artblog

 
Posted by roberta

Judy Engle emailed me at the Weekly to invite me to see a small exhibit of her collages in the teacher's lounge at Community College. She reminded me that I hadn't made it to a previous exhibit of hers, and that triggered the Catholic guilt in me and off I went. While the exhibit space, in the teachers' lounge, was nothing special (in fact it is a utilitarian space with copy machine, lunch/meeting table and bulletin boards and would be a killer for some work), it was fine for Engle's intimate pieces. The collages were seductive and intriguing and because you went in close to see them, they overcame the space.
engle, judy
The work is serious, ambitious and technically unique -- narrow strips of taped pieces of imagery that build up to mostly abstract fields with an underwater drowsiness to them. The artist's statement, which was sassy and smart, seemed part art history lesson and part confessional. Quoting from the statement:

"In an illustrious group that includes Romare Bearden, Robert Motherwell, and Joan Miro, Hannah Hoch is my favorite collage artist....As a so-called "outsider artist," I am expected to be obsessive in my work and I am happy to oblige."

The entire package intrigued and I wanted to know more.



Over coffee, I learned that Engle, a bouncy, talkative 61, is an English teacher, something she's done for 39 years. Evenings and weekends she stays up late making art. She does a lot of gallery-going, here and in New York, and is informed and passionate about what she sees. She buys art, even when it stretches her pocketbook. She longs to have the balance of her life change so that she could spend more time making art and less time at her day job which pays the bills.

Engle's need to make art runs deep. While not schooled in art, the artist's background of growing up on a farm in Bucks County surrounded by mother, father and grandfather who did everything themselves (from building the house they lived in to designing and stitching the clothes they wore to growing their food) propelled her into the world of hands-on object-making.

"I did a sweater for a doll when I was eight years old. I can do a whole lot of things. I got that from a farmer and a carpenter and a housewife who wanted to be a fashion designer," she said.

"Everybody made things. They were creating things. Necessity is the mother of art," she said.



Talking about her work habits, Engle said "I work every day....sometimes I don't have the time to do the dishes and the laundry." She reads the NY Times every day and the newspaper is source material for the collages. One time she used the Ikea catalog but that was the exception. A number of years ago, Engle applied for a Leeway grant in photography. She wanted to study with a mentor, Ellen Priest, who teaches collage art at UArts. She didn't get the grant but she went ahead with the mentoring sessions, at her own expense, which tells you a lot about the artist's zeal and determination.


Lately, Engle has been applying to juried exhibitions -- and getting in. In fact, she's been in three exhibits so far this year. "I get in to a lot of shows that people who've been to art school don't get in to," she said, amazed and bemused. Early on, her art was photography but now she's dedicated to collage. She loves the process and has found success showing and selling it. She's been in shows at Perkins Center for the Arts and the Sedgewick Cultural Arts Center.

As a collage artist, Engle is intimately acquainted with tape. In particular she loves packing tape. Several of the works I saw, which were long and narrow, were from what she calls the "1.88 Project." The standard width of all packing tapes is 1.88 inches and the pieces in the "1.88 Project" were ribbons of collage exactly 1.88 inches wide.



So Engle is having a little fun with her art, as well as obsessing over it. The artist has numerous friends and supporters and she's got several irons in the fire, like sending slides to a publisher so her work can be considered for book covers. What I loved most about the work -- and the artist -- is the clear confidence that the work has value and that it communicates a "topsy-turvy" world that's quite a bit like the one we live in, breathless with imagery, fragmented and in collision with itself. Without being spiritual in nature, Engle's collages are wonderful meditations on life in 2005. (all images are details from collages by Engle; last image is based on the Ikea catalog.)

permanent link   roberta 11:12 AM
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Posted by libby

We're on for today (see Dorothy info in left bar), the first day of our art giveaway. Maybe we'll see you there.

permanent link   libby 9:54 AM
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Posted by libby

At last someone in Philadelphia has picked up the New York Times-style narrated slide show, one of the great things that the internet can give you that print media cannot. The local show, a behind-the-scenes look at the installation of "Accumulated Vision: Barry Le Va" at the Institute of Contemporary Art, voice over by exhibition curator Ingrid Schaffner, is on the ICA's web site (right, Le Va's "Shatterscatter").
le va, barry
Go directly to the slide show here.

