in this case "crown" via Google, adds an element of chance, but ultimately, she is controling the final product. The crowd oohed and ahhed over the challenge of silk-screening directly onto the wall. We all wondered how she avoided drips.





From Amy Adams

Adams is interested in accumulation. She starts with a shape with no meaning, and has a number of stencils of the same shape in different sizes. As she adds the shapes, the work gains significance to her, and she thinks of it as microsopic and massive. She thinks of the work as having something to do with mass production.

There's no materiality to her surface (she works with an air brush), not much illusion of depth, only the illusion of the imagery, and she mentioned David Reed (left, a Reed painting) as one of her influences.






From Gus Boyce

Both of Boyce's tiny chipboard house models are of his childhood homes (right, "5223 North Chalet Court," about 3" x 3" x 1 1/2" deep from wall), and they are his idea of what an aerial view of them would be like. They serve as a backdrop for his memories. He also likes the surveillance quality, and zeroing in a cropping stuff out. At one point, he discovered he could zoom in on his childhood home (I'm not clear if he could view both of them) from a Website that had satellite photos of the area where he had lived, but that came after the inspiration for the work.

I'm not sure he nailed down in his mind his rationale for such specificity in naming the pieces versus the uninflected material and minimal detail in the pieces themselves. But the craftsmanship was meticulous. He cited sculptor Charles Ray and Victor Hugo (for his drawings) as artists he liked.


From Stefan Abrams

By choosing places and moments with even lighting, so even that they give the illusion of objectivity, Abrams is making photos that are highly subjective. His subject matter here is landscape, and about how technology creates landscape (left, "Rock Piles"). But the photos, which are made with an analog 4x5 camera (it's hard to make such large prints with a digital), are also about photos as flat spaces. He is avoiding anything narrative in these images. Unfortunately, I think the images need to tip his hand a little more. Right now the images look as objective as he says they look. There's no hint of the subjectivity that might be there. It's how they look that counts.


From Linda Yun

Yun is trying to pay attention to her everyday environment, using everyday materials elevated to art. She said she had a professor once compain about "Home Depot art," but almost everything she makes is from Home Depot, she said. She's attracted by the utilitarian quality of the materials. But what she does is make her viewer notice, too--the reflected light of a color, a scent emanating from a small space, an ordinary outlet, the traces of a spider that lives inside the outlet (right, "Get Your History Straight" detail).

She likes to offer surprises and treats, and in the piece with the scented markers embedded, she pictured people swiping their noses along the opening like an ATM card. She also liked the feeling of violating the sculpture's space.

From Samantha Simpson

Simpson is throwing down the gauntlet, ready to duel highbrow, unfriendly art. She said that art education weans young artists away from what's easily pleasing to what's sophisticated, smart and inaccessible. She felt that popular culture got all that was good in visual art, and high culture got austere minimalism. So she decided, after learning to scorn everything that drew her to visual art, to return to the things she liked as a child. She's deliberately decorative, using color, prettiness, drama and narrative, using them as strategies to say something bigger and make her message accessible.

Her mural at Vox is about her grandmother, who she had just spent time with at a lakeside place called Rockyview, full of sick, elderly people. The badgers are her grandparents. Simpson has "millions of stencils," which she used with an airbrush to create the piece, "Incident at Rockyview" (left). Right now, she's been looking at Pre-Raphaelite art with its cheesy, romantic, over-the-top, feminine decorative qualities, as well as 17th century and Japanese prints, and Maxfield Parrish sunsets. Her work is not ironic.

I don't know what else she said because I had to leave, but whatever I heard made me love what I loved all the more, and made me reconsider what I didn't love. I won't say I changed my view and judgment, but I will say that even the work I found less than convincing was made with great thought, and any one of these artists has enough cooking to make me look forward to where they go.

permanent link  libby 11:50 AM
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Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Reading Philly in artnet

 
Artnet's always newsy news roundup yesterday included three items with Philadelphia connections. Here.

1. Proposed Calder museum for the parkway on hold according to unnamed insiders. Money is the issue.

2. Larry Mangel of Bozart toys launches a new art/design enterprise Cerealart (brain food, get it). Products by international superstars Yoshitomo Nara, Laurie Simmons, Ryan McGinniss and more. Cute flash website, same format as Bozart.

3. On a sadder note, German artist Jorg Immendorff, whose "I wanted to be an artist" exhibit was a great show this year at Moore College of Art and Design, was found guilty and given a fine and a suspended sentence on a cocaine possession charge. The artist, late 50s, has the nerve-degenerative ALS disease and the story says his painting arm is already paralyzed. Libby and I both wrote about the show for artblog (check the artists index) and I wrote about it for PW (check PW archives) and for artnet (Philadelphia Story).

permanent link  roberta 6:32 AM
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Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Christo ball

 
International House is having a fiesta of 5 films about Christo and his installations Friday, Aug. 13 to Sunday, Aug. 15. Director Albert Maysles will be there in person.