To make things even better, all the ICA has to do is replace the mysterious front-page description "interactive feature" with the transparent description "slide show" or "narrated slide show" so we clickers can find our way there with some understanding of what's being offered.

permanent link   libby 4:25 PM
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Posted by libby

Two very different species of stitchery crossed my path recently, and the differences speak volumes about the differences in the two galleries where the work exhibited.
ahn, julianne
At Space 1026, Julianne Ahn showed embroidered images on rough, hand-made felt that looked a little mysterious--maybe padding for clothes or furniture. The embroidery was bold and rough, the images surprising scenes of modern life--people sitting on the Kyoto Metro viewed from an angle so the figures were anonymous, a full-figure outline portrait of a young boy named Sebastian, a club scene on open mic night, a city view (left, "Kyoto Metro").
greene, talia
Ahn's work was part of a group show including pumped-up specimen portraits of bees by Talia Greenee, clown Xerox-transfer prints more notable for their method than their content by Candace Vivian, tiny, sweet quilts and woodblock prints by Katie Baldwin (I've seen better work from her elsewhere), and collage and assemblage by Brielle Duym (right, Greene's "Augmented Bee #6").





What made Ahn's work so interesting was its toughness and sharp observation in a medium associated with femininity and decoration. It was work chronicling the time and culture in which she is working (left, Ahn's "Kyoto 2").
san chirico, joanie
In contrast, stichery and applique by Joanie San Chirico at Pringle Gallery had references to cultures in which she is not working--pre-industrial Japan, ancient Rome and ancient Egypt, for example. Chirico may be mining the past, (she has a series made with pieces of old kimonos, a couple of catacombs pieces, an obelisk) but the work is visually modern, with its undermined rectangles and abstracted imagery.

My favorite was "Kimono Fragments: Sun" (image right) which stood out for its prominent hand-stitchery and its color. But all in all, pretty trumped meaning, and the references to the past and distant cultures couldn't pour in quite enough content to lift this work above nice craft.

Also at Pringle, pretty encaustic paintings by Karen Nielsen-Fried, the images likable and unsurprising.

permanent link   libby 10:42 AM
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Posted by roberta

I stopped in to see Allen Bentley's exhibit at Bridgette Mayer Gallery the other day. It was pouring rain and inside, Bentley's hot colors and all the steamy bodies in motion in his paintings took the chill right out of me. These new works, which were selling well, Mayer said, show Bentley moving in a new direction, away from the dance motif and into edgier territory with more about gender politics, sex and power. It's great to see artists take risks. (image is "Two Count," 2004, oil on canvas)
bentley, allen
"Two Count" and another work, "Thunder," (below) both large and full of saturated, Toys-R-Us colors, are the most open and provocative of the lot. They seem to imply a questioning about roles and human interaction without coming to conclusions.

Bentley will give a public gallery talk about his work this Friday, 5:30-6:30 p.m. Email or call the gallery to rsvp: bridgetteart@earthlink.net 215.413.8893



Meanwhile, gallerist Mayer, who is an art consultant as well, is putting together a seminar for artists called "Rock Solid Finance: Building your Financial Present and Future as a Creative Professional." The two-hour long session, co-sponsored by Mayer and Kara Zidek, will provide information on financial planning and goals for artists. The seminar is scheduled for May 11, 6-8:30 pm and will be held at the ICA (not a sponsor but they have a good room for the event). Nominal fee (in the neighborhood of $10) and proceeds go to a scholarship fund for a student from Philadelphia High School of Art and Design.

permanent link   roberta 10:34 AM
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Posted by roberta

Yesterday I went to Ingrid Schaffner's talk about Dali's Dream of Venus. The talk was late in the afternoon on the Penn campus and on my way I saw these flowers -- in bloom -- on the sunny side of Steinberg-Dietrich Hall. Today we're supposed to get 9 inches of snow. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

permanent link   roberta 9:45 AM
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Posted by roberta

You might not get to see Mark Shetabi's work locally this year since his Locks solo show has been postponed due to gallery scheduling conflicts. I'm trying to contain my disappointment. I'm a big fan, and the artist's first Locks exhibit in 2003 was a great environmental work -- completely transforming the Locks downstairs gallery into a mysterious, chilly office corridor. And it was one of the year's stand-out shows here.
shetabi, mark
But the artist of the peephole environments and grisaille paintings, who told me the news, said that things are going well and that he's been exhibiting successfully outside Philadelphia.