Friday, Aug. 13 at 7 p.m.

Christo's Valley Curtain dir. The Maysles Bros. & Ellen Hovde, USA, 1974, 16mm, 28 mins, color
The first collaboration between the Maysles Brothers and the Christos and recipient of an Academy Award nomination, Christo's Valley Curtain celebrates the dramatic hanging of a huge orange curtain between two Colorado mountains and the powerful effect it has on a community.

Followed by Running Fence dir. The Maysles Bros. & Charlotte Zwerin, USA, 1978, 16mm, 58 mins, color
An engrossing document of Christo and Jean-Claude's efforts to build a 24 ½-mile-long, 18-foot-high fence of white fabric across the hills of northern California. The artists' struggle with local ranchers, environmentalists and state bureaucrats ends when the fence is unfurled, reuniting the community in a celebration of beauty (top, the "Running Fence").

Saturday, Aug. 14 at 7 p.m.

Director Albert Maysles in Person Islands dir. The Maysles Bros. & Charlotte Zwerin, USA, 1986, 16mm, 57 mins, color
Christo and Jean-Claude fight for permission to surround eleven islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay with 6.5 million square feet of bright pink fabric, interwoven with their struggle to wrap the Pont-Neuf in Paris and the Reichstag in Berlin.

Followed by Christo in Paris dir. The Maysles Bros., Deborah Dickson & Susan Froemke, USA/France, 1990, 16mm, 58 mins, color, French w/ English subtitles
Winner of the Grand Prize at the Amsterdam Film Festival and Best Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival, Christo in Paris explores Christo's escape from Bulgaria, his early years as a struggling artist, his romance with Jean-Claude and the fulfillment of a ten-year obsession: the wrapping of the Pont-Neuf in Paris.

Sunday, Aug. 15 at 7 p.m. Umbrellas dir. Albert Maysles, Henry Corra & Grahame Weinbren, USA, 1995, 16mm, 81 mins, color
East and West are brought together in the Christo's most ambitious projects to date: 1,340 blue umbrellas are opened in a rice-farming valley in the Japanese province of Ibaraki, and 1,760 yellow umbrellas across a cluster of cattle ranches in the rolling hills of southern California. A beautiful journey filled with both triumph and tragedy.

Friday's screening is followed by the White Dog Cafe's Eighteenth Annual Caribbean Street Party. The White Dog is located at 3420 Sansom Street, Philadelphia. Must be 21 to attend the Block Party. ID will be checked at the White Dog. Film tickets are $6.00 for general admission, $5.00 for I House members, students and seniors. Film and Street Party tickets are $9.00 for general admission, $8.00 for I House members, students and seniors. Available one hour before showtime at the International House box office at 37th and Chestnut.

permanent link  libby 10:21 AM
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The sea, the sky, the storm

 
Artblog contributor Mark Barry was in Cape Hatteras with his family when Hurricane Alex ripped its way up the coast. His story at ionarts includes lots of photos including a suite of beauties of the sea and sky taken the night before the storm.

By the way, Barry tells us that one benefit from this harrowing experience is that he now can spell hurricane (two r's) without using the spell checker. Ah, the things nature can teach you!
permanent link  roberta 7:40 AM
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Sad news, Leon Golub dies

 
I got a note from Tony Seraphin of Seraphin Gallery this morning. I'll let the dealer who was the artist's friend speak in his own words:

Last night a true Lion of the art world died at 82, Leon Golub. Leon was a friend and mentor to me and will be sorely missed by myself and those who knew and respected him as the man and as the unique artist he was. Leon never changed course in his beliefs and expressions that have made him an icon. Hopefully the NYT will do justice to his career this week.--Anthony Seraphin

Libby wrote a nice appreciation here about Golub's work at Seraphin. Golub's voice of righteous anger against social injustice will be missed.

permanent link  roberta 7:19 AM
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Monday, August 09, 2004

Monday list of things

 
The artblog editors make a list
Inspired by Tyler Green's list-o-mania (he's made his list of 10 favorite artists and asked bloggers to give their lists of their 10 favorite artists). We sampled some of the lists and found peoples' choices full of surprises.

Unable to conform as usual, we've come up with our own list:

Art world stuff we love to hate at 1:09 p.m., Monday, Aug. 9, 2004:

1.) Robert Ryman. Too much white, too much ego.

2.) The Corcoran giving Seward Johnson a show.

3.) Abstract sculpture except for Richard Serra.

4.) Aida Ruilova. Freudian cliches.

5.) David Altmejd. Damien Hirst lite.

6.) Antony Gormley. Lead poisoning.

7.) Marina Abramovic. Enough with the self-abuse already. (top, her razored belly)

8.) Richard Tuttle. Decline and fall of content. (image is "In 19 (Two Greens)")

9.) Too much Matthew Barney at the Guggenheim.

10.) Seating arrangements parading as public art.

--By Libby and Roberta
permanent link  roberta 1:10 PM
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Fun, fun, fun in the summer

 
Thanks to Daily Gusto who read it at the BBC, we now know why Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" is the scariest movie ever.

I'm not disagreeing. But get this triumph of reason over intuition:

Mathemeticians have now concocted a formula to determine scariness to the nth degree . They treated themselves to a gore n horror movie fest and got their brains burned.

Here's the formula:
SCARY MOVIE FORMULA

(es+u+cs+t) squared +s+ (tl+f)/2 + (a+dr+fs)/n
+ sin x - 1.
Where:
es = escalating music
u = the unknown
cs = chase scenes
t = sense of being trapped
s = shock
tl = true life
f = fantasy
a = character is alone
dr = in the dark
fs = film setting
n = number of people
sin = blood and guts
1 = stereotypes

I'd like to ad a little to that formula although I don't have a clue where it goes. Call it vm = visual memory you'd like to erase but can't -- like that image of Nicholson axing through the door to murder Shelley Duval and the kid. Who can ever forget? Not only was it shocking (s) but it was funny (f) too, which is one reason the image above, "Here's Georgy," high in (t) (tl) (a) (sin) (dr), works so well. Thanks to billmon's archives for correctly spinning the current administration's policies.
permanent link  roberta 7:30 AM
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Sunday, August 08, 2004

First Friday ups and downs

 

This was not the world's best First Friday, what with a number of galleries closed for the holidays and a number of second-string shows up. But there's still some quality out here and there and somewhere.

The clear high point was at Vox Populi, which is showing off its new members in a group show. I don't want to say too much because I know Roberta wants to post on this but I can't help myself and have to put in a couple of comments.

First of all, our sometime contributor Samantha Simpson is on a roll. She had some drawings up at Gallery Joe, which we glowingly reviewed last month for First Friday; she has an airbrushed and stencilled mural installation at Vox; and she has a show coming up in September at the Philadelphia Art Alliance for which she's hard at work completing a bestiary in a box. (Top and left, detail views of Simpson's installation at Vox, "Incident at the Rockyview").

What I love about Simpson's work is the way it looks like a storybook illustration yet has a larger mythic quality that keeps you wondering as your eyes keep wandering, the quandaries of the animals and their place in the universe like your own.

Somehow, I managed to miss a lot of the work when I was at Vox, so this is not a comprehensive or complete set of comments on what's there. I enjoyed a couple of paintings by Amy Adams that seemed strongly influenced by computer-generated screen-saver patterns. The press release suggests a comparison to landscapes, and they certainly had a quality of roiling hills or varying altitudes, but they also reminded me of intestines and industrial production and amassing via conveyer belt of multiples like cigarettes or candy.

The blue image had some sneaky little depth charges in between the proliferation that suggested a nether world beneath our bubbling and roiling daily excess. (My shot of the blue image came out too flat a blue, so I'm showing the green, right, which retains its pop in spite of the flash-flattened center; besides you can check on the Vox site for the blue one.) The finish on these paintings was smooth, with controlled edges, which made me think they were silk-screened and airbrushed, but I do not know this for sure.

I'll also put up an image of Eva Wylie's hand-pulled silkscreen installation, "Crowned," the images drawn from a computer search of the word "crown," decontextualized and arranged in a lyrical, decorative pattern filled with subversive commentary(left, a detail of Wylie's piece).

Others showing there included Anne Schaefer, Gabriel Boyce, Stefan Abrams and Linda Yun. As I mentioned, I missed entire swaths of this show. I'm feeling guilty toward these artists and in no way is my leaving them out a statement of judgment. I'll see what Roberta writes, and may come back at this show later.

Fresco rainbow

At Wexler Gallery, I spent some time with Mark Bennion's "Frescoes" exhibit of squares of layered rich oil colors on plaster on paper mounted on canvas. These were pretty minimal--glowing squares of color, with dark uneven edges that made me think of the edges of early photographs.

Small squares of black or brown or deep deep red suggested tiny windows in enormous walls, or the holes that are reminders of where the beams used to be before the renovations. Dark fissures looked like lightening on a negative or scratches on the positive. Some pieces had more texture than others; some had marks that looked like fingerprints and rain. But the plaster plus the distress marks evoked ancient walls at the same time that the paint looked not at all ancient.