In fact, Shetabi's work, which was picked up by ratio 3 gallery, had a big success in that gallery's booth at the recent NADA fair in Miami. Apparently, his paintings sold out fast at NADA. And just in case you were wondering, the peephole environments are popular as well, with several sold.

This May, the artist's work will be included in "Subversion and Censure" a three-person show at EVO gallery in Santa Fe. Amanda Innes, EVO's owner emailed me to say they're planning to have an installation piece by Shetabi in the show. There will also be an installation by Ligia Bouton and paintings by Gerry Snyder. This will be Shetabi's second time showing with EVO. (image is Shetabi's "92 Voyager," oil on panel, 2004)

Shetabi's not the first, nor will he be the last to throw his net widely and achieve success out of town as well as in town. It's a given that an artist must reach out. With luck (and work) a Philadelphia artist like Shetabi and other up-and-comers will be able to keep the home fires burning (or at least simmering) while creating a national audience for their work.

permanent link   roberta 10:50 AM
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Posted by roberta

One is surreal and the other is expressionistic but they're both hot and hallucinatory. My book review of "The Secret Life of Salvador Dali" is in PW today. Here. It's a thrilling bad boy book with a great narrative voice and exquisite prose. Libby mentioned how poetic the guy's titles are. Well that's the give-away. He's a writer!
yufit, yevgeniy
Also in the paper today, my preview of Russian filmmaker Yevgeniy Yufit's wonderful black and white art films at Pageant Soloveev. Here. The gallery's screening the films (the early shorts and later feature length works) and what I sampled when I was there was absolutely beautiful, eerie and memorable. Yufit is playing with political metaphor throughout (it's about life in the Soviet state and about mankind's failure to evolve). Highly recommended. (image is a still from Yufit's "Killed by Lightening" in which evolution is played off against a story about a father's war-time secret.)

Film screenings: Every Wed., 5:30pm and 7pm; Thurs., 7pm; Fri., 5:30pm and 7pm; Sat., 2pm; and Sun., 1pm. Donation suggested. Pageant: Soloveev Gallery, 607 Bainbridge St. 215.925.1535.

permanent link   roberta 8:54 AM
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Posted by roberta

The theme of Abington Curator Amy Lipton's innaugural show, "Trouble in Paradise," is loss. The context is the environment. That said, the thrust of the show is not one of overwhelming sorrow or shock but one of questioning and quiet observation. The works are uniformly interesting; some are beautiful, and at least one has lots of edgy atmosphere. And by the end of my looking, I thought that by repeating its theme, tweaking it this way and that the show succeeded as a visual essay on the fragile state of air, water, plants, animals, birds, bees and humans in the 21st Century. We really ought to think a little harder about this globe of ours and what a mess it's in. (top image is "Apotheosis of the Successor Culture" by Dan Ford. You can't tell here but the apogee element is a gas station, seen atop a hill way in the distance.)
ford, dan

garnett, joy
"Trouble" is a gentle show. An exhibit of Bernd and Hilla Becher photographs of coke processing plants -- or Steven Benson's photos of the Three Gorges project in China, or Sebastiao Salgado's photographs of ships being dismantled in India would be more horrifying to look at than anything here.