These were easy to look at for a long time, rescued by their thoughtfulness and concentration from falling into mere decoration. The layers here were keys to the work--layers of support media, layers of paint, layers of the past leaving their marks on the present for us to contend with.

Shroom love

At Gallery 222, Deanne Cheuk is showing mushroom-obsessed work of mostly oils and computer prints. Cheuk has a strong sense of design and fashion, and some of her mushrooms look like spinning girls or dervishes with Fortuny-pleated skirts (right, "Undersided 02" oil on canvas). But many of the pieces included small nudes with mushroom heads or just small nudes romping among the mushrooms, and all I could think of was Henry Darger and his Vivian Girls, although I admit the mushroom girls weren't quite so creepy.

Cheuk's technique is terrific, painting trompe l'oeil collages and trompe l'oeil windows to the wall behind. The flat surfaces look like silk-screened areas and airbrush work for the most part. Overall, these were slick bits of packaged hipness (left, "Mushroom Nights Collage Boy 2," oil on canvas).

The gallery notes described the paintings as psychedelic; I wondered if that's why mushrooms were the subject (I wouldn't know a potent mushroom from a shiitake); maybe she was high when she made them, but as visions go, these felt pretty calculated.

As Roberta said, we were there early, and that I got in when I did was thanks to the kindness of the 222ers, so I ended up leaving before the artist arrived and didn't get to ask her my questions about why mushrooms, etc.

The opposite of calculated

I also saw some paintings at PII at 2nd and Race that were heavy on the process approach. A little calculation can be a good thing, in my view.

Nonetheless, in the front room, Cathleen Hughes' "Elements" (right) had a pleasing mappy quality. Hughes, by the way, has a painting going up at a Germantown Avenue mosque as part of the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.



In PII's back room, Paris resident Odetka Tuduri expressed personal angst with slashing, serious, expressionist strokes--painterly process that didn't reveal attention to the decisions behind the process.

The highlight was Tuduri's whirling figure in a swivel chair, the awkward giant feet in Converse hightops reminding me of the comic strip "Zits" (left). I like a sense of humor.

permanent link  libby 12:29 PM
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Jumble of dogs, shoes, commerce and stuff

 
You go early to First Friday and you have trouble getting in. So instead of telling you about Union 237 which wasn't open when I stopped by at 5:30, (they open at 6) I'll tell you about the jumble to stuff I ran into on the street and in a few emporia that were open. Libby and I split up the reportorial duties and we crossed paths at Nexus so you may get some double redundancy here and in her post, but nevermind, just consider it part of the ongoing conversation.

First off, Nexus had a yard sale clogging the artery on 2nd St. The boxes and tables full of stuff out front of the gallery made me understand why the British call these things "jumble" sales. (top image)

Out of the chaos, however, Stella did pull one nice 50 cent object -- a coffee mug. Happiness is a finding a bargain and she was happy. The sale was a fundraiser and while I didn't see a lot of cash transactions, I hope they did well.

Meanwhile next door there's a new pooch accessory shop and being a viable commercial enterprise they were of course open. "2 Dog Studio" is the name. Proprietors Deborah and Robert Simmons told me they'd moved their operation from Atlanta recently and before that they were in Dallas. The store's been open since June and they sell items like dog pillows manufactured locally to their specs. Lots of stuff, definitely not a jumble. In fact the shop's stacks of pillows had a sculptural aesthetic I loved. (left)

The Simmonses said they hoped to make their shop a complete lifestyle shop in the future. Whether that means pillows for people as well as pillows for Fido I'm not sure but it sounded like an integrated plan.

We saw echoes of dog love later when we ran in to Vox Populi for the new members show. Samantha Simpson, artist, artblog pal, and new Voxer, had a wall painting that was full of animal love.

Simpson has an affinity for animals which appear as human stand-ins in her works. She was dressed to coincide with that theme, in black leather clogs that had stitched images of a cat and a dog on the tops. (right) While not quite ruby red slippers they had a not in Kansas anymore ambiance that went beautifully with her dreamy, watery, fairy tale painting.



Meanwhile, back outside on 2nd St., Mark Price and his sister, Hilary Price, were there selling Brother Price's prints and drawing and Sister Price's bags and wallets. Their stuff by the way looks better and better. Brother Price's prints and drawings seems to be blossoming into a full-blown, beautiful, stylized forlorn aesthetic. (and there they are,left, looking forlorn)

Before exiting Old City for Space 1026 and Vox, we dropped in to Dane Decor to see Jeff Schaller paint a moderne design sofa. (right)

The painted couch, once finished, will be auctioned off, proceeds going to help fund a needy person's house makeover in a show called "Extreme Home" a spin-off of "Trading Spaces."

permanent link  roberta 9:34 AM
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