But the show's not out to horrify. It's out to steer and raise issues and to introduce the idea that there are many many artists out there who are concerned about our earth. This show alone has fifteen artists and you know it's the tip of the tip of the iceberg. (image is Ford's "Manifest Destiny," a beautiful landscape painted on a flattened Colt 45 beer can)

rockman, alexis
There's one image here that stands out. It has a kind of shock value the other works -- even one by the eco-hysterical Alexis Rockman (shown below left, Rockman's "Prairie") -- don't have. That's Joy Garnett's "Jog," (right) a simple work based on a news photo of a jogger getting some exercise during the first Gulf War. The jogger is running with a mask on his face and in the background are the burning oil fields of Kuwait. The sly, subliminal, run for the hills it's the apocalypse coming message works perfectly with the fast, brushy atmosphere of the work. Garnett, whose blog, Newsgrist, is on my bookmarks, has, without hysteria and with a lot of smart geo-political positioning, created a work that is a modern day Albert Pinkham Ryder Death riding through the land painting.


mumford, steve
It's man and nature everywhere in this show. And the works are to a piece worth the trip out to Abington. The big surprise is Steve Mumford's painting, "Midnight Sun," (below right) a kind of N. C. Wyeth does Jack London with a twist -- a shiny illustration gone weird even by fiction standards. Mumford, you may remember, is the artist whose diaristic drawings from the current Iraq war, called Bagdad Journal, appears regularly at artnet magazine.


Anyway enough now I'll say more when I review the show -- which is up through may 28 -- in the Weekly. My only twinge of disappointment is that one artist, Brian Alfred, a painter whose show Libby and I had seen last year at Max Protetch (see Libby's post and mine which is mostly about Ann Craven but gets in a little about Alfred at the end) couldn't be in the show. I was excited about seeing his work and an early press release had him in the list but Curator Lipton told me that Alfred had just sold out a show at Protech and had nothing for the Abington exhibit! Good news for the young artist, bad news for us. (Go to Protetch and check this guy out. He's pretty great.)

permanent link   roberta 8:25 PM
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Posted by libby

While I was at Vox Populi last week, I asked gallery director Yana Balson about what I assumed to be the imminent demolition of the gallery's space. Vox, the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Highwire Gallery, the Asian Arts Initiative and a number of artists studios are in the Gilbert Building, at 1315 Cherry Street, a location that is scheduled to be gobbled up by the expansion of the nearby Pennsylvania Convention Center. The Gilbert Building, with its stacked large spaces, has become a terrific locus for viewing art in the past few years in Philadelphia, enhanced by its location down the street from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

From the newspaper articles I read reporting the release of the money by the Pennsylvania Legislature for the expansion, I assumed this spring would be the end of the line.

Balson, however, was optimistic that the demolition was far from imminent, and that the gallery might be able to eke out two more years in the building. She said the building owner had not yet been formally notified of the takeover, and the Convention Center would have to purchase the building, then the city would have to condemn it and the tenants would have to be given some time to relocate. She said she was hoping for two years before the gallery would actually have to evacuate.

On the dark side, real estate and rentals are high right now and appropriate buildings are not plentiful in Center City, which is where the gallery would prefer to remain. On the bright side, the city, she said, is supposed to pay for relocation expenses.

permanent link   libby 3:38 PM
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Posted by libby

Surprise. All white and I'm hooked. I'm referring to Justin Witte's new work showing at Vox Populi this month. "Whitewash" takes not-surprising imagery--I've seen these lumbering lumberjacks in the woods from Witte before--mixes in a surprising material, white puff paint, the kind craftsy people use to decorate sweatshirts, screens it onto triptych canvases painted white, adds urban and suburban landscape details, and voila, we've got something new and interesting (left, a detail image which at this low resolution doesn't look like much).
witte, justin
Part of what makes the work interesting is that you can get it on a really basic level and then find more in it than its superficial meaning about how, from afar, we don't notice the violence and mayhem we've created on the other side of the world (right, installation shot).
hu, joseph
Part of what makes it interesting is its references to medieval triptychs and the detailed landscapes in the background of the paintings of that era--and how Witte translates that taste for detail into McDonald's, McMansions, and McSprawl as well as ornate urban architecture.

And part of what makes it interesting is that the paintings do not lend themselves to looking from afar and taking in the whole--all you see is white. You've got to get nose-to-nose with the paintings to see them, which means, since they are too large to take in all at once, that you have to walk along their length, crane your neck up, drop your nose down and read them like a story with incidents and complications that suggest terrible doings (left, another not-quite readable detail image).

In the distance, the landscapes of McMalls keep their distance from what's going on.

Even though Witte is using imagery familiar from past work--especially the strangely static dudes in flannel shirts and the cut tree limbs--this change enriches the work, and even though inspired by specific events, the work is pretty open to multiple interpretations. I especially liked the way the white-on-white forces a meandering reading of the canvas.

Also at Vox, Joseph Hu's grisaille paintings of blurry, remembered rooms and spaces have a noir, high-contrast look that I don't remember in his past work. The surprise is the hard-boiled look paired with soft-focus, homey spaces from middle-class suburbia. The show, "An Image That I Have of Them," still leaves me puzzled by just what Hu feels about these memories of his past, but they're beautifully painted and imply a search for meaning, significance and connection with the commonplaces of past experiences. Hu, by the way, also has work up at Peng Gallery right now (right, "My Bedroom in Leawood," oil on canvas, 42" x 54", showing at Vox).
abrams, stefan
Also on exhibit are videos by Justin Marshall that collage clips from movies and print-outs from Stefan Abrams of photos downloaded from and Internet search for stefan.jpg, which is what he named the show. I had trouble staying focused on the videos, and ultimately I concluded that the strategy of borrowing that both of these artists use here is not enough. There needs to be some sort of transformation so the material transcends its sources (left, installation shot of "stefan.jpg").

permanent link   libby 3:15 PM
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Posted by roberta

heffernan, julie
I've been meaning to write about my talk with Amy Lipton, the new full-time curator at Abington Art Center. I met her a couple weeks ago when she walked me through her first indoor exhibit at the Center,"Trouble in Paradise." It's a show she originated at Van Brunt Gallery in New York (in May, 2004) and has brought with her to Abington -- with a few changes. (top image is Julie Heffernan's "Study for Self Portrait as Hostile Takeover," oil on canvas, 2004, and below is a detail of that detail-rich and Mardi-Gras bead heavy work, one reason to go see "Trouble.")

I'll have more on the show in another post. And Libby will weigh in also.



Anyway, Lipton is a Main Line girl who went to art school at California Institute of the Arts (BFA, 1980, she studied painting, drawing, printmaking). After graduation, she said, "I moved to New York and got a studio and within a year I knew a career as a studio artist was not for me. The New York scene is a killer." Instead, Lipton did something she knew she'd be good at -- she became a curator and gallery owner in the then cheap-rent East Village. Her Amy Lipton Gallery (which moved to Soho after a while) was up and running from the mid-80s to mid-90s. She was the first to show then-emerging artists Polly Apfelbaum, Sue Williams, Karen Finley and Mel Chin. Her successful show with Mel Chin went straight to the Hirshhorn, she said.

Working with Chin early in her career was instrumental in focusing her on ecology and on artists whose work deals with earth-related concerns. Since 1995, Lipton has been an independent curator whose writings and exhibitions have dealt with that subject, something Abington is increasingly interested in as well.

AAC, which includes an historically-important building, Alverthorpe, has 20+ acres of land including a manicured lawn cum sculpture park that houses works by Alan Greenberg, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Steven Donegan, Jeanne Jaffe, Sheila Klein, Mara Adamitz Scrup, Ron Klein, Tom Bills, Nick Kripal and Rebecca Johnson.
greenberg, alan
(below right is Greenberg's "Up House Down" in the sculpture garden)


The extensive and heretofore unaltered woods (with watershed) houses Winifred Lutz's "Reclamation Garden" and a Quaker Meeting House dating from 1836 that was abandoned in 1970 when the meeting moved elsewhere.

Abington recently got money from the state of Pennsylvania ($500,000) and from the Institute of Museum and Library Services ($64,410) to work on a master landscaping plan and visitors' interpretive center. Both grants require local matching funds.

Lipton's charge is to bring art to the great outdoors. The indoor program, she said, will expand on the outdoor program, giving the featured artists a chance to show works in the gallery. Right now, Lipton told me she is talking with Winifred Lutz about re-envisioning the Reclamation Garden.

Lipton debuts her first hands-on, Abington outdoor exhibit on June 5. The show will be temporary works, up for about a year, some in the sculpture park and some, she hopes, in the woods. In the future, there will be permanent or long-term projects installed. Also debuting that same date will be a piece by J. Morgan Puett in the abandoned Quaker meetinghouse. "Lost Meeting," curated by Julie Courtney, is a PEI-funded project.
donegan, steven

(left is Donegan's sculpture garden piece, "Conductor")

Lipton, whom I found charming, articulate, and serious but possessed of a nice sense of humor, is commuting to Abington several days a week from her home in the Beacon, NY area. She is house-hunting and will be moving to Philadelphia with husband and daughter soon.

permanent link   roberta 8:15 AM
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Posted by libby and roberta

Post from Karl Martino

Hello Roberta and Libby, I just wanted to inform you that we picked you as this week's featured blog at Philly Future. You are providing a great service to the community and I wanted to recognize it at the site.

--Karl Martino is co-editor of Philly Future, an online blog aggregator

permanent link   libby and roberta 10:29 AM
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Posted by libby and roberta

Four people thought the giveaway had come and gone and they missed it.

Not so. The "Dorothy Speaks" giveaway begins Friday, Feb. 25.

We'll be out there at 17th and Market between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. with the first installment of the Dorothy Speaks collection, a series of 12 cards in all. We have only 750 sets to distribute, so get there early. Click info on left column for more.

Volunteers welcome. Give away some art.

permanent link   libby and roberta 9:50 AM
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Posted by roberta

Awesome micro-cosmic guy, Randall Sellers, whose drawings we cannot get enough of, wrote to tell us about Micro Universe a New York show he's in that is up during the Christo and in a midtown location, so check it out. The show, through Feb. 26 at the Lab Gallery at Roger Smith Hotel includes Sellers and ten others, Noriko Ambe, Davide Cantoni, Soyeon Cho, Satoru Eguchi, Pamela Hadfield, Nicola Lopez, Marco Maggi, David McQueen, Dylan Stone and Ulrich Vogl. Show's curated by Hélianthe Bourdeaux-Maurin.
sellers, randall
We told you about Astrid Bowlby whose works will be highlighted in Gallery Joe's room at the Scope fair (Mar 10-14). Sellers, too, will be at Scope -- in the Miller Block Gallery room. And he'll have work in the Armory show at Richard Heller Gallery. (New work in both fairs. Check out the gallery's websites for the young phenoms they represent. Sellers is in good company.) The artist, who says he's trying to deal with his drawings flying away almost as quickly as he makes them, is constructing a website. Looks good! He will also have work at the Albany International Airport March 8-Sept 4.

Sellers' October, 2004 solo exhibit at Spector was a complete knock-out, in which he continued his exploration of fantasy cities in the clouds, but showed work in a new direction that I loved even better. See post. (image is untitled drawing from the Spector show)

permanent link   roberta 8:55 AM
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Posted by libby

Tom McCloskey's one-man show in the back gallery at Nexus is a meditation on communication failure--our communication failure in tv-land. With just three pieces, the show is worth a visit.
mccloskey, tom
McCloskey's tv screens are human alter-egos and what they have to say is less than enlightening. The screens roar at one another, just like our televisions roar at us, with no way for us to communicate back. It's one-way self-expression that appalls.


A black fabric worm's head and tail are identical television monitors (top image). The monitors call to one another from each end of the 15-foot body, but ultimately fail. Four tv screens sit on four pew-like chairs set in a circle, each tv image a closeup of faces and mouths that roar (image right). The roaring humans are mesmerizing and somewhat repellent. The faces show gender and race variety. They belong to all of us; they are all of us. And their chairs remind us that we do have a real-world presence, a body that comes to rest and needs support.
rath, alan
The work reminds me of Alan Rath, who's got more mechanics and an endearing sense of humor. In contrast McCloskey's humor is mordant, and his mechanics, relatively minimal. And his work has a low-tech edge that contrasts to Rath's techno-wizardry and robotics (left, Rath's "Neo-Watcher III").


McCloskey, who lives in South Philadelphia, undercuts the techno-wizardry with homey materials and basic structures, even in his third and last piece in the show, in which two shooters face off by not facing eachother and then shoot with their screen-persona eyes wide shut (image right).

With his homey materials, McCloskey seems to be saying we're more beast-like than we like to pretend and our lack of communication is in the private as well as the public sphere. His subject is the human condition, and he's saying, rather desperately, you're not listening. Listen.

permanent link   libby 10:34 AM
